This World

[Kamelle Skyler]

EDIT: The following takes place before Kamelle was electrocuted to death.

Spoiler: Music OOC

Naboo. Hills, plains, swamps, mountains. If nature was a jewel then here it was, far more glorious than any Hutt could ever hope to conjure. In this world, Kamelle Skyler stood on the balcony atop a skyscraper nestled into the mountainside, gazing upon a sea and the distant shore on the horizon.

She had her own, had come to call it home, that freighter called the Wailing. It was a sea, it was a shore, it was nothing and everything more, and whatever that meant might one day be deciphered on her deathbed.

For now, Kamelle was content with gazing, staring ever forward in the hopes of glimpsing her future. What comes next? Her hands grasped the railing, tightened, suddenly concerned over falling over, but not afraid. Never afraid.

The Sith eschewed fear as much as embraced it, let it fuel their passions, but what passions could a person like Skyler ever possess? Only one in this world of worlds, this galaxy of suns, had ever truly come to understand the daughter. Even then, not much. And where are you now, brother?

Kayden Skyler was above the sky, blue as painted glass, dotted with white clouds so pale, and beyond that fragile illusion was the great expanse where her twin was surely marauding. Ever the reaver, ever the reaper, my flesh and bone and blood.

The sister had been no different, once upon a time; had sailed with him, soared beside him; fought beside him, flayed with him. Yet, when the Silence had split, when the Wailing caught wind, the two siblings had parted from one another, and there one stood alone.

Naboo, green glory, was beautiful and bountiful. I could…I could…could I…live here? Kamelle crossed her brows, felt one quiver, perplexed at this ‘feeling’, whatever it was. A breeze brushed her hair, as gentle as his fingers had been as they brushed her neck, cold and warm all at once.

She shook her head. Folly. Spat into the wind. Futile. No, she could not live here, could not stay here. She had business to take care of and it was not on this world. Time to go. Stealing one last look at the sapphire sea, the idea of leaping into it tried to steal her back, one hand locked on the railing as the woman turned around.

The hand was forced to let go. On her way out, Kamelle stepped over a headless corpse, another one; waved a hand to open a door so as not to touch a bloody handle; negotiated her way through a living room littered with the dead, with heads and arms and legs no longer connected, black red robes held above the blood where there were no burns.

She entered her ship and, as it left the landing pad atop the roof, the screams of the dead whispered into her ears like soft fingertips, and the Wailing broke the glass to join the darkness between the stars. Here where I belong.

 

[Kamelle Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

The Wailing. A ship of regret and sleep. In that freighter, Kamelle slept, bereft of regret, or so she told herself. She never cried herself to sleep, never had the glands for tears, but she had seen and heard others do so.

Pitby. That was his name. He was a boy of twelve, a Zeltron boy, and maybe to some that emotional connection might have mattered. Someone like Kamelle, well, she had overlooked it. She had heard his cries but had not listened. He was just another load of cargo, another lump in the throat, but not hers.

Pitby. Where was he now? In a ship of regret and sleep…just not this one. This one was hers. The Wailing. It traversed the stars, glinted in the black backdrop, screeching like a maddened banshee, but only those with connections to the Force might have ever heard it.

You did, Kamelle thought in the cockpit of her ship. Even in your Silence, you hear my Wailing, don’t you, brother? He did. She knew it. They were inseparable, those twins, even with star systems between them.

Wherever he was, whoever he had become, whatever he was doing, Kayden Skyler could hear his sister. They were connected, the siblings of blood, and for a certainty they had heard their fair share of wailing upon spilling blood. Until the silence drowns out the screams, and then…nothing.

The Wailing. Kamelle closed her eyes in that cockpit, in the captain’s chair, remembered the memory of long ago but struggled to hear the wailing. Pitby. She heard his just then. The little boy was crying for his mother. The woman opened the door, but it was not his mother. It’s me.

Kamelle reached a hand out. The boy recoiled. “It’s okay,” she promised. “You are safe,” she lied. “Who is he?” Kayden asked. “A stowaway,” she admitted. “Fair enough. We could use a fresh pair of hands in the galley. Chain him to it?”

It was more a command than a question. Kamelle never liked that about her brother. “No,” she refused. “He has already heard too much.” As if reading her mind, Kayden shrugged and strolled away.

Kamelle beckoned the boy forth, promised him food, led him down the corridor, opened the door. “In you go,” she commanded. Pitby went in. She pressed a button. The airlock opened. Pitby floated away, pale as ice, a frozen scream more silent than the Wailing.

Ship of regret and sleep. Kamelle smiled, at peace, coming in and out of sleep, floating in a bath of memories. There was no room for regret. A hand strolled over her belly. Pitby. Maybe, like Pitby, hers would be a boy too.

 

[Kamelle Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

There was something out there. Kamelle couldn’t quite pinpoint what. From the cockpit of the Silence, she felt it; like a whisper against the skin, silent, save for the breath that could make no noise except that which skin could hear.

Am I dead? She blinked before the stars, those stars that turned to lines as hyperspace engaged. Am I dead? Why ask the question twice? Why ask why? The ship was empty, lifeless, unless one could count two siblings as being alive. Sometimes, Kamelle did not. We are dead.

Were they anything less? Kamelle and Kayden Skyler, though the latter would insist on ‘Kayden and Kamelle Skyler’. Though, he could never prove the time, as much as string theory could prove no less. Who was first? Who was last?

They were born together, born apart, by seconds if not milliseconds, and that itself was the anomaly. Are we anything less? Anything more? Sometimes, late at night, Kamelle would lay on her bed wondering no less.

The search was fruitless, like sinking teeth into a dried banana peel, and Kayden would just as much cackle while watching a boy slip on said peel to tumble out the airlock. His amusement was not his own.

We do this day after night, night after day, us Skylers. Kamelle had done no less, known no more. I am Kamelle. She told herself the same every night. Kamelle! Kamelle! Kamelle! Night, though, was the very day when it came to outer space. The endless night. The endless journey.

In the cockpit of Silence, in the silence, she stroked her stomach. Will you take after your mother? After your uncle? One meant much the same as the other; much and more, little and less. Or will you become another? Time, only time, only time…would ever tell.

 

[Kamelle Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

There was a time when Kamelle Skyler could gaze upon the sky and see herself, not below or beyond it, but upon it. It was strange, especially so to word it aloud to someone else, but she felt almost like an egg. She felt one with the sky, a part of it, spread in and around it, stretched across it.

Not stretched thin, like butter scraped over too much bread, but more like the effect your body had when it was stretched head to toe in the clutches of a black hole that spaghettified you. A black hole is exactly what the woman found herself to be in, day after night, upon being conceived and birthed in either.

Not you, my son, she promised the seed in her belly. You will grow to surpass both. It was truth, it was fact, no denying it, for a mother’s promise was no less, no more. It was just so.

This one would crack the center of the galaxy, black hole and all, cradle the cosmos on his shoulders, flay the universe alive and rebirth it on the backs of the dead if it meant staying alive and surviving. A mother’s promise is just so.

She had no name for him yet, could not conjure the title, but knew it would come. For now, Kamelle settled for sitting in the cockpit of her Wailing, rubbing her belly. It was slim, tight, not bulging just yet, but in time it would grow. As will you, my son.

Until then, there was a world waiting for her. The starship drifted toward it, beckoned forth, for none could deny the force of the hail. There was a secret buried in the message broadcasted, kind of like candy hidden in a kid’s pocket, and Kamelle would pluck both. Here I come, she promised the universe. And my future comes with me.

 

[Kamelle Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

‘If you’re hearing this message, the signal has gotten through. The Hutt treasure vault I am stuck in is about to be bombarded from orbit by the Hutts - there isn’t much time but what is held here can topple their grip on the Galactic underworld! Finance a war a dozen times over! Please, help me escape and it’s all yours!’

Kamelle heard the message, loud and clear. Up there in the far reaches of outer space, where there were no walls except within worlds and even they could not contain, one could fly free as a bird like those upon those planets.

The Wailing was nothing more and nothing less as she soared the sky above the sky, her captain and pilot drifting toward nowhere and everywhere. Hutt treasure vault, is it? The Hutts were filthy, no new argument there, but just as much filthy rich.

Cracking one of their vaults would be a nice break for Kamelle Skyler. And a nice break from the drudgery of this hell called living. She would never admit it but she had to secure a financial future for her offspring, after all, and financing a war a dozen times over was just one way of doing that.

Some hapless soul wanted to escape its own hell but Kamelle would not be responsible for that. All in all, she could not afford to have her child be born into the hands of her brother. That would be as forfeit as handing the vault itself over to him with her own body cocooned within.

So, Kamelle veered her ship and set it on a new course bound for Mataou. There was a world waiting for her and so much more. You won’t be born into the poverty I was, my child. You won’t grow up as no one. You won't become his pet. Your future is safe and sound. Your mother will make sure of it.

She descended upon the world, determined to claim its secrets and safeguard them in her womb. And, if I don’t, I will die trying. And, if I die, my son, we will die together, smiling as one.


[END THREAD]