Death and Life

[ysonesse]

Dream World: The Wilds

"Tell me about yourself," Nalieza said.

Solo picked up a stone and tossed it into the river. "I generally don't talk about myself."

"Am I allowed to ask why?" She sat down on a nearby medium sized boulder.

"It's simple. Talk too much about anything, especially yourself, and there's no mystery. Everybody knows all about you, and they can use it to their advantage." He threw the stone high into the air. It landed on the other bank, the side representing the entrance and exit to the conscious world.

"Damn, I can't walk over there, but I can throw a rock on that side. Doesn't make any sense," he said in a low voice.

She leaned back, and gave the sky above them an inspection. Grey, overcast, dreary. An obvious sign of Solo's underlying feeling about the situation. Dramatically appropriate. "Can I at least ask about your philosophy on life?"

He had another stone in his hand, and bounced it in his palm. "Well, philosophy bores the hell out of me. But just to keep the conversation going, I'll tell you. It's a game of chance."

"How did you come to that conclusion?"

He dropped the stone and spread his hands out in front of him. "Think of a sabacc table. The cards are spread out in front of you, and the little trick to remember in this game is the random factor." He paused. "Wait, how much do you know about sabacc?"

"Only that it's a card game. And that some people goof around and use the cards for fortune telling."

"I forgot all about that." Then he returned to his original topic. "Okay, the cards change face values at random. That's the beauty of the game. When you're playing, a hand gets dealt, and each card changes its value. Like, if the hand you have at the moment has cards like the Idiot and the Four of Coins in it, the the dealer passes out some more cards, and then a randomizer in the table shift the values of all the cards everyone has."

"What's the purpose of that, exactly?"

"To keep things interesting."

"It sounds chaotic."

"Well, if you like boring, then it's not the game for you."

"So, that's why life is like sabacc. Because of randomness."

"Pretty much."

Nalieza stood up and walked over to the river's edge. "Does your theory account for concepts like death?"

"None that I can recall."

"So, it's not a convenient way to explain everything in life."

"It works for the most part."

"But that can't help you with death."

"I've done pretty well so far not giving much thought to that particular matter."

This conversation was quickly approaching a point of no return. Time to shift focus so she could keep the flow of words going. If she was meant to help him, then she needed to know as much about him as possible.

"Is Solo really your last name?"

"Why shouldn't it be?"

"I don't know. 'Solo' sounds like an alias. Or something you decided to use because it might be good for business."

"Tell me about your name first." He grinned.

"Why should I do that?"

She sighed. Of course he was going to make this difficult. But she had to play along, so she might as well go ahead and indulge his question. "The first one comes from my mother's side. And the last one is fairly common on Ultraia. Where I was born, by the way." She bent down to pick up a stone with jagged edges. "My father and I moved to Aeithera when I was two. He got a job teaching at one of the universities there."

"Didn't your mother go with you and him?"

Nalieza swallowed hard. "She was dead by then."

Her answer silenced him for a moment. When he replied, it was with one word, spoken in a low and solemn tone. "Sorry."

She tossed the stone over her left shoulder without looking backwards. "It was the Will of the Creatrix, I guess. No one could help it." Then she wiped some nonexistent dirt from her palm. "Enough about me. Tell me something about where you come from."

He began to pace along the shoreline. "Corellia ."

"What about your parents?"

He turned to look at her with a hardened expression. "There's nothing to say about them."

Nalieza was taken aback. Yet she also realized it was far too early in their acquaintance for him to reveal anything truly personal about his past. Which meant that it definitely would be pointless to bring up the matter of his relationship with the princess. But all in good time...well, not necessarily a time that was good, but still those things might be revealed eventually.

She watched him for a few minutes. He moved from the far side of the riverbank, and stopped to stare across the river. Then, he would come back slowly to the other side, and stop to stand completely still.

Finally, she asked him a question. "You don't believe in life after death?"

"No, to be honest."

She took a glimpse of their surroundings. "Well, tell me what you would call this."
"You call this death?"

"I don't exactly call it living. Sitting around in the woods you used to go to as a kid, and talking to some stranger who appears out of nowhere. Isn't that just a little odd to you?"

He shrugged. "It's a dream. So you told me, anyway. Things always get strange in those." He stood up and walked over to the edge of the river. "Besides, dead people can't dream."

"How do you know they can't?"

"How do you know they can?"

If he was dead, then why in the Force was she given the task of dealing with his soul? Dreams of the living were her territory, not visions from the dead. "Look, you can't say for sure. If you aren't alive, then you have to go over to the Netherworld."

He cast his gaze to the wet ground beneath his boots. "It doesn't exist."

"Yes it does."

"Have you ever been there?"

Nalieza stared down at her hands. "I think so. Maybe."

"Yeah, sure. Just like Luke really talks to Kenobi." Solo shook his head. "You kids and your Force."

"Who said I use Force? I never said that."

"You sound just like Luke."

She paused, gave the matter some thought. "So maybe I might have a little bit of Force sensitivity." She turned around to stare at him. "But that doesn't mean I'm anything like your friend."

"All Jedi aren't alike?"

"I can't compare whatever little drop of sensitivity I have to what he has. Or do you think there's one huge club for all the freaky Force people?"

"What, you mean to tell me there isn't a secret Jedi society?"

She smirked. "Now, if I told you that, you'd get a late night visit from the Hooded Nerfs. Do you really want to see them showing up on your doorstep?"

"Nerfs wearing hoods...I gotta look out for that when I wake up," he replied, turning back to look across the river once more.

There was another lengthy silence between them. Nalieza took the opportunity to come up with a rough strategy for how to approach this entire situation. She really couldn't form a specific plan. Basically, it was going to be a case of "making it up as you go along," which was her father's preferred approach to dealing with difficult situations. Not one that she agreed with...but since she was dealing with a man who had become notorious for handling everything thrown at him by doing the first thing that came to his mind, and somehow always managed to survive, then she decided that going with the flow of the moment was the only way that events were going to unfold.

As if he was able to read her mind for one brief moment, Solo came over and stood by the boulder she was seated upon. "If I'm stuck like this until somebody comes and gets me out, then what am I supposed to do?"

"I can't say for sure. But I'm thinking that since I've been tossed into the middle of this with you, then I'm going to be a dream guide. Where I'm from, it's called an aident."

"Which means...?"

She smiled. "You can say that I'm sort of a tribal dream counselor. My mother was one, and so was most of her family. It's been a tradition on Ultraia for longer than anyone can remember."

"Okay, so you're going to be running around in my head, looking for some dark secrets from my childhood." He shook his head. "I'm not too crazy about the idea of letting someone do that. Too personal."

"No, I only have access to what you let me see. Which right now are your memories. You're the one in control here. I'm just an interpreter. What I do is try and help you figure out why you did certain things at certain times. But you still have the final say in what shows up."

"You're still not selling me on it." Then he shrugged. "But I guess it's better than sitting around here all the time."

"So you'll go along with me on this? You promise not to back out?"

He smirked, and gave her a mock military salute. "You have the word of a Corellian on that."

She leaned back a little and gave him a suspicious look. "Can that be trusted?"

He held his arms out wide. "Hey, we're always trustworthy. At least, when we're sober."