I Know Something About Pain You Don't

They'd been on Zonama Sekot for several weeks now. Several weeks of Nen Yim and Harrar pretty much geeking out over every possible thing, Yu'shaa's long periods of silence broken by occasional speeches . . . and absolutely no sign of native inhabitants anywhere, despite repeated and farther-ranging expeditions. With limited food supplies, they'd been doing their best to live off the native resources -- Nen Yim had been able to identify a small handful of edible plants. Gathering expeditions to keep themselves fed provided a good excuse for Tahiri and Corran to talk in private, too.

"We can't stay here forever," Corran was saying. "I've been trying to think of a way to attract the attention of that Imperial frigate, if nothing else."

Tahiri turned the pingpear she'd picked over in her hands and looked down at her bare feet, frowning slightly. The trouser cuffs of her flightsuit seemed to be riding a couple of centimeters higher -- had she grown? "Any thoughts on how to go about that?"

He nodded. ( Yes. I'll have to go to the one place I've been avoiding. )



When she found Nen Yim a little while later, the shaper was examining a spherical object that looked like a qahsa but probably wasn't; Tahiri knew, because she'd watched her grow the thing. Tahiri had been watching Nen Yim a lot since they'd been here, which had probably been annoying at least at first.

Sitting down cross-legged near Nen Yim, she queried about this latest experiment -- an elaborate test of Tahiri's theory that the Force was regulating all the life on the planet.

"To explain," Nen Yim began, "I may have to speak of things that will upset you."

She'd wanted to know. And she hadn't. Her stomach twisted in anticipation and apprehension. ( This concerns my own shaping, doesn't it? )

[OOC: Oh, you know the drill. Still, yes, still adapted from The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes; dialogue mostly intact, with narrative adjustments by me. Tahiri's random growth spurt is the fault of trickster_twin, momslilassassin, and new canon.]

Several days later their situation hadn't improved much, not in a living ship that was already acting up and had been further damaged by a run-in with the gravity well from an Imperial Remnant interdictor, with tension growing between the Jedi and Yuuzhan Vong on board. They'd been jumping from point to point in a largely uncharted region of space, Corran playing headgames with Nen Yim and Harrar about their real destination and Tahiri halfway wanting to knock all their heads together.

( The latest jump had brought them to the fringes of an unnamed star system whose primary planet appeared as a tiny blue sphere haloed by a vast ring that shone as if it were made of a few hundred trillion corusca gems. It was fascinating, and gorgeous, and Tahiri couldn't stop looking at it. )

[OOC: Oh, you so know the acronym drill by now. Also that this is still adapted and in parts just ganked from The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes.]