I Know Something About Pain You Don't

She'd spent the night out on the beach with Ben, but a vague unsettling feeling had drawn Tahiri back to the cabins and the comlink she'd left in her alcove there -- it wasn't that she was in the habit of leaving it behind, but she hadn't wanted the potential interruption. (Not of that. Because there was no that. Just a chance to get some uninterrupted sleep, okay?)

There was, in fact, a message waiting for her when she got there, and as soon as she played it the unsettling feeling coalesced into something very much not vague any more. Jaina -- her Jaina at home -- never sounded like this, and yet she was practically exuberant. And it wasn't that Tahiri could blame her for being happy that her twin brother was alive after all.

She'd half expected it, really, and it saved her the guilt of hoping it wasn't going to happen, but at the same time it brought certain unwanted potential futures a little closer than she'd like for comfort. Having just met someone who looked exactly like Jacen, even if George sounded and acted nothing like him, didn't do much to help either. The timing was what really sucked void, though. Tahiri couldn't have stopped being aware of the time that had passed since Anakin's death if she tried, even if she wanted to, and by her count (including the time that had passed on her mission home in spring) it had been a year since Myrkr.

So it . . . wasn't unfair, exactly; she knew that. It was just the fact that she'd gotten news of one of Jaina's brothers being alive again had come now. When it marked a year since Anakin died, and she had to face up -- again -- to the realization that he wasn't coming back.

After getting the message, Tahiri had wandered away from the campsite into the preserve and now found herself staring at a cluster of grotesque-looking angel statues. She didn't know the story of what they were or how they had gotten there, but she got the sense that they were frozen in time, somehow. Stuck in a moment they couldn't get out of.

She hadn't had that dream again last night, but she'd had it often enough in the past few weeks. Had, to some extent, been stuck in that moment for the past year. Looking at the statues now, she wished she couldn't say she knew the feeling.

[OOC: Yeah, I'm a mean, horrible person. I know. I AM SO SORRY. And I swear she will get over this or I'm going to headdesk myself unconscious. Establishy, but open, why not? ETA: Details of convo with Karla NFB, whee.]

Sometimes Tahiri wondered if there was some kind of cosmic rule about everything going wrong at once. The day had started off well enough, and the field trip had promised to be fun.

But then there had been zombies, and Tahiri was far less than thrilled about her reaction to them. Getting back to the group hadn't been a highlight of her day either.

And as if that hadn't been bad enough (because really, hadn't it?) she'd come home to find a message from Firekeeper about going away for a while, and on top of that there was the message from Ben that was about the farthest possible thing from reassuring.

Sore, exhausted, and badly freaked out for reasons that had nothing to do with the zombies themselves, Tahiri headed straight for a really, really long shower and then her room, where she promptly curled up on her bed and tried to put herself through some meditative techniques.

[OOC: Establishy/linkdroppy, but open if you want with the caveat that I'm going to bed in about an hour. ETA: Wait, did I just linkdrop? Well, now I'm scared.]