thisavrou | 001. [video]

001. [video]

[Soon after the mail shows up, Leia flicks on the video feed on the MID. Her holster is already in use, but there are several vacuum-sealed packets of ruica and three packets of ruica seeds next to her. Ruica's basically spinach, and Leia has Complicated Feelings about it. But never mind that. She's looking directly into the feed, wearing a pleasant, Not At All Complicated expression on her face. Princesses talking to groups know how to look mild while doing so.]

Greetings. If we haven't met before, it's a pleasure to speak with you.

I was brought to the Moira recently, and I'm still learning the ship's norms, so I hope you'll forgive the questions. Does the Moira have any facilities or previously agreed-upon standards for trading packages from home? I'm sure some of us have received items we don't need, or don't need in the quantity we received.

Thank you for any help you can provide on the matter.

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[It's not actually the girl on the screen, she has the MID focused on the robot toy in her lap.]

Don't see why this place should be different that anywhere else. Ya got somethin' someone wants, ya make 'em cough up something in return.

[She shrugs, jostling the camera.]

What have ya got to trade anyway?

[Luckily, Leia recognizes that voice.]

They sent me more ruica than I think anyone could eat before it goes bad. [She gestures to the vacuum-sealed greens.] I thought someone else might like some.

Kind of looks a bunch of funny leaves. You sure it's for eatin'? What's it taste like? Looks like it will taste gross.

I'm sure. [She smiles. Trust her, Bee, she's eaten a lot of this stuff.] It's...fine, as vegetables go.

What did you receive in the mail? A droid?

[She could point out that vegetables weren't something she had much experience with, so she really didn't know what would make one better than the other. But Leia had to insinuate her toy was a droid and that knocked the words right out of her. Her idea of droids were not something any child would be allowed to play with, even with the lax parenting of the Zones.

Leia gets a few moments of stunned silence before the girl can find anything to say.]

I'm a kid!

[She's not at all sure what brought on that silence, but she waits--and is rewarded with a statement that doesn't clear things up one bit.]

I beg your pardon. [Clearly, she's caused offense, but she's not sure how. By Leia's standards, that's definitely a droid, even if she's never seen one that looks quite like it.] Maybe you could tell me about it.

It's a toy. [She says it slowly, like that will help with understanding.] Just a toy. A little robot, like Destroya. I'm not, I'm not even old enough for- I mean, they can talk and stuff! You can't keep them to play with.

At home, we call all robots droids. [She's not unfamiliar with the word robot--though Destroya doesn't mean anything to her--but it's not exactly common parlance.] It sounds like those are something specific where you come from.

[And specifically inappropriate, at that. Which explains most of the confusion.]

Yeah! Robots and droids are different. Droids are for, ya know, partyin' and sex and pictures in magazines. They're, like, an old people thing. And they can talk and think. They wouldn't wanna be here.

[She's more disturbed by the implication she'd ask for one to be sent here than she is to being explaining their functions to Leia, even as awkward as that was. Outside of their duties, the droids had sentience. She wouldn't dare ask for one to be trapped here with her.]

That's a big difference. I'll try and remember it. [A little pause.] Especially if you can remember that droids in my world do things like translating and flying ships.

[More likely than not, she'll still refer casually to droids in the girl's presence, after all.]

They don't do a lot of partying.

No partyin'? I guess if ya got 'em doing everything else they wouldn't have time. [A snort.] I can remember. Got a pretty good memory.

Ya got a lot of people speakin' a lot of languages at home? If ya gotta build something just to translate.

When people want to party, they usually seek out humanoids. [The idea of seeking out droids for that kind of thing is as strange to her as Jabba the Hutt's predilection for humanoid women must be to his fellow Hutts.]

Well, to give you an idea--C3PO, our protocol droid, can translate between more than six million forms of communication. [Her words become his. She's heard his introduction so many times at this point...] Between all the different species in the galaxy, and all the programming languages droids--our droids--speak, there are a lot of ways to communicate.

Oh, they go ‘round with plenty of human-people too. Ain’t never met a picky runner. Sometimes they just want the professionals, I guess. [She’d seen plenty in the Zones hook up with each other, seen it within her own group. But the droids seemed to have some specific allure she couldn’t understand.]

Six million? [She nearly squeaks. The number is beyond the scope of her imagination, too big for someone used to sparsity to grasp. The few languages she’d heard at home she could count on one hand. The language everyone spoke, the language BLI had brought in, the language Jet sometimes slipped into.] How? You sound like you’re speakin’ all plain to me.

I guess so. [Whatever you say, kid. It's nothing she wants to discuss in detail, let alone with a ten-year-old, so that explanation is as good as any.]

It's a big galaxy. [It must seem impossible to someone who's never left her planet before, but it's still a little funny to see her reaction.] Most beings speak Basic--what you and I are speaking right now--but there are plenty of other options out there.

[Big is such an arbitrary description. For the girl, big is the expanse of sand and pavement on Route Guano or the night horizon from a cliff top after a storm.]

But big enough for six million people? [She could count all the faces she knew from home and still never leave the double digits. In the millions seemed like a mistake.] Basic? That what its called? It's kind of a weird name. Makes it sound like the others are more fancy. I've only ever heard of three ways people can talk. Kinda hard to imagine there bein' more.

Six million and more. There are hundreds of planets and moons out there, and people live on a lot of them.

[Maybe she'll have to take a look for some holobooks in the library; there must be a way of conveying the universe's breadth to a girl who's seen so little of it.]

The official name for it is Galactic Basic Standard, but that's a little long for conversations. What do you call the languages you knew at home?

People can live on the moon? And hundreds?

[It's a lot to take it and a lot to ask her to believe. This entire place has been an exercise in trying to expand her mind beyond the narrow scope of her desert and it's not sinking in well.]

Uh. Some of the people speak Japanese? I think. And Spanish. I can read some of the first, but I'm not that good at either.

Some moons, anyway. There are plenty that don't support life.

[Whether the moon the girl means is one that doesn't, she's not sure.]

I'm not sure C3PO could help you with those languages. I've never heard of them before.

But how? The one at home just looks like a real big star. Can people live on stars?

[She feels like Jet Star would have taught her about it if they could; if he knew.]

Yeah? Then what's some that you know? Those are all I've ever heard at home.

Oh, no--stars are too hot to live on. But your moon probably wasn't.

[Probably. It's hard to tell when she has so little information to go on.]

Well, besides Basic, there's Mando'a, Shyriiwook, Sullustese, Huttese... [She wrinkles her nose.] My brother can help you with that one, but I wouldn't recommend it.

We don't got space ships though, so ain't no body ever gonna know.

[She doesn't know enough of her own history to know such things had once existed on her Earth. To her, the sky was an impossible limit.]

Ya got a brother? Like a brother-brother or someone ya got blood with?

In the future, you might.

[The girl's world sounds far from ideal for such things, but the possibility will always be there as long as people are.]

A brother-brother. [Said with a little grin.] He's my twin. Have you met anybody named Luke Skywalker?

Twin? [She racks her brain, trying to think if she'd ever met such a thing.] Nope. He's got a good name though. Sounds like something.

Something is right. He's a pilot--and a Jedi. [That's probably not going to mean much to the girl, though.] If you meet him, ask him about it.

[Now she doesn't have to explain. Nailed it.]

Okay. [That sounds a lot like one of the boys telling her to wait on her questions for the next time they see Cherri or when Jet’s awake; she knows the gentle ways to nudge her away from an explanation] Hope he likes talkin’.

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001. [video]

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