Post by Talau the Ever-Lurking on Sept 29, 2009 0:27:21 GMT -5
((Song: "Desert Rose" by Sting))
To be honest, Aunna was annoyed.
During their time on Corellia she’d had her fair share of problems…not the least of which being her parents, and then there was Vex and his…actions.
She didn’t even want to go into that.
She had avoided him since she’d seen him with the jedi...had locked her door and shunned his presence at every turn and only helping if he needed it or there was no getting around his presence…like deciding to go to Carida for her training. Again she had realized that she had given up her whole life, her entire little world, for a killer…someone who didn’t care about life in any form. If it wasn’t useful to him, if it got in his way, it was better off dead or broken. She had wondered, then, just what he might do to her if he found her pushing his patience too much…testing his limits too often…when whatever little use (or imagined use) he had for her failed or ran out. Would she become like that jedi?
The woman had pushed it from her mind time and again…after all, he had saved her more than once; he wouldn’t go through all that just to kill her on a wish and a whim, right? The sensible side of her mind, however, pointed out that he had also threatened her life more than once (not always verbally), and that he was also a dark jedi…a classification of people that tended to all run about the same way: if you think it’s best to kill someone, kill them and be done, no matter what you’ve done to, for, or with the person. This counted doubly for people who outlived their usefulness, and people who caused you problems…she fit easily into at least one of these two categories. Though she had stubbornly refused the thoughts and doubt during her waking hours, it wasn’t quite so simple during her sleep.
This was part of the reason she now found herself annoyed…lack of sleep (good sleep anyway) was never a good idea, and it had made her more irritable. Then there had been the fact that there was something nagging at her. Well, several somethings actually. Seeing as Vex hadn’t sought her out, she took the chance to use one thing she’d managed to get her hands on while at the manor on Corellia. Her mother had offered it, oddly enough, and the exchange had managed to take place while Vex wasn’t about. It couldn’t have been better timed if she’d planned it. Either way, Aunna had emerged from the refresher the night before…as an auburn. That had taken care of one nagging urge, but the other she was far less willing to accommodate.
The newly minted auburn now sat in her room, glaring impotently at the wall across from her, data pad in her hands and long since forgotten. Muscles bunched and bundled beneath her skin before going slack once more as she continued trying to bore a hole through the wall with her eyes. Finally, she decided she would just have to give in to her idiotic need and get it out of her system. Huffing, she stood and smoothed out the thin, loose legged, pants that Veera had given her and padded nearly silently toward the cargo bay. Though the clothing she was wearing wasn’t…ideal…for what she was about to do, it was far from detrimental. If anything, she preferred the pants and form fitting top to the barely there skirt and top she would have been wearing were she going to do this in public. Stepping into the cargo bay, she took stock of the room she had…not bad considering what it was and what it held, and she’d certainly used smaller spaces.
It would work for her purposes.
Grumbling to herself mildly about how she should likely warm up first, Aunna ignored the thought and huffed again at the song that was creeping up into the back of her mind, poking at her consciousness like an itch waiting to be scratched. Giving in, she closed her eyes gently and allowed herself a moment to remember the tune as she had heard it before. She’d preformed to it once and even now, years later, it wasn’t difficult to remember the rhythm and tune…even the lyrics were ready to spring to her mind as she slowly lowered her head and settled her feet apart slightly, the metal of the floor cold against her bare feet.
Even as the melody started unfolding in her mind her arm had raised parallel to the ground, the muscles of it rippling to bring about the fluid motion that had worked its way all the way to her finger tips in an undulating wave that echoed back along her arm, across her shoulders and along the other. Her eyes slid open, blue depths almost unseeing as the curtain of her hair obscured her view. A slight twist of her body had her back and side lengthening even as she turned so that her weight rested along her leading leg. Her arms and shoulders moved even as she kept the rest of her body in strict lines as she turned again to lunge the other direction, each motion a strict and controlled action embedded into her subconscious to warm her up and lengthen out her muscles so she didn’t injure herself. The movements flowing along her arms as she gathered her energy and readied her body spoke of wind or waves, and while she still hadn’t brought her head up, Aunna didn’t need to see for what she was doing…not yet.
Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, as the rolling desert language began in her mind, the energy that had been building in and around her called her to motion.
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
Those dreams have tied two hearts that will never tie
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire
Within moments she had become movement.
Aunna was not simply moving, dance had never been that way for her…at least not this type of dance…she did not follow movements, she became them. Music, song, art, dance, they were all the same thing…expression…and so she had learned to connect to those feelings and then express them through song or dance, or even music (if she was ever lucky enough to get her hands on an instrument she knew how to play), and she had learned to feed off of the emotions of others as well. The songs that these dances went to, songs like this one, they were often stories as well (yet another form of expression), and she sought to become those stories, to mimic them in new or unique ways…ways that were only hers. This was the case now as she entwined her own emotions with the music that flowed through her, her body almost automatically expressing it through her motions.
That auburn hair had cascaded away as her head came up, her body moving, flowing, into the series of actions she wished. The material of her pants swayed gently around her legs as she moved forward, only to halt her progress as her body arched backward into a graceful curve while her arms became flames to light the room. The flames died down, the fluid motion sinking into her shoulders as she brought her arms down to her chest again only to blossom outward as she brought her body up and around out of that backward arch.
She was moving once more, her hair whispering behind her as she followed the motion of the blood in her veins through another few swift steps. Military strengthened muscles became the motivators of sensual undulations through her stomach, bringing her ribs outward up and around so the motion could continue effortlessly back to her core where it had started. For as much as she hated the force-fed dance lessons of her youth, Aunna loved the freedom of dance itself…the expression of it…almost as much as she loved the music that drove it and the songs she sang. The dances of the desert dwelling peoples, and those that had become associated with the twi’lek dancing girls the Hutts so prized, were some of her favorites simply because of the expression and the freedom they allowed. If you could imagine your body creating that particular movement, it was to be put into the dance without hesitation.
Even as she danced, somewhere on the edges of her senses, she noticed the brooding presence of Vex near by, but if he were in the room or out she couldn’t tell. While her eyes looked for obstacles in her path, they did not often see more than what was the nearest hazard, and even then it was not often her eyes that kept her avoiding a particular crate or box that might find itself near her path. With this being the case, she certainly didn’t notice what side of the door he might be on. The cool presence heated her blood slightly and made her skin prickle as she felt a mild embarrassment course through her. Despite this, she continued the conglomeration of movements that seemed to flow effortlessly and smoothly into each other.
This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing's as it seems
Black cloth swirled about her legs now, her hair splaying out around her as she turned, and vaguely she wished she had a veil to use. The dance lacked something without that thin cloth, but the musing left her mind as swiftly as it had come as she now worked to balance the imaginary candles that had just been placed in the palms of her hands while she moved.
Each hand carried the individual phantom candles along their own separate paths from shoulder height, below her arm, and up over her head only to settle at shoulder height for another journey along the same route. She continued this motion with little difficulty as she turned and moved, at one point lowing to her knees and leaning back slightly only to make the task that much more difficult before allowing the phantom candles to vanish as her arms once more became flickering flames, the back of her head all but touching the floor behind her. Lightly bronzed skin had begun to glisten slightly as she slowly brought herself to her feet once more.
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes
Her rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love
A moment only did she seem to slow before lean legs began eating away the floor beneath her, covering distance in the ballet-esque leaps, intricate turns, and pirouettes bringing a new style to the dance…something more classical added to the mystic and sensual dance movements that she had been doing before. Sapphire eyes flickered brightly amidst the crimson feathers of her hair that floated about her as the movements became increasingly more difficult. Muscles preformed the movements on a whim, the long practiced art form a little dusty but still burned into her every fiber well enough that she didn’t need more than that half thought and the energy she had built up over the dance to carry her through them.
The song thrilled through her blood as she continued her dance, pouring her soul into the movements. To do less, at this point, would be a crime against the song itself. Each motion, each glance she cast, every movement of her head, her arms, her hands or fingers, every expression…she had a meaning for them all, and much to her…vexation…many of them revolved around a certain man. Frustrated with herself, or perhaps him (or maybe both), Aunna could do little but allow herself to see the dance through to the end. She knew, by now, that Vex was most certainly near by (not that he could really go FAR as they were on a ship after all)…she just wasn’t certain if she would be pleased or displeased to find that he had seen her dancing. Pressing the thought from her mind, she drew her attention back into the dance. Things were already awkward enough; it couldn’t really get much worse, so why should she bother to hide this from him?
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower
This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall
Once more her mind settled into the near thoughtless movement of the dance, her motions slowing, but no less complex. As her mind flowed from one ‘thought’ to the next, so did her body in its movements. She was coy, peeking around behind her past one arm as the other reached for the phantom that stood there (an odd motion for her mind to consider doing without a veil, but one she did anyway). She was ‘traditional’, her whole form undulating while she moved to the side as she followed a certain step, only to pause and bring her ribs around in a circle as she turned the rest of herself only a moment after and lowered herself to her knees once more. She was seductive as she arched backward, the crown of her head near the floor once again while her arms moved as smoothly as serpents, her upper body rising and falling with the motion of them. Slowly she rose again, her body turning as she did until finally she folded her arms across her chest gently, lowering her head and closing her eyes as the song ended in her mind, fading away into nothingness once more.
There were times, many of them, in her youth when Aunna had wished desperately to dance alone. She had preferred it that way, in fact, and so she had taken to dances where no partner was required. Her prowess, if it could be called that (she wouldn’t have), in this dance form was a testament to that thinking…things got sticky and people got hurt or stepped on or dropped when a partner was involved. Now however, for whatever reason, she found herself almost wishing for a dance partner as she stood there, her mind slowly shifting away from its blissful thoughtlessness into something more conscious as she panted slightly from the exertion.
Damp hair clung to the sides of her face lightly as she stood like that, absorbing the sensory information the world was giving her, and began to gain pronounced waves from the moisture. The ship was mainly quiet, save for the running of the engines and the sound of the electricity in the lights above her; in fact, it was almost unnaturally quiet now, the song she’d just heard having been ‘loud’ to her. Distantly she noted a bead of sweat running the length of her spine, and she quirked a slight smile at her mild annoyance caused by the sensation. The main things she noticed, however (aside from her breathing and her slowing heart rate), was the blessed silence of her mind…the peaceful calm she’d finally acquired in the aftermath of her dancing.
The other thing she noticed…
Slowly relaxing her arms and shoulders, she allowed her hands to return to her sides as she lifted her head and opened those sapphire eyes once more, boring into the onyx ones of Vex with a seemingly rekindled fire.
She stood there, gazing at him like that for a long moment, her face a passive mask. Quietly she studied him, sizing him up almost as if she were debating the intelligence of challenging him to a fight and weighing the chances of her success. She wasn’t, of course, at least…not in the respect Vex’s mind worked. Aunna took him in with that gaze, studying his reaction to how he had found her, and testing his reaction to how she was treating him at the moment, only a wisp of a smile barely lifting one corner of her mouth. Finally, she lifted one, questioning, eyebrow.
He could take that look how he wished.
Chances were he would know and answer one of its…many…meanings.
To be honest, Aunna was annoyed.
During their time on Corellia she’d had her fair share of problems…not the least of which being her parents, and then there was Vex and his…actions.
She didn’t even want to go into that.
She had avoided him since she’d seen him with the jedi...had locked her door and shunned his presence at every turn and only helping if he needed it or there was no getting around his presence…like deciding to go to Carida for her training. Again she had realized that she had given up her whole life, her entire little world, for a killer…someone who didn’t care about life in any form. If it wasn’t useful to him, if it got in his way, it was better off dead or broken. She had wondered, then, just what he might do to her if he found her pushing his patience too much…testing his limits too often…when whatever little use (or imagined use) he had for her failed or ran out. Would she become like that jedi?
The woman had pushed it from her mind time and again…after all, he had saved her more than once; he wouldn’t go through all that just to kill her on a wish and a whim, right? The sensible side of her mind, however, pointed out that he had also threatened her life more than once (not always verbally), and that he was also a dark jedi…a classification of people that tended to all run about the same way: if you think it’s best to kill someone, kill them and be done, no matter what you’ve done to, for, or with the person. This counted doubly for people who outlived their usefulness, and people who caused you problems…she fit easily into at least one of these two categories. Though she had stubbornly refused the thoughts and doubt during her waking hours, it wasn’t quite so simple during her sleep.
This was part of the reason she now found herself annoyed…lack of sleep (good sleep anyway) was never a good idea, and it had made her more irritable. Then there had been the fact that there was something nagging at her. Well, several somethings actually. Seeing as Vex hadn’t sought her out, she took the chance to use one thing she’d managed to get her hands on while at the manor on Corellia. Her mother had offered it, oddly enough, and the exchange had managed to take place while Vex wasn’t about. It couldn’t have been better timed if she’d planned it. Either way, Aunna had emerged from the refresher the night before…as an auburn. That had taken care of one nagging urge, but the other she was far less willing to accommodate.
The newly minted auburn now sat in her room, glaring impotently at the wall across from her, data pad in her hands and long since forgotten. Muscles bunched and bundled beneath her skin before going slack once more as she continued trying to bore a hole through the wall with her eyes. Finally, she decided she would just have to give in to her idiotic need and get it out of her system. Huffing, she stood and smoothed out the thin, loose legged, pants that Veera had given her and padded nearly silently toward the cargo bay. Though the clothing she was wearing wasn’t…ideal…for what she was about to do, it was far from detrimental. If anything, she preferred the pants and form fitting top to the barely there skirt and top she would have been wearing were she going to do this in public. Stepping into the cargo bay, she took stock of the room she had…not bad considering what it was and what it held, and she’d certainly used smaller spaces.
It would work for her purposes.
Grumbling to herself mildly about how she should likely warm up first, Aunna ignored the thought and huffed again at the song that was creeping up into the back of her mind, poking at her consciousness like an itch waiting to be scratched. Giving in, she closed her eyes gently and allowed herself a moment to remember the tune as she had heard it before. She’d preformed to it once and even now, years later, it wasn’t difficult to remember the rhythm and tune…even the lyrics were ready to spring to her mind as she slowly lowered her head and settled her feet apart slightly, the metal of the floor cold against her bare feet.
Even as the melody started unfolding in her mind her arm had raised parallel to the ground, the muscles of it rippling to bring about the fluid motion that had worked its way all the way to her finger tips in an undulating wave that echoed back along her arm, across her shoulders and along the other. Her eyes slid open, blue depths almost unseeing as the curtain of her hair obscured her view. A slight twist of her body had her back and side lengthening even as she turned so that her weight rested along her leading leg. Her arms and shoulders moved even as she kept the rest of her body in strict lines as she turned again to lunge the other direction, each motion a strict and controlled action embedded into her subconscious to warm her up and lengthen out her muscles so she didn’t injure herself. The movements flowing along her arms as she gathered her energy and readied her body spoke of wind or waves, and while she still hadn’t brought her head up, Aunna didn’t need to see for what she was doing…not yet.
Suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, as the rolling desert language began in her mind, the energy that had been building in and around her called her to motion.
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
Those dreams have tied two hearts that will never tie
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire
Within moments she had become movement.
Aunna was not simply moving, dance had never been that way for her…at least not this type of dance…she did not follow movements, she became them. Music, song, art, dance, they were all the same thing…expression…and so she had learned to connect to those feelings and then express them through song or dance, or even music (if she was ever lucky enough to get her hands on an instrument she knew how to play), and she had learned to feed off of the emotions of others as well. The songs that these dances went to, songs like this one, they were often stories as well (yet another form of expression), and she sought to become those stories, to mimic them in new or unique ways…ways that were only hers. This was the case now as she entwined her own emotions with the music that flowed through her, her body almost automatically expressing it through her motions.
That auburn hair had cascaded away as her head came up, her body moving, flowing, into the series of actions she wished. The material of her pants swayed gently around her legs as she moved forward, only to halt her progress as her body arched backward into a graceful curve while her arms became flames to light the room. The flames died down, the fluid motion sinking into her shoulders as she brought her arms down to her chest again only to blossom outward as she brought her body up and around out of that backward arch.
She was moving once more, her hair whispering behind her as she followed the motion of the blood in her veins through another few swift steps. Military strengthened muscles became the motivators of sensual undulations through her stomach, bringing her ribs outward up and around so the motion could continue effortlessly back to her core where it had started. For as much as she hated the force-fed dance lessons of her youth, Aunna loved the freedom of dance itself…the expression of it…almost as much as she loved the music that drove it and the songs she sang. The dances of the desert dwelling peoples, and those that had become associated with the twi’lek dancing girls the Hutts so prized, were some of her favorites simply because of the expression and the freedom they allowed. If you could imagine your body creating that particular movement, it was to be put into the dance without hesitation.
Even as she danced, somewhere on the edges of her senses, she noticed the brooding presence of Vex near by, but if he were in the room or out she couldn’t tell. While her eyes looked for obstacles in her path, they did not often see more than what was the nearest hazard, and even then it was not often her eyes that kept her avoiding a particular crate or box that might find itself near her path. With this being the case, she certainly didn’t notice what side of the door he might be on. The cool presence heated her blood slightly and made her skin prickle as she felt a mild embarrassment course through her. Despite this, she continued the conglomeration of movements that seemed to flow effortlessly and smoothly into each other.
This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing's as it seems
Black cloth swirled about her legs now, her hair splaying out around her as she turned, and vaguely she wished she had a veil to use. The dance lacked something without that thin cloth, but the musing left her mind as swiftly as it had come as she now worked to balance the imaginary candles that had just been placed in the palms of her hands while she moved.
Each hand carried the individual phantom candles along their own separate paths from shoulder height, below her arm, and up over her head only to settle at shoulder height for another journey along the same route. She continued this motion with little difficulty as she turned and moved, at one point lowing to her knees and leaning back slightly only to make the task that much more difficult before allowing the phantom candles to vanish as her arms once more became flickering flames, the back of her head all but touching the floor behind her. Lightly bronzed skin had begun to glisten slightly as she slowly brought herself to her feet once more.
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes
Her rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love
A moment only did she seem to slow before lean legs began eating away the floor beneath her, covering distance in the ballet-esque leaps, intricate turns, and pirouettes bringing a new style to the dance…something more classical added to the mystic and sensual dance movements that she had been doing before. Sapphire eyes flickered brightly amidst the crimson feathers of her hair that floated about her as the movements became increasingly more difficult. Muscles preformed the movements on a whim, the long practiced art form a little dusty but still burned into her every fiber well enough that she didn’t need more than that half thought and the energy she had built up over the dance to carry her through them.
The song thrilled through her blood as she continued her dance, pouring her soul into the movements. To do less, at this point, would be a crime against the song itself. Each motion, each glance she cast, every movement of her head, her arms, her hands or fingers, every expression…she had a meaning for them all, and much to her…vexation…many of them revolved around a certain man. Frustrated with herself, or perhaps him (or maybe both), Aunna could do little but allow herself to see the dance through to the end. She knew, by now, that Vex was most certainly near by (not that he could really go FAR as they were on a ship after all)…she just wasn’t certain if she would be pleased or displeased to find that he had seen her dancing. Pressing the thought from her mind, she drew her attention back into the dance. Things were already awkward enough; it couldn’t really get much worse, so why should she bother to hide this from him?
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in pain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower
This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall
Once more her mind settled into the near thoughtless movement of the dance, her motions slowing, but no less complex. As her mind flowed from one ‘thought’ to the next, so did her body in its movements. She was coy, peeking around behind her past one arm as the other reached for the phantom that stood there (an odd motion for her mind to consider doing without a veil, but one she did anyway). She was ‘traditional’, her whole form undulating while she moved to the side as she followed a certain step, only to pause and bring her ribs around in a circle as she turned the rest of herself only a moment after and lowered herself to her knees once more. She was seductive as she arched backward, the crown of her head near the floor once again while her arms moved as smoothly as serpents, her upper body rising and falling with the motion of them. Slowly she rose again, her body turning as she did until finally she folded her arms across her chest gently, lowering her head and closing her eyes as the song ended in her mind, fading away into nothingness once more.
There were times, many of them, in her youth when Aunna had wished desperately to dance alone. She had preferred it that way, in fact, and so she had taken to dances where no partner was required. Her prowess, if it could be called that (she wouldn’t have), in this dance form was a testament to that thinking…things got sticky and people got hurt or stepped on or dropped when a partner was involved. Now however, for whatever reason, she found herself almost wishing for a dance partner as she stood there, her mind slowly shifting away from its blissful thoughtlessness into something more conscious as she panted slightly from the exertion.
Damp hair clung to the sides of her face lightly as she stood like that, absorbing the sensory information the world was giving her, and began to gain pronounced waves from the moisture. The ship was mainly quiet, save for the running of the engines and the sound of the electricity in the lights above her; in fact, it was almost unnaturally quiet now, the song she’d just heard having been ‘loud’ to her. Distantly she noted a bead of sweat running the length of her spine, and she quirked a slight smile at her mild annoyance caused by the sensation. The main things she noticed, however (aside from her breathing and her slowing heart rate), was the blessed silence of her mind…the peaceful calm she’d finally acquired in the aftermath of her dancing.
The other thing she noticed…
Slowly relaxing her arms and shoulders, she allowed her hands to return to her sides as she lifted her head and opened those sapphire eyes once more, boring into the onyx ones of Vex with a seemingly rekindled fire.
She stood there, gazing at him like that for a long moment, her face a passive mask. Quietly she studied him, sizing him up almost as if she were debating the intelligence of challenging him to a fight and weighing the chances of her success. She wasn’t, of course, at least…not in the respect Vex’s mind worked. Aunna took him in with that gaze, studying his reaction to how he had found her, and testing his reaction to how she was treating him at the moment, only a wisp of a smile barely lifting one corner of her mouth. Finally, she lifted one, questioning, eyebrow.
He could take that look how he wished.
Chances were he would know and answer one of its…many…meanings.
