My phoenix. My passion.

[Joslae]

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Joslae wakes with a startle, shooting up into a sitting position. For a moment a flash of lightning illuminates her chambers through the full wall window, and then fades back to the inky night. She leans forwards and rests her forehead in the palm of her hands then recoiling immediately from her own touch. Gingerly the left hand touches the same side of her face, nail-talons drawing a line down her cheek bone and back up to her eyelid. Reaching out to a bedside table she turns on ambient lighting, illuminating the room in an ice blue glow. Crawling out from underneath luxurious covers she walks to the window, not able to see out into the night she sees her reflection instead; an eye squeezed with swollen blisters and tight skin, complexion pock-marked and hair burnt off in clumps. Near a minute does the Sith stand there looking at her own reflection before another flash of lightning makes her flinch and escape that daze of horror. The whole time her hands had fidgeted, toying with a small lump of ugly metal, perhaps an old ring.

Closing her eyes tight, wishing it all to go away, for the nightmare to stop and that she would wake up back in her bed. The eyes open and that scarred and swollen woman looks back at her. She rushes from the window, unable to look at it anymore, but in the rush knocks her shin against the end of her bed. Recoiling, she swings out and knocks a small vase to the floor, shattering immediately and in time with a crack of thunder, and unknowingly dropping the metal she had held moments ago. Clamping her hands over her ears, hyperventilating, it takes several seconds for her to calm down. It feels like hours. Pulling on a long robe of heavy silks she walks from the chamber and turns right and stops by a door she’s seen a hundred or more times. Hesitating long enough for another boom of rolling thunder she takes a deep breath then keys in a code on the access panel, the door sliding open with barely a sound.

Entering the room triggers automatic lights, brighter than in her own chamber. Eyes move from right to left taking in all the details here: wall decorations, archival screens, a full wardrobe, a writing desk, a perfectly made bed. Joslae does not linger in the door frame, she steps in quickly, walking barefoot onto a soft carpet of gold fabric. Stopping in the middle of it she just stays there, crossing her arms across her chest and holding herself. Releasing a held breath from her lungs she starts to move around. Going to the desk first, standing on one side she thumbs through a neat stack of books and a ream of parchment next to them, picking each book up to examine briefly before setting them back where she found them. Finding a quill she lifts that and rubs the feather across the palm of one of her hands, forcing a small on cracked lips.

“Always so antiquated,” she thinks, before carefully returning the utensil to where she found it.

Glancing around again, she moves to the wardrobe pressed against the wall, stopping in front of it her eyes caught by a glimmer of gold. Resting against it was a wooden cane topped with a golden icon in the shape of a bird, at first Joslae reaches out to the cane but stops and leaves it there, unwilling to use it herself. She spends no more time there, moving on quickly.

She stops by a wall, looking at the art pinned to it. A vista of Kaas City was one, she remembers the name, “Imperial Majesty”, she had gifted that to him. Moving to the side she comes to a short blade hung on the wall, finely crafted indeed, she lifts it from its mount and turns it over in her hands. Slowly she watches the pommel, a hollow orb of glass with shifting sands inside. That brings a small smile again, a base level satisfaction fulfilled by weapons.
The blade is returning to its place of display, and Joslae looks around again, so few things but pleasant in their simplicity. For a time she’s unsure of where to go, then she knows. At the desk in the center of the room she pulls the chair out and turns it to face the window, sitting there and pulling her robe tighter around her body she watches. Watches the rain soak the window, watches the flashes of lightning, watches the distant speeder cars and the glow of shuttle engines. Minutes or hours, she stays there and considers everything that happened. And after a time she looks over, picks up the first of the three books on the desk next to her, and begins to read.

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