The holo-image of Sylia comes to life.
She is smiling softly as she sits on her bedroll, garbed not in her usual type of outfit, wearing a blouse, short shorts, and legwarmers, all mostly pink. She reaches for one of her nearby pillows and hugs at it as she begins to speak.
“Gosh, how long has it been since I did this? So much has happened since then, but I’m in a good mood this morning. Um…where should I start?”
She takes a few moments to ponder the question.
“Um…where did I leave off last time? I think it was after seeing Andro and Keyan outside the city. Um…well, everybody is getting mad at Andro for threatening to kidnap me. They’re all so sweet, I am really lucky to have so many new friends that seem to care about me. I think they all went and yelled at him, cause he started bugging me to talk. I think he wants to apologize or something, but I’d just rather not talk to him. He seems kinda crazy, and I never know if he’s going to try to do something nice, something heroic, be angry, or just a jerk.”
She huffs, but continues.
“Since I found out I’m force sensitive, I’ve been trying to work on getting stronger at using it. I thought if I tried to feel like I did when I killed the colocoid thing on the station, I could do it again, and I was right. It comes really easy when I let myself get mad, and I started taking bounty jobs for Czerka as an excuse to practice on stuff. I’m a little embarrassed, I think I might have gone a little overboard with those…um…Mando…somethings…the ones that killed Czerka’s patrol in the woods. I heard there was a recent war with them too. They seem like pretty bad people I guess. Maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad for killing so many of them? I just…I went there, and thought about all the stuff that’s been making me mad…what master did to me, what he let his guests do to me, what that monster did to Gina, all the guys that look at me like they want to hurt me, or make rude jokes about hitting that”
She rolls her eyes.
“Men are such jerks…Ira says her friend Zain is nice though, and different than others…so I try to give him a chance…I guess he seems okay…I can tolerate him mostly, except when he starts getting mad that I won’t be good friends with him. I don’t really know how to tell him any other way than I already have. Its not his fault, but I just don’t feel comfortable around guys. Seela and Hriste think there might be something wrong with his head though, and wanted to do some tests. I haven’t heard from Zain since they called him over to do it. I had to leave cause he was griping again. I tried to explain before I went, but he didn’t seem to get it…”
She huffs again, taking a few more moment to re-collect her thoughts.
“So I got really good at blasting those Mando-people with the force. I really surprised myself. It seemed like the madder I got, the more I was able to do, it really almost even scared me how I became, when I think about it. I think I was enjoying it…I talked to Seela about it and she wants to help me learn to use the light side. I guess there’s two sides of the force. And I’ve been using the dark. But I feel so powerful when I do it. But everybody’s saying that’s not good and it can get out of control. They’ve also been warning me about dark side people. They’re really dangerous, and hurt people, and are really manipulative. Or that’s what they say anyway. Seela gave me a lesson the other day in using the light side. It was hard at first, but when I listened to the rain, I could start to feel stuff everywhere. It was really amazing, like I could feel life all over the planet, and how connected it all was, and then I was able to lift a rock and play around with it. I did hit myself in the head with it though.”
She lets out a small chuckle.
“I got to meet Ira’s master, too. She seems really quiet. Seela thinks a lot of her. Heh, Seela’s pretty nice, I had a crush on her for a minute, but she said she’s not looking for anything right now. She still loves Althea, she said she always will. I’m not sure I’m ready to just forget about Kara yet anyway. I still feel horrible I couldn’t bring her with me. Someday, when I’m strong enough, I wanna go back and rescue her and the others from the master…”
She takes a deep breath, huffing again.
“I think that’s most everything before the recent real bad stuff that happened…Everything turned into such a mess a few days ago…and all my friends were hurting badly. I guess that jedi, Verrac, hired mercenaries to attack the city, a bunch of guards were hurt even though Verrac’s contract said to keep casualties low. I found the contracts, so I guess I did something useful…I told the others, and there was a distress call from the Czerka tower, the place was under attack, so we went and tried to get in. There were a bunch more mercenaries in there, but we beat them all, and tried to take the elevator to the top. But Verrac was stopping us, he actually cut the cable to the elevator and tried to kill us…I almost didn’t get out in time, I was really scared. But we kept looking, somebody found an air duct going up and they all went up it, except for me and Walessa. Walessa said I couldn’t go because I was too weak…”
Sylia frowns dejectedly.
“I thought I was so much stronger than before, but these mercenaries were really strong…but I still wanted to help…but Walessa made me leave anyway. She took me back down and back to her workshop. She made me some better armored clothes, they’ve helped me a lot…um…well…they didn’t yesterday…but mostly they’re a lot better. But I guess while we were doing that, everybody else was fighting Verrac in the director’s office. Ira sent me a copy of the security holo footage. Verrac was mad at Czerka’s director and blamed him for the death of his padowans, and was trying to kill him for it. He cut off Althea’s leg in the fight even, and was about to kill her when Seela saved her by pushing him away. She didn’t mean to knock him out the window, but she was just reacting. Althea would have died if she didn’t. Andro said he was burying him in the crystal cave. I don’t know how you bury someone in a solid rock cave, but he did. I went there to look for Sandra, and I couldn’t believe it…”
She pauses, frowning sadly as she recalls it.
Sandra seemed to be so together when I talked to her before. She’d told me how jedi didn’t do attachments. Romance is discouraged, and it seemed like she didn’t care for it herself. But when I saw her, she was crying so hard…she was totally bawling, and even though we just met the day before, it broke my heart to see her like that. She was even clawing at the ground…I felt so bad for her, I wanted to just run up and hug her, but stupid Andro was standing over her being a jerk. So all I could do was try and get him to leave her alone. I dragged him away, but as soon as I let him go, he ran back to her…I swear, one of these days, I’m gonna deck him. Sandra finally decided to leave, and we all walked out, and we ran into Ira on the way back. Ira was yelling at Seela over the holonet, blaming her for killing Verrac, but I told her Seela was trying to stop him without killing him. She stopped yelling at her after that. I guess Seela sent her the holofootage later too, and then let me see it the day after. It was really horrible. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Sandra, and seeing her in the cave. She was so hurt…even I can tell she cared a lot more about him than she ever let on. I wanted to do whatever I could to help her feel better. And Ira and Seela too…everyone was hurting over what happened. I’ve been trying my best to be there for them all."
She sighs, laying her pillow down on the floor, then leaning over to lay her head on it, laying on her side as she speaks to the holo-recorder.
“I actually got Sandra to talk about it the other day too, which was good. I’m glad she opened up a little. Me her and Zain all sat and ate this pasta, it was okay, but the restaraunt gave me so much of it, I think they sold me too much. But Sandra seemed to like it, which is what was important.”
The soft smile returns as she pauses.
“She talked about her old boyfriend and how they used to date. I never heard of dating before, but they said its something you do when you want to be romantic with somebody you like, and friends can do it too, so I asked Sandra if she wanted to go out on a date.”
Sylia smiles more, chuckling softly.
“She actually said yes, but just as friends, heh. Oh, and I guess normal friends don’t usually have sex with each other. That’s what her and Zain said. I thought it was a regular thing for friends to enjoy each other, but I guess not. Me and the other girls were so open with each other when master and his guests weren’t around. I guess normal people aren’t like that. But we decided to watch a holo-drama instead, which was great, cause I never got to see one before. The date was really nice, and I had a lot of fun. I think she did too, heh.”
She curls up on the bedroll, grabbing another throw pillow and hugs it to her chest.
“It was really nice, I hope we can do another date sometime. I wanna do a date with Seela too, and maybe Ira. They won’t wanna do sex though. Maybe a big date with all of us together sometime…heh, that won’t happen for a while, though, Sandra still has issues with Seela. But maybe she’ll be okay with her after a while. I really hope my friends can all get along some day. They’re all such nice people, and really sweet and caring. If they could just see that in each other, I think things would be so much better.”
She sighs softly, squeezing the cushion to her chest.
“Sandra sent me a bunch of holovids for reading lessons, so I’m working on that too. I’ve been working really hard every day to try and learn, and I started looking at the medical manuals too. They have a lot of big words in them that I haven’t got to yet in my reading lessons, so its been tough, but I’m still trying. I wanna look at engineering manuals too. I figured out how to do basic energy cells, but I could only get so much from the pictures. They say its a good thing to learn for maintaining my lightsaber…Oh! That’s right, I almost forgot. I learned how to make my own lightsaber! I even had this vision in the crystal cave. Afterwards, Jorron gave me a green crystal that I used to make my saber. So that’s something else I’m trying to practice on too, heh, lightsaber fighting. I’m still not that good.”
She pauses, huffing again.
“Other stuff happened yesterday before the date too, it was really bad. Some really strong cannibals were attacking miners in the mountains, so I helped Althea in fighting them back. I was doing really good too, Walessa’s armor was helping. Fighting with the lightside is hard right now, though, so I had draw on the darkside to beat them. I even had almost beaten their leader while Althea kept it busy, but then it turned and slashed me with it’s giant scythe thing…and I passed out like right away. I think it only hit me once, that blade was just huge…I’m really lucky I didn’t die…but…”
Sylia frowns a little, seeming worried.
“When I woke up, the sith lady, Lanari was standing over me…or…Rathi I mean. I guess she healed me, and heard me say I was cold, so gave me her scarf. When she told me who she was, I could have jumped out of my skin! She said she wants me to bring it back the first chance I get.”
She swallows hard.
“I am not looking forward to this…Althea says she won’t hurt me, but might try and tempt me. She says I’m strong at using the dark side and Lanari might try to get me to come to her side because of it. Sandra says she’ll go with me, though. I’m so lucky to have her as a friend. I hope we get to have another date soon. I wonder what other kinds of holodramas there are. Maybe I can bribe her with another massage.”
Sylia grins impishly.
“I guess that’s pretty much everything. I wonder what awaits me today. Hopefully more time with my friends. I love them all.”
She clenches her eyes shut as she gives her cushion another squeeze, smiling sweetly, then reaches to her datapad and the holo-image cuts out.
