Revised 7/19/10
The planet's name was Raxin. It was a boiling, sooty planet that left the taste of sour chemicals burning the inside of your mouth and the wind bringing smarting tears to your eyes. It was a destructed, wasteful, once beautiful planet.
Mountains were mountains of radioactive-studded rock from failed nuclear waste storage. The forests were piles of charred and dead trees. And the plains were all but gone; much of it swallowed by expanded oceans.
This was where they stood; by the sea. Unlike the waters of many worlds, it was pitch black. Its salty composition was overwhelmed by the rotting corpses of dead marine life and an assortment of revolting debris. If one dipped their toes into the liquid it was said they would simply burn away to pale white bone.
Tahl kept her distance from the shore, as she happened to cherish all ten of her toes. She stood on the land that was not quite sand but not quite suitable soil, careful to make sure not one grain of the sandy dirt got in her boots.
She found herself suppressing a shiver, despite the constant heat the sun berated the planet with. In the Force-and as a physical feeling- she felt no sign of indigenous wildlife. This place was completely industrialized.
Tahl would willingly trade a day on this wasted, acid planet swollen with the juices from a hundred thousand factories for a month in the untamed, overgrown jungles of an uncharted world. Give nature its freedom, don't tie it down and abuse it for personal gain. Yes; she would be thrilled when her ordeal here was over.
Every so often during her muses it would slip into her mind that she was not the only one unhappily stationed here. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had rendezvoused with her, and they were awaiting transport home. But they had the sense to stay indoors, at the base.
Or at least, she thought they had the sense. Someone- judging by the build, it could only be Qui-Gon -was slowly advancing towards her, shuffling across the sand. Tahl tore her gaze from the waves in front of her to turn and watch him lumber around. In a way, it was amusing to watch. He carried himself like he did not trust the ground and he was stiff, like he was just waiting for a deadly sea spray to strike him full force. She could sense the tension radiating off him in powerful, pulsating patterns.
"Enjoying nature?" Tahl joked in greeting.
Qui-Gon frowned. "Don't joke about that."
"Sorry," Tahl flatly apologized. Now that he stood beside her, she could clearly see sadness carved into his features. He was in no mood for wisecracks.
"It's madness," he continued. "Not another Coruscant. It won't survive as a megacity. What have they done here?"
Tahl strongly considered warning her friend to hold his tongue, and that they were to observe, not judge. But everyone was entitled to an opinion. "It was their choice," she said carefully. "Nature has no worth to some. They chose to do this."
"Chose to kill it."
"Chose to use it."
"They had no right."
"Be careful. It is not our place to judge-"
"Only observe," Qui-Gon quietly finished for her. "So look around."
Tahl obeyed. She turned her head from the roaring, black sea to the land. It had hills and valleys and plains. But they were stripped of all resources, leaving naked mounds of dirt.
On the horizon was a single city shrouded in smog. She looked to the west, where clouds were fighting to condense a multitude of heavy gases into a murderous drizzle. The rest was an unappealing blue streaked with gray smoke.
Finally, she looked at the ground. The sand was full of rocks and dirt as the sea washed it away. Add that to the fact that quite recently a good portion of the ocean floor was land, sand was practically nonexistent.
And sand was part of nature. Nature had ceased to exist.