Yuki tried to be as inconspicuous as possible on the large freighter, keeping to himself in the small compartment that had been chartered for him. After his first night of roaming the ship, he found he was the youngest passenger onboard, a fact which had earned him unwanted attention in the public sector.
A majority of the occupants were miners from one of Sernissha's ore-laden moons. The rich veins, Yuki's mother told him once, had once been prosperous but quickly dried up in the push for stronger metal alloys. The miners, many having come from generations of workers, found themselves suddenly huddled planet-side without work, without possessions, and in a land provincially quaint, steeped with agriculture, and struggling to immerse itself in universal trade.
The boy would have liked to identify with them. After all, they shared the sensation of the lost—those that had never before left their birth-town, much less the planet. Yet he found himself shunned by them, as if his mere presence was upsetting. Yuki knew it couldn't be his appearance alone. Only half were remotely human, although none shared his ashen skin or soft features. If any happened to met his luminous, pink eyes, they would abruptly look away. Typically, though, one or two would comment on his sex or lineage with a drunken slur. That didn't bother the boy so much. It was the times when he was most distressed, when the rest of the ship would go out of their way to stay away from him that upset him the most.
So Yuki learned to sit alone, as he had always been alone, even before the weeks-long journey to wherever he was happening to go on this freighter from his remote outer-rim home world. This loneliness was particularly acute during meal times. The boy sat with downcast eyes, absently picking through the unappetizing mixture of exotic meats they served, remembering Mekna's happy trill as she stewed tubers and herbs from the garden. Fortunately or not for him, the teen was having trouble deciding, it was during these meals that he was given the widest berth, so he didn't feel so ashamed when another repast ended with his tears blended into the oily gravy.
It was a shock when the captain of the freighter approached him early one evening. He shook the young boy roughly on the shoulder from behind as Yuki was finishing his dinner.
"3 hours 'till your stop, kid," he informed the child gruffly before stomping off, notifying other various passengers in the same way. The boy stared weakly after the large man, his mouth hanging slightly agape. It never occurred to him that he would eventually have to reach his destination; it had become a familiar routine to reach a planet, exchange passengers and goods, and then speed off to the emptiness of space again. Sure, in the back of his mind, a tiny voice complained that his mother never intended him to hide out in substandard quarters in a rusting space tug for the rest of his life. But I was hoping I might have been wrong, he thought as he trudged back to his sparse room to reluctantly gather his things.
The official eyed the pale boy suspiciously as the latter stepped off the landing platform to the hard packed sand below. "Welcome to Tatooine. Do you have anything to declare?"
"Uh…" Yuki replied deftly as he half-shaded his sensitive eyes from the intense sunlight, blinking rapidly. "I don't…"
The grimy officer wiped his sweaty hands across the paunch of his uniform, the wetness blending with other various stains. "Look, kid," he snorted, adjusting his hat. "Are you carrying anything illegal or not? Don't make us search your bag." Two dangerously armed aliens, both scaled like giant lizards, stepped closer to the cluttered desk, looking like they were waiting for an invitation to do just that.
"Oh, uh, no then." The teen wrapped his arms around the duffle, inching backwards.
"Well then get on, kid. We got people waiting." A chorus of grumbles echoed in response, and for the first time, Yuki realized that there was a line growing steadily behind him. He smiled apologetically and rushed off towards the market-place across the street.
Upon first glance, Mos Espa spaceport could have been the heart of the universe. Certainly, the bustling thoroughfare sported aliens from every corner of the free-trade world. However, as the day wore on, the child realized that if it were the heart, it would be the bleeding, cancerous kind the universe would have long disposed of for the best technology had to offer. While there were samples from any imaginable species, these were examples of the worst sort. Who else would choose to live on a sweltering planet with too much sun and too little water?
Hours after landing, and the boy realized he had neither eaten nor drunken anything. Unfortunately, Yuki could not read the characters that comprised this planet's primary language, and followed the smells of food and the brightest of the advertisements. The miners left him in blissful peace compared to the attentions he received the moment he stepped into a dark hollow carved into what appeared to be a mud wall as he followed unfamiliar characters blinking cheerily beside a tall glass of beverage.
Natives, however, had a sixth (or seventh, as was the case with some) sense about fresh meat, and Yuki happened to tumble right into the stereotypical role of a "wet behind the ears" traveler. Luckily, the boy had enough sense to leave the moment he entered to see that all sets of eyes had been trained on him, many roving over his trembling form with hints of greed and promises that made him nauseous. Without looking over his shoulder, he ran from the building, not caring who he ran over in his flight. He only stopped once he reached the single landmark he recognized: the port he through which he entered.
The official was chatting happily with two rather underdressed females when the boy skidded breathlessly into the back of the man's chair, shoving the entire desk and its contents into the now-frowning Twi'lek consorts.
"I want to get back on the ship," he blurted as soon as his breath would allow, raising a hand to calm his rapidly pounding heart. The man merely looked up at him with a sneer.
"Well you you're shit outta luck, kid. Your transport just left." He motioned to a dot high in the sky before it blinked out in the glare of the sun. "So unless you wanna push your luck, I'd say you go the hell away."
Before he could resist, one of the armed alien guards heaved him up by the back of his shirt, and sent him sprawling across the sandy street and back into the open-air market. The Cortiaari hardly heard the mocking laughter that followed as he lay, dejected, in the middle of the road.
So I'm really stuck here. He resisted the urge to cry in shame and fear at his situation, choosing instead to smash the pad of his fist into the desert pavement. The resulting ache that spread up his arm made him instantly sorry. To add insult to injury, the aching pain crept over his back and into his chest, where, coupled with the tightness suddenly flaring up at the base of his skull, made him gasp for breath.
That certainly isn't normal, the boy thought as he struggled to roll onto his hands and knees, another sudden bout of pain and dizziness all but making him pitch forward. A pair of strong hands caught him, righting the trembling teen back onto his haunches. A gloved fist raised Yuki's chin, forcing the pale-haired child to look up into possibly the most frightening visage he had seen. The massive alien was clad head to toe in heavy, brown robes, bulging in strategic places to make Yuki believe it was armed more than well enough to cause the boy trouble. Round, dark goggles (or are those eyes?) reflected a red-faced child, his mouth slack with fear. Whatever the alien was looking for, he evidently didn't find it as he snorted, pulling the little traveler to his feet.
"You've had a bit too much sun," came the muffled voice from the robes, still holding onto the boy's shoulder. "Can you walk? We need to get you inside."
All Yuki could manage was a week nod, his mouth still gaping at the tall being who had already hefted the boy's bag in one hand, steering the child with the other into the crowd towards the unknown destination.
They paused at the entrance to a multileveled, hive-like complex on the outskirts of town when Yuki wobbled, latching onto a nearby wall.
"I think…" The boy blanched. "I think I'm going to be sick."
The much larger alien steered the boy to the left between two buildings. It remained holding onto his shoulder as the child relieved his nausea.
With an almost gentle insistence, the pair continued into a ground-floor room radiating from the center of the honey comb structure.
Yuki felt himself being moved to a bed. His entire being ached. His vision was hazy, and even though the room was mercifully dim, his sight was punctuated by brilliant flashes of light that existed even when he closed his eyes, which throbbed in time with the pressure at the base of his skull. The boy was only vaguely aware that his alien acquaintance had removed the outermost robes, a "he" replacing the "it" in the child's mind as he recognized a human form beneath the rags despite the scarf still wrapped around the older man's mouth and nose, revealing only kindly scrutinizing eyes now that the thick, black goggles had been pushed to his forehead.
"I've never seen anyone get heat sickness as fast as you managed," the muffled voice chuckled softly, cool fingers, now devoid of gloves, pressing into Yuki's neck for a pulse.
The pale boy's fear had long ago faded into a desire to curl up and die. Mekna would be furious. All of her detailed instructions and he still needed the coddling of an adult. Not to mention he had gotten himself kidnapped. Sort of. For some reason, Yuki wasn't worried under the man's careful ministrations.
"Well, if you can hold on for a bit, I might be able to go out and find something for this sunburn." The older man interrupted the boy's thoughts and was now across the room, digging through a large duffle next to the door.
Reality rushed back to prone boy, and he managed to cough out, "My bag."
The man glanced over his shoulder, raising a hand to scratch at the cloth covering his head like a makeshift turban. "Eh, it's ok. I brought it along. Now just you lay still, and I'll be right back."
The boy frowned and tried again. "No…in my bag. It's in my bag."
The corner of the elder's eyes crinkled like he was smiling. Walking to the bed, he sat heavily at the foot, pulling the familiar duffle from beneath. After a moment of searching and quite a few raised eyebrows, a jar was produced. Even through squinted eyes, Yuki recognized Mekna's handwriting. "Yeah…yeah that's it."
"Oh," the man chuckled, reading the directions attached. "Oh, that's quite clever! Of course, we don't have these plants on Tatooine. You must have come from a more temperate planet!"
Before the boy could answer, the man was already applying the salve to the child's badly burnt face and arms with all the care that Mekna would have done. The thought brought tears to his eyes, dry and irritated from the sand as they were. The man pulled back suddenly.
"Oh, now now. Did I hurt you?"
The boy quickly shook his head to indicate the negative and sniffled a bit. Again, the thought hit him. Here he was, lost the Maker knows where, burned, in a stranger's care, and now he was crying. What did his mother think? He wasn't a man. He was a scared little boy, and all he could think was how much he wished he was still at home, with Mekna hovering over him, warbling at this and that, forcing him to eat and making sure he slept. He was ashamed that the stranger had to see him cry, ashamed that he had been sick in front of the man. The boy rolled to his side, ignoring the pain as the rough fabric of the bed cover rubbed against his raw flesh.
A hand patted his back gently, if awkwardly. Yuki heard an intake of breath behind him, as if the man were about to say something, and then he felt the native stand, the bed shifting to compensate.
"I need to get a few things. I'll be back after a while, after you've had a chance to rest," the man called, a scraping of metal on stone echoing in the small room as he opened the door. There was a rustling of fabric as the cloak was thrown over his form, and the sound of the door closing, followed by a hollow thud as the lock was thrown.
Before the man's retreating footsteps had completely faded, Yuki found himself grudgingly accepting the elder's advice and drifting into a dreamless sleep.