Hello, everyone! I've been writing this story for a while and I'm super excited to share it with you.
This story is already finished and locked away safely on my computer, so you can expect weekly updates with no delays!
Please leave a comment if you enjoy. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
She was running. Her lungs were on fire and the scorching heat of Tatooine's two suns was offering no respite. It seemed the only solace was the dripping of sweat across her brow that blurred her squinted gaze towards the suns.
Too high, she inwardly cursed.
She was going to be late. The person expecting her presence was… well, someone who didn't want to be kept waiting.
"Typhe! Hey, Typhe!" Her own surname ringing out from the corner of the market below brought the woman to a screeching halt. "They're looking for you in the cantina!" A burly man spoke. "But at this hour, their guns might be in your face instead of their money. You'd better run."
"I'm already running!" She panted, hands over her knees. "Get me out of this mess, Arden!" The man's hand clamped around her wrist, his skin rough from years of peeling fruit. With a single tug, she stumbled into the safety behind his merchant stall and out of the bustling morning crowd.
"Look, I could get blasted for even talking to you at this rate." Arden's beard kept any trace of a smile hidden. Or maybe he's not joking, the woman thought begrudgingly. "They're getting angry - angrier than usual. You'd better take the high road."
The woman closed her eyes but not without a perturbed roll of them. A heavy sigh burst from her lips as the duo glanced to the rooftop. "I really want to say that you're wrong."
"But you know I'm right."
"I'm not wearing my boots."
"Take off your shoes, then."
She arched a brow. "Remember last time?"
"You did us all a favor by making a hole in that no-good Twi'lek's roof. All I know is you better go." A cheeky smirk finally broke across Arden's face, exposing his Moof Juice-stained teeth. Yellow, like the constant sand that blew around them. Yellow, like the houses and huts that lined Mos Espa streets. Yellow, like never-ending visions of Tatooine - a planet she could never truly call home.
"Blast it," she cursed, ripping off her boots. "I hate it when you're right."
Rolling up her sleeves, the young woman began to scale the poles holding the stall. Scrambling onto rickety tiles, she balanced herself out amid curious looks from onlookers below. Nothing they weren't already used to. Truthfully, the roofs weren't so high. Also truthfully, they were the fastest road in the city. Although everything on Tatooine was one poke away from crumbling like a dune under a Sarlacc, it was a risk many took.
Spotting her destination at the end of the market lane, the young woman skipped and leaped from each raised roof edge. Whether she was gifted at balance or not, she could only focus on the voice of her client in the back of her head.
Get here by midday… or else.
After a few minutes of carefully considered steps, curses from stall owners below, and her own mumbled apologies, the woman finally met the sandy ground near the cantina. The heat of the day was even more apparent to her bare feet. Hissing away the pain, she sprinted forward.
"You're late," the guard grumbled.
"You can't even tell time, Titus!" She growled as she rushed past.
The woman's sharp tongue echoed through the cantina as all eyes fell on her. Beneath the hooded lids of gangsters, one could never stand their full height. She curled inward, making a straight path towards the farthest wall. Her client, already sitting with a glass half-empty, lazily swung his blaster around his index finger.
"Brong Rok!" She chuckled with a plastered grin. "Nice to see you again after… how many years? Two? Three? You haven't aged at all." She pointed to the Gamorrean's thick arm muscles, which were always on full display. "Been working for the Hutts, I presume?"
His massive hand hit the table with an echo. Like times before, she kept her smile glued to her face, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
"You have kept me waiting."
The woman flicked her fingers towards the wall, where a stream of sunlight marked midday. "If my calculations are correct, I'm exactly on time."
A blaster suddenly met her temple, courtesy of the Gammorean's henchman. Her steady fingers wrapped around the barrel, ever-so-slowly, until it pointed defiantly towards his foot. Silence pooled over the cantina. After what felt like a short lifetime, a hum began to ripple from the Gamorrean's lips. They curled upwards until the woman was able to recognize a clear stream of laughter.
"Rowan Typhe does it again. Always making our sweat break, but never quite fall." His smile disappeared as quickly as it had come. "Yet. You'd better be careful, sand rat. Putting your stained hands on my blasters will only get you so far in Mos Espa."
Rowan's painted smirk dissolved. There were times her intelligence had come to the rescue, but she was also smart enough to know its limits. After all, her parents had worked tirelessly to train her for life in Mos Espa. She wouldn't fail them.
Without a word, Rowan opened her rucksack to retrieve a repulsor coil. The Gamorrean exchanged it with a small, velvet bag. Without opening her reward, Rowan's face began to turn as red as the planet's suns. "I know what less than 4,000 credits feels like, Rok."
"Oh, do you? Then you should have also been smart enough to know that pulling out a repulsor coil in a public space is a bad idea, little girl."
Her eyes said what her mouth could not. Despite the money she managed to earn from these deals, it took her weeks to fix a repulsor coil, meaning money only came every so often. Unable to sell her pride, she feigned another grin. "Always a pleasure to see you, Rok."
"Always a pleasure to see your back, Typhe." He waved her away with a flick of his wrist.
Rowan turned on a swift heel, thankful just to be making it out alive. As she drug her bare feet through the market, the bustle of the streets seemed to melt into a single, vibrating song. The song of Tatooine. What was it made up of? Grunts, sighs, cries, speeders, mechanics, and the clinking of glasses raised in a false deal.
Rowan despised it, yet it was the only song she knew.
By the time Rowan reached Arden's stall, she seemed to have aged five years. Her companion could only offer her a sympathetic sigh as he passed over her boots. "What held you up this time?"
"Malan Jandi was telling me about her new lamta recipe this morning. Couldn't get her to shut up."
Arden groaned. He loved Rowan; he had watched her grow up and was even bold to say he had some part in raising her. But stars… her patience would be the death of her. "Just because you run around here in your bare feet, knocking holes in rooves and getting passes from the Hutts doesn't automatically paint you as a nerf-herder. You're a nice kid, but I think you've got to start looking for that bit of scoundrel in you. You've got to tell people like Malan Jandi to shut her hole when your neck is on the line, Rowan."
Rowan's head dropped as she fumbled with the latch on her satchel. She hated looking Arden in the eye when he was going into a lecture: he knew her too well.
"Just like your mother."
Rowan weakly looked up.
Her beautiful mother, whose eyes had watered too much from sand clouds.
Her intelligent mother, who had taught her everything about repulsor coils.
Her strong mother, who had left this life all too soon, and without a clear reason as to why.
She didn't want to be like her mother. She couldn't be like her mother. She didn't even understand who her mother had been. Her father's story was no different.
"Here." Rowan chucked Arden ten credits in a desperate attempt to change the subject. "Treat yourself to a Bespin Breeze… for always cheering me on."
"I just want you to start your life so that I don't have to safeguard your boots anymore."
She cocked her head to the side, that playful smile returning. "Aw, c'mon. You'd miss me too much if I left this cesspool."
Arden shrugged. "I'd like to get a chance to find out."
He went back to chopping his fruit while the words continued to roll over in Rowan's head. The day was still young, but walking through Mos Espa with a bag full of credits made her an easy target. It was better to hide from the sun in the solitude of her home, as she did most days. Saying her farewells to Arden, Rowan Typhe retraced her steps from that morning. Alleyways offered no extra comfort with the hot breath of strangers crawling down her neck.
Rowan had never done well in confined spaces, which made her wonder how she had ever managed to grow up on the biggest city of Tatooine.
As she flickered past open cantina doors, cries, coos, and chords rumbled back into that familiar Tatooine song. It was numbing in a way - a familiar, yet distant sound. However, a voice was there to pull her back to reality.
"Rowan Typhe is bleeding from her feet again." The deep rumble was spoken in Huttese, a language Rowan was far from fluent in.
"Another day," she replied to the giant Hutt slithering out of a cantina doorway. "I walk…" She pointed above. "Roof."
"If you have any problems with that unloyal Gamorrean, you come to me. Understand?"
It was rare for a Hutt to make a human smile, but Rowan couldn't help herself. "I understand. What payment you want for cheering up?"
He somehow managed to shake his thick neck. "No payment. You know that. I owe you half a lifetime of debt."
"I think thoughts," she said slowly. "You find broke coil - no droid. Never droid. Always send to me. I make better than droid each bread."
"Time," the Hutt corrected.
"Sorry," she muttered. That was a word she definitely knew in Huttese.
Rowan said her farewells before continuing on her journey. She understood that she was likely the only human this side of Mos Espa on good terms with the Hutts. At least, she was the only human who was able to work together with them and keep her morals intact.
Mostly.
Her home greeted her with its two circular windows and faded blue door. It was simple, as most homes were on Tatooine, but boasted a small plant bed at the front that was the result of a decade of hard work.
Rowan's arms were weighted by events of the morning, so it was her foot that kicked open the front door. She fell face-first into her bed, which sputtered billowing clouds of dust back into her eyes. Hauling herself back up, she poured a glass of blue milk and began to dust what had flown in from the ceiling crack. As the suns continued to sink beneath the horizon, Rowan enjoyed a simple meal of soup and bread while sketching in her botanical journal. She then tucked herself into bed with the company of a good book - one she had read one hundred times over - about plant species around the galaxy. Her fingers traced over their names as she tried to memorize the long string of letters.
Her eyelids eventually grew heavy and she pulled her itchy blanket just below her chin, her fists clenching it closer from the inside. It still smelled like her mother: a strange mix of flowers and sand.
Rowan's eyes opened slightly towards the far corner of her hut before she tumbled into her dreams. In the corner stood a black trunk with rusting locks. Any visitor would have looked past it, mistaking it for a mere storage chest.
It was anything but that.
Her breath froze in her chest when she recalled what lay inside.
"Good night," she whispered from across the room. An eerie silence followed. "I'll see you in the morning."