Week 11: More Hapan Goodies
51. dawn
52. morning
53. noon
54. dusk
55. evening

Dawn

It was dawn already and there was still no evidence save the nature of the poison that killed the young queen. The consort sighed. Did the mysterious scars on her arm point to anything that Allana had in her past before she married him? And what of the blood on the rug where she collapsed? The sun had brought light, but it shed none.

Why, my queen, why? I'll do anything for you. Tears streaked down the nobleman's face as he paced around the eerily empty royal chambers.

"Prince Consort?"

"Yes?"

"We saved the kids." It was the Jedi healer.

Morning

The young man threw a sidelong glance at the nutrient tanks, not wanting to see the son and daughter that he almost failed to save. Which of those vipers would attack a woman who was six months pregnant?

The man rose to leave but could not bring himself to walk out of the medbay. On one hand, it was his duty was Prince Consort to further investigate his love's death, but on the other, he could not leave his children.

"Would you like a powder cake?" asked a servant. It was morning and he had not eaten in twelve hours.

Noon

The food sat there untouched as the handsome, young man poured over his memories of his wife. They were only sixteen when they married and yet she had a past even by then, for those scars were vestiges of that past. But how, my dear?

Come on, think. What did she tell you? The man asked himself. His response was silence. That was what she gave him when he first asked about the scars and that was what her memories yielded when he looked back. Then he froze in the noon sun. Had he been married to a total stranger?

Dusk

The walls of the palace were the color of blood as they reflected the filtered, final rays of the setting sun. Exactly one day ago, he found his queen dead. Her fine, violet dress was wrapped around her like a shroud and both her lips and her fingernails glistened in what was left of the sunlight. The traditional Hapan veil still hung motionlessly on the bedstand and the wine still stained that beautiful, hand-made rug that Teneniel Djo had brought from Dathomir. Allana had wrapped some mysterious necklace made from an eggshell around her wrist.

It was quite a scene.

Evening

Many evenings had passed and several noblewomen were executed for Queen Mother Allana's death, but the answer did not come until Jedi Skywalker sent in his Holo-Letter.

"How pathetic," the former Prince consort mused, smiling weakly. "Everything in the galaxy leads from one Skywalker to another. I should've known she was one of 'em, but it's not my business now, is it?"

He received no answer from the sleeping girl who automatically inherited the crown before she was born. Of course, she and every subsequent Hapan ruler would be descended from that Skywalker line, despite Allana's attempt at extinguishing it.