Sola buried her head in the small bed that was set up for her and squeezed her eyes shut. Trying to squash the desire to take her pillow and smother Uriellien with it, she let out a frustrated grunt and flung her covers off. She was immediately assaulted by the cold of the desert night. She gave her brother an exasperated look in the bed on the other side of the tent, knowing it would do nothing to stop his snoring. Each snore sent a new wave of anger through her at her lack of sleep. She grabbed her nightshawl and stormed out of the tent.
"I'm gonna kill him if I stay in there," she told a stormtrooper on duty close by. She heard the mechanical laugh from below the helmet. "If I fall asleep before he does, it's fine," she tried to explain. Then realized she was explaining why she was awake when a particularly loud snore emanated from the tent. She grunted and walked off.
The camp was quiet and dark, with most of the contingent sleeping. Breathing deeply of the fresh, cool air, she wrapped her shawl a little closer around herself, the cold seeping through the lace. The ground was still warm on her bare feet as she wended her way through the camp, having no particular place in mind to go. She just needed to calm down and get away from Uriellien's snoring before she tried to fall asleep again.
As she came to the command building to see the door open and the light shining onto the sand outside. Had they left lights on? Surely someone wasn't up this late working in there. She approached the doorway slowly, squinting to adjust to the change in light. Inside were holos of various pieces of Twi'lek art were projected into the air by small mobile holoprojectors.
Her heart gave a hard thump as she caught sight of Grand Admiral Thrawn, his back to the door, standing among the many art pieces. He had his tunic off, as if the cold did not bother him. The issue undershirt stretched tightly across his broad back and showed off his fit, bare arms. His head was tilted up slightly as he gazed at a piece, his hair slicked back in the current modern style. He stood still, like a statue, she couldn't even see him breathing. She watched him in fascination for a moment before she realized what she was doing.
"You know," she said softly, coming farther into the room, "one will almost never find a piece of Twi'lek art with only one person on it?"
He knew she was there the moment she darkened the door. He didn't have to see her. He could feel her. Her presence was like a physical push against him. But he hadn't expected what he saw when he turned around to face her.
She looked like an apparition standing in the open doorway with the darkness radiating behind her. Her long, golden hair was loose, it reached down past her waist in large curls. She wore a white shift nightdress that reached her bare feet, which were orange with the sand. The rest of her skin was like alabaster and her bright blue eyes seemed like the only real color on her person. With the gossamer lace shawl she wore wrapped around her shoulders, the entirety of it gave her an otherworldly look.
He did not know if the surprise he felt showed on his face or not, but he schooled it immediately. He locked eyes with her, again feeling the sensation of being pushed against.
"Will one not?" he asked. He recalled, now, that he hadn't seen any individuals depicted by themselves.
"No," she said, coming farther into the building, but not to the point where she approached the holos of the art. "They are very tribal and family oriented. It shows in their representations of each other. I wrote a paper on it, a long time ago." She shook her head. "Not on the Twi'lek," she babbled, "but on tribal cultures in art and the individual."
"How did you end up writing a paper on such a thing?" he asked. He hadn't gotten the impression that she would know such things, much less write about them.
She shrugged and looked apologetic. "My reading in university was sociology. Like I said, it was a long time ago."
"You studied sociology?" he asked her.
He knew that from his research into her file. Faro had done what he asked, sent both dossiers on her and her brother to him. While Viita's was stuffed full, her's was much less filled out and stopped in her late twenties, only to pick up again within the last eight years. Consequently, it was those eight years where Uriellien Viita had flown through the ranks of the Imperial Navy.
He learned that her father had been an officer in the Imperial Navy who had married a local woman on Astarrax. That the local woman was a lower ranking princess of the royal household had surprised him. Not only that she had married out of her species, but that she had married a Coruscant non-noble to boot. Her mother had died of Sizit's disease and her father had perished in a ship accident fighting local pirates.
She had fought in the Clone Wars as a local guerilla loyalist against the Separatist forces. There had been several pictures in her dossier of her as a young girl, no more than 12 or 13 in some of them, with a group of clones that he assumed were part of her fighting group. She was hailed as a superb locator of enemy forces and apparently had some medical training. The file made it clear that the training was under duress and not at all wanted. Accoladed as a local hero, her performance in the war granted her a spot at the newly renamed Imperial Academy, which she refused, instead going to the University of Coruscant to pursue a career in education. She had taught in the lower levels of the city for several years, was brought into the Senate Education Committee as a field liaison and curriculum specialist. There her file stopped.
She did not seem like a warrior to him. He couldn't say she was soft, though she looked delicate. She did not sound soft, though, nor did she feel it. But with the interactions he had seen her have with others, she came across as firm but with a gentleness that made it supple. He had trouble imagining how she would fight.
"As half one species and half another, I have a unique perspective into other cultures," she replied. She smiled somberly. "But you would know all about outside perspectives, wouldn't you?"
The question took him by surprise. No one had ever asked him before about his perspective coming from the outside rather than in. But then, he was rarely asked sociological questions at all. Military ones, on the other hand…
He returned her somber smile and tilted his head in acquiescence. "My position would engender me to such, yes."
"Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to see things clearly," she said softly. There was a moment of silence between them before she gestured to the air. "Why are you looking at all these?"
"Our enemies are Twi'lek fundamentalists," he replied, his hands still clasped behind his back. "Studying Twi'lek art reveals much of their thought process about life in general and war in particular. Understanding one's enemy is the first step to defeating them."
"Getting a glimpse at the subconsciousness of a culture," she said.
"Yes," he murmured. No one had ever answered his reply in such a way before. Most people looked at him as if he were eccentric, not apprehending the greater meaning of such a study of a people. They did not see the connection between art and war. She kept her eyes on his, not looking away as she spoke to him. The look on her face was one of acceptance and understanding.
She took another step forward, so she was just at the edge of the holos. The light from them played on her skin, creating shadows and highlights that made her pale skin look all the more ghostly. Part of him thought that perhaps she was not really here, that she was sleeping in her tent with her brother and he had conjured up her form in his imagination. The memory of her breath touching his face, the smell of sweet fruit she'd eaten when she cried out an answer in their parlor game struck him suddenly. Fear tried to tickle his chest and he stamped it down. He swallowed.
"If I were to go to the place you touched on the map," he found himself saying, almost without conscious thought, as if the words would keep her from coming any closer, "what would I find?"
She did not answer him immediately. The look on her face changed to one far away, as if she were remembering something. It wasn't the same look she had when she had touched the place in the air represented on the holomap. That had been more of a trance, where she had been unaware of what was happening around her. Her shame was obvious when Captain Slavin had called her out, so that she had hurried out of the room, clutching the offending hand to her chest. This look she had now simply looked thoughtful.
Her eyes refocused on his and she opened her mouth to speak. For a long moment, nothing came out and he thought she wasn't going to answer. Then, she blinked slowly and said, "Rebels."
"Are you sure?" He thought that would be her reply, but now that she had spoken aloud, the fear tried to wriggle its way into his thoughts.
"No." She shook her head, and then smiled sweetly. It transformed her face from a ghostly apparition to a light being, it radiated outward like heat. "It's very late, Grand Admiral. You should go to bed."
"As should you," he told her.
She nodded in agreement.
He waved a hand, turning off the holos around him. Her infrared silhouette flared into his vision in the darkness, the heat concentrating on her chest and flaring outward through the rest of her body. He knew that Astarraxians had excellent night vision and was not surprised when she backed up the way she had come without turning toward the door.
She saw him wave his hand then Luxsolaria's world went black. The sudden lack of light from the holos washed the room in an impenetrable ink, so she could not even see Thrawn's shadow. She knew she had walked straight into the building, could feel the temperature difference of the cold at her back. She backed up several steps toward the cold of the door, saying "Good night, Grand Admiral."
She turned, feeling a pull at her back. She felt as if she had to work her way to the door before emerging outside. The cold hit her. She tightened the shawl about her shoulders and heard, "Good night, Lady Viita," behind her.