Dažbog's Coffee Shop

Eralam sat down, leaned back, and propped his feet up. On what exactly it was he was propping his feet was unclear, but it didn't matter much in this place.

"You know how it goes. Everyone is walking on eggshells to keep from breaking out into open warfare. They like their war served cold these days. All the fun without people screaming because their planets are under attack. You follow?"

The Shard produced a pipe from nowhere and lit it with a spark from a metal finger. The air was quickly filled with a scent similar to vanilla, but with a strong cinnamon note to it as well.

"Must be awfully interesting for you folks to watch."

"I hadn't heard, no," Eralam said. "I only met the old bastard briefly. He was part of a group of independents that I tried to rally up into sort of a mutual defense pact. Shame that never got off the ground."

The fallen Whill nodded in thanks as his brother offered the bag of granola to him and extracted a handful. The crunch of chewed grains and nuts was audible, but the mechanism for his mastication wasn't obvious.

"I've noticed you and Erevis have been acting outside the given parameters. Your coffee shop is ostensibly more benign than his, shall we say, more controversial endeavors, but I find it galling to find you acting openly. While I applaud the principal, I was banished for an offense far less dire than offering that crazy bitch Diva power. Even collared, declawed and made mortal, she's too dangerous to do anything more than give her a target and a number goal. Give her a reason to start thinking and we're all fucked."

"I don't know what he knew or what he was thinking. Gonna dig himself into an early grave if he keeps it up."

Eralam sighed and puffed on his pipe, contemplating the myriad futures that would spring from such an event.

"I've heard tales of your special blend. You'll have to pardon me for passing; there are things best left in the past. Still, I can't help but think you've got something in mind, some grand scheme. Reminding people of things, letting them see clearly the past, that's some pretty subtle fuckery, friend. Seems harmless enough on the surface, but you don't become a Whill without learning to play the long game."

Eralam cocked an eyebrow quizzically. Don't ask how, just go with it.

"Stuck in the past, eh? That's pretty devious, if done correctly. I imagine there are a fair few folks around here who might find a way to take advantage of that."

He made a note to keep am eye out for sudden reversals of character development.

"Still, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the folks who could do something with that type of story know better than to try. It's the ones that can't but still want to do it anyway that you have to watch out for."

"Dude."

The look on Eralam's face was not far off from one found on a recently converted religious fanatic's.

"As a robot, there was fun. See a lot of cool shit, meet a lot of cool people, blow it up and move on. As a human..."

A series of images and sensations flashed through the fallen Whill's mind. The taste of really good whiskey. The smell of steak cooking over a wood fire. The sound of his lover calling his name, the feel of her teeth biting into his shoulder as they reached the end, accompanied by sights better left to the imagination.

"You forget what it's like to be alive, I mean, really, really alive as a Whill. Most of you guys were human, or close enough to count, but that all loses perspective in the face of eternity. When you know you've got sixty, maybe eighty years total left in this realm, and you can only really enjoy a lot of things for the next forty, it adds a sense of urgency. It sharpens things up, puts them in perspective. The Journal is unforgivably bland in comparison."

Eralam shrugged.

"Your guess is as good as mine. I've managed to beat the timer. Maybe I'll live another sixty years, or maybe I'll piss off Sin tomorrow. The mystery is intoxicating."

It definitely added a certain flavor to things. And hell, it had done wonders for his relationship with the Emperor. It had done wonders for a great many things, to be honest.

"It's also weird to have something to fight for on the small scale. I shoot at people because they threaten my lover or myself these days, rather than because there's some interplanetary scheme that demands they die."

"This is about as close to seeing me in my prime as you can get these days. I can create a facsimile of my old self here in the temple, but without even chambers to serve as a seat of power, it's but a shadow. Still, you're not missing much. I always preferred guns and blades to overt displays of power. Kill the right man at the right time and you can watch the fate of the universe tip. Same with ideas, if you know how to use them. Mind, I'm past all that now."

Eralam sighed and tapped his pipe against an invisible ashtray before repacking and relighting it.

"I'm not a part of the Empire. My loyalty is to the woman, not the organization she runs. She's not perfect, and she's not always easy to get along with. But, she is amazing. I'm head over heels, little brother. If you ever get the chance to give this sort of thing a shot, I highly recommend it. Believe me, you'll get a perspective on the Journal that you never had before. A lot of history suddenly starts to make sense."

"If they pine for a crush, they are probably alone in a gutter. I think you meant to say that some will suffer a failing relationship rather than be alone. In either case, fools." The ancient and wrinkled Rakata appeared at the front door seemingly out of thin air, although in truth her essence had been swirling through the galaxy for some time now. Pulled to Tython by the manifestations of cosmic power, she found the way to remake an approximation of the form she once held so long ago. She looked at the two men before her, observant of the way that time and power both flowed through them, around them and obeyed their wishes. It was the same thing that graced her with the body she now admired, her small hand in front of her noseless face. She let it fall back to her side, speaking calmly to the pair. "I hope I am not intruding."

Eralam waved in greeting to the newcomer.

"Something tells me the one I found isn't the type to let me get off with merely pining, should this go south. Still, a fight for one's life can be a good thing. Hard to mope when dodging lightsaber blades."

A chair materialized for the other ancient mystic.

"So, what brings you to our neck of the woods?