( act one ⎯ hidden in the sand )
33 BBY ✶ 5494 Era IV

The dazzling light of the Vimeran sun pierced her retinas, making her regret ever opening her eyes on the first place.

     Zeisan quickly covered her face with her forearm to avoid looking directly at the gleaming sun and, once again, grimaced in regret as soon as the sand that had managed to sneak inside her baggy white sleeves spilled onto her face.  She could barely recall the way she ended up on that specific spot, or the exact moment the sandstorm had begun or the way the wind had carried her along to drop her in the middle of nowhere. 

     She sat on the sand-soaked rock floor and spit out that that had gotten into her mouth. The scratchy feeling seemingly uninterested in leaving her tongue as she tried to get rid of the grains with her palms, equally covered in them. Zeisan wiped her face and her dusted off her clothes as best she could, slowly realizing that the feeling of dirt dancing all over her skin would not go away so easily.

     Once her sight was clear, she stood up and looked around, trying to find the camp — the burning sun left her unable to properly make out details of anything in the edge of the horizon (if there really was anything),  distorting her vision into swirls and waves she thought were amusing — but everything she could truly see were rocks and an endless sea of sand. No white Attaran platforms, no cities, no people, no dad.

     Despite her better judgment, Zeisan began walking towards the nearest mountain she could see at the distance (unaware of the fact that its apparent closeness was the product of an illusion caused by the heat of the desert) hoping it was the rift the camp was settled on.  She had seen hundreds of platforms made of the same materials and tailored with the same crystal patterns that one had: It was the simplest base they could've built, it shouldn't be that hard to find.

     Zeisan stared at the waving ground as she walked, singing to herself under her breath, trying to find comfort in her mother's songs and replayed her father's warnings as she tried to make her way back to him, the same warnings she had so deliberately ignored. For a moment she thought of whatever Sulan could have done to return home after her disappearance — If she could do it then it shouldn't be that hard of a task. Zeisan only hoped it wouldn't be months before she could see her home again.

     She had tried to listen Narek's rant and explanations over the planet's characteristics, its inhabitants and the clans — always as thorough as possible, a wide smile painted on his face — but her interest had faded away when her surroundings proved to be a much more exciting matter to focus on: The enormous complex and its seemingly complicated operations, too marvelous for her to skip over.

     "The desert may look pretty," he had told her. "But it is ruthless." She now knew his intention hadn't been just to scare her away from doing whatever she wanted. 

     This planet was unlike any other she had visited or seen before. As soon as their starship broke its way through time and space and they had finally reached the planet's solar system, Narek had told her that its most striking characteristic was the way its amber atmosphere found itself pierced by the massive mountain ranges that cut the world into two halves, but once her feet fell on the ground, Zeisan knew the real beauty of the planet was not the view from space but in the one in front of her at that very moment: She had never seen that much sun, that much light and yellow all around, she had never felt anything similar to the burning heat that radiated from the vimeran sunlight in her life before that day.

     And she was slowly beginning to hate it. 

     It had been naive of her to assume that she could so easily handle the local environment. That she could skip around without a care in the world as if she knew the ways of this world, simply assuming its people would bend their knees upon hearing her family name as well. But it wasn't fit for a princess to lie for no reason, so she wouldn't say the idea of possible danger didn't just increase her wish to run off towards the sand dunes to explore the wastelands by herself.

     She had hoped to find cities made of sandstone or metallic skyscrapers kept away from the clouds inside domes like she had read and heard there were, but from the rock she had placed on her starting point to the horizon there was nothing. The planet's arid climate was making her head feel lighter and lighter the more time she spent under the sun and it made her entire world spin. Her dark hair, almost completely wrapped in a braided bun, began to stick to her nape and forehead as the sweat slid over her skin. She was almost desperately trying to ignore the discomfort she felt under the thin pale-pink fabrics of her dress, the increasing itchiness the sweat-glued sand grains brought all around her body refusing to go away. Perhaps that was the price of her disobedience. Or maybe the gods were testing her strength.

     The young princess watched her boots sweep the sand as she shuffled her feet over the dunes, admiring the golden glimmer of the grit brought by the near mid-morning sun. She had never thought sand could be so dry and burning; When Zeisan thought of sand she thought of her grandmother's seaside home and the bay below the citadel she called home, of the cold water washing over the shores, lilac mist soaking the white grains of sand so her siblings and her could create figures and castles out of it. Never before had sand been a synonym for the absence of water and its ruthlessness, but rather a synonym of the seaside and the calmness that came with it.

     Maybe thinking about water isn't the best idea, she thought to herself.

     She grabbed the small waterskin that she had tied to the belt of her dress before leaving the camp and prayed to Celestea that it would last enough for her way back before taking a long sip. She tried to distract herself from the nearly unmanageable heat, hunger, discomfort and thirst by thinking about home; One positive thing about her situation was that her siblings weren't around to make matters worse. Zeisan, in her opinion, was the most capable out of them anyway: Sulan wouldn't have survived the sunburns; Solaria would only whine and complain as if that would get her anywhere, worried more about whatever the sweat would make her look like from the very moment the first drop slid down rather than the fact that were completely lost; Arwen was useless in any matter that did not concern court matters and Zeisan was almost completely sure she would spend her time blaming whoever had crossed her sight first, like the absolute spoilsport she was, instead of being of help.

     Her father should be thankful it was her who was lost, she thought, because unlike her sisters, Zeisan actually tried to hold her own. Because she was the only one who cared about the expeditions, his relocation missions and now whatever they were doing here, and it was definitely not only because they seemed to be the only chances Zeisan had to live beyond the shadow of her older sister and the limits brought to her life by her duties as a Yshtar'i princess. Camouflaging in unknown planets to explore them was her only opportunity to ignore any protocol and be a girl who didn't have to carry the surprisingly heavy weight of an almost invisible tiara which would soon become meaningless, she knew she could manage.

     This was her chance to prove herself. That she knew how to take care of herself and, most importantly, that she could. That she was as brave as her father was, that she was much more than just Solaria's sister and another one of the faceless Atheia's daughters, because for once in her life, her fate depended on her and her alone.

     She just wondered: Why — on the first time she had decided to act before thinking — had Halcycone decided to throw a sandstorm in her face?

     The sound of her foot hitting a piece of metal and the sand scraping her face after she hit the ground made her lose her train of thought. With her stomach sunk in the sand, Zeisan raised her face in horror as she quickly reached for the waterskin she had dropped. Her horror turned into relief as she gave out a long sigh when she realized she had, in fact, properly closed it before her fall.

     She turned her head back towards the object that had made her trip on her face to find a metallic object painted white half-covered by the ground that seemed to be making (or trying to make) a sound. She picked up her legs and knelt, hesitating whether she should get closer or not until finally deciding to carefully lean towards the thing and began digging the sand around it, praying to The Warden that it wasn't some kind of bomb.

     She quickly managed to unbury what appeared to be some type of droid: It was quite small and cylindrical in shape, with round edges and oddly shaped legs, navy blue paint faintly colored the multiple rectangles decorating its head and giving detail to its design; It was vastly different from the long and slim droids that were of common use in her homeworld and it seemed to be trying to communicate with her through a language made of beeps and chirping she couldn't begin to understand as he tried and tried to move forward,  waving and rolling every single part of him that he could.

     Zeisan tilted her head in amusement as she watched the droid spin. "Hello," she giggled. "Are you lost?" 

     The droid stopped its incessant fluttering to analyze the young girl in front of him before replying in its beeping language. 

     "So am I." She replied, pretending to understand what it had said. 

     Zeisan noted the droid's apparent stress as it remained half-buried under the sand dunes (weird,  she thought. Never before had she seen a droid display that much emotion — or 'talk', even), she supposed he had been caught by the storm as well, so she stood from the ground, easily lifted him up and sat him properly on top of the sand, allowing him to move freely once again.

     "Have you seen an odd camp nearby?"

✴︎

     In times like this, a small piece of Narek Valnaeron regretted ever having children.

     He knew he shouldn't have left Zeisan unsupervised, he knew she would run off despite his warnings and requests, he knew she wouldn't listen, and yet he still had foolishly let her go play in the sand.

     The Senator's presence had been necessary to monitor the progress of the excavation site shortly after his landing on the planet; Which was why he had spent the hours before the storm began discussing all base operations with its full-time supervisors over the holographic map of the excavation site next to one of the mines (Zeisan had taken a quick glance at the excavation shaft before entering the building; It held much resemblance with the mines surrounding the underground royal laboratories back in Erebos, except for the fact that she couldn't recognize any of the suitable light sources or the freight trains needed for irium mining, so she just assumed this had to be something else. She planned to find out what it was once she returned from her little solo exploration), but he hadn't left the building before giving his daughter both the task of unpacking her things appropriately and a last warning.

     As soon as the sandstorm had begun, Narek (like all the other workers, doctors, scientists, and guards on the platform) sought shelter inside the large white buildings of the Yshtar'i camp, and when he found nothing inside the room where he had asked her to stay, he knew that leaving her alone had been a mistake. He had not wish to disappoint his daughter when he told her they wouldn't be exploring the planet as they usually did on their trips, but he knew Zeisan was as stubborn as her mother and as fearless as her brother, but never as calm and collected as either of them. She was a girl with a big heart, willing to help everyone around her at all times — knowing she hoped only to help others in whatever way just like he tried to — but she was impulsive and with a temper as thunderous as a summer storm, much like her sister Solaria. 

     Her curiosity knew no limits and neither did her boldness, it wasn't his wish or intention to limit these qualities of hers, but this was still a desert planet with not a single similarity with Kas Attara. It was a desert planet in the Outer Rim that was, at least in some capacity, controlled by the hutt. No matter what side of the Daltarion Belt they were in and despite the Alliance Vira Maera had a part on.

     He had ordered everyone to look for her and they had been running around for hours since he realized she was missing. He had even been willing to head out into the open desert despite the raging sandstorm once searching inside the facility had proven futile, fearing he would find her limp body buried beneath the dunes. And he had. Captain Kafizel, several other guards and himself had spent every single minute of the last fourteen hours looking for the missing princess everywhere they could, making sure to check under every single rock and grain there was, pausing anything else to prioritize her search. He wouldn't have stopped if they hadn't dragged him back to base after he had a heatstroke.

     He found himself pacing around the camp's main platform as he waited for any kind of news when the sounds of yelling, running and loud talking could suddenly be heard all around the platform — that had been almost completely silent for several hours now — He frowned as he saw the scientists resume the extraction operations. 

     "Senator," Narek turned around quickly at the Captain's call. "They've found the princess."

     Narek let out a long sigh of relief. "Thank the gods." He breathed before sprinting wherever the Captain was guiding him to.

     As he caught sight of her, the Senator ran towards his daughter — barely up on the platform — and let himself fall on his knees to hug her as tightly as he could.  "Thank the Warden you're alright." He said. "Do not do that ever again." Narek cradled his daughter's face in his hands and squashed her cheeks, making the girl laugh. "How did you find the camp?"

     "I didn't." She shook her head. "He did!" Zeisan pointed at the white and blue astromechanic with excitement. "Can we keep him,  please?" she pleaded.

     Narek looked over his daughter's shoulder before he could hear a droid chirping happily, he recognized him as an R2 astromechanic unit from his time as a rebel soldier during the Crepuscular War.

     He hummed, hesitating to grant Zeisan's request.  Not only did she not deserve any kind of reward after the stunt she had pulled, but also because no Attaran ship required an astromechanic. It'd have no place around. And while it had been years since the last time the senator had seen an R2 unit with his own eyes, he could tell this wasn't a particularly recent model; It looked a little busted and worn out, it's paint looked like it could use another layer and he could tell the planet's terrain had damaged several of his pieces. He wasn't looking to recompense his daughter's reckless disobedience, but it seemed like his daughter needed some kind of friend and the little droid looked hopeful to stay with her.

     "We could give him a good fix." The senator mumbled as he finished examining the droid. "I'll let you keep it," he gave in. "If you promise not to pull a stunt quite like this ever again."

✴︎

wc:  2810

🌥️   this took me a good while to finish 😔 procrastination is a bitch and i'll probably end up majorly editing this later

🌥️   i am sorry if i take long on updates,  esp on these first chapters,  i've been having a hard time with my words 😭 and i apologize in advance for any spelling or grammar mistakes :)

🌥️   the original plan was for them to be visiting tatooine,  but then i realized that wouldn't really make sense so i thought of introducing vira maera instead!  this isn't one of the main planets or anything but the vimeran will have somewhat of a recurrent role during the clone wars in the au so i thought i'd introduce them