Starlight

[The Future Warrior]

It was...it was hot.

That was the single most recurring, all-encompassing thought that continued to circulate through the diminutive azure alien's mind. Sitting here, in the shade (such as it was) and yet still feeling no better than actually being out in the direct sunlight. What made matters worse, of course, was the simple fact that she had somehow or other managed to completely forget what she'd come here for at all. In true stubborn fashion, she had of course decided not to go anywhere else until she recalled just what her purpose for coming here was.

Something... Something... Following someone. Or searching for someone. Trying to find someone for a meeting. Or something. Trying to find something? Something important. She knew it was important. It was important enough that she'd ventured out here into the desert for it. Important enough that she'd managed to track down a town that didn't have a name. That was pretty hard, and she wasn't all that great at finding things. Not without some sort of convenient radar-thing to point her literally right where said thing was.

Thankfully, though, she'd developed a habit lately. Well, "lately" was a generous word. And for that matter, so was "habit". She barely remembered to do it half the time. But now and then, she did as some advice was given to her and used her scouter to take recordings. Video logs, she was almost sure it was called. Serve as reminders, and things like that.

Brushing sand off of her scarf with one hand, and carefully tapping through the holographic interface of her scouter's in-built computer with the other, she was currently checking over said video logs. Trying to find some clue about why she'd come out here to this desert.

There was a whole lot of stuff about a bunch of things she sort of remembered. Then some stuff about Dante's Abyss, which she didn't really think she'd ever forget. And...oh. Oh! OH RIGHT! Star pieces. Those things. There was supposed to be one that fell in every verse, except Coruscant. Some snooping and rumors around the dataverse were hinting that some of them had already been found and picked up, in some verses.

"But not here!" the little blue creature voiced aloud.

And she hopped up, going from sitting on her knees to standing in the blink of an eye. The old cloak she was sitting on, which was so buried under sand and errant wind-blown dust it had started to do a very good impression of a pile of sand itself, was pulled out from under her in a flourish. She tugged it up, over her shoulders, and fastened it in place. The hood came up, over her head, and after a bit of struggling with the cloth her scarf was tugged up from around her neck. A quick flipping around and re-tying and it was secured, over her face with the darker inner side facing outward. Good and safe from the sand now. Or...at least that was her thoughts. She was a simple creature that way.

Now back up, properly covered and mentally ready for the task ahead of her, Graowr turned her focus toward the part of things she was so very, very bad at. Information gathering. The...the other place, the one opposed to Coruscant and the Empire, they were also looking into the star pieces. They'd sent out some...astro people? Star scientists. People who watched stars. Astronomers! to look for clues and figure out where the pieces had actually landed.

In her own drawn-out, clueless and overall needlessly roundabout way, she eventually turned up something productive and useful. Here, right here, in the Endless Dunes, right here in the Town With no Name, there'd been a little expedition from the Kingdom spotted. Whether it was the astronomer person or not, the little bundle of blue had no idea. But the possibility that it might not be never really crossed her mind. It was too much of a coincidence to be anything else, she thought. It would be them. Or they were here with them, and they'd know where they were. That was all there was to it, in her mind.

Now it was just...all a matter of finding them.

Graowr's status as an agent of the Empire didn't seem to have won her many friends, here in this town. No outright enemies, from what she could tell (which wasn't much, the naive little thing), but definitely a distinct shortage of anything approaching 'helpful' by a large margin. Likely didn't help that she was about as socially capable as a box of glass ornaments falling down a flight of stairs.

None of that was going to stop her. None of it was even going to slow her down! They were here, somewhere in this time. And if she had to scour the entire town and check every inch of it herself to find them, she would. She'd covered a lot more ground before, and under some pretty strict time constraints, too. This would be nothing by comparison.

Although...as the sun was starting to go down and it was rapidly beginning to get darker...she sort of hoped she was right. She really, really hoped she was right. Not that she really had anything against the desert at night or anything, but... Well. This place just didn't seem like a good place to be lost in at the best of times. Especially at night. Some unsettling things that made it seem kind of spooky, even with its relative level of civilization and 'safety' compared to the rest of the Endless Dunes.

....and maybe she did kind of have a few issues with the desert at night.

All word/character counts according to wordcounter.net
Word Count: 952
Character Count: 5,342