Sta.sh
Darth Maul looks up at the creature that is calling itself his brother.
He sees black stripes on a yellow face; hooked, tan horns; orange eyes. He sees black armor like the shell of a turtle. This must be another animal, come to fight Maul for his nest. Maul shivers all over, readying himself to get up. He arcs like a cat. He tastes the air with his teeth and his tongue. It smells like ashes and fire, but it always does. Maybe, somewhere, there's the tang of speeder exhaust from above, and something electrical.
The creature talks to him. The voice is deep, and the words, garbled. It has shoved its way into his den, and sniffed while it looked at his scrap metal and his fire and his drawings. It is a big, wide-shouldered creature.
Maul has trouble with words sometimes. He remembers that they used to be easy for him, but now they seem to stick and repeat instead of forming into new shapes quickly. The shapes of letters seem to have color and sound of their own.
("Years...and years...and years...")
The creature that calls itself his brother is wearing a blue stone on a leather cord around its neck. If Maul grabbed the cord the necklace would cut into the creature's skin hard enough to hurt it and whip its head forward, at which point Maul could headbutt or bite or scratch or run. Anything.
The creature is talking again, but it doesn't quite feel real. It's as real as the rat corpse in the alley, the hot blood Maul shifted through to find the meat. It's as real as the dirt underneath his fingernails and in the gear embedded in his right thigh. (He will have to fix that leg soon. Things are rusting. He will sort through his pile of metal and make it work again.)
Sometimes, the drawings on the walls are the realest things to him. He makes them with animal blood or clumps of carbon he pulls from the fire. Pictures are simple. Just lines and places with no lines.
The stranger is talking. Maul is deciding whether to kill it or to draw the lines painted on its face on the walls in order to make it feel more real.
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I'm about to go on a Nem-fic bender, by the way. Expect inbox full of love
Wow. You write him so well. <3