Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

“Those deliveries aren’t going to carry themselves,” Tap muttered, turning to Izzy with small fists squared on his hips. He’d finally managed to free himself from the finger trap. “What do you want, then?”

“I got this, Tap,” Jules said, and pulled the kid’s hat over his eyes, then gave him a shove back to his corner of the dimly lit shop.

“My parents never let me come here when I was little,” Izzy said, eyes roaming the display cases. She wove around stacks of open crates, an Ewok headdress covered in feathers and teeth overflowing out of one of them.

“All things considered, this is one of the safest places in the Outpost.” Jules shrugged. Then his eyes darted to the reinforced tank that housed a juvenile dianoga near the metal railing. He wasn’t sure if it was growing too big for its confinement or if it just liked to press its ferocious fanged underside against the glass. “But now I understand why some might object.”

Izzy peered up at the taxidermic body of the wampa on the raised mezzanine, the creature’s last growl frozen for all eternity.

“Is that real?” she asked.

Jules felt his body answer before the rest of him. He went to her side in two long strides, and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t curse his too-long legs. “As real as you or me. Dok prides himself on rare and authentic.”

She flicked her gaze to him, then back to the beast. “You work here?”

He didn’t want to get into the circumstances that had brought him to Dok’s that day. “For today. Usual staff seems to have taken off. Almost feel sorry for the ones who cross Dok-Ondar.”

Izzy quirked her brows skeptically. “What happens when someone gets on his bad side? Slow torture by droids?”

“You get fed to Toothy!” Tap piped up.

“Ignore him,” Jules said. “The dianoga is only fed ronto meat. But if you plan to stick around the Outpost, you don’t want to get on the Doklist.”

“The Doklist?” she asked, weighing a crystal ball in her hands. “Is that like being blacklisted?”

“Around these parts you’re better off packing up and finding work on a distant moon and never coming back. My parents made that clear practically at the time we could walk.”

“Mine failed to mention it.” She made a thoughtful sound and picked up one of the many glass jars filled with shimmering golden lichen. Despite her abrupt greeting, he got the feeling she was doing everything in her power to look at anything but him.

“What are you doing here, Izzy?” he asked, voice lower than he’d intended.

What did he want her to say? That she’d come back to the edge of the galaxy for him? Belen always reminded him he was a foolish dreamer, but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that Izzy Garsea had returned just to see him after thirteen years.

She took a deep breath and scanned the metal chandelier above. The Ithorian wind chimes had gone perfectly still. It was difficult for him to read her. How could he? She was practically as unknown to him as anyone who passed through the Outpost. Contrary to his current inability to think straight, usually he was quite good at striking up conversations with strangers. It was the closest he’d get to knowing about the greater galaxy. For now.

Izzy adjusted the strap of her pack and said, “I’m here to see Dok. I have a parcel he requested.”

Tap lifted his head and joined the conversation again. “Dok’s not here, but you can leave it with us.”

Izzy’s hand went to the bottom of her rucksack, much like the one Jules was wearing.

“My instructions were to deliver to Dok and Dok only.”

“Suit yourself.” Tap shrugged. “He stepped out, but he doesn’t stay gone for long.”

Right then, Jules was overcome with the need to do anything to make her happy. For a fraction of a second, he even wanted to turn into a two-centuries-old Ithorian to make her day better and take away the lightning-bolt frown that marred her otherwise smooth brow.

She muttered a curse under her breath, but then gave him a small smile. “I don’t suppose you could help me with changing credits to Batuuan spikes?”

Tap snorted behind his hand.

“Spira,” Jules gently corrected.

“That, I can do.” Tap slid off the stool he’d been using and sauntered over. He hopped over the metal railing that encased the raised platform where Dok was usually stationed. Jules could hardly remember another time when the Ithorian hadn’t been there mulling over his illegible ledgers.

“Thanks, kid,” Izzy said.

Jules had his own work to get done, but he was grounded to the stone floor. He couldn’t rationalize his need to be seen by Izzy, truly seen. He wasn’t entitled to her attention, or time, or anything she didn’t want to give. They were virtually strangers. But the part of him that had searched the skies hoping to see her again longed for the friendship they’d once had. No one, not even Belen, had understood him the way Izzy had.

That was long ago, he reminded himself.

Julen Rakab believed in fate. It was a notion he’d learned from his mother. Between his parents, she was the dreamer, the one who found a bit of hope and goodness in any situation. She believed that there were things brewing in the wide galaxy that couldn’t always be explained. Whether it was the movement of the planets, ancient deities, or the Force—something was at work. Haal, his brother-in-law, liked to make fun of Jules for trying to string together mundane events and call them “fate.”

Jules had once bent down to pick up a coin, some sort of currency that must have fallen from an off-worlder’s pocket. Because he’d moved out of the way at that precise moment, he’d narrowly missed getting hit by a runaway hover-raft full of scrap metal. He’d traded the coin to Dok for a used hologame. Another time, Jules had taken a wrong turn into Smuggler’s Alley and came up on a Togruta kid getting mugged. They’d both gotten pummeled by a couple of wannabe gangsters, but he’d made a lifelong friend. Haal didn’t believe that anything had a greater meaning or purpose. For Haal, days and nights blended together because that was the order of the world and nothing more than a string of coincidences. But wasn’t coincidence just a version of fate for those who didn’t believe in anything?

Izzy Garsea herself was standing right in front of him. If he’d left the shop a minute sooner, if he had swung by the fields to wave to his sister or grabbed some grub at Cookie’s like he had wanted to do from the moment he woke up—if he’d done anything different—he might have missed Izzy entirely. Granted, perhaps it was just the Force’s way of telling him he needed to be punched in the face, but Jules was nothing if not optimistic.

Tap exchanged Izzy’s credits and handed her a sizable pouch of spira, which she then divided between the inside pockets of her jacket.

“Thanks,” she said. “I have to go pay the lady at the filling station so I don’t get stuck here tonight.”

That stung. He wondered what their home planet might look like to her. Most people didn’t see past the craggy exterior of the spires, an outpost built among dusty old ruins, and market stalls patched with canvas that never quite matched the original. But Jules loved where he came from. Was that love why he’d never left as he’d planned? He pushed the thoughts away.

“Would that be so bad?” he asked.

“It’s been a rough couple of days. My plan was to keep moving.”

“I could give you a ride back to your ship,” Jules blurted out.

“I thought you were working.”

He shrugged like it was no big deal. Truthfully, he couldn’t watch her walk away without at least talking to her. Where had she gone? What had her life been like off Batuu? Why had she had a rough couple of days?