Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

“Do you think we can feed Lucky caf beans?” Jules asked as he drove. He was clearly relieved not to have to worry about Delta Jeet or Damar for the moment. They had a couple of more hours until the suns set, and he wanted to show her more of the surrounding area. She was happy to, but her mind lingered on the past. “Izzy?”

“Sorry, I was thinking about how kind your mother was compared to mine.”

Jules smiled in that unbearably charming way of his. “Your mother was kind to me, Izzy.”

“When?” Why did she question that so readily?

“There was one time when you were sick. All the kids had caught a strain of valley fever, but for some reason I was fine. She told me to go back home, but I said I could help take care of you.”

She couldn’t believe him. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you that you were being an idiot and would get sick, too.”

“She gave me a piece of candy from her pocket and said that the best way I could help you was to let you rest. When I saw you earlier today, I thought you looked just like her in that jacket, you know.”

Izzy looked down at the bird in her lap, using her jacket as a nest. When she looked in the mirror she liked to think that she resembled her father more, but everyone saw what they wanted to see when it came to their parents.

“It doesn’t sound like her,” Izzy said. “I never got any candy. Unless I stole it.”

“Do you think that we’re supposed to understand our parents?” he asked, taking his eyes off the road to look at her.

“I think we’re supposed to at least know who they are.” She hated that Oga had deepened that. She hated that it bothered her so much, because all she kept thinking was that if her mother had made different decisions, they could have had a normal life instead of jumping around more than a gorg in the middle of summer. Maybe she needed sleep to untangle her thoughts.

They crested a small green hill, and a quick memory came surging back to her. Running through golden fields of wheat. Laughing at the top of her lungs. She’d been there with her dad once. He didn’t take her to work often, but on that particular day, her mother had been—away.

“I remember this,” she said as Jules powered down the speeder. Up ahead were rows of crops, silos, and a water tower. “This is a grain farm. Is it bigger than before?”

“Kat’s very proud of her operation. Business is booming lately. I mean, I’ve never tried the corn or grains from anywhere else, but I don’t have to.”

“She could make a fortune if she sold it to big farms.”

Jules widened his eyes. “Don’t mention big farms around here. She’s gotten offers from all sorts of corporations. She’s too proud.”

“I mean, you can be proud and also rich.”

Jules shook his head, but he was grinning at her as they got closer to the farm. Izzy could see where they’d recently expanded, adding more white storage barns. Two water towers flanked the fields in the distance. There was a small lot for speeders, but there weren’t many parked there despite the number of bodies congregated at long community tables. Jules left his speeder at an angle and shouldered Dok’s parcel.

“Time for you to go,” Izzy said to the loralora bird.

“I don’t think Lucky’s going anywhere,” Jules reminded her.

But the bird took off on great wings. She swooped around in a large arc before landing on Izzy’s shoulder, wrapping that thick reptilian tail around Izzy’s arm again. Jules looked ready to speak, but she held up a finger to silence him.

As they approached, Izzy noticed that the farmers were all kinds of species, some Izzy had never encountered before. Izzy had once thought of herself as cultured enough to have seen it all. Over the past day she had realized that she’d been pretentious. She had a lot to learn. She was only eighteen, after all.

A group of Twi’lek males with pale green skin and dark brown eyes were playing a game of cards. As they got closer, Izzy could see they weren’t gambling with credits or spira but with everyday items—buttons, a couple of metal bolts, screws, pins, anything that seemed unusable until you needed to find one in a pinch. That seemed to keep everything friendly, though as one of the smaller Twi’lek males showed his cards, the others slammed the surface of the table and everything rattled. Izzy jumped at the noise, but in the next moment they were all laughing uproariously.

The next couple of tables were occupied by some younger humans and Sullustans, and a being with a long neck and wide eyes that Izzy had no name for. They were clustered together, watching a stream on the holonet. When one of the girls looked up and saw Jules, she perked up like a flower for the sun. Her skin was a shade darker than Izzy’s, and her two braids made her look young.

“Jules!” she called out, then flicked her gaze down to the table. The rind of a fruit was coiled in front of her.

“Hey, Shari,” he said warmly. “How’s the day?”

Shari sat up straighter, running her fingers down the bottom of a braid. Her face was round and there was a tiny scar on her cheek. That kind of clean cut had to have been made with a very sharp blade. It looked like it was done on purpose. She wondered how the girl wound up there.

One rock is as good as the next. Her mother’s words rebounded in her thoughts. But was that true? If one was as good as the next, why were some planets the kind where you could make a home and others were the kind where her parents didn’t even allow her to step off the ship? Jules had said he always found a reason to stay on Batuu. She should ask him what those reasons were. Maybe then she’d have a better sense of where she could belong.

“It goes,” Shari answered. “Surprised to see you here today. Did you change your mind about quitting?”

Shari, as well as the other farm kids, kept turning their eyes to Izzy. They looked at everything from the cuffs of her leggings to her windblown mess of a ponytail. She wasn’t used to so many people staring at her, and she felt self-conscious. She let her hair down, allowing her scalp to breathe as the strands tumbled loose.

“Who are you?” someone with a squeaky voice asked her. “Is that a monkey-lizard? My gran won’t let me get one.”

“This is Lucky,” Jules said, rubbing the bird between her eyes. “She’s a loralora.”

Izzy looked at the small Nautolan child who’d asked the question. She had large brown eyes and tentacles for hair. Her skin was green with gold freckles, and her plain beige dress was adorned with fabric wildflowers.

“I’m Izzy. Who are you?” she replied.

“Ksana!” she yelled, and reached up to try to grab the bird’s tail. The loralora flapped her wings and flew to the taller, safer perch of Jules’s shoulder.

Jules laughed and said, “Hey, kid. I haven’t seen you since you drank all my milk this morning.”

The little girl giggled, and it reminded Izzy of a running brook. “Are you Julen’s girlfriend ?”

The other kids snickered, and Izzy wondered why her first reaction was to look at Jules’s face. All she had to do was say that they were working together, that she was a girl and also his friend. But over the course of the day, her eyes had kept straying to his lips and his hair. The whole thing felt so complicated that she decided not to answer at all.

“Julen has a girlfriend?” someone said behind them. “Since when?”

“I’m not—” Izzy stopped when she turned and saw a face that was so much like Jules’s she almost froze.

“Belen,” Jules said nervously. “Overtime?”

“Did I hear right? Is this Izal Garsea?” she asked. Belen Rakab was almost as tall as her brother. The woman’s age—nearly thirteen standard years older than Jules—and the hard work she put in showed in the crinkles around her eyes. Izzy had always associated those wrinkles with people who enjoyed life and smiled a lot. Her father had lines around his eyes, but her mother? She’d looked young, almost petrified in time.