The Watchmen of Deralia

Briane Moran poked at her meal. She was fairly sure it was edible, but she was having a marvelous time building it into a sculpture of a gizka. Well, sort of a gizka. But any soft meal substance viscous enough to hold its shape when molded had to be suspect.

'Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with your food?'

Not bothering to look up, Briane continued crafting the gizka out of... well, whatever it was the Ebon Hawk's food synthesizer was producing. 'Well, Carth, she's not really around to tell me not to. I think I'll call it... Kale. That's a good respectable name for a gizka.'

'Oh no, you don't get off that easy. You know what she'd say if she was here.'

'If she said anything, I'd be shocked.' She looked up at Carth with a sad smirk. 'She died several years ago.'

A slight flush rose to Carth's cheeks. 'I, ah... didn't realize. Sorry.'

Briane shook her head. 'Don't be. I came to terms with it quite a while ago.' She smiled slightly. 'She's actually the reason I'm here today.'

'What, did she save your life or something? I mean, aside from being your mother and all...' he paused. 'You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want.'

Briane waved her hand dismissively. 'No, you've certainly told more than your share of history, it's my turn to tell a story. What do you know about Deralia?'

'Absolutely nothing.'

'Well, it's a water world, much like Manaan. With, perhaps, a bit more land present. It's where I grew up, riding the sea-dragons and swimming in the oceans as much as possible.' She smiled at the reminiscence. 'But the waters can be somewhat dangerous. So we have an order of sorts - the Watchmen. They patrol the waters, they're trained in all sorts of water safety, rescue, medical treatments for at least basic injuries, those sorts of things.'

'Sounds like a noble sort of order.'

'In its own way - I joined when I was still in school, as a junior watchman. It made a good job, and the training kept me in good shape. Not to mention I just loved being out on the water all the time. The summer training program, in particular, was great.' Briane grinned and shifted in her chair, clearly getting into the telling of the story. 'They'd have us spend our first summer in training offworld, at some place with considerably less water and a few more controlled factors. Just to get us used to it, you know? Well, I went to train on Corliath, a moderately forested world. The pool I was at was great - it had a massive competitive swimming program, lots of recreational facilities, and a retractable transparisteel roof.' She smirked somewhat. 'I know people who went to other worlds who would've given their Watchman's whistles just to have that roof. Whenever the weather was good, we'd just open it right up. Even better was when it rained. The raindrops would patter off the roof, you could see the drops running down, and see the lightning outside. It was pretty phenomenal. Not to mention the regulars there were great people.'

'The regulars?'

'Yeah, about a quarter of the summer staff were trainees from Deralia, the rest were local people who worked there year-round. Some of the trainees could tend to be snobbish, since our job would eventually encompass much more than anything the regulars had to do. But some of them - especially the ones who had been working there for a long time - were just so good at what they did.' She chuckled. 'Put a couple of the trainees in their place more than once. I remember one challenge day when we had two teams, and each had a rescue dummy they had to fish off the bottom of the pool. The only catch was, we weren't allowed to actually pull the dummies ourselves. We had to use the regular pool equipment, which we could bid for. One of the more, shall we say, overconfident trainees was on the other team, and was rather vocal about how 'stupid' the exercise was, and how it would be 'simple' for him to beat the other team.' She shook her head in amusement. 'Alis, a girl on my team, managed to outsmart him. He laughed at her when she bid for the diving brick, since he figured it wouldn't help anyone get a dummy up.'

Carth scratched his head. 'Well, a brick actually doesn't sound like much help.'

Briane grinned wickedly. 'Exactly. But the point he missed was that the brick was not to help get our dummy up, it was to help keep his dummy down. She inserted the brick into the dummy's shorts, and none of the floatation that the other team bid for was sufficient to lift the whole thing.'

'Heh, well, that's one way to do it.' He had to admit at least to himself that it was a somewhat mean trick, however, he still had to laugh a little. After all, the kid probably had it coming.

'There was a lot we learned from the regulars. It's one reason why we kept the training program going, even during the Mandalorian Wars, when it wasn't all that safe to travel.' The smile on her face faded ever so slightly. 'My mother was a Watchman, one of the trainers that would travel with us to our first-year locations. She loved doing it, too. And she was so good at it.' Briane sighed. 'But the problem with the offworld training program is that many of the worlds we train on are in the Outer Rim. She got away with it for a while, but the statistics finally caught up with her, and a ship full of trainees.'

Silence hung between them for a few long moments.

Finally, Carth's voice found its way to his throat. 'Wow. I... I don't know what to say.'

'There's not much to say, is there? That's about when we closed down the offworld training program. I had been a Watchman for six years at that point, and that's when I decided to join the Republic military.' She looked up at him, a determined, but hopeful light in her eyes. 'I knew that I couldn't stand to see another planet's shipful of trainees blown into oblivion. So many bright futures, all they really wanted was to help keep Deralia's waters safe. And,' she smirked slightly, 'I suspect a few of them were excited to receive their Watchman's whistles.'

Carth raised an eyebrow. 'Watchman's whistles?'

'Yes, the true symbol that you had been accepted as a full Watchman - a really nice whistle. Doesn't seem like much, but it was a Watchman's most prized possession. I still carry it, along with the slightly less nice whistle I used during my first-year training.' She dug her hand into her pocket, and retrieved a long red lanyard that had two whistles hooked on it - one was a battered and well-used blue plastic whistle, the other was gleaming silver. 'They might be silly to carry around, but they remind me of home.'

'And of your mother.'

Briane met his gaze, somewhat surprised that he would come out and say it. But she smiled, nodded, and replied, 'Yes, of my mother. And of why I decided to fight.'

'Well, it's good to have people like you fighting for us. It must have been a terrible thing to endure at the time... but I'm glad you're here with us.'

'And I'm glad to be here... even though this ship's food leaves something to be desired.' She poked once more at her gizka sculpture.

Carth laughed. 'Well, I've had worse. But I do see your point. However, I'm off to get some slop for myself.' He ambled out of the room, and Briane was left with her sculpture. Eating it was out of the question, it was impossible to eat something you'd taken the time to name. However, she was content to sit back and reminisce of happier days back on Deralia.

It was just as well for her to do so, anyway. In two week's time, she would no longer find any comfort in such thoughts.