( act one ⎯ hidden in the sand ) 33 BBY ✶ 5494 Era IV
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As soon as Zeisan woke up, the dazzling light of the Vimeran sun pierced her retinas, making her regret ever opening her eyes. She quickly covered her face with her forearm to avoid looking directly at the gleaming sun and, once again, grimaced in regret as soon as the sand that had managed to sneak inside her baggy white sleeves spilled onto her face.
She could barely remember the way she ended up on that spot. She couldn't even recall the moment the sandstorm had begun or the way the wind had carried her along to drop her in the middle of nowhere.
She sat on the sand-soaked rock floor and spit out that that had gotten into her mouth; The scratchy feeling wouldn't leave her tongue as she tried to get rid of the grains with her hands, equally covered in them; Her small hands wiped her face and her dusted off her clothes as best she could, slowly realizing that the feeling of dirt dancing all over her skin would not go away so easily.
Once her sight was clear, she stood up and looked around, trying to find the camp — the burning sun left her unable to properly make out details of anything in the edge of the horizon (if there really was anything), distorting her vision into swirls and waves she thought were amusing — but everything she could truly see were rocks and an endless sea of sand. No white Attaran platforms, no cities, no people, no dad.
Despite her better judgment, Zeisan began walking towards the nearest mountain she could see at the distance (unaware of the fact that its apparent closeness was the product of an illusion caused by the heat of the desert) hoping it was the rift the camp was settled on. She had seen hundreds of platforms made of the same materials and tailored with the same crystal patterns that one had: It was the simplest Attaran base they could've built, it shouldn't be that hard to find.
She stared at the ground as she walked and sang to herself under her breath; Zeisan wondered what her sister had done to get back home safely and hoped it wouldn't take her months to return like it had taken Saelle when she disappeared amongst the gray-wooden trees of the Dead Forest. She recalled her father's warnings as she tried to make her way back to him; The warnings she had so deliberately ignored. Zeisan had heard her father begin to explain the characteristics of the planet and its inhabitants as thoroughly as he could with a wide smile on his face and, under normal circumstances, she would've been paying close attention to her father's rant, but she had been too busy marveling over the enormous complex and its seemingly complicated operations that were going on in the Attaran base.
"The desert may look pretty," he had told her. "But it is ruthless."
She knew now he wasn't just trying to scare her away from doing whatever she wanted. This planet was unlike any other she had visited or seen before; As soon as they had arrived to the planet's solar system her father had told her that its most striking characteristic was the way its amber atmosphere was pierced by the massive mountain ranges that cut the world into two halves, but as soon as she had stepped foot in the ground, Zeisan found the beauty of the planet was not the view from space but in the one in front of her at that very moment. She had never seen that much sun, that much light and yellow all around; She had never felt anything similar to the burning heat that radiated from the vimeran sunlight in her life before that day. And she was slowly beginning to hate it.
