“It would have been better if you could have brought the [body|waste] yourself.”
Shadows dance across the tapestries that hang along the walls as the trandoshan matriarch bends down in front of her fireplace to prod at the warm fire with a poker. Behind her, a younger white-blue trandoshan stands at attention, his head turned as his eyes scanned the stories portrayed on the weavings, stories he had heard from childhood until he knew them all by heart.
“I had wanted to, but between his brood returning to the camp and the Jedi’s…dissapproval, I was unable to,” Raskt replies in his mother tongue, his gaze lingering on one particular tapestry where a portion had been evidently cut out. “I was able to remove his head before we left.”
Crashu stands to her full height, placing the poker down beside the fireplace as she turns to face Raskt. “And, where is it now?”
Raskt’s eyes shift to look at Crashu and say with confidence, “Gone. It was [destroyed|desecrated] beneath my heel against the [stones|land] of the moon he hid on.”
Crashu lets out a sound from the back of her throat, one of approval — or disappointment. “I must wonder, Raskt.” Her steps are heavy and deliberate as she approaches Raskt, circling around him. “You answered the call to the hunt, yet brought Jedi with you. You tracked Stassix with their help, yet struck him down as a hunter. You beheaded the corpse and began to [destroy|desecrate] [Stassix’s body|person] as the Huntress requires of those who have strayed, yet are willing to leave the task incomplete for the Jedi’s approval.”
“I was not the one to kill Stassix,” Raskt cuts in. “It was Jedi Padawans Raylan and Elias were the ones who countered Stassix’s cloaking armor and Padawan Sestri who delivered the final blow.”
“And is that why you insisted on removing the head? Because you felt [cheated out of|denied] your hunt?” Crashu’s voice hisses from behind Raskt as she pauses her pace, her orange eyes bearing down on his shoulders. “If you had been the one to finish the hunt, would you have [atoned|repented] by leaving the [body|waste] untouched for the sake of the Jedi?”
“I—” Raskt begins but stops, his gaze falling to the floor. What was he trying to do? After a pause, he finishes gathering his thoughts and confesses, “Yes, I would have. I would have begun to but, following the [conviction|demands] of the others, stopped and gone along with them. And I almost did but there was one who spoke up, who [supported|defended] me and kept me from straying from my task.”
The matriarch’s eyes widen in surprise, then realization. “The wookie,” she dryly chuckles, needing no confirmation. “You’ve mentioned him. Keel, the one who honors Kexar. It is fitting that the one who hates our kind and our ways should also be the one who understands it the