Log Date:
	9/5/98

Log Cast:
	Jonathan Webb, Shenneret Veery

Log Intro:
	As if one visit hadn't been enough, Shenner on her second night
on Caspar is drawn back to the same beach where she and Paul had had their
last uninterrupted, exquisitely sweet romantic encounter. This time, though,
Shenner is sober -- half-afraid that she might bump either into Aidon
Semmes or the unnerving scarred woman who had found her the previous night.
She doesn't _really_ want to face that beach and her memories of Paul,
but on the other hand, she can't quite bring herself to face Nelun or the
motel room the two of them have found to stay in. Thus, haunted by the
Corellian she hasn't seen in nine months, Shenner and her guitar find a
quiet spot out on the sands, and this time, her audience is rather more
sympathetic....

----------
Beaches tend to be rather quiet places once the mercury dips down to about 51 
  degrees farenheit. Most people tend to see them more as warm weather places, 
  for frolicking about beneath the sun, or catching a tan... Then again, some 
  don't quite get it, and do such things like join the Marines, spend much of 
  their life exposed to harsh elements, and are often damp, muddy, 
  frostbitten, or picking off leeches. These are also the kind of people who 
  show up on beaches on night's like tonight, and can't seem to figure out why 
  there aren't more people here, but eventually decide that it's better this 
  way since the beach is even more impressive when it's not bustling with 
  human activity, and the sounds are more natural. One such person has just 
  appeared atop one of the dunes overlooking the beach, and now gazes out upon 
  the darkened sea.

And another such person is sitting crosslegged in the center of a stretch of 
  beach, red hair unbound from its usual braid, windruffled and tangled by the 
  ocean breezes. Beside Shenneret Veery rests a big guitar case, lying open on 
  the sand, and the guitar that it must generally house is currently residing 
  inher lap... producing at the behest of her hands a soft, complicated, 
  plaintive sort of melody wafting up into the night.

Webb starts slowly down the dune upon which he is perched, finding it easier 
  to half-skid down the steep portion in front of him than to actually climb 
  or simply walk down... well, not necessarily easier, but more interesting. 
  Every once in a while it always helps to have things more interesting than 
  easy. Once he has skidded to a stop after taking the hard way down (he's 
  still approximately right side up too), he looks about the beach to get his 
  bearings, then begins to approach the source of the melody which greets his 
  ears, barely audible over the waves.

Oblivious to the approaching figure, Shen sits and plays. Her head and 
  shoulders are bowed slightly over the big guitar in her lap, and her eyes 
  are closed. Made louder by proximity, her melody's individual intricate 
  notes can be more clearly heard, but if the young musician's posture is any 
  indication, she's not producing this music for enjoyment.

Webb probably doesn't mean to approach unheard, but he is walking on sand, and 
  the roar of the ocean could obscure small movements, and he does tend to 
  naturally walk with somewhat unnervingly quiet steps. Either way, he now 
  stands a few metres behind you, gazing out at the sea as he listens to the 
  tune you play. He's content to stand there silently for a good while, before 
  he finally comments, "Excellent spot for inspiration, isn't it?"

Normally, Shenner is a skilled and comfortable enough musician that the 
  approach of an unexpected audience won't throw her off. Tonight, though, her 
  fingers jangle her guitar strings into silence, and she shoots a startled 
  glance up and around her shoulder. Her green regard locks on the newcomer. 
  After a beat, recognizing him as someone who still currently falls into the 
  category of Relatively Harmless, she clears her throat to try to speak up in 
  as even a tone as she can. "Uh... yeah. Yeah, it is..."

Webb arches one eyebrow slightly, noting your startled response. A somewhat 
  sheepish grin spreads across his features for a moment as he inquires, 
  "Ummm... I'm not too much of a disturbance to that at the moment, am I?"

"Oh... nah, nah, don't worry, pal," the redheaded guitar player says, jerking 
  her gaze off oceanwards again, while tossing off a dismissive gesture with 
  one thin hand. "It's a public beach. If I'da not wanted anybody listenin' 
  in, I'da stayed indoors." And Shen flicks over a narrow, lopsided smile, 
  seemingly casual now.

Webb flashes another grin, then glances about the beach briefly, before 
  selecting a spot of sand to seat himself upon somewhere fairly close by, 
  just the right distance to engage in a casual conversation at. He returns 
  your lopsided smile with a somewhat less lopsided one of his own as he says, 
  "'Kay... just thought I'd ask. On a day like today, most people who come 
  here seem to come for the solitude."

"Well, yeah," says Shenner, rolling one shoulder in a seemingly offhand shrug. 
  "But hey, it's a public beach, so, no problem." She starts playing again, 
  but only small random strings of notes this time, apparently merely 
  something to do to occupy her hands. "You live around here, huh?"

Webb nods and makes a vague motion with his hands, gesturing back towards the 
  city to the east, "Yeah... back in the city. It's been my home since just 
  after Endor." Such is a quaint habit among military types, to break down the 
  timeline into battles, incidents, crises, wars, etc.

Shen's features crinkle a little, and she peers over at the pale young man, 
  apparently puzzled. "Endor... like in, uh, the moon where the second Death 
  Star went boom...?" she asks, dark red brows going up.

Webb looks at you for a moment.
Webb's right hand casually begins to dig through the sand as he talks, as if 
  it were searching for something to keep it occupied. Already a small pile 
  seems to be growing beside him. As for looking young, yeah, he kind of does 
  (though in terms of the relatively fledgeling CDU Marines, he's old enough 
  to be veteran), except for the look in those steely grey eyes of his. If you 
  just saw the eyes, you'd swear he'd been around to see the dawn of time. He 
  nods his head slightly and says, "Yeah, that rock."

Shen's pale mouth shapes a small soundless 'o', and then the girl eyes the man 
  nearby searchingly. "Were ya Rebel or Imperial?" she asks, her expression 
  giving nothing away, but her gaze has sharpened slightly.

Webb chuckles quietly as he continues to expand the sand-pile that his hands 
  busily work at. They continue to work even as he looks up at your face at 
  that seemingly innocent question. Webb answers nonchalantly, "Rebel... 
  stationed aboard a 'liberated' ISC... the Magnificent. That was in Admiral 
  Roj's fleet."

The girl still isn't giving anything much away by her expression... but the 
  answer given, from the ever so slight relaxing of her eyes, seems to be the 
  right one as far as this redheaded guitar player is concerned. "Cool," she 
  remarks, all gruff and casual even now. "So what'd ya do in the battle?"

Webb smirks slightly and gives you a brief account of his experiences there, 
  "Huddled down and listened to the Maggie's bulkheads rattle and groan as we 
  tried to break through the imp lines. I was just a ground pounder, and it 
  was mostly a big-ship battle... though eventually they managed to drop me 
  onto the rock itself, but there wasn't much to do down there by then except 
  mop up the remainder of the Imp's garrison. Those pretty white suits really 
  didn't help them much in the forests."

Casual though she might be trying to appear, something in the recounting seems 
  to spark Shenner's interest. Her green gaze flares with what may well be a 
  hint of wonder, a hint of awe, though it vanishes as quickly as it appears, 
  replaced by another of those small lopsided smiles she seems to favor. "So I 
  heard, yeah," she agrees, plucking out a few simple chords on the guitar, 
  the instrument sounding almost martial for a moment or two.

Webb starts to carefully sculpt out a more defined shape to his sandpile, 
  which has grown fairly considerable. The form that emerges beneath his hands 
  is sleek, obviously aquatic, and with a certain sinister grace to it. A 
  local would know it as an akula... a rather large shark which inhabits 
  Caspar's deep seas, and is noted for having what some might consider a bit 
  of a personality problem, namely that it eats nearly anything it can fit 
  into its mouth, and on rare instances unfortunate people fit that bill. Webb 
  make's it look as if his 'creature' is lunging up right out of the sand. 
  Since you seem so interested, he divulges a few more details of the story, 
  "By then the land war was pretty much a rout. The Imps had a few AT-ATs and 
  such, but those ugly beasts just got fouled up in the rough something fierce 
  trying to come to the rescue of their troops. Hell, they didn't even know 
  where we were... really. Most of their scouts bit it early on, trying to 
  root out the sniper teams."

Shenner's gaze falls on the sand-sculpting, and she pauses her playing 
  attempts, staring at Webb's efforts with a slowly but inexorably increasing 
  curiosity. The little lopsided grin broadens out some, turning closer to a 
  real smile, as she seems to register what the man is doing. But half her 
  attention is still on his tale, and she peers over at him again. The terms 
  for the military machinery make only the vaguest of sense to her, but 
  still... this is a ground fight, on Endor, of which this soldier is 
  speaking. And Shen has seen enough of recent history texts and news holos to 
  know certain key facts about the Battle of Endor... such as major figures 
  who were present for it. She asks, still in that casual tone but with that 
  flare of interest lurking in her gaze, "Didja get to see... well, ya know? 
  Luke Skywalker, or General Solo, or the Princess or anybody like that?"

Webb shakes his eyes as his fingers smooth out the impression of the akula's 
  eyes and the slits of its gills, "Can't say I saw any of them... but who 
  knows. I probably helped save their asses even though I didn't even know 
  they were on the same rock as us. After all, if those stormies didn't meet 
  us, they would have gone for them." He pauses for a moment as his akula 
  grows a pair of nostrils, "Well, I did see a quite a few imp officers. Some 
  of them might've been important... of course, in the cross-hairs is no place 
  to be important."

Shenner makes a short, sharp sort of noise at the mention of Imperial 
  officers, her nose crinkling up in an expression that suggests she'd just 
  tasted something unpleasant. "Yeah," she says, the syllable as short and 
  sharp as the previous noise she'd uttered. She shifts position, moving the 
  guitar so she can turn round and get a better look at the evolving 
  sand-creature, and she abruptly and marvellingly demands, "How the hells 
  didja learn how to do _that_?"

Webb grins again. He seems to do that more readily when the subject of 
  discussion is something other than his past battle experiences. His 
  expression mixes with a touch of surprise, as if he somehow wasn't expecting 
  that kind of question. He shrugs his shoulders and says, "This? I'm not sure 
  entirely... I just had an image in my mind and my hands made it. I've been 
  doing things like this since I was a kid really... painting, drawing, 
  sculpting nearly anything I could mould with my hands. Artistically 
  talented, or something to that effect. I guess I've had a lot of practice."

The transformation is a subtle one, but it's there nonetheless: something of 
  the edge leaves Shenner's expression, her gaze turning almost... eager, 
  resting on the sand-akula with the kind of wonder a sentient generally 
  reserves for encountering something utterly fascinating and new. Her grin 
  flares up into an actual smile for a instant before she seems to catch 
  herself and make it subside again... and she doesn't bother to hide the 
  amazement in her eyes, perhaps because she doesn't know it's there. "Whoa... 
  I didn't know you could use sand to, well, ya know, sculpt stuff," she 
  announces, a bit of the edge having left her voice, too. "What is that 
  thing?"

Webb takes a small pocket-knife from his pocket and leans down to get a better 
  look at his akula's mouth, and begins to do a little dental work, making the 
  creature look suitably toothy like the flesh and blood version would be. As 
  he sculpts he says, "Moist sand works better... the stuff on the surface 
  wouldn't have worked too well... it'd just crumble, but we've had a good 
  rain recently, so the sand is wet just a few centimetres down. And this guy 
  is an akula, as the locals call him. He's a large shark-like fish. Flesh and 
  blood versions of him inhabit the depths of our oceans. They're one of the 
  main predators in the seas... them and the orcas I suppose. Some of them get 
  big enough to threaten the orcas and the walenocets (pronounced wah leh no 
  set, or something to that effect) though the orcas travel in packs and 
  co-operate to defend each other... and even for an akula attacking something 
  as utterly massive as a walenocet is no simple matter. The young ones are 
  vulnerable though.... and I suppose injured or otherwise dying walenocets 
  would look tempting too."

Shenner's expression has noticeably lightened, and she alternates between 
  glancing at the creature taking shape in the sand and the young man whose 
  hands are doing the shaping. "A what-like fish?" she repeats, about all she 
  manages to get out as Webb delivers his impromptu lecture on marine biology. 
  Once she gets another word in, though, she goes on in apparent amazement, 
  "What's a shark? And an... orcas? And a wal-uh-no-set?" The smile flares up 
  again, and no doubt about it, that's a light of eagerness coming into her 
  eyes, as she seems to be striving to absorb all this new information as 
  readily as the sand had drunk in the rain.

Webb chuckles quietly and looks up at you from his work. In addition to being 
  the sort who seems to like to create, Webb also seems to be the sort who 
  likes to teach... and though he's not as old and crusty as some of the 
  professors at various colleges, he seems to have a lot of information 
  kicking around up there. He starts his lesson with the first of your 
  questions, "A shark is a general classification of a sort of fish that some 
  worlds have. They aren't necessarily related to their inter-planetary 
  'cousins'... they just share the same characteristics. It seems to be a 
  design that works in a lot of oceans. They have skeletons of cartiledge, 
  rather than bone, and many rows of teeth, so that if they lose one, a new 
  one is quick to move up to fill the gap. They usually eat other fish, or 
  mammals, or seabirds, but some of them filter micro-organisms out of the 
  water. The akula is the biggest such beast on this planet... there are 
  smaller species that look something like him and have smaller appatites. 
  They tend to look something like this," he pauses his speech to draw out the 
  full body shape of a shark in the sand, torpedo-shaped and graceful. It 
  looks like they'd be fairly fast swimmers.

If Webb is the kind of man who likes the teach, it would seem that Shenner is 
  the kind of girl who likes to learn. She avidly soaks in the improvised 
  Introduction to Sharks 101, looking back and forth between the sculpted 
  akula, Webb himself, and the shape he draws in the sand... and the ocean 
  itself, her green eyes narrowing musingly, as she tries to place the 
  creature described into the visual context of its habitat, right here with 
  the omnipresent susurration of its waves beside her. "Don't know all that 
  karkin' much about oceans," she admits gruffly. "Do they come in up close to 
  the shore? I mean... sharks, and stuff?"

Webb grins and says, "The akula tends to live further out to sea. It's a real 
  rarity to find one within sight of land. It's probably a good thing too, 
  because they're big and varacious enough that they might try human from time 
  to time if they had the opportunity. Smaller sharks come closer in at 
  times... like out near the reefs where there's more fish. There's one 
  species that you can find quite often off the beach, which roots through the 
  sand for shellfish. Those ones get about this long," he holds his arms out 
  as wide as he can reach, "And will tolerate swimmers petting them. Orcas can 
  be found be found fairly close inshore from time to time... they look kind 
  of like sharks except they're fatter and blunter and have fewer fins. They 
  reach about 12 tonnes, which is... a little bigger than an akula... though 
  that's debateable, because the scientists who look at these oceans really 
  aren't sure just how big an akula can get. Anyhow, an orca is nothing like a 
  shark, except for a vaguely similar shape. It's a mammal just like a human 
  is, and has to breath air from the surface, so it has nostrils on the top of 
  its head. They seem quite intelligent, and they make noises to communicate 
  with one another. Some people even say they have their own language, and if 
  we learned it we could talk to them... if they do it makes Verpine look nice 
  and simple by comparison."

Shenner can be noted to swallow at the description of shark and akula 
  appetites, and the glance she shoots seaward has just a touch of trepidation 
  in it. But she gets past it quickly, merely blowing out a breath and 
  muttering, "I think I'll stay on dry land, thanks." Still, a bit of her 
  earlier smile peeks back into being again, and she appends, "Huh. I ain't 
  tried learnin' Verpine. What's so hard about it?"

Webb smirks and says, "Nothing... if you're a Verpine. A human, though... just 
  isn't equipped to make the same noises, or to interpret them as speech. Some 
  can understand it, but usually not very well." He turns and gazes out 
  towards the sea, "It's kind of like that with the orca, except even moreso. 
  But they certainly seem to understand one another. We're just not sure how. 
  The other funny thing is that even though they're big and toothy and cunning 
  enough to view the shark population of the area as a tasty meal, they never 
  hurt people, though if they chose to they probably could. They just don't. 
  They're usually found along the coasts, and they migrate all of the way up 
  to cold waters in the polar regions. Now, a walenocet has a similar shape to 
  an orca..." he sketches the two out in the sand, approximately to scale... 
  the walenocet dwarfs both the bullet-nosed shape of the orca, and the 
  similarly sized one of the akula by many times, "but bigger and slower... 
  they swim the deeper seas, and their mouths are designed to filter out 
  smaller organisms from the water for their food, so unlike the orca they 
  couldn't bite if they wanted to. They're related though, and they have 
  similarly complex minds and communication too."
Oh yes, the sketch of the walenocet also lacks a dorsal fin, so it's not 
  exactly orca-shaped, and the pectoral fins seem to trail much longer in 
  proportion, looking almost wing-like.

Shenner takes all of this in, her expression... at least initially... 
  continuing to hold that eager glow of interest, of a young intellect 
  reaching out for unexpected nourishment. But somewhere in the midst of 
  Webb's willingly provided instruction, another shift steals across the 
  musician's features, a darkening of her gaze, some unspoken thought that 
  seems to pull her back out of the conversation somehow, though she doesn't 
  shift position or move her guitar. She does put on one of those narrow 
  lopsided smiles, however, and she says when her companion has finished once 
  more, "Well, pal, I'm impressed. You study all this stuff?"

Webb shrugs and merely responds with, "Kinda." There's a brief pause, almost 
  dramatic in feel, before he adds, "I've been here a couple of years now... 
  and I kind of like the ocean, so I just read it."

"Oh." Shenner falls silent for a bit, perhaps uncomfortable, then she seems to 
  square her shoulders. And she says brightly, "Well... thanks for sharin' all 
  that anyhow. Nobody hardly ever bothers to tell me that kinda stuff." And 
  now she does shift position again, pulling the big well-used 
  wood-and-plastic guitar back into her lap.

Webb's grin appears once again as he reaches up with his arms in a rather 
  lengthy stretching of his muscles... which produces an odd popping sound or 
  two from somewhere within his back. He starts to pull himself to his feet as 
  he says, "Yeah, well it was no problem. I rather enjoyed talking to you. 
  Oh... um. I'm Jonathan, by the way."

The redheaded girl peers up, indeed finding those poppings odd, as if it's 
  another novelty to her that a human frame can make those kinds of noises. 
  Then she proffers forth another crooked smile, and proffers with it, 
  "Shenner... hiya."

Webb takes a deep breath of the sea breeze which blows into his face, then 
  looks down to your face and flashes one last grin as he says, "Well Shenner, 
  it's been fun, but my body is telling me that I ought to be sleeping right 
  about now," he chuckles quietly and adds, "And since there's no shooting 
  going on, I think I just might decide to listen to that reccomendation."

And the young musician nods, amiable enough, though her expression's 
  shuttering down again as she sits there on the sand with the big guitar 
  between her and the expanse of the waves. "Sure... see ya round, pal."

Webb trudges his way back up the dunes, headed back towards the city, his 
  home, and eventually to his bed, assuming Caspar doesn't have some great 
  crisis which demands his immediate attention before he gets there. This 
  thought prompts a quiet, weary sounding sigh as he departs.
Webb leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city.
Webb has left.

[End log.]