I loved her from the moment I saw her. Peering over the rooftop’s edge down at her in the market’s courtyard, her small figure facing off determinedly against a pair of attackers. Their loud voices interrupting my clandestine studying, the boys’ jeering and angry shouts pulling me from my arcane world on the roof of the abandoned shop.

I stowed my recently liberated book in it’s hiding place with the others; quite a collection I’d amassed over the last year, stolen from various stalls and schools around the spaceport. I reasoned I wouldn’t have to steal them if my worthless father would pay for tuition instead of drinking his meager wages away, chasing the memory of my once beautiful but long dead mother.

I hadn’t seen her around before, she was Zabrak, like me, but from her clothing and weapon I assumed she was one of the wealthy youths that came to the port to shop or cause trouble. There was a large Zabrak community here for such a small port city, but rarely did I encounter them. Most of them worked in some official capacity for the government and lived in their walled, secure enclave. My father and his low status ensured we never rubbed elbows with the well connected. The private Academies were filled with Zabrak students, but I’d never even been to the grounds. All of my knowledge and fighting skills (meager as they were) came from the dusty streets.

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