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By Root 1477 0

a barve in the front yard. The barve is wandering around on five legs—one leg has been amputated. The sentient in question, JoJo, asks the owner why the barve has had a leg amputated. “Well,” says the owner, “let me tell you something about that barve. That’s the smartest barve you’ve ever seen in your life, JoJo. That barve talks, he can fly a speeder, and he’s great with the kids, keeps an eye on ’em when I’m out in the field—why, just a few weeks ago he rescued my youngest one from drowning.” And JoJo says, “That’s amazing! But what happened to the amputated leg?” The owner stares at JoJo. “Well, man, you don’t eat a barve like that all at once!”

Susejo laughed silently in the darkness, and the wall behind Fett rippled again.

Boba Fett thought to himself, I wish I had a thermal detonator. I’d take you with me.

You are eternally the Real, Boba Fett … and there is nothing to desire.

The chrono that glowed in the lower right-hand corner of Boba Fett’s helmet visor told him when dawn came. It had been dark already when he awakened; when dawn arrived, the tunnel off to Fett’s left lightened noticeably. At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, enough light filtered down through the yawning mouth of the Sarlacc that Fett could see his surroundings clearly.

The walls of the small tunnel in which the Sarlacc had stored him were grayish-green; they looked damp, though Fett’s gloves prevented him from being certain. Small tendrils grew along the edges of the ridging in the walls; along the floor the tendrils were larger, proper tentacles, a mat of several hundred tentacles, four to six centimeters wide, three and four meters long. They lay motionless most of the time; when the tentacles did move they whipped around at such speed that the tentacle tips broke the sound barrier, very like the tip of a whip. It was the source of the cracking noises Fett had been hearing since he’d awakened … and once he knew what it was he shivered. The cracking was a steady background sound, yet the tentacles around him did not move often. It made Fett wonder just how large the Sarlacc’s interior was and how far from the surface he might be—how many of those tentacles he would have to fight his way through to get out again.

Oh, but you’re not going to get out again, Boba Fett No one ever has, and you won’t be the first Listen:

The Sarlacc ate my left leg first, love. I hadn’t been able to move either my arms or my legs for … months, I suppose, a very long time. They didn’t hurt anymore, though my skin burned, and never has stopped burning the entire time I’ve been in this blasted pit.

She has me hanging up in the main chamber while she digests me. I suppose that’s something; a thing to be grateful for in the grand scheme of things. Mica and I came down together when our speeder got shot down, and Mica got hustled back into one of those little openings along the edge, down into the Sarlacc’s guts. This is a bad way to die, but that’d be worse, that’d be a lot worse. I’m blind in one of my eyes now, but I can still see the sunlight striking down into the main pit, through the other, and I tell you, it keeps me going. Never thought I’d see the day when a brief glimpse of Tatooine’s pale blue sky would be a reason to keep living.

I try not to look down. My left leg’s gone beneath the knee. I didn’t even notice it going, tell you the truth. One day I looked down and there it was, on the floor of the pit, down in the acid, being dissolved down into nothing.

That annoying Susejo leaves me alone at times. I don’t know what he does when he’s not talking to me; maybe he’s off draining Mica the way he’s draining me. I don’t know exactly what Susejo’s doing to us … but well, some days I’m not even certain sure who I am anymore. There’s been a lot of us down here; I guess Susejo keeps the ones he and the Sarlacc enjoy, for a while anyway. It’s a sort of immortality, I suppose, but love, I could have tolerated actually dying a lot better. I always thought that’s how I’d go, you know; fleeing a blaster wedding at the age of ninety-three, something