It was no secret that Bianca Ducain loathed Tatooine. She was from Naboo, a land of ponds and greenery and sun, and the sand there was the soft sand you'd find at the bottom of a lake, not this coarse, irritating mess that clung to your clothes and hair for weeks. The one upside of the sand was that it made leaving a solid footprint near impossible, though of course that didn't matter if you couldn't run without slipping. She considered hailing a droid-led cart to save time, but then saw their price and decided to walk.
She could very well just steal a droid, but it'd be near impossible to carry it to Winston in this terrain. And besides that, it would have some sort of restraining bolt that she wouldn't have time to pry off, if the suns' positions were anything to go by. Instead she scanned the stalls set up down the street, trying to find an astromech unit. She'd rather blast her own brains out than fly across the galaxy with some protocal droid, and astromechs served a use beyond irritation and translation. She had just about given up hope when the sheen of a silver-grey dome caught her eye. She half-ran to the ramshackle booth and knelt beside the droid. It was an R3 unit, slightly battered with green and grey markings and one bronzish leg.
"How much for the astromech?" Bianca asked the booth's owner, an old Rodian man with goggles around his eyes. He leaned forward with a confused expression, as if he'd already forgotten what she'd asked.
"You'll have to excuse old Ari," a light voice said, and a Theelin woman walked over. She was young, no more than a year older than Bianca, with bronze skin speckled with purple splotches and bright teal hair, and three small horns jutting out from either side of her head. Her feet were bare, exposing that she had three toes on each hooflike foot. "His memory isn't what it used to be. Not that it was ever that good. I'm Reeta, by the way. Reeta Kuin."
Reeta held out a gloved hand, and Bianca shook it. "Now, you wanted the droid?"
