Star Wars - Musings of an Ithorian

I am a sad and lonely creature. A sad and despicable wart. After such a life as mine — well-lived, meandering, full of mitosis and ambient radiation — it has finally come to this. Drowning my sorrows in a pint of nectoral syrup.

I was such a promising pupa. Glassy-eyed, appendageless, able to move my organs around at will. The world was a titillating surface, an endless, glistening horizon that I had only to track across, to let slip under my underbelly, to feel satisfied. Ah, the simple joys of youth!

And then I metamorphosized. Rimbaux Four was my oyster and mating never a problem. I fathered several thousand offspring, sending my saliva out into the winds of Solax. I fed on the refuse of others. What an effervescent time! What connections to meteors and spongy roots! My throat sack in constant flutter! Adventure always at my caravan door!

Then the molt. The horrible, terrible molt. I’d heard about it, saw it in others, yet somehow never expected it for myself. Not for me! The most handsome, admired Ithorian in the orbit of Satellite Nine. But it happens to us all, male and female alike, that’s the brutal lesson of experience. First it’s the loss of an aural flap, then a bend in each and every locomotion tube. Finally, there’s the lumps and the hunger for ant-flies. They stick to your face like blemishes. Like space barnacles. You become despised by those who loved you, spurned by your closest friends — useless, taunted, forgotten. And you hear it all because suddenly five craters appear in the side of your cranium, letting it all in. All the cruel and callous comments fill your head like the windsong of approaching disintegration.

And so this final stage comes as a relief. Gone is the disappointment, the despair. Accepted is the lack of energy. You wander the free-trade zone wondering “What is it all about?” “Was it all worth it?” Your casing shrinks around your ever-lengthening, bulbous frame. But you just don’t care anymore. You just don’t care. You realize you are what you always were destined to be — a mature Ithorian with a shell and knowledge so frightening and ripe that you can hardly stand yourself.

From

Monsters and Aliens From George Lucas

By Bob Carrau

(11-1993)

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