Hoth: Blood and Ice

"This music is entirely mine, Pipka. I draw it neither from my kin nor from my calling, but from the essence of me. I am a true Sith, beyond being determined by my origins, as I have broken my chains. And I share it for no other reason than to exercise my freedom to do so." She chuckled. "I appreciate your effort to talk to me in Ryl." That was expressed with the contextual movement of lekku.

"Then we're kind of the same. Well, to break the chains of my origins, I was kind of put in chains... but either way, I left Chad behind and now I'm here and I am me.

It's kind of odd, now that I think about it, since you brought it up..." he trails off for a moment as if struggling to gather his thoughts, perhaps spurred on by the message of the song and her words, but without a deep understanding of either. "I was freed from my life on Chad by being made into a slave, and now I am free from slavery, but I still can't do whatever I want. If I wasn't free on Chad, then am I free now?"

Then he cheerily compartmentalizes that particular philosophical conundrum (as one does) and adds, "Thanks, I try my best to learn other languages. I met a lot of different species and they usually liked it when they could chat in their native tongue.

"I was a slave once as well, Pipka, I had left Ryloth in quite similar fashion as you had left Chad." There wasn't much emotion behind that statement, as if all its exigencies had long been settled. "But freedom is more than just not being presently enslaved. It is destroying the chance to ever again be, and that requires travelling a demanding spiritual path. The steps along it are known, however: passion, strength, power, victory, convergence with the Force. By the sound of it, you still have a few things to do to assert yourself and enjoy self-determination."

"I think I get what you mean... Maybe if I take my goats off world and start marketing them and Hoth Chocolate, I can get enough credits to buy some of that self-determination, although I would miss the Turtle." Pipka grows uncharacteristically silent as he contemplates a life apart from the crew of the Turtle.

"You know you are free when you no longer feel constrained or compelled by others' choices but can chart a path through the galaxy that is your own, Pipka's. Perhaps there is a whole planet somewhere out there where even your goats can roam free, without pens and collars."