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Tess Oprin knew what it was like to feel nothing.
She had lived fifteen years with the knowledge weighing her down like a boulder placed permanently on her back. She knew what it felt like to feel nothing, if you could forgive the irony. It was everything good and bad and in-between in the world, and it all rested within her. Nothing was the kind of thing that you knew, but could not see, yet it was as tangible as metal. It was the wave of heat that rendered your limbs useless and your mind numb. Nothing was the enemy to all, for it took everything from you and left something else --something terrible-- in return.
Nothing was having no heart, and Tess knew all about having no heart.
The children of the town called her many things. They whispered behind her straight and proper back. They huddled close to one another as she walked across the sand, her metal leg glinting in the heat of the day. The kids would always glare at her when she spoke; her short, clipped words like a snake waiting to bite.
They called her many things, but the only one Tess truly agreed with was heartless. Tess Oprin had no heart. Where what should have been a pumping, beating, ruby-tinted ball of love and hope and desire sat only a cold empty space. Tess didn't care whether people hated her or not. She couldn't give a damn if the Elders scolded her or a towns-person was killed in an accident (as long as it wasn't her fault, Tess would turn the other way). She was a girl of frowns and fear, glistening behind her electric eyes.
Tess Oprin had no heart.
Well, the townspeople thought, it wasn't exactly true, as Tess did have a heart. It was a required part of the anatomy, something keeping her --unfortunately-- alive and somewhat feeling. No, what Tess didn't have was a heart for others. She preferred cold, calculated results, something that always appeared exactly as she wanted. Machines and technology and mechanics was what called to Tess, not the laughter of children or the feeling of a nice cold glass of crystalline water after a day of fun out in the sand pits.
She was an anomaly. A girl of thunderstorms and lightning strikes in a world of seething sunlight and blistering heat.
The girl sat at a table now, drawn into the shadowy confines of the mechanic shop. Tools and machinery were littered around her in perfect disarray. Shells and bolts and cuplinks and laserfire all culminated into an organized chaos that was completely her own. The astromech droid in front of her whirred to life at the flick of a switch, and Tess pulled her goggles up proudly, admiring her work.
