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Csilla is beautiful, Thrawn told him.
From space, he says, it looks like a moonstone, white and blue and smoothed with clouds. On the ground it is in perpetual twilight, the snow and ice a hundred shades of white that glitter under the starlight like endless fields of diamonds. The air is crisp and clean and leaves one feeling refreshed just from breathing it in. The wind sings, and it makes fresh snow dance on the surface of the ice. The sea is vast and the salt of it rims everything it touches with a sparkling crust, and icebergs jut from the water, clear blue. The aurora that shimmers in the air is easy to get lost in, and one can stand and watch it for hours on end without seeing the same pattern twice.
There is a fondness in his voice when he speaks, an expression of longing that Eli recognized; he hears it in his own voice whenever he speaks of Lysatra. And like his descriptions of Lysatra, Thrawn’s memories are fueled by nostalgia and homesickness, but are also clouded by the passage of time.
Csilla is beautiful from space; Eli does agree with that. The rest, however..
It is a dark planet, the sunlight too thin and the sun itself too distant to be more than a particularly bright star, and while Eli does find the stars lovely he craves the sun, physically and psychologically both. The snow is dark white, and dark grey, and dark white-grey, and the ice is either clear or dirty grey; both are treacherous underfoot, the former covering dips and holes that makes the ground untrustworthy to walk on, the latter slippery and often hidden or hard to spot. Both are hard and painful to fall on, which Eli does, often; when he is planetside, it is unusual for him not to be covered with bruises. When the ice and snow catch the light from the stars or moons, the sudden glare hurts his eyes, leaving him in pain and temporarily blinded; he learns quickly not to look directly at the shine.
The air is frigid; if he breathes it in through his nose, ice forms in his nostrils; if he uses his mouth, his teeth and throat ache. He can only breathe it directly for a few minutes before it hurts his lungs too much to continue; if he breathes through a scarf, he can manage ten or fifteen. He develops a cough that never leaves him within a week of breathing the air for the first time; it becomes more severe whenever he has to travel and re-expose his lungs to the Csillan chill. The wind howls, throwing snow and tiny chips of ice against his face that leaves it chapped and raw and once, after a particularly strong gust, bleeding.
The sea is vicious, dangerous in a way the snow and ice are not; getting anywhere near it leaves one coated in heavy salt spray, which does not freeze or evaporate but lingers and invites in the ever present cold to strike at the body like claws, shredding any sense of warmth regardless of how many layers are worn. The icebergs jut from the water like the broken teeth of a great lurking beast, milky and sharp. The aurora in the sky is faint and difficult to discern most of the time.
Eli wishes he could see Csilla through Thrawn’s eyes. He believes that there is beauty here, but no matter how hard he looks he cannot find it.
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Lysatra is beautiful, Eli told him.
Dozens of shades of brown and red with small patches of green and blue, it is a vibrant world. The sun is bright, the breezes warm, the land full of life in the scrublands and the vast deserts and green fields and the vibrant cities. The people are friendly and welcoming, and you can buy anything you want in the trading centers, and no matter where you stand you’re not far from a friend you just haven’t met yet. Hospitality is the rule, and to mistreat a guest is the height of rudeness. The sunsets are breathtaking, he says, and the canyons, and the rock formations. You can go from being surrounded by a thousand people to being the only person for miles in no time.
There is a fondness when he speaks, an expression of longing that Thrawn recognized; he hears it in his own voice whenever he speaks of Csilla. And like his descriptions of Csilla, Eli’s memories are fueled by nostalgia and homesickness.
Thrawn finds Lysatra to be an unattractive planet. The browns and reds might have potential, but their patterns are broken by the green and blue patches, leading to a discordant effect that he does not favor.
What Eli described as vibrant Thrawn finds to be slow and tedious, if he is being kind. The sun is blinding; it hurts his eyes to look at anything during the daylight, which never seems to end, and at night its effect lingers, leaving everything blazing in his infrared vision. Even in the shade it is hot to a degree he has not often experienced. The wind saps the moisture from his mouth, his eyes, his skin - he is left feeling dehydrated and overheated in minutes of exposure to the outside environment. There is a great deal of natural life, but it is all small and dangerous and mean, everything struggling to survive, animals and plants both. It makes him uncomfortable to see so many insects and vermin and reptiles crawling freely through the city, the population unawares of their proximity to danger and death.
The friendly and welcoming people that would never mistreat a guest must be in a different location than he is - Thrawn is looked at with suspicion when he isn’t looked at with outright dislike. You can find anything you want at the trade depot, so long as you want an extremely limited selection of goods available for an almost obscene markup. The food is barely edible, painful to the lips and tongue and sinuses and stomach.
The sunsets are breathtaking. He agrees with that point. The canyons and rock formations are interesting to a degree, but they glow in his vision, day and night, dulling the effect.
Thrawn is always alone, even when in the middle of the most populated city. He does not need to travel anywhere to gain that experience.
He wishes he could see Lysatra through Eli’s eyes. He believes that Eli thinks that there is great beauty here, but no matter how hard he looks he cannot find it.