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Revel

Born of War Part 1 — 641 words

Born of War Part 2 — 526 words

Born of War Part 3 — 577 words

Born of War Part 4 — 696 words

Born of War Part 5 — 625 words

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Raised in Shadow Part 1 — 1,682 words

Raised in Shadow Part 2 — 1,301 words

Raised in Shadow Part 3 — 1,107 words

Raised in Shadow Part 4 — 1,195 words

Raised in Shadow Part 5 — 1,487 words

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Exposed to Wonder Part 1 — 1,490 words

Exposed to Wonder Part 2 — 960 words

Exposed to Wonder Part 3 — 890 words

Exposed to Wonder Part 4 — 1,389 words

Exposed to Wonder Part 5 — 1,224 words

Exposed to Wonder Part 6 — 1,430 words

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Taught of Oceans Part 1 — 1,151 words

Taught of Oceans Part 2 — 1,000 words

Taught of Oceans Part 3 — 1,143 words

Taught of Oceans Part 4 — 1,016 words

Taught of Oceans Part 5 — 1,870 words

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Tempest

Crowded Steps Part 1 — 1,052 words

Crowded Steps Part 2 — 1,375 words

Crowded Steps Part 3 — 1,268 words

Crowded Steps Part 4 — 1,104 words

Crowded Steps Part 5 — 972 words

Crowded Steps Part 6 — 1,198 words

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Friend or Foe? Part 1 — 1,115 words

Friend or Foe? Part 2 — 784 words

Friend or Foe? Part 3 — 1,350 words

Friend or Foe? Part 4 — 1,062 words

Friend or Foe? Part 5 — 1,153 words

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Trialled by Passion Part 1 — 1,145 words

Trialled by Passion Part 2 — 1,414 words

Trialled by Passion Part 3 — 1,176 words

Trialled by Passion Part 4 — 1,118 words

Trialled by Passion Part 5 — 1,103 words

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Whispers of Chaos Part 1 — 1,320 words

Whispers of Chaos Part 2 — 1,004 words

Whispers of Chaos Part 3 — 842 words

Whispers of Chaos Part 4 — 1,394 words

Whispers of Chaos Part 5 — 892 words

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Torment

Proponent of Order Part 1 — 1,274 words

Proponent of Order Part 2 — 926 words

3660 BBY, Ord Radama

A deep boom sounded from the direction of the plateau and a concussion ripped through the ground that Tyria Eleni crouched upon. Back pressed against the side of the mountain, she watched the first billows of smoke rise from the stronghold on Ord Radama, rain and dust soaking into her shoulders. Lightning rippled around the battle, thunder-cracks sharp on its heels.

A Devlikk nudged her with one claw. “This way, this way,” he said, plucking at his sodden cheek feathers. “We keep moving.”

“I can’t leave my master behind, Barba” she said. Her left hand drifted to her belt and touched cool metal. I’ve not had to use it yet, she thought.

“Your master told you to follow. We think poor sense to anger man with lightsabre.” Barba’s stumpy tail twitched in nervous impatience. “You have poor sense? We go without you.”

Tyria refocussed her attention on the group of Devlikk behind Barba, each casting anxious glances between her and the stronghold. She’d seen the imperial troops marching up the mountain and worried for the fate of her master, but if she left now, she left the Devlikk undefended.

“Show the way,” she said.

Barba turned and they scurried down the mountain-side together, trying to find a path that was both easy to run down and well-hidden from enemy spacecraft. Loose rocks clattered down all around them as they moved, but ever louder sounds of battle overwhelmed the noise, layering over it with blasts and cries.

As much as she tried to recall her training, her heart raced and panic ate away at the edges of her mind. The silhouettes of three dreadnoughts, black cut-outs in a darkening sky, made her stomach tighten in fear.

Perhaps that was why she didn’t notice him.

Perhaps that was how she noticed him.

The next flash of lightning glanced off the surface of something metal, moving fast towards them. Tyria barely had time to register the Force presence before he was there. A vivid red gash arced through the air and two Devlikk flew backwards, dim ember-edges marking the cuts in their flesh.

As the Sith raised his lightsabre again, its guttural drone ringing out, Tyria came back to her senses. She grabbed the lightsabre from her belt and activated it. Then, she hesitated.

Alerted by the blue glow that now illuminated his form, the Sith turn to face her. He was close enough that she could see the thin line of her blade reflected in his orange eyes. Behind him the Devlikk ran for safety, but his mouth lifted into a grin, unconcerned.

Chills ran through Tyria’s body, but it wasn’t the cold of the rain. She could sense the power in this Sith. She knew she was no match for him. But there was no way out, no way back. The longer she delayed him, the more time the Devlikk would have to escape and maybe, perhaps, her master would come to save her.

He leapt, blade blazing through the air towards her and she met it with hers. It took all her strength to keep her own blade being driven back into her, but the Sith appeared unfazed. Inches away from her, she saw every pit and scar of his red skin lit by the combined hue of their lightsabres. His eyes were feral, crazed, his lips the picture of a snarl.

“I taste your fear,” he hissed, leaning in close.

Muscle memory whipped her arms into motion, trying for a riposte against his blade, but with one motion of his hand she went flying backwards through the air. Her head cracked against the side of the mountain and filled her mind with sickening pain.

The last thing she saw before the haze came down was the Sith, taking steady steps towards her, as the light of his lightsabre fizzled out.

She woke with the dawn. Or at least, she thought she did, but when she opened her eyes all she could see was the streaked light of hyperspace peeking through a window. She tried to prop herself up on one elbow to get a better look at her surroundings, but a wave of dizziness swept over her and she sank back down, half-unconscious.

A silent voice pressed against her eardrums.

“Hey,” it said as her brain began to piece sounds together again. “You okay back there? If you gonna throw, aim for the floor, not the furniture.”

It was a drawl of a voice. Female, and it didn’t seem hostile – yet.

Tyria winced and tried running calming exercises through her mind to dull the pain that still shot through her body. Eventually, she worked up the strength to ask, “Who are you?”

“Ain’t really anyone. Just someone who don’t shirk money for transport.”

This time, she just about managed to prop herself up into a seated position. She squinted at the voice’s owner – a short Chiss woman in a fur-lined travelling jacket slouched in a pilot’s chair near some controls.

“You all nasty when you got here,” she continued. “Singed all over and…ugh.” She waved a dismissive hand and glanced over at Tyria. “Still pretty nasty.”

At the realisation she might still have injuries that needed tending, Tyria checked herself over, but the most she could find were bruises and scrapes. Big bruises and deep scrapes, but nothing serious.

Something seemed off.

“How did I survive?”

The woman shrugged. “Damned if I know. Birdy fellas just gave me money and off I went.”

It wasn’t like a Sith to leave survivors…was it? “Where are we going?”

“Alderaan. Something ‘bout family being there?”

Tyria nodded, forgetting that the woman couldn’t see her. She’d been born on Alderaan, but she didn’t know her parents. The Jedi had taken her away when she was three and that’s the last she’d known of a normal world. Or rather, the last she didn’t know. Could anyone ever remember that far back?

Unbidden, her fingers brushed against the locket she wore. Her parents had given it to her before they took her away, knowing they were coming for her. It had their contact details in it; the Devlikk must have checked it while she was knocked out.

For some reason, she now felt dread where before she would have felt excitement at seeing them again. She calmed herself, but an uneasy feeling remained.

“How long until we get there?” she asked.

“Two days left.” The Chiss scratched at her head, not looking back. “Don’t go in the hold.”

Tyria caught sight of the access hatch out of the corner of her eye. She was alive. She didn’t really care to know the manner of her rescue. “I won’t,” she promised.

The Chiss grunted and that was the last of their conversation. Tyria resigned herself to staring out of the window for the rest of the journey. She could meditate, probably should, but something held her back. She didn’t want to look, afraid of what she might see.

Time, as it was, passed.

3660 BBY, Alderaan

The Chiss woman dropped her off on some remote patch of ground by the lesser-travelled side of the Juran Mountains, leaving with barely a word of explanation or goodbye. Tyria wouldn’t miss the ‘companionable’ silence, but she was concerned that she knew nothing of her family’s whereabouts. Any memory of her home had been taken from her by the passage of time, just as the Jedi had taken her from this place.

Snow drifted down around her, little ice clouds clumping together in the faintest whisper of a breeze. She raised her face to the heavens, letting the flakes brush against her cheeks, and lost herself in the chaotic harmony of their movements against the backdrop of Alderaan’s star-filled sky, unclouded as it was in the distance.

“Tyria?” a soft voice carried over to her, muffled by the snow.

She drifted out of her observation, slower than any teacher of hers would have approved. At the edge of the glade stood a middle-aged woman, straight-backed and regal in the shadow of a gnarled tree. She stared out at Tyria with nervous eyes, hope and curiosity casting a subtle edge across her features.

“Are you Tyria?” she asked again.

Tyria nodded. “I am.”

“You…You were so small when last I saw you. I wasn’t sure. How could I not be sure?” she said, voice wavering. But then she collected herself. In a few short strides she crossed to Tyria’s side and wrapped her arms around her. “You’re all grown now,” she whispered.

The whisper was one that dripped with love and sadness, but carried with it an undercurrent of bitter regret and, Tyria sensed, anger. Anger at the Jedi for taking her away, for denying her the opportunity to see her own daughter grow. The emotions were unspoken words, those too taken from her by taboo. Where did your morals lie if you spoke against the Order, even with the faintest breath?

Taking in a deep breath, Tyria returned the hug, body alive with sensations at once familiar and lost in the distant past. “I’ve missed you,” she admitted.

“I tried to write, but… I’ve missed you too,” her mother replied.

As they separated, her mother raised her hand to Tyria’s forehead and she winced as her fingers traced over broken skin.

“What did they do to you?” she asked.

“It wasn’t the Jedi, it…” She paused, noting the concern etched into her mother’s features. Sometimes it was best to withhold the truth. “I tripped over during training.”

Her mother seemed unconvinced by the lie, but took her arm in hers regardless and began leading her away from the glade. For the most part they were silent as they walked, but every few minutes, her mother would tell her of something else that had happened while she was gone. The family had fallen on hard times, so they had a new house, but they lived well. They were happy, or so she said.

Tyria would have loved to pay more attention, but half the names and places were alien to her, all things she couldn’t remember. Instead she drifted down into herself, practised meditation techniques mingling with the soothing effect of a familiar voice. Yet as she drifted down, comfort bled into unease. She sensed something else within her and the implications set panic nibbling at the edges of her mind.

When she realised it was not something that she sensed, but someone, that panic turned to terror.

In the end, she decided to twist the truth again, not that she knew much of it herself. Days had passed, and she knew that withholding the news any longer would leave the truth to tell itself. Her father paid close attention to her every evening when he returned from his administrative duties. Thanks to his questions, gently worded though they were, at least Tyria had become better at lying.

Muffled footsteps announced his arrival now. He moved quietly for a man of his bulk — a trait her mother said he had returned with after he was disgraced from the guard of House Baliss.

“You seem quiet, Tyria,” her father said, drap:ng his thick winter coat over a chair.

Tyria stirred a stick of Oro bark around her cup of Jeru tea and shot a weak smile at him before looking away. “There’s something I want to discuss,” she said, attempting to make the words sounds as ordinary as possible.

Her father frowned and dropped his holdall in the corner of the room. “That sounds… formal. Do you want me to get your mother?”

She nodded, then waited for them both to gather.

“What’s this about?” her mother asked.

Taking a deep breath, Tyria began the tale she had rehearsed. “The Order recently sent me on my first travels off-world with my master and another padawan.” That was true, in part. “We were told to maintain relations with the locals, among other things, and the work was good. Enjoyable. As we were there for quite a while, my master, the other padawan and I grew closer than before. We worked well as a team.

“But I grew closer to the other padawan than I should have.” She tapped her fingers against the side of her mug to dissuade her nerves as she waited for the words to form on her tongue. “I… am with child.”

Surprised exclamations issued from both her parents. She could sense excitement tinged with equal parts worry and joy issuing from her mother. From her father grew only surprise, at first, but it was soon replaced by concern.

“What would your Jedi do with this?” he asked.

“It doesn’t-“ her mother tried to say, but her father cut her off with a calm gesture.

Tyria risked a glance at them, noting the contrasting expressions of her mother and father. He stared at her not unkindly, but with arms folded and brows knitted together.

“I don’t know what they’d do.” She shrugged. “I don’t want to find out. I don’t want to go back until this is done with. I don’t want them to know about it.”

For a few seconds she thought her father was going to protest, but instead he nodded and stepped toward her, placing a steady hand on her shoulder. “We’ll do everything we can for you,” he said. “You’re safe here. You’re home.”

In that moment her heart told her that he was wrong, that she would never be truly safe again, that she would never again see the people she had come to know in the Order. A pang of regret tugged at her then, pulling her in two directions. Her mind cried that the Jedi would know what to do, would help her be rid of it. But what she had glimpsed within herself, wreathed in darkness and pain, conceived of war and shadow… Her heart had latched onto the solitary glimpse of life contained, the bright, constant spark amidst the chaos. Her heart would not permit it to be extinguished, no matter the terror in her mind.

Later that night she walked out among the stars, naked fingers tracing the snow-laced stems of dead flowers, the beauty of their form undiminished by cessation of existence. She gazed into the night, noting the depth of colour within the sky’s pitch void, the smatter of light and life wending its way across eternity. Sensations passed through and within her, frozen air sloughing away the heat of her skin and pressing the cold against her temples. Tyria let her eyes close and savoured the moment.

Her heart told her it would be the last such moment she experienced.

As life faded, so too did it begin. Trapped in the turbulence of an unborn state, Tyria’s infant child knew nothing of its surroundings, only that the comforting veil of warmth that had surrounded it for long months was starting to lift. Still-forming senses grasped the loss of life but wondered at its meaning, and unrecognised emotions manifested as primitive fear that quickened the heart and set limbs into action.

Strange devices ripped apart that world and tore the infant from it, blinding lights assailing eyes which had never seen the day or night. The shock of the transfer brought forth caterwauls from newly-formed lungs, a sound which echoed in the confined space, travelling back to ears that until then had only been privy to the murmurs of a dying heart.

And yet every physical sense was of no consequence. The infant’s mind was awash with emotions. They rushed as tides and rapids through consciousness, impossible to tell where the stench of one feeling ended and another began. The heavy pang of horror was the easiest to place, a thick current stemming from the hands that held the infant now. They grabbed rather than cradled and an air of unease suggested fear rather than neglect.

The child was thrust into the arms of another and though these arms nestled it between soft fabric and the beat of a steady heart, they remained rigid, cold and indifferent. Grief far beyond comprehension began to change and shift to anger, to hate and a smouldering desire for retribution.

Another form of grief originated nearby, more raw and open and hounded by sadness.

Beneath the sounds of its own cries, the child heard guttural noises it did not understand.

“The skin,” came noise from the one that freed it, high and wavering “I…”

The arms that held it reverberated as it interrupted, deep sound echoing through the hollows of its body. “We will pay whatever it takes to keep this silent.”

“Don’t. I won’t talk.” The person started to move away. “I just never want to see that thing again.”

“But…” came the voice of grief, but it was silenced by the holder.

“It’s not a problem,” it said.

The world shifted as the holder moved, holding the child tight to its chest. Sensations which before had been washed-over by emotion were now sliced through by a cutting wind. Air colder than the child had ever known bit into its exposed skin and as its body rebelled at the intrusion, its mind chafed at the betrayal of the holder. It tried to burrow closer to its chest for warmth, but remained locked in its iron grip.

“Where are you taking her?” asked the voice of grief.

The holder gave no reply.

“You don’t mean to… You aren’t going to abandon her out here, are you?”

“Look at it, Miri. You see that skin. You know what it is. You know what it was born of, what it will become.”

The holder set the child down on a surface colder still than the air and she sank into it, white ice rising by her sides.

“I see our daughter’s eyes,” said grief. “Tyria wouldn’t want this.”

“Tyria is dead.”

“More reason for us to do as she would want.”

The holder grunted and its brusque hands hauled the child back out of the snow before thrusting her into the arms of grief. “I want nothing to do with it,” it said, and walked away.

Grief held her closer than the others had, cradling her close to the warmth of its body, the grief that defined it underpinned by hope and nervous love. The world began to rock again as they set off together.

“He will come round… Mebeth. He will.”

3652 BBY, Alderaan

Mebeth felt a thrill run through her as she hung upside-down in her straps, watching the valleys rush past beneath her in a blur of sun-dipped evergreen. The thranta’s sides shuddered between her legs as it sounded its call, the hollow note seeming to echo in the sky. With a dip of its wings, it righted itself and Mebeth settled back into the saddle, grinning. She lived for moments like this.

Together, her and the thranta slipped in and out of the shadow of the mountains, alternating light and dark, sun-heat and shade-cold. Crisp wind flowed over her, the frigidity of it stinging her eyes as it cut through the only strip of red skin visible beneath her clothes. These were the only times she didn’t chafe at the thought of wearing so much clothing just to hide her appearance. People would be scared, they’d told her. Well, people were cowards if they were so frightened by mere colour.

From her vantage point atop the thranta’s back she could see her patch of Alderaan laid bare, unbroken ranks of trees marching on and up until the mountains defeated them. The valley had the look of a jagged bowl cut out of Alderaan’s soil, with a hearty stew of life threatening to spill through its gaps. Rearing thrantas here with her grandparents was all she remembered doing for the past eight years and it was all she’d been told she was ever allowed to do.

If it weren’t for everything else, she could almost imagine doing it forever. There was a freedom to flight that she’d always grasp at, but she wanted more.

Circling once more before it was time to land, Mebeth watched the sun’s base lick across the mountains the marked the edge of the only world she knew. As it did, her guts clenched in an all-too-familiar knot. She wanted more than anything to fly beyond them and never return.

Burying the thought, she gathered the thranta’s reigns in her hands and guided it back to the ground below. They arrived just as dusk reached the tip of the mooring masts and Mebeth leapt down to tie the creature off for the day. Winter fast approached and the ground was hard beneath her feet, but the smell of tea wafting up from home warmed her as she worked.

The largest mast, she noted, was still empty. Grandfather had left three days ago with Silara, the female half of their great thranta breeding pair, on one of his regular trading journeys to the noble houses. Her mate roamed the ranges nearby, no doubt depriving higher atmospheric reaches of their zooplankton residents. In theory it meant Mebeth could relax for just a little longer in his absence, but reality had other things to say. Lateness indicated delays and delays promised an unhappy return. All this would roll downhill to Mebeth, which was a prospect she could not bring herself to relax before.

She nodded to the thranta above her and it crooned back at her as she turned away. A cheery glow surrounded the squat form of her home and smoke rose from the chimney set in its domed roof. Most people would see it as idyllic – a rural paradise with a ringside seat to nature. Mebeth saw it as a prison.

Every time she passed through the front door, it felt like being swallowed by a gaping maw, sucked into a deceptively well-furnished stomach to be dissolved, digested and subdued. Leaving every morning gave her a taste of escape, but with it came a bitter cord that grounded her and pulled her back, nagging at the back of her mind until night fell.

Just as her first foot crossed the threshold, she had the urge to look out into the dusk, where Silara’s shadow melted across the undulations of the foothills. Moments later she felt her sternum vibrate at the deeper, inaudible notes of the great thranta’s call, higher pitches lost to distance. Looking up, she could see the way her massive wings obliterated the sky above them. The combat drones were too far away to see at the moment, but she knew they’d be there, buzzing like gnats around a bantha.

“Grandfather’s back,” Mebeth called into the house, wiping her feet on the doormat.

“I didn’t hear him,” came her grandmother’s reply, muffled by the sound of the stove. “Are you sure?”

Mebeth found her way to the kitchen and nodded, craning her neck to see what was cooking at the demand of her stomach. “I’m sure,” she said. “I saw him coming over the twisted ridge.”

Her grandmother turned from cooking to smile at her, but something in Mebeth’s words had stirred unease into the currents of emotion surrounding her. Mebeth wondered at it, frowning.

“Your eyesight must be far better than mine, then, dear.” Her grandmother tapped a stirring spoon against the rim of a pot and put it to one side as she spoke. “That ridge is a long way to pick out in the dark.”

“I heard him first,” Mebeth said. A brief glance at the dining room confirmed the table was already laid, so she stayed put and poured herself some nerf milk. “And the sun still touched it.”

“Then you have fine hearing as well, dear.” She picked the pot of stew up by both handles and laughed aloud at the sound of Mebeth’s stomach gurgling. The unease around her had lifted a little, but Mebeth imagined it had more to do with her stomach than her words.

She followed her grandmother, and the promise of food, to the table, taking a seat on her worn stool opposite the hearth. Outside, a series of whines and clicks announced the activation of their service droids, ready to help her grandfather unsaddle Silara and stow or guard the cargo. He maintained they were preferable to human workers, but Mebeth had always seen through that lie. Mebeth was the real reason that almost no other human had set foot here in eight years.

“What are you thinking?” her grandmother asked as she ladled stew into their two bowls. Grandfather’s remained empty, for now. She asked the question every evening and the answer was always the same.

“Lots of things,” Mebeth said.

“You must be excited for your new book chips.”

She scrunched her nose at the mention of them. It wasn’t that she disliked reading, but it was all there really was to do at home. That and think. She must read at least two hundred a year, but actually counting them would have added an extra layer of tedium.

Before saying anything else, Mebeth wolfed down a few mouthfuls of her meal, savouring the taste after such a long day’s work. Eventually, she said, “I hope the books aren’t broken this time,” and wiped a spot of sauce off her chin.

Her grandmother frowned at her. “You didn’t tell me the last lot were broken.”

“Not broken,” she clarified, “but the words were gone. Like the data was funny.”

“All the words?”

She shook her head. “Only a few, but there were so many gone words in the history books. I couldn’t work out who was fighting who. One book was almost all empty.”

Her grandmother hadn’t touched her stew, other than to stir it, since she first mentioned the broken books. “Which book was this?” she asked.

“I don’t know what the empty book was called, but the one about the droids on the metal planet had lots of things missing, too.”

“Metal planet?”

Mebeth grimaced before naming the planet as Coruscant. She still had trouble pronouncing its name.

“What was the book missing?”

That’s a silly question, Mebeth thought, saying, “I don’t know – the words weren’t there to say. But there was a man who was a master of something, but it wouldn’t say what that something was. And it didn’t say how he beat them or what his weapons were.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t fix.” She fixed Mebeth with a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but it was easy to see she was troubled. “I’ll ask your grandfather about it when he gets back.”

Despite seeing through the emotions her grandmother projected, Mebeth couldn’t place a guess on what she could be hiding. She tried to convince herself that maybe she was just genuinely concerned for her entertainment and education, but her gut told her the assumption was wrong. In any case, she went along with the outward-facing emotions and gave her grandmother a cheerful smile. “I’ll be glad if he fixes it. That book looked far more fun than Plaristes,” she said, grimacing at her final point.

“You’ve read-“ her grandmother started, eyes widening, but was interrupted as the front door slammed open and shut, rattling the crockery. Without a word to either of them, her grandfather marched into the kitchen and grabbed his own food. As he went to take a seat at the table, one hand brushed her grandmother’s shoulder, but that was the only acknowledgement he made of either of their existences that evening.

Mebeth finished her meal in silence, face bent down over her food, but she risked surreptitious glances at her grandparents when she could. He grandfather’s mood was normal and she recognised something of her grandmother’s emotions, too. It was a feeling so often present in her aura that Mebeth usually disregarded it, but every now and then it would flare up. She couldn’t help remembering that it did so, for the most part, whenever Mebeth did something unexpected or asked certain kinds of questions. Today, it had been the mention of Plaristes. She understood the surprise – it was apparently too complicated a book for someone her age – but she couldn’t wrap her head around its kindling of fear.

Her mind sought out her grandfather and as usual, all she could sense was revulsion. Was fear the cause of that as well, buried somewhere underneath?

She pushed the thought aside. Such worries could wait for the morrow, when the sky was safe around her.

Snow covered every surface when she left the house the next morning, every noise in the valley deadened by its touch. Mebeth’s grandfather busied himself with the droids as she trudged past, never once greeting her nor looking in her direction. It turned her stomach with annoyance, sometimes, but she was used to it. Considering the only time he spoke to her was to reprimand her for some slight or other, silence was welcome.

The thranta were groggy, floating in half-listless slumber as Mebeth tended to them. It made the task easier, but boring. Still, it had to be done: day in, day out, before the dawn arrived. Today though, she had to dig at the snow to clean up after them properly, or it would all pile up over the winter and foul the base of the masts. With each shovel thrust into the ground she grew more frustrated. Morning light crept up her face as if flaunting the precious hours she wasted.

After she had flung the last shovel-full of muck into the composter, she almost ran back up to the masts. Her grandfather stood nearby, though, so she reigned herself back to a hasty trot to avoid unwanted attention. The thranta she headed towards matched her own excitement, wheeling back and forth around its mast.

“You’ll get your flight, Malla,” she said to it. “Calm down.”

Malla dipped lower in response, brushing a proto-feathered wingtip against Mebeth’s head in challenge. The giant thranta let out a series of harsh clicks, readying herself for another approach. If she’d wanted to do any real damage, one blow from her plated skull would have been enough. She was playing, and Mebeth knew it. They both just wanted to fly.

She coaxed Malla to the ground with a dead sea mouse and set about harnessing her while she was distracted. For a large creature, it took a bit of work, but Malla had become amicable enough after her snack that she only fidgeted a little. As with all the others, though, she was destined to be sold, and the fidgeting would have be put to a stop before then.

Using the mast as a mounting block, she stepped onto Malla’s back and walked to the training saddle. At least this time she didn’t try to fly off before the tether was detached.

Mebeth hooked her legs through a lateral strap and took hold of the reigns. “Where to, then?”

Malla rumbled and shuffled from side to side, looking toward the mountains.

“Far away?” She chuckled and unclipped the tether attachment. “You and me both.”

With an audible rush of air, Malla inflated her air sacs and leapt skywards. The acceleration threatened to push Mebeth back from her kneeling position, but she tensed her muscles and stayed upright as the ground lurched away beneath them.

Soon they were in a steady climb rising above the rest of the masts. They circled around Silara and her mate as they went, waving them goodbye before continuing on their way. Every now and then Malla would dart off to catch some flying creature, but Mebeth brought her back under control. As much as she understood the thranta’s excitement at the chase – and its natural instinct – her job was to train her and that’s what she intended to do.

The air was deceptively warm today and Mebeth loosened her face coverings to give herself a better sense of the world. She pulled Malla into a tight circle and stared down at the valley below her. Even Silara looked insignificant from this height. The mountains, the forests, the overarching sky… they all dwarfed her home. Beyond them lay more mountains, more people. There was an ocean, somewhere – she’d seen the maps. There were palaces out there, too. It was hard to imagine how much the sight bounded by the horizon paled before the size of everything else.

Before that train of thought could reach its conclusion, she put herself to work on Malla’s training regime. They flew for two hours under the sun, pacing back and forth across the sky, before Mebeth decided they were done for the day. There were other thranta to exercise when she returned, after all.

She reached across to pat Malla’s flank. “Not long now before Grandfather will want to sell you,” she said, pulling a sad smile. The thranta crooned by means of reply.

They wheeled around in the direction of home, but a flash of light caught Mebeth’s attention as they did. She pulled back on the reigns, bringing them to a halt, and squinted at the patch of ground it came from. As she moved her head to the right, she caught sight of it again. It was coming from a grove of trees nestled in a crack in the mountainside. If it had been there before, it was no surprise she hadn’t noticed it until now – there’d be no good view of it from any angle but this.

Curiosity took hold of her and she commanded Malla to dive. Her grandfather would be expecting her back soon, but he could come after her if he wanted to. She knew from experience that he tracked her wherever she went. Who was she to turn down adventure?

Even as they got closer, she couldn’t make out what it was and she had lost sight of the source of light as soon as they started to dive. An uneasy feeling came over her. What if she was flying straight into a nest of poachers?

She pulled up early, just in case, and swept over the area, but there was nothing to be seen. Not quite satisfied, she landed a little further away and dismounted in silence, tying Malla off to a nearby tree.

“Don’t try anything,” she whispered.

Being as quiet as she could, Mebeth crept up the mountainside. Aware of the contrast between her brown clothes and the glaring snow, she kept to the shadow of the trees as much as she could, but her heart clenched in her chest nonetheless. This was the twisted ridge, where the trees took on all manner of odd shapes. The ground was pitted as well, but that was more obvious from far away.

Now that she was up close, she couldn’t help noticing that many of the trees sported blackened trunks. Old fire scars criss-crossed their bark, some with great swathes burned out. It was these scars which twisted them, she thought. They arched away from the memory of pain but were ultimately shaped by it.

There were no poachers here, but she found the source of the light – it was a jagged shard of metal, or might once have been, but the years and winds had weathered it. She took a few nervous steps toward it. The way the tree grew around it, puckered at the edges, suggested it had been lodged in it for quite some time. She wondered how far in it went and how long it had been there.

Maybe there’s more to it, she thought. She peered around her, half expecting to see a trail of debris through the forest, but there was only charcoal and shadow. Something clawed at her mind and she shivered. The feeling drew her eyes to a darker patch of ground, set right back in the heart of the fissure. She couldn’t see the back of it and that in itself sent fear through her. Whatever was in there was warning her away.

It would make all the sense in the world to turn back, but this was the most interesting things could ever get for her. Whatever was in there was warning her away, but it was also luring her in.

She took one hesitant step, and then another, and headed toward the darkness.

Silence crowded at Mebeth’s ears as she moved forward. She could feel the crunch of snow underneath her feet, but the sound never made it to her ears. The world had been hollowed out by whatever lay in the fissure before her. It didn’t matter how close she got – darkness still clung to its edges and her own blood rushing and pulsing was the only sound that registered.

Her breath condensed in the air before her, colder than it had been above the treeline, with no wind to brush it away.

“Hello?” she called out, but cursed herself for doing so. Why would anyone be hiding in a place like this?

She reached the edge of the fissure and stopped, peering to make out anything in the blackness it enclosed. It felt alive, somehow, like an animal staring out at her from its lair. But there were no tracks, no signs of any life visiting here recently, even where the snow ended and gave way to dirt. Mebeth looked back over her shoulder to check that Malla was still there, but she’d walked too far away to see her.

I’m probably scared over nothing, she thought, and stepped over the threshold.

Darkness immediately surrounded her and she had a feeling that if she turned back, even the daylight would be gone. For a few moments she just held her breath, waiting for her eyes to adjust. They did, but only a little. She could only pick out the vaguest outlines in the area around her – contours of the mountain walls and a faint path to follow.

“I’m not afraid of the dark,” she muttered, mostly to hear the sound of her own voice as she began to walk forward.

She might have been imagining things, but she almost thought she heard a chorus of whispers in reply.

Raising her arms out in front of her, she stumbled forward, trying as best she could to see her way in the gloom. She felt it more than saw it, though, as her instinct laid out a path for her amongst the rocks and debris.

Even so, she felt her toe stub against something on the floor. She tumbled forward, bashing her knees on whatever had tripped her as she fell to the ground. Her breath caught in her throat and she tensed up, ready for anything to come out of the shadows.

There’s nothing here, she thought, but the whispers were louder this time. It’s just the wind.

She shuffled around to face the object and groped toward it with one outstretched hand. Her fingers brushed up against smooth metal with harsh ridges running along its surface, then cloth with what felt like a rigid strut underneath.

Some machine, perhaps? She took her gloves off and patted at the fabric, but couldn’t make out the structure of what lay underneath until she reached another material. This felt like smooth stone, except it was warmer to the touch than she might expect it to be. She traced over its curved surface, catching on fragments of another material which felt almost resin-like to her. There was a ridge bordering a pit, and another, but more rough. Resin moulded everywhere to its surface in layers of varying thickness. Her hand reached a jagged gash and her fingers explored around it. Offshoots of the stone, jutting out of the gap. One pulled loose as she felt it and she fell back, gasping.

Teeth. They’re teeth. That makes it… A wave of nausea came over her. She’d touched – probed – a body. A dead body, with parts of its flesh still attached. Her grandfather had mentioned, once, that the twisted ridge was shaped the way it was because of a battle that had passed through here. Was this one of the casualties?

She imagined its empty eyes staring at her in the dark. Running away as fast as possible was the sensible option, but in her mind she pictured it leaping up and grabbing her ankle as she ran past, dragging her down into the underworld with it.

Something compelled her to reach out again. She found its shoulder and traced down the bones of its arm to its hand. There was something in the way that its body strained from its place of rest that didn’t seem right to her. She saw a shadowy figure dying, reaching out for a last vestige of hope.

Following the reach of its arm, Mebeth came across the smashed remains of a droid scattered by the fissure wall. After a moment’s hesitation, she started to rummage through the scrap. Perhaps she could salvage something useful, or perhaps something to take back and ask what it used to be. The thought of an exciting discovery pushed the worst of her fear out of her mind.

Then she found it. Wedged into the heart of the droid, constricted by crumpled metal, there was a strange object. She had no idea what it was, but as soon as her skin touched it, she knew she had to have it. The tubular metal was cool to the touch, but it gave off the semblance of warmth. She grunted as she tried to pry it loose, but her efforts went in vain. The object was stuck fast within the droid and the droid itself was part-buried under the floor.

Frustrated, she tried to examine the object to see if it could be dismantled, but all she could find was a single button.

What if it’s a detonator? She hesitated, then thought, What have I got to lose? and pressed the button.

A great roar blasted out, chasing silence out of the fissure and out of her head. With it came a line of crimson fire, slicing into the metal of the droid. Its light illuminated the area in a sickly glow and cast sinister shadows on the wall, just as the shadows whispered back.

As quickly as she’d pressed it, Mebeth jumped away, releasing the blade, and the light and sound vanished. She lay panting by the opposite wall, trying to get her head around what she’d just seen.

I’ll keep it, she thought. She hauled herself to her feet and searched around on the floor until she found the blade again. This time she made sure to keep her hand well clear of the button.

I’ll keep it, she thought, and show it to grandfather. He’ll tell me what it is. With surer steps than before, Mebeth made her way back out through the shadows toward the day.

Lies, the whispers told her, but Mebeth couldn’t hear them.

By the time she returned home, Mebeth was back to her usual self. Her face was once more covered and only the occasional nudge from the blade secreted inside her clothes reminded her of the darkness of the fissure. She tied a subdued Malla back to her mooring mast before continuing with her schedule for the day. There were only so many hours of light left and no matter how interesting her find was, she’d be best waiting for the sun to fall when there was no obligation to work.

So she flew all her other training flights as she usually would, but her mind kept returning to the events of that morning. When dusk finally arrived, she raced to tidy up for the day, finishing a good half an hour earlier than was normal.

She made her way down towards the house, placing one hand on the raised area of fabric covering the blade. As she approached she could make out voices — her grandparent’s voices — trying to remain quiet. Curious, she decided to sneak closer rather than waltz through the door. Each foot crept forward one after the other, light upon the covering of snow.

“-just don’t understand why you thought it was a good idea,” she could hear her grandmother saying.

“How would letting her know the truth be better?” her grandfather replied.

“That’s not the point. Hiding some books here and there? That I might agree with. But censoring the words? Could you be any more obvious?”

“What was I supposed to do?” he said. “She’s read everything. I couldn’t just say ‘there are no more books’. It was a better option than giving her access to the holonet.”

“I know, but what if she starts asking questions? What if she works out what’s missing?”

The pair were silent for a few moments before her grandmother continued. “We should send her to the Jedi.”

“I will not-” her grandfather’s voice threatened to rise and he paused to regain control of it. “I will not let our daughter’s name be dragged through the dirt for the sake of the thing that killed her.”

“The fault lies with neither of them. The fault lies with the Sith.”

“She is Sith!” he roared, then continued in a whisper that Mebeth struggled to hear. “She may not have the Force, but she is one of them. They’re all the same. Murderers. Butchers. Ra-“

“Stop!” Her grandmother sounded on the verge of tears. “Stop. We can’t keep her here like this forever. Not with all the lies. I love her. I think she feels close to me, but… Well, I can’t see her being too happy when she finds out. We’ll either break her or she’ll run and then what? Would you prefer the Empire to pick her up?”

This time, the silence stretched over several minutes — long enough for Mebeth to wonder if they had finished and were waiting for her to arrive. Wrestling with the weight of whispered words, she fidgeted by the doorway, hoping that neither of her grandparents would choose that moment to walk out.

It was her grandfather who spoke first. “Next month,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll speak to someone from House Organa next month, ask if they have any connections with the Jedi.”

“Thank you.” Her grandmother hesitated. “She’ll be back soon. Sit down for tea.”

“We’re not telling her anything yet. Not until I have an answer.”

“I know.”

Mebeth released her breath quietly. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding it, but it seemed there were a lot of things she hadn’t realised. Names she’d never heard buffeted around her head, names that seemed to hint at familiar gaps in her knowledge, but names that had been denied to her.

Why? she asked herself, but try as she might she couldn’t see a reason. Her initial confusion roiled in her mind, mingled with a heart-pang of betrayal. Then it soured. Emotions turned in on themselves, churning up older thoughts and memories of frustration. Anger flooded in from where she had bottled it up, unseen and unremembered in her heart for countless years. Even as her mind sought explanation, her heart grasped at hatred.

She stayed beside the doorway, blinded to outside sensation, until it was about the time she would usually arrive for tea. With a deep breath, she collected her thoughts, stood up and headed inside. On the outside she maintained her normal demeanour, but she didn’t smell or taste the food she ate and whatever conversation she may have had eluded recollection. Before she knew it, the meal was over and she retreated to her room.

In a few short steps, Mebeth crossed from the closed door to her bed and sat down. The metal of the blade pressed into her side as she did so and she retrieved it from her clothes. She rested it on her knees and examined it with sullen eyes. With each second she looked upon it, she grew more convinced: her life was an elaborately crafted lie. Her grandparents wanted rid of her. She, apparently, had killed her own mother.

She would not hand this blade to them. Instead, she buried it in the soil of the potted plant which served as her room’s only decoration.

Lit by the dim light of a solitary ceiling panel across the other side of the room lay her book chips. She gazed at them, each breath she took loud in her ears. Tomorrow she would learn to find what was missing. She had a month to uncover the meaning of the words: Jedi; Sith; the Force.

I am Sith, she thought. Despite being unaware of its meaning, she felt the truth of it. She felt something of it resonate within her, connecting to some long-lost sense of belonging.

She went to bed early that night, convinced to get a good night’s sleep before starting her detective efforts in earnest. Sleep, however, did not come easy. Memories which before had been forgotten now came out to haunt her, plaguing her attempts to rest.

She remembered playing in the snow. The light of a star-surrounded moon illuminated individual flakes, patterning a black night with flurries of subtle pearl. They danced around her in ever more complex patterns: spinning, wheeling, pirouetting through the air. Murmurations rose and fell and she- she controlled them. She turned with them, arms outstretched, the innocent conductor of a symphony of ice. They matched a solid tempo in her mind — a rhythm that wended through her and passed through every other thing. She felt the life around her and within her, and she danced in the snow.

The memory of the joy she felt that night tugged at her, but with it came sadness at the knowledge that she had never experienced it since. The moonlight dimmed, the image shattered, the symphony ground to a halt. Her grandmother’s gasp sliced across the snow, but her emotions were a physical blow to Mebeth. Her shock and horror rippled across her mind, amplifying themselves and chasing every life sensation away.

That shock had buried the memory, and the tempo’s call. She remembered now. She remembered, and resented.

Excitement woke her from sleep an hour early and despite the tiredness she’d accumulated from the restless night, it soon settled into determination. She would get to the bottom of this before they sent her away. She had to.

As she swung her legs over the side of her bed, her gaze passed over the plant pot. Worried, she wondered if she should recover the blade and take it with her for the day, just in case. But if she did that, it would become increasingly more obvious that the soil was being turned over on a regular basis. So she left it, but a part of her mind rebelled at the thought of leaving it alone.

She crossed to the other side of her room on silent feet and picked up a book chip. Running one hand along the side of it, she wondered where to start. She’d read about computing devices briefly, but nothing that told her how to change the way they worked or find things that were hidden. Even if instructions existed – which she imagined they did – she doubted her grandfather would have rented them for her willingly. Not for the first time, she wished she could just press a button and get every book in existence. But no, here she was stuck with the side-spillage of infrequent trading runs.

Do I have to go into the circuits? she thought, turning the device over in her hands. She’d disassembled droids before and didn’t remember anything special about the parts, but she hadn’t looked that hard. It was only now, looking at the metal casing of the chip, that she realised how little she knew. A dull feeling churned around in her stomach as she wondered if she was the only eight-year-old who didn’t know how this worked. She could equally well be the only one her age who bothered to try, but that wasn’t much consolation to her.

Giving up on her external examination, she contemplated delving into its innards but decided against breaking anything by accident and instead turned the chip on. Indecision gripped her for the first few seconds and she stared at the screen, at a loss on where to start.

Then she sighed, Trial and error, don’t fail me now, and threw herself in at the deep end.

Time slipped through her fingers faster than she could feel it, every minute and hour and day cascading into a headlong rush of near-identical moments. She had some close calls – frantic moments when her grandparents did something unexpected and she had to hide her things. Still she had to live alongside them and she could feel them growing wary of her temperament. With the threat of abandonment bearing down on her, she did a poor job of disguising her emotions. Her anger manifested as snappiness and rebellion, brought to bear in a split second and subject to reprimand just as fast.

Before long the month was almost up, her teeth felt ground to stubs in her frustration and she was nearly at her wit’s end. She paced in the twilight hours and fidgeted in the day. She pushed the thranta harder than she’d ever pushed before and pushed herself beyond even that. She lacked sleep and she lacked patience, but above all, she lacked time. Hope was fading fast.

And then she cracked it. Half-delirious, she couldn’t even figure out how she’d done it, but there it was. Every lost word, every forbidden history, every piece of herself that had been hidden from her – they were all there.

Exhilaration coursed through her veins at the thrill of new horizons laid bare. Everything she had learned until that point gained a new dimension. She pored over the books as if for the first time. Each uncovered a new facet of reality. Each solved old doubts and raised countless new questions.

Rare though mention of any of the unknown elements was, she could see the Jedi were most often talked about. The books painted them as paragons, for the most part. Defenders of the weak and protectors of peace. In some texts they sounded more like thorns in the side of progress. When people sent children to them, did they ever return? It didn’t sound like it.

The Jedi were part of the Republic which, she already knew, fought against the Empire. She’d never heard much about them – her grandfather said their books were full of lies – but from what she saw here it seemed the Sith fought for the Empire and indeed commanded it.

Butchers, he’d called them. Murderers. Other things besides. But she was Sith and she had done none of this. The books called them the same: demons and anarchists, warmongers and masochists. Mebeth saw nothing to say otherwise, but she’d passed the days of trusting. Even the books she’d grown up alongside could lie to her. She knew enough about the world to know you needed to understand both sides of an argument, even at her age.

Both factions faded into insignificance for her when she noticed the thread that bound them together. The Force: mysterious, intriguing and yet almost unmentioned. Her grandfather had said she didn’t have it, but the few examples she read spoke of a power that connected everything. They spoke of miraculous feats that manifested in a chosen few.

When she’d played in the snow and directed its movements, had that been the Force? Had her grandmother never told her grandfather of the event?

Mebeth grasped at the distant memory, struggling to understand how she’d done it, but the feeling proved elusive. She wrestled in the depths of her own mind, but in her struggle she forgot to listen.

The door slammed open, juddering past the limits of its hinges. Mebeth leapt to her feet. Book chips scattered to the floor around her.

“What time do you-?” Her grandfather paused in the doorway, one clenched fist holding the door open and the clawed fingers of the other clutching at the frame. His eyes narrowed as he saw her there and dark brows fell to shadow them.

Mebeth could see his muscles contracting under the harsh angles of his jaw.

“What are you doing?” he asked, the quietness of his voice sucking the air from the room.

She swallowed, terrified of the figure looming over her. “Reading,” she whispered.

“You won’t do well to lie,” her grandfather growled.

The knot of fear in her stomach unwound, loose ends rearing up as anger. “Why not?” she said. “You lied to me.”

She watched her grandfather’s eyes bulge in their sockets, saw his veins show through his skin as if in some eerie slow motion. Her grandmother’s footsteps started to sound one foot after the other, coming toward them.

“When have I lied to you?” he asked, voice close to being a hiss.

Mebeth looked him in the eyes as she backed towards the corner and said, “Forever.” To her continued anger, she couldn't keep a waver from her voice.

His eyes darted over the chips on the floor and he seemed to put two and two together. He took a deep breath before continuing. “I lied to keep us all safe.”

“From what?”

“From you!”

Perhaps contrary to his expectations, the words sent a rush of excitement through Mebeth. He’s frightened. Of me. Despite the building rage, her lips curled up into a smile.

She felt something brush against the back of her legs and halted, pressed back against the plant pot.

As her grandfather caught sight of her smile, he backed away. His lips curled up in a disgust echoed by his emotions. “You tore the life from your mother’s body when you came into this world. You were vile on the day of your birth. You are no child or grandchild of mine – I should have satiated the winter winds with your evil life when I had the chance.

“Instead, I have to send you to the Jedi,” he spat out the word, “and let you rot with the co-conspirators of my daughter’s end.”

Mebeth reached behind her with one hand, fingers digging into the soil. The rage had built into an inferno, clawing at her throat, squeezing her mind and breathing fire into her eyes. It took all she had not to scream at them as she spoke.

“Don’t blame me for my mother’s death,” she said, and her hand tightened around the blade beneath the soil. It was warm and felt alive to the touch, the essence of it joining as whispers to her anger. “You can blame me for yours.”

Her words had no time to register for her grandfather. A second later he was consumed by a line of crimson fire. The shadow of his falling body and the glow of the blade played across the face of her grandmother as they both hesitated. She in terror, and Mebeth in the fact that she had loved her.

Neither terror nor love saved her.

Standing in a time-stripped void, Mebeth’s mind went blank for what felt like eternity before the humming of the blade re-entered her awareness. She blinked into the indoor dusk, eyes passing over the two prone bodies without registering their presence, and released the activation stud. The sound of its retraction grated in the newfound silence.

Although there was silence, there was not peace. Mebeth’s thoughts were so much in turmoil that she had no semblance of control of them and no measure of understanding. They raged against each other in a sealed-off segment of her brain. The rest of her mind, numb to any thought that tried to enter, wondered at it briefly before assuming bodily control.

Before she knew it, she found herself outside again, blade reactivated and carving into mooring tethers. Thrantas wheeled away into the growing night. They called out in alarm, the whites of their eyes flashing as they rolled them, picking up on the scent of death and distress. Even Silara and her mate reared back in their high perches, chests inflating as they expanded their air sacks to propel themselves to greater heights. Malla, less afeared than the others, circled a short way above Mebeth’s head before crooning and taking her leave.

The snow picked up. It lashed in horizontal sheets through her as she ran away from the lights of the house, tucking the blade under her clothes. Her feet found their way to the twisted ridge and beyond, where the sound of retreating wings was replaced by the volume of the wind as it screamed through the trees. The mountain became ever steeper, rising to the point that she had to crawl forward on hands and knees, clutching at each new handful of rock and snow, hoping that each held in place.

Blind instinct drove her, in the absence of all sense. It was thanks to this blindness that, upon reaching the summit of the tallest ridge, its length shaped as a knife-edge, she stumbled over it. One second there was snow, the next there was emptiness.

She tumbled head first. The world upended itself into a patchwork of rotating white and black as she ragdolled, limbs flailing through the air and thudding back to the ground in ever more rapid succession. The bruising beat coherent thought back into her and she attempted to slow her descent, but then sharp, needle-like fingers clawed at her. They caught at her clothes and tore into them, straight to the skin, before she came to a halt in a tangled mess of fabric.

After taking a few seconds to get her breathing under control, Mebeth assessed the situation. The cold had her in its grasp, icy teeth lodged into her bones, even where the pain of her fall had warmed them. She needed to find shelter, and soon.

She looked up and was confronted with a mess of brambles covering the sky. In an attempt to struggle free of them, she twisted and squirmed, but every move she made just wrapped them around her tighter. Then she paused and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. When she opened them, the storm of confused emotions still swirled in her mind, but it had less effect on her actions. She traced the pattern of branches with careful fingers, unravelling them in the order they were layered.

It took an age, but soon enough the branches loosened and she tore free of the rest. Her hair had tugged free of its binding and flowed about her in the wind as her top layer of clothes hung about her in tatters. She shivered, teeth chattering despite her attempt to control them, and took one step toward lower ground.

“Halt!” a voice called through the blizzard.

Mebeth started to jerk away from it before freezing, caught between flight and obedience.

From out of the swirling snows came the muzzle of a rifle, followed by its owner. Wrapped all over in mottled white thermal clothes, the only visible skin peeked out just above the goggles they wore, underneath a thick cap. Other figures appeared to either side, seeming to melt out of the night.

Mebeth didn’t know what to do; she’d never spoken to someone outside her family before, let alone been confronted by one. She felt her face flush as she realised it was visible and wondered what her appearance would mean to them, since it was apparently so murderous.

The soldier paused, tip of his rifle lowering slightly, before he removed his goggles and squinted as if trying to confirm what his eyes saw.

In the silence, Mebeth found herself caught by the dull brown flicker of his irises as they passed over her.

“Are you lost?” The man cleared his throat. “Where are your parents? Your… masters?”

Is he afraid? Mebeth thought, glancing over the others around her. Are they all afraid?

After a while, she replied, “My parents are dead,” but her own voice sounded alien to her.

The soldier appeared relieved that she’d finally spoken. “Do you have anywhere to go?” he asked.

Mebeth shook her head.

Nodding, the man turned to one of his companions, stepping a short distance away to converse in private. Although Mebeth tried to listen in, the wind took the beginning of their conversation and another person stepped toward her before she could hear more.

“Here,” they said, taking off their thick jacket and passing it to her. The top of a smile showed above their scarf, but it seemed wavering.

Mebeth took the jacket, granting a miniscule smile in return before drap:ng it over her shoulders. In between shivers, she nodded at the person who had given it to her.

After all that, the man had finished talking with the other. He picked his way back across the snow toward her. “We know somewhere we can take you,” he said. “Somewhere that you’ll be safe. Will you come with us?”

She looked down at his rifle, then back at his face, noting the anger of the blizzard around them. Surprised that she felt no reluctance to comply, she nodded. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

The man nodded again and motioned to the person who had lent her the jacket to accompany her. They set off down the mountain together, those at the edges of their formation lost to the depths of the weather.

It was a journey that took even longer than her trip up the mountains, although that could have been an illusion caused by the fact she was only now paying attention. If the night had been clearer she would have looked around, taking in everything she could about lands she’d never been to, but the snow obscured everything.

When her feet ached from all the walking and felt as if the ground itself was biting into them, they reached a door set back into a flat panel of metal. After the man spoke into a communications panel set to its side, the door opened and she was bundled inside by the soldiers. Warm air struck her immediately and the cold was soon shut out as the door closed behind them.

A slender woman in a uniform with purple and red highlights turned around to face them, abandoning the terminal she worked on. A frown crossed over her features.

“Sergeant?” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “Your team wasn’t due to return for another two hours. What are you doing back? And,” her gaze passed down to Mebeth, “who…?”

The man removed his cap and goggles, revealing a mop of auburn hair and sun-weathered skin. “I would have had someone radio it in, but we were on radio silence for this one. Didn’t want to alert the other houses. We saw this child tumble halfway down a mountainside. Her parents are dead. I thought it best to…”

“Yes, but where did she come from?” The woman’s eyes locked onto her own. There wasn’t a hint of kindness in them.

“I reckoned the Empire,” the sergeant said. “If not by birth, then at least by heritage.”

Angling her head upward, the woman gave a curt nod. “And you imagined the Empire would be… pleased… to have one of their own returned to them.”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you will look after this child until I have talked with my superiors and arranged a transfer. See to it that she doesn’t leave the compound.” The woman went to move away, but sent one last strained look in Mebeth’s direction. “And perhaps see to it that she has a bath and some new clothes.”

“Ma’am.” The sergeant nodded again, then turned to Mebeth as the sound of the woman’s smart shoes echoed into the distance. He hesitated before asking, “What’s your name?”

“Mebeth,” she replied. Her heart raced with renewed curiosity at the number of people surrounding her.

“Okay then, Mebeth,” he said. “Come with us.”