“Please don’t go in the water today!”
A pale woman, with white hair and silver eyes sat on a scantily maintained shingle rooftop. Dirt crusted her fingertips, hair greasy and discoloured, although brushed, was as if it were fraying at the ends. Smudges of mud had survived a mirror-less scrubbing and stuck out starkly against her skin. An old jacket was wrapped around her, covering the plain shirt she was wearing but not the too-short trousers that dug in at her hips and exposed her shins. The woman didn’t wear shoes, though the layer of mud made it hard to tell at a moments glance.
She looked out on the thinning forest, head tilted just enough that her hair formed a curtain over her shoulder. Her ear to the sky, eyes aimed toward the ground a few metres below. A pile of wooden crates, precariously stacked against the wall, cast a shadow against the trodden path to the house.
The house itself was as poorly kept as she was. Missing shingles were padded down with twig-lined mud that did minimal to actually prevent leaks. The walls were sturdy, mismatched stones locked together after years of the weight wearing them into a perfect fit. The wooden windows and door were beginning to rot, swollen with moisture.
Still, it was home for the woman who sat atop it.
Words of the past echoed in her mind. They often did.
“I’m not going in, please don’t. Please.”
She had spoken them after all. Not that she’d known why at the time, only that the river brought sadness.
And it did.
Her parents died from parasites burrowing through their lungs. By the time they knew it was too late. They’d left for the soil within a few months, buried beneath a circle of stones, overlapping so they’d stay together into the next.
The village kept her fed, and healthy enough, but even ten years later the seeress was held at arms length. They were glad her home was on the edges of the community. They all knew she’d predicted the unfortunate events that would follow. They were never unkind, but they were afraid.
Melissa should have been too.
Instead she focused on trying to do it again. Maybe she could save someone. She saved herself from a tree branch once, feeling the pain of it striking her days prior. When the day came she stayed home. The following morning a quick exploration saw it already fallen, splintered against the ground. It was a good distraction if nothing else, to practise all the things she could do with this strange sensation. Shed even healed herself, although when she offered to heal someone in the village they turned her away. Bacta was safer. It was known.
Sometimes her abilities scared her too, especially working out how to throw a ball of heatless light. But it was good to help hunting at least. So it didn’t frighten her anymore.
She straightened up, keeping her sentry position but impatiently tapping against the shingles.
Today would bring someone.
A green man with black markings and scars. Purple eyes. They’d looked so bright in the vision. Looking down at her with the trees behind him. Melissa had been having the visions for a few months, not seeing much beyond the strangers face. The emotions with it were odd, conflicting. Sometimes she was scared, other times elated. Other times there were no emotions and just the speaking of words she couldn’t hear yet.
She didn’t know if he’d really come. Sometimes her visions didn’t happen, but she felt it in her heart. Or her gut. Maybe both.
The roof was a good place to watch out for strange things like people.
The first time, he sees silver.
It’s beautiful. An entire forest of it. Like frost, except the branches aren’t laden with snow; there’s no bark in sharp, earthy contrast, no soft crunch of powder, no cold. Every twine and twig gleams, soft and muted, white metal. He touches a trunk, and it crumbles and caves in and sticks to his fingers as easily as gold leaf torn at the seam.
That single touch is all it takes. The whole world caves in, shorn and melting into darkness. He feels, abruptly, completely alone, a pit in his chest to match the void around him, and when he clutches at it, the scraps of silver still stuck to his hand seem to come alive. They burrow into him, like worms, and he’s gasping, gasping—
The next, he knows better. He doesn’t touch. Just in case. But he does make himself look around, search out details instead of being distracted by the glimmering foliage. Something has to mean something here. This is a warning, or a promise, and he’s had enough practice to listen, to heed the lecture.
He starts walking. It’s a beautiful forest, sizable, sure, but not dominating. Not Kashyyyk, he thinks, crossing it off his list — deferring one possibility in billions. It’s stupid, really. But it helps him.
A river is here, somewhere, he can hear it, but he hasn’t found it by the time he wakes, and when he centers himself and tries to go back in the morning, it slips from his reach, echoes of water and loneliness.
The visions persist. Questioning the Clan’s researchers doesn’t give them anything back on any planet in their system with silver forests, nor any particular world in the known galaxy with as much. Crystal ones, though– and they both shudder at that. A few moons and planets in Dajorra are rich and minerals, and brilliant, beautiful Cora speculates about silver mines, especially when they hear about the flagship mission the Envoy Corps are putting together to a mining town on Tatooine. But that’s a whole other thing, and Ruka tries not to feel any bitterness that the Force hasn’t seen fit to warn him about that and that mind controlling franger behind the hostage situation there.
And then, one night, he sees a girl.
She’s in a clearing. The river is behind her. And she’s as silver and small as anything. Just a child. Just a child.
Ashla and Bogan, no, please, he prays. Leave her alone! Keep her safe, let her be happy.
Don’t mix her up in whatever this is.
It doesn’t matter, he knows it, because it’s his dreams, but he still smiles for her when he comes out of the woods and walks closer, slow. Stops to crouch a few feet away, and his voice is soft when he says, “Hey there.”
She doesn’t have a face. He still gets the impression she stares at him. The loneliness is a taste, now. It’s heavy, and cloying, bland. He could wash his mouth for days and it wouldn’t go away, not really.
“Hey, I’m Ruka. I’m. I’m here to help, ay, I hope. What’s your name?”
Mouthless, she’s silent. He sighs, then gets up to go inspect the river. He hasn’t found it before.
Something grabs his hand. He turns, and it’s her. She’s already falling apart where they touch, and the world is disintegrating, but still she shakes her head furiously, tugging him back, no, don’t.
Don’t what? Leave? He can’t help that. Don’t go to the water? Don’t do what? What’s the warning? It’s always a warning. He dies so many times in his dreams.
But there aren’t answers. Just darkness.
He’s more determined, then. A little girl. His hands fist in the sweat-soaked, cold sheets as he pants and Cora rubs a soothing hand over his back, across his brow.
A little girl.
He checks every shelter and orphanage and alleyway in Estle. On Ol'Val. There’s kids, and they break his heart, but they’re not her, he knows. He just knows he needs to find her.
The visions come more and more frequently. Monthly, then weekly, more, every night, every time he closes his eyes. He feels them pulling. He has to go. It’s not about silver, or that river, or the forest, it’s not a warning, it’s her.
She’s calling him.
He goes.
The planet they find eventually doesn’t even have an official name, just its starchart designation and a few nicknames. He wonders what the locals call it and themselves. Visitors don’t seem that common; there’s no starport. But they’re not entirely beyond tech either, for all the preindustrial fixings. Folks shy away, and Ruka let’s Cora, bless him, do the talking while he hangs back.
He wanders into the woods only half choosing to do it, and when he realizes, there’s no choice at all. It’s already a yes.
He runs. The Force is alive in his muscles, and the branches and undergrowth are a blur. He can hear the river. Smell the air. Nothing is crumbling now. Will she?
Is he going to kill her at a touch? Will his life meeting hers doom it? The voices in his head that say hurtful, true things hiss that he will. That he’s going to kriff her up. Thoughts of his family, his apprentices, his friends, argue otherwise, weak things he feels selfish and wrong believing. But right then it’s all just noise, and it fades away to the sound of pounding blood in his ears.
He bursts into a clearing. Slows, stops. There’s a house here, sinking into the earth, sagging back into whence it came. It reminds him of his own home, his Mama’s alone now. How it seemed like the concrete was going to eat the prefab metal back up. This is just more…natural.
And there is silver on the roof.
She has a face now.
She’s not a girl. Not little. But she is small, and thin, and alone up there, and her silver his is dirty and she’s staring at him and he wonders, in some part of his mind, if she’s eaten today, if she’s warm enough, if she’s happy.
She’s watching him, staring right back, and she doesn’t look surprised. She looks like someone who’s been waiting.
Ruka opened his mouth. Worked it slightly, closed it. Opened it again.
“Hey there.”
“Hi.” Her voice wasn’t used as much as it should have been, the words grating against her throat.
There he was.
He’d been looking for her, head swivelling until their eyes met. The moment had been coming for some time, they were going to meet. And now they had.
What now?
She griped her toes on the roof, getting up to her feet and making her way to the edge of the roof where the boxes were. The Echani only took her eyes away from him on the shingles she knew where loose. The bits that were more precarious. She got to the edge before pausing again, looking at him with a sudden uncertainty. In her hesitation she sat down, her legs dangling over the edge, a few inches off the top most box.
What if he was just a random traveller. It was significant that he was there at all really considering how few come down from the stars. Maybe the villagers had mentioned her.
“I’ve been.. seeing you. For a while. Is that why you’re here? I think its you.”
A startled look crossed the Mirialan’s face. Of all the times he’d gone looking for someone or something that he’d seen in his dreams, no one had ever reciprocated, nevermind it being a peaceful affair where he wasn’t immediately attacked for some convoluted reason or another.
Seeing her uncertainty as she sat and dangled her legs again made a ghost of her: the little girl from countless visions now. His chest squeezed sharply, and he exhaled. He had to check himself, remind she likely wasn’t that much younger than him, probably maybe. He didn’t know her. He couldn’t make the mistake of imposing the foretelling overly on reality.
“…yeah. Ay, yeah, that’s why I’m here. I’ve been seeing you, too.” The Mirialan debated moving further forward, but thought better of it. He’d come armed and armored just in case, based on those previous experiences, and he could only imagine how he looked, a scarred stranger invading her home. “My name’s Ruka. Ruka Tenbriss Ya-ir, ay. And you…you see things too? I have visions, dreams. The Force gives them to me. I’ve been seeing…you, this place. Don’t know what the point is, or why the river’s bad. Just knew I had to come find you. I won’t hurt you or anybody or nothing, ay. I’ll leave if you want. Or we could, I dunno, talk?”
Ruka’s lips had slowly crawled more and more up into a smile the longer the young woman, Melissa, spoke, his brows creasing in endearment, features gone soft. It seemed like she’d forgotten her own name for a moment, and while that made the little vice in his chest squeeze again, she was also eager– and not shooing him away.
“Like this?” he asked gently, and, rather than mess up her boxes or freak her out using his blades, he picked up several smooth river stones from the grass and twirled them around in the air, flicking his eyes this way and that to make them dance. “It’s called the Force. Lots of people call it different things, course, ay, but…you have it. And yeah, I have it too. We’re born with it. And you seem to have a pretty impressive damn grasp for being untrained.” He smiled for her, finally taking a few steps closer. “I’d be happy to stay and talk a bit. Whatever you wanna talk about. What you see, or this,” he gestured, and the rocks whirled, following the motion of his fingers now, “or ‘bout anything else. Ain’t gotta show me nothing, either. I’m the one imposing on you.”
Mentally, he was noting her statements about trading food, about not talking, loneliness. Cataloguing the dirt on her and the state of her clothes and hair, the half-starved thinness of her frame. The urge to make her food right then was so strong he had to kick himself in the ankle as he approached just to not ask outright about it. Baby steps.
“Yes! Like that.” Melissa smiled, shoulders drooping. It was one thing to hear him speak of visions but another to see it in action. To see that he was like her. She wasn’t alone. “I’ve had a lot of practise is all. It was hard at first but I had the time.”
She watched the rocks with fascination as they spoke, considering his words. Everything. From how this Force worked to how the black markings on his face weren’t smudged.
“You’re not imposing! I.. I’m grateful really. That you did come. I..” She trailed off, suddenly having an idea as to why this meeting was happening. “I’m not meant to be in this village, I don’t think. For someone to come from the stars, it… It means a lot.”
The Echani had been about to ask for him to take her with him. To a world where she could meet other people, practise her abilities with others like her. Do more than circle the same paths she had for the last decade. But he’d only just arrived. Maybe he wouldn’t want to take a strange girl with him, one covered in muck that says strange things.
“Where.. Um. Where did you come from?”
The Mirialan huffed a little self consciously, his cheeks warming with red. He rubbed at the back of his neck, but still kept up the smile for her, reading hesitation and excitement at once.
“Ay, I ain’t nothing special, but…I dunno about where you’re meant to be. But I knew you were calling. So I came.” He shrugged a little, then sat down in the grass and folded his legs up lotus style, not unlike the emblem on his armor. “I’m from, uh– well. I’m from this planet called Kiast, yeah? Grew up there. But I came here from a different one, Selen. It’s where…geez. It’s kinda complicated. But there’s a big group of people there and on Kiast and on other worlds that are just like you and me. That have powers. My husband does. And there’s lots who don’t, too, like our kids, but we all live together. It’s not all good. Some of it is …really bad. But mostly it’s just people. Helping each other, fighting sometimes, teaching. I learned how to use my abilities with them, and I’ve taught a couple too… But it’s just you, here? You’ve never met anyone else?”
So many people. And so many that shared the abilities.
There was a pull in her chest. Want. A gnawing for connection that she had given up on, assumed would never happen. It came back with vengeance. Crying out at the galaxy that it wasn’t fair. It felt like the hollow was dragging at everything, grasping. Each word he spoke was another concept to reach for, to know that it had been missed. To miss it.
Tears formed in her eyes, making the silver shimmer even as she tried to blink them away.
It was a lot to take in, but she pushed on with a smile still on because while it was awful it was also wonderful.
It took a moment for her to answer the question, to fully process one had been asked. It have Melissa pause.
“I.. have. The villagers, they’re good people. My parents…” She frowned, “Well. They died ten years ago. Not.. really met anyone new since then. I guess. Only really one of the people from town come up now. Gowirn brings up stuff to trade, food stuff.” She trailed off, avoiding Ruka’s eye. She could feel the worry even as she was speaking. She didn’t want to worry him really, it wasn’t his job to be worrying over her. But he had asked.
Silvery tears flowed like the silver of the river in his visions. But this, he knew, held no danger. Only heartbreak. Smiling through tears. A long few moments of quiet – ones that seemed more overwhelmed than gone away somewhere else. He watched her carefully for any vacant look. But then the smile turned to a frown, and her voice was small and trying to not take up space.
Villagers. Good people, sure, but only one who came up, and only to trade. Parents dead. She’d been alone all that time? She couldn’t have been more than twenty, not unless her species aged long like Sephi and he was way off. She’d have been a child.
He thought of the girl in his dreams. Maybe the Force had been showing him to her, a version of her, then. Or maybe it was showing him a her that was here before him now, a truer one than the body. He couldn’t say, and he didn’t dare assume, but Ashla and Bogan…
“I’m here,” the words come unbidden but easy, natural like breathing, like shushing the kids when they cried, like I love you the first time he held either. It’s a promise, and he doesn’t know if he should already be making it, but it feels right. Even as voices of logic and meaner ones clamor and clatter in his head, vying for attention – too coddling obsessive babying stalker not your child what’s wrong with you don’t need you go away can do it myself deserves better more empower her don’t adopt her you fre – it still feels right. And he meant it when he repeated, “I’m here, now, if you want. I won’t leave. We can talk long as you want. I can’t stay forever, but I can stay a bit. You can even come with me when I go if you want.”
Hope. A flutter that broke through the sinking. It was a lot for him to offer though. That..
“I.. Are you sure? I.. It’s been so long.” Melissa took a steadying breath, looking up at him with her teeth working her lower lip. She wanted to just say yes. To run and never look back, but- “That’s a lot to offer. I know we had the visions but thats…”
Her voice shook and she stopped again, taking a moment to really consider it. She looked back at the house. Her home. And then back to the green man, with strange hair, purple eyes and black markings that made shapes across his skin. Ruka.
“If you’re sure, then yes. I.. I- The villagers are kind enough but they’re afraid of me i think.”
Ruka had to actually dig one hand in the dirt to hold himself back from just hugging her. That broken quiver in her tone, silver eyes scared and hopeful at once, was killing him. He kept himself still though, kept his voice soft and his expression calm, even if his brows couldn’t help but furrow more.
“A lot of times things people don’t understand seem scary, and that makes people…mean. Hateful, sometimes. It kriffing sucks. But I’m not scared of you. And yeah, I’m sure. Not just cause visions brought us together, neither. Just. I want to help make it better, if you’ll let me. Whatever that means. You don’t have to stay with me, I can take you anywhere you want…but you’re also welcome with us. Me and my family.”
They’d have to talk about it, of course, if that ended up being more literal, but Cor and the kids were already expecting anything when he came home. And there were plenty of options.
Family. A home to stay in that wasn’t just the memories.
Melissa was quiet, avoiding eye contact as she mulled it over but looking up. Silver met purple, and a small but relieved smile crossed her face.
“I’d.. id love that. ”