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Enfys Nest got her helmet from her mother. She got her drive, her ethics, her skills, and her charisma from her mother. Her victories, though, were her own.
Off and on throughout her life, Enfys thought about a child of her own, who might take her helmet, and her momentum, and run with it. She tempered those thoughts with a commitment to have no need to pass on her violence - a commitment to build a world where Enfys Nest was superfluous.
For a woman with a singular will and deep-seated purpose, this was her one constant vacillation.
She never did have that child. The time was never right, she never had that trust with a partner, she was too busy – it didn’t matter. It just never happened.
But that didn’t mean she did not help raise children. Oh, there were so many of them: Cloud-Riders’ kids whom she’d watch for a day, or play with some afternoons, or train as they joined the ranks; locals on the various planets the Riders visited and liberated that latched onto Enfys without her having any choice in the matter; orphans that they rescued from battles and work camps and prisons and “reeducation centers” that they found homes for, then visited every so often, ensuring that the kids were safe.
None of those children was more “hers” than the little girl on Savareen who decided without a word that Enfys was hers to care for. She had parents, yes, but the way of the Savarians was to raise children as a village, and this one had certainly adopted the Cloud-Riders as part of their village. The little girl was always on Enfys’s heels – she insisted on bringing the warrior her stew when she stayed for dinner; Enfys was one of few people she trusted to braid her hair; she loved tracing the lines and cracks of Enfys’s helmet while Enfys conferred with the adults. Once, when Crimson Dawn had fought with the Cloud-Riders over some coaxium refined on Savareen by some smugglers, the brave little girl had come out and held Enfys’s hand as she watched her new smuggler friends, victorious and just a little better for having met her.
Enfys was not surprised when the little girl – not so little anymore – asked to be trained by and join the Cloud-Riders. She sighed, and shook her head, and (fully aware of her hypocrisy, having trained many children and been trained as one herself) told the girl no. Enough, she told herself. She’d led enough children into war. The girl was near enough to adulthood, but Enfys could remember when the girl was very small, and could remember how many battles she’d already fought at that point. So many more now, and so many more children dead.
The girl was hurt, but she nodded and accepted Enfys’s answer.
As years passed, and the Cloud-Riders stayed busy, and their goals and targets shifted, they visited Savareen less and less. After a long absence, Enfys arrived in the village to find that the girl – not girl, woman – was gone, and the villagers informed her that she had taken off with a trading convoy, seeking more than the quiet village life. Enfys was hurt, but she nodded and accepted that the girl’s path was her own.
Years later, in a battle against the latest in a long, long line of enemies, Enfys found herself fighting alongside a woman whom she only recognized due deep, long familiarity. The little girl was hardened and scarred now, and Enfys’s heart dropped. She’d sought to shield the girl from this world, to set her on a different path, but she’d found her way here all the same.
After the battle, over glasses of Savareen brandy, the woman laughed at Enfys’s lament. In big, bombastic Savarian sign language, with a smile still bright as ever, the woman set Enfys straight. Yes, she could fight. But that did not make her a warrior. The Cloud-Riders had never come to Savareen to make war; they’d come to provide food and medicine, to dance and rest, to teach and laugh and learn and play. And the woman had not left Savareen to make war; she had left to learn and to teach, in that order, and to provide what she had to offer to a wounded galaxy.
She was a healer, a diplomat, a detective, a savior on a dozen worlds. And yes, she could fight when she needed to. Enfys had refused to train her as a warrior, but the woman nonetheless got her drive, her ethics, her skills, and her charisma from Enfys.
Enfys Nest was not superfluous, but the galaxy needed so much *more* than her. It needed not just warriors but little girls who absorbed every lesson taught to them, who imparted those lessons to the galaxy around them as soon and as often as possible.
When Enfys Nest retired – not died, retired, and thank the Force for that small mercy – she knew exactly who to pass her helmet on to. The mask itself had become a symbol, a mythological force, and Enfys wanted the myth to be about more than the Angel of Death.
On her young friend’s head, the helmet could be so much more. In her young friend’s hands, the myth could teach peace better than war.