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The cold water rushing past her ankles had long since numbed her skin, but for once, she wasn’t shaking from the chill—she was shaking in triumph.
On the end of her long, crooked spear was the pierced belly of a fat fish, wriggling furiously in a vain effort to escape. She watched it flap around in awe, still unable to accept that she’d finally caught something. It had been in the river all afternoon, along with the dozens of other fish she’d failed to catch. But she had caught this one, and all by herself!
Satine’s arms jolted as the fish’s flailing threatened to unhook itself from her spear. Sloughing off her shock, she held the tip out towards the riverbed, stepping out of the water and kneeling down beside the rocks. Her joints were stiff from the cold, her bare feet sore and raw from standing on jagged river rocks all day. The tall grass brushed past her legs as phantoms, her frigid skin registering only the barest pressure.
Unhooking the fish from the spear, she grabbed it tightly by the tail and smacked its head against the wet, rough granite of a nearby rock. It stopped wriggling, going limp in her hand.
She blew out a breath and collapsed onto the grass, leaving the fish and the spear beside her. Closing her eyes, she began to work the feeling back into her feet by flexing her toes, pulling her knees up to her chest one leg at a time before settling them back down onto the ground, just as Qui-Gon had shown her. Every part of her ached; her face and shoulders and arms were tight with a fresh sunburn, her scalp itched from sweating, and the bones in her legs felt like they were frozen solid. And yet none of it was enough to temper her grin.
Her days of being left at the camp or sent out to pick berries and forage were over. She could hunt now, without the use of the Force or years of ridiculous martial training, and she had the haul to prove it. More importantly, she could be left to her own devices, trusted to stay safe and hidden without the constant, protective hovering of her Jedi escort.
Her feet and ankles began to throb as blood flowed back into them, and she sat up to look at her prize again, laying still in the grass. The fish was surely large enough to feed all three of them tonight, she thought. Now she just had to figure out how to skin and gut it. Perhaps she would ask Master Qui-Gon for help. The only thing worse than coming back to camp empty-handed was to return with a ruined meal.
Satine stood up and rolled her pant legs back down, wincing at the pain in her feet, and found her shoes and pack nearby. She was soaking wet, exhausted, and famished, but the fact that nobody had come around to find her meant she was the first to have caught something. Her grin widened.
The walk back to the camp was short, but the muscles in her calves were cramped and still partially numb, and the underbrush in this part of the forest was wicked, so her pace was slow. The smell of a freshly lit fire was her guide back, though she prided herself on not needing that; she may have just recently become a proper hunter, but she was well familiar with tracking by now. Her trail out to the river this afternoon was easy enough to find and follow.
It surprised her to find Qui-Gon at the camp when she arrived. Neither he nor Obi-Wan were prone to idling around, especially when she wasn’t with them. Same as them, he’d headed off to find food and keep an eye on the area this morning, but the pack he’d dropped off by one of their benches looked empty.
His back was turned when she stepped into the circle of their camp, his hands busy with kindling. She didn’t bother to make her presence known, certain that he’d sensed her by now.
“Any luck?” he asked without looking up, and she dropped her own pack beside her bedroll.
“I caught us dinner,” she announced proudly, and he turned to see her holding up the massive river fish.
His brows shot up in surprise, and he wiped his hands free of dirt on his pants before walking over. It was difficult to keep clean in the middle of the forest, and his robes were looking worse for wear. “Ah,” he hummed, taking the fish from her carefully and looking it over. “Quite the catch. With your spear, I see.”
“I told you it wasn’t useless.” She stuck the sharp end deep into the earth beside her, partly to clean the tip and partly so that she didn’t have to hold it anymore, and blew out a tired breath.
He gave her an amused look. “I’m not the one you have to convince,” he replied, sitting down by the fire and calling over a flat, thin plate from his pack with a curl of his finger. “Do you know how to gut these?”
“Sort of,” she admitted, following him over to his bench but not sitting down. Once she sat down she wouldn’t be getting up again, and there were things that still needed doing. “I know the process. But I’ve never done it before. I was hoping you could show me.”
“I can,” he said calmly, retrieving a knife from his belt. “But not this evening.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“I need you to go find Obi-Wan while I prepare us dinner,” he replied, settling the fish on the plate and pulling its belly up with a thumb. “He was supposed to return an hour ago, and I’d prefer not to eat in the dark.”
Satine looked out at the forest, suddenly aware again of the deactivator at her belt. “You don’t think something’s happened to him, do you?”
Qui-Gon found that amusing for some reason. “Oh, no,” he assured her with a smile. “He’s quite alright. He may need some help on his hunt, though.”
She scoffed. “He’ll hardly accept it from me.” Obi-Wan took his role as part of her official guard detail with grim seriousness, which usually amounted to him loudly proclaiming that he did not, in fact, require her assistance, now or ever.
“And I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear,” Qui-Gon continued, pausing for a moment to run the edge of his knife along the side of the fish. Scales peeled away and shone like flecks of pearlescent glass in the sun, falling to the earth softly beside him. “That you’ve found food before he has.”
“I thought you said competitiveness was unbecoming of a Jedi.”
He looked up at her with a wry expression. “Ah, but you’re not a Jedi, are you?”
She pursed her lips. It was not the first time Qui-Gon had been an accessory to one of their arguments, and she doubted it would be the last. Hiking through Draboon’s dense forests and sleeping in the dirt left little else in the way of entertainment, she supposed. At least they were on the same page when it came to tormenting his padawan.
“He went that way,” Qui-Gon informed her when she didn’t reply, using the tip of his knife to point east. “He’s not far. Walk quietly, though. He’s hunting quail.”
“Quail,” she repeated, looking in the direction he’d pointed. She could pick out Obi-Wan’s footsteps easily enough. With a shrug she began to walk beyond their camp, following the trail through the trees. Behind her, Qui-Gon hummed a tune she remembered from one of the many cantinas they’d passed through, and she could hear the rhythmic sound of his knife running against the fish’s scales.
The tree canopy overhead quickly became quite dense, enough that it cast the forest in twilight even though it was only early evening. Qui-Gon’s warning about being quiet seemed overly cautious; she could’ve stomped her way through the underbrush and it hardly would have mattered. The springy layer of rotten leaves and mushrooms muffled the sound of her footsteps, and the forest was humming with the chorus of insects, birds and other animals screeching and squawking at the arrival of the evening.
Focusing on the ground in front of her so that she didn’t roll an ankle, she didn’t notice that she’d happened upon Obi-Wan until she felt a tug at her hair and looked up, grabbing at it instinctively. When her hand caught on nothing, she glanced around until she found him nearby, suspended in a tree, holding a hand out to her in a shushing gesture.
She paused, nodding to him when she caught his eye, and followed his pointing finger to the bird at the end of the branch. Neither of them were that far off the ground; the tree was squat and thick, its twirling branches reaching outwards instead of upwards. And at the end of the one Obi-Wan stood on was a large, plump bird, pecking at the spiky buds freshly blooming on the tree until their seeds fell to the ground.
She looked back at Obi-Wan, holding her breath. He didn’t have any sort of weapon out, and his strategy as far as she could tell was to cross the branch until he was close enough to grab the bird with his bare hands. Reserving her judgement of his plan for the time being, she crouched low and watched his hunting attempt unfold.
For several minutes he only made slow, incremental movements, each one virtually indistinguishable as anything more than a twitch, but eventually she figured out what he was doing; he was shifting the position of his feet on the branch to better distribute his weight, much like a cat would before pouncing. They were subtle enough not to shake the branch, and the quail continued to peck away at the leaves, oblivious.
She wondered how long he’d been at this. Looking around, she quickly located the small pack he’d taken out with him, noting smugly that it looked empty. He’d hinged everything on the bird in front of him.
A cracking noise made her look back at the tree just in time to watch Obi-Wan bolt forward. The branch creaked with the sudden movement; the leaves rustled and began to rain down from the tree; and an awful squawking began to come from the bird.
Despite his speed, his initial dive was unsuccessful—both of them ended up tumbling down to the ground as the branch shook tremendously, and she winced when she heard the breath explode out of him as he landed on his stomach. The quail’s squawking continued unabated, joined by the furious flapping of wings and a spray of feathers as it darted away. Obi-Wan recovered quickly, standing up with a wheeze, and began chasing after the bird through the underbrush.
Covering her mouth to stifle her laughter, Satine stood up from her hiding spot and followed after them. She didn’t need to run to keep up; the trail of broken branches, squashed mushrooms and churned up leaves was more than enough to guide her. Ahead of her, she could hear Obi-Wan cursing furiously, sounding much like the bird’s indignant squawking. Judging by all the noise, he still had quite a bit of running to do before catching up to it.
She wasn’t sure how long his wild chase through the forest continued, but eventually she came upon him. He was on his back now, an arm slung over his eyes, chest heaving. Most importantly, he was empty-handed. Looking around, the only sign of the quail was the numerous feathers left on the ground; any squawking had either abated or become indistinguishable from the cacophony of screeching birds overhead.
Stopping at his sprawled out feet, Satine watched him catch his breath. His robes were smeared with greens and browns, and the cuffs were filthy. Her clothes were in a similar state, but she had caught dinner. He had caught—well, he’d caught twigs in his tunic, she supposed.
Sensing her staring, he pulled his arm away from his face, which was flushed with effort and—she suspected—embarrassment. “Can I help you?” he asked, rather rudely.
“I should be asking you that,” she replied, and he let his arm fall back down with a roll of his eyes. “Why are you chasing birds through the forest?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said dismissively. She looked down at his belt to confirm his lightsaber was there, and frowned.
“Wouldn’t understand that a man with a sword and access to the Force couldn’t catch a stupid little bird?” she surmised. “No, I suppose I wouldn’t.”
“It’s not—” He let out an exasperated sigh and sat up, brushing at his robes. “It’s part of my training.”
She raised a brow. “You’re doing rather poorly, then, aren’t you?”
He glared up at her. “Training is about failure,” he told her. If his tone had been more measured, he would’ve sounded like Qui-Gon. “It’s more valuable than success.”
“Unless you’re trying to find something to eat,” she mused, and his expression only grew darker. He gave her a daggered look when she offered him a hand up, stubbornly using a spindly nearby tree to pull himself up off the ground instead.
“Yes, well,” he said grumpily, brushing at his robes again. Leaves and twigs fell from his clothes and rained down onto the forest floor. “I’m sure Qui-Gon has found us something to eat.”
“Afraid not,” she told him, being careful to keep a straight face. When Obi-Wan looked up in dismay, she nearly broke. “But luckily for the both of you, I’ve picked up the slack.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
“Don’t sound so disbelieving,” she chided him, turning around. “Come back to camp and see for yourself.”
“I’ll have to,” he said behind her, following her back the way they’d come.
She rolled her eyes. “Keep talking like that, and I won’t let you eat any.”
He was silent for a moment. “How in the world did you catch something?” he asked then, stomping loudly through the forest.
She shot him an annoyed look over her shoulder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means it takes practice to hunt like that,” he said, waving his hand behind him.
“Oh?” She grinned, and his face reddened again. “That took practice, did it?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
Despite the sharp, hungry pain in his belly and the heavy weight of defeat clouding his mind, he was still half-hopeful that Satine had been lying about her catch when they arrived at the camp. Those hopes were instantly dashed when the smell of cooking meat hit his nose.
“You’re finally back,” Qui-Gon said in greeting, seated by the fire. He gave Obi-Wan an amused once-over. “How was quail hunting?”
“A spectacular failure,” Satine announced before Obi-Wan could reply, walking over to her spot and sitting down with a self-satisfied sigh.
He glared at her as she rummaged around in her pack for water, taking up his seat across from them. “A lesson in patience,” he answered his master, making sure not to betray his own anger.
“Patience is good,” Qui-Gon replied, wiping a cloth over his knife to clean it. “Although food is better.”
Satine snorted, and Obi-Wan slouched back against the rough log they used for sitting. He was too exhausted to entertain either of them with debate.
“And what did you catch?” he asked instead, looking at Satine.
She gestured to the meat hanging over the fire. “A fish from the river. With my spear,” she added, wrapping a hand around the staff that stuck in the ground beside her.
He rolled his eyes, not bothering to reply.
In a small fit of mercy that he suspected was born from exhaustion rather than courtesy, they spent their dinner mostly in silence. Only to himself did he admit how delicious the meat was—hunting was time-consuming, dangerous, and took a great deal of energy, and even when they did manage to scrounge something up, it was usually tubers and small, stringy game. By comparison, the fleshy fat meat of a river fish was a delicacy. He did his best not to devour his share, but he still finished far too quickly for his liking.
“Did you manage to find anything, Qui-Gon?” Satine asked, breaking their amicable silence. She’d finished her meal too, and was wiping at her hands and mouth with a cloth. Obi-Wan noted the lack of judgement in her voice this time.
“Some berries,” he replied. If he was disappointed with the haul, he didn’t show it. “For the morning. They’ll help the ration bars go down.”
“Ugh.” She glowered at their food pack. “I don’t know how you can stand them. Such horrid things.”
Qui-Gon only gave a good-natured shrug in reply, standing up to walk the perimeter of their camp. He looked preoccupied, scanning the forest. Obi-Wan concentrated, trying to sense anything that would be a threat to them. The tree canopy only made the fading sunlight disappear that much faster, and the forests of Draboon were not kind at night.
When he determined there was nothing dangerous nearby, he shrank back to prod at his Master, hoping to find something—unease, perhaps. But Qui-Gon only reflected back a quiet patience; certainly nothing to indicate he felt an attack was imminent.
“Is everything all right?” Obi-Wan asked then, unable to stand watching his Master pace around. If he didn’t know better, he would call Qui-Gon’s sudden alertness superstition.
“Quite alright,” Qui-Gon replied, not stopping. His pace was slow, leisurely, but none of them had the energy to walk for the pleasure of it. “Just checking.”
Satine glanced at Obi-Wan, his own unease reflected back in her eyes. He tried to look confident, reassuring, but he was just as wary.
“We’ll leave tomorrow, I think,” Qui-Gon told them both. “There’s a cave system not far from here.”
“What for?” Satine asked. “You haven’t seen anyone, have you?”
Instead of responding, he looked directly at Obi-Wan. “Do you feel it?” he asked.
He frowned. “Feel what?”
“Exactly,” Qui-Gon said. “I can no longer sense their hunters.”
Obi-Wan closed his eyes and tried again, prodding out with the Force. Qui-Gon was right; he could no longer feel the pressure of pursuit. It wasn’t the first time their assailants had faded into the background, but Obi-Wan had never felt them disappear entirely. Their intent had been singular and laser-focused, easily detectable to someone familiar with its signature and a place to concentrate. But now there was only silence.
He opened his eyes, and found Satine still watching him. “They’re gone,” he murmured. “Are they dead?”
“No,” Qui-Gon murmured, but there was a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “They’ve broken off pursuit, I believe. Perhaps they’ve rotated out their hunting party.”
“What does that mean?” Satine asked, her eyes now glued to Qui-Gon’s slow, careful pacing.
“They may have insight into our counter-tracking.” He paused then, looking around their camp. “It’s more difficult to detect hunters we’ve yet to encounter. Which means we should leave and head for new ground.”
That would be simple enough. They travelled light on purpose, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. And a cave system meant they’d have more than a forest above their heads, at least. Sleeping dry was always a luxury.
“Our trails need to be hidden,” Qui-Gon continued, walking over to his pack and retrieving his freshly-cleaned knife, which he settled on his belt next to his saber. “I will go disrupt our hunting tracks, and in the morning we will destroy the camp. The both of you stay here.”
Obi-Wan snuck another look at Satine, but it was hardly needed. He could sense her worry as if she’d spoken it aloud.
Despite her exhaustion, Qui-Gon’s warnings left her unable to sleep, so instead she set to sharpening her hunting spear. Aside from packing her things, it was the only way to feel like she was prepared for whatever was coming next.
Obi-Wan was clearly just as perturbed by the new development, so he took up his Master’s habit of pacing around the camp. His gait was decidedly less leisurely, and she wondered how long it would be before he fell flat on his face, keeping his eyes closed like that. She hoped it was soon; his footsteps only made her anxious.
“Perhaps I will make a bow next,” she said aloud, mostly to fill the quiet with more than just Obi-Wan’s pacing. “Then we could finally catch quail.”
“Do you know how to use a bow?” Obi-Wan asked her. She looked up just as he walked past behind her, his eyes still closed.
“Do you?” she countered.
“I don’t need to,” he replied, one of his hands settling on his belt where his saber was clipped.
“Well, I don’t have your sword or your Force,” she told him, bringing the spear tip close to inspect the edge. “So I must make do.”
“It’s not my Force,” Obi-Wan corrected her, as she knew he would. “It’s not anybody’s.”
She smiled, watching him as he disappeared behind her again. His full circuits only took about twenty seconds. “It’s certainly not mine.”
“You still bear a register within its flow,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “All living things do. It’s how we sense danger.”
“Can you sense my irritation?”
He paused in his walking, now to her left again, and opened his eyes to look at her. “Yes,” he said simply.
She smiled and pointed to the bench with the spear. “Sit, then. You’ll need your energy for the hike tomorrow.”
“I have plenty of energy,” he said, as if in protest—even as he broke from the perimeter to sit back down. She heard him let out a sigh as he stretched his feet out in front of him and winced in sympathy. Her own feet were sore, too. She could no longer remember what it was like not to have a constant ache in her heels.
He fell silent then, and she felt his eyes on her as she continued to hone her spear. The rhythmic stroke of her knife against the deadwood was soothing, but the monotony also let her mind wander—a tricky luxury these days.
“I can catch fish with this,” she said quietly. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or to herself. “I can hunt.” I can be useful.
“We can do that,” Obi-Wan protested, but he was quiet, too.
She shook her head, watching her knife peel up curling strings of wood from the spear. “You already do enough,” she said. “It’s only fair I contribute.”
“That’s not your job.” Obi-Wan spoke in that ever-familiar, confident way he did whenever he thought a lecture was better than listening. “We’re here to protect you.”
“I don’t know what my job is anymore,” she confessed sadly, keeping her eyes on her blade. “It’s certainly not leading. Not right now, at least. I need something to do in the meantime.” She wasn’t sure what that looked like yet, but all she could do was search.
Her knife continued its course across the speartip.
Obi-Wan went quiet again. Perhaps he was actually listening to her. Or, more likely, he sensed her doubts. It had taken some getting used to, travelling with two men who could intuit her emotions without even looking at her, but it had quickly taught her how to control them better. She knew when to suppress them and focus on the road ahead—and when to lay them out in the open.
“You said you dislike violence,” he murmured then, and she finally looked up from her work. The confident edge in his voice was gone; he sounded only curious now.
“I do,” she replied. “As I know most people tend to.”
His mouth tugged up. “Less than you’d hope.”
She shrugged, unbothered. “Maybe so. Why do you ask?”
He nodded to the weapon in her hand, and she looked down at the spear. The gore from her catch earlier in the day had been cleaned away, but some of the blood had soaked into the wood, where she hadn’t yet shaved it with her knife.
“You’re trying your hand at being a huntsman,” he stated. “Why?”
Satine smiled. “Hunting for food is different,” she explained. “It’s what we have to do to survive. Violence for… for this sort of thing,” she said, gesturing around them. “To provoke fear. To gain at the expense of others. That’s what I take issue with.”
“As do we,” he replied. His hand was back at his lightsaber again, wrapping around the hilt. His voice sounded far away. “Fight to survive, I mean.”
She frowned. “Don’t think me ungrateful. I would be long dead without your protection.”
“I know it bothers you,” he murmured, still sounding distracted. “When Qui-Gon and I have to fight.”
“Does my bother bother you?”
He smiled faintly at that. “I figured you must resent it.”
Resent me , she was sure he wanted to say. Satine set the spear down flat on the ground beside her, watching him.
“I resent having to run,” she corrected him gently. “Not you or Master Qui-Gon helping me do it.”
His expression cleared, becoming focused in the present again. Obi-Wan nodded. “That’s good.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy berating you,” she added, smiling. “You can be quite irritating.”
The more familiar, amused edge crept back into his eyes. His jaw set, as if preparing for battle. “Pots and kettles,” he responded.
She raised a brow. “We differ by kind, not degree,” she informed him. “I believe your Master will back me up on that.”
While she left him to scrounge around for a returning barb, Satine turned and reached for her bedroll, pulling the laces free and letting the bag roll out in front of her with a gentle nudge of her hand. It was rapidly becoming dark, and with some of her anxieties now pushed out of the way, she was struggling to stay awake.
“We should sleep,” she said when he continued to stay quiet, and he frowned in indignation.
“We mustn't,” Obi-Wan objected. “Qui-Gon isn’t back yet.”
She began to pull off her boots. “You sense no danger, correct?”
His frown deepened. “No,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“We can sleep back-to-back,” she suggested, pulling the top of the bag back and climbing into it.
He was fully annoyed again, and stood up to make his protest known. “That won’t do anything to prevent a surprise attack.”
“Then stay awake,” she said, settling into her sleeping bag. It wasn’t cold, but it soon would be. “I need to rest.”
She pulled the bag over her head, obscuring Obi-Wan’s affronted expression from view and muffling whatever retort he came up with. On some level she knew it was unfair to leave him awake by himself, especially to keep watch, but she also knew that her exhaustion would only slow them down tomorrow.
Satine did her best to clear her mind and get comfortable. The spongy forest floor was a far cry from her own bed, but she didn’t have a bed to call her own any longer, and this was the next best thing. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on keeping her breathing even. There would be time to wallow about her losses later.
It wasn’t long before she began to drift off, relaxing into the warm shelter of her bedroll. She always enjoyed night-time; even if it meant they had to stand guard, this was the closest she ever came to getting privacy now. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend she wasn’t here, sleeping in dirty clothes in the middle of a forest on a planet she’d never even heard of until a week ago.
Dimly, she heard Obi-Wan douse their fire and putter around camp, sounding aimless. Even from the sanctuary of her tented sleeping bag, she could sense his unease. Qui-Gon was rarely on edge, and it clearly bothered Obi-Wan. It bothered her, too.
But she needed to rest.
Her sleep was fitful, full of little jolts that brought her back to consciousness for a few moments. She would hold her breath, listen to the sounds of the forest, and then fall back asleep before she realised it. Her dreams were just as stilted—the glitter of river water, the gore of a freshly killed fish. Eyes watching through the trees, the hum of lightsabers. Insects picking at her skin and her feet throbbing from wear. All things she had sensed and seen and felt, and would again.
When she woke again, she was unsure of what had startled her, unable to hear anything aside from her breath blowing against her covers. The darkness of her sleeping bag was disorienting, and Satine shifted around until she felt her shoulder brush against something that was not the forest floor.
Grabbing the edge of her bag, she poked her head out, blinking. It was fully dark by now, too dark to see, but she still moved carefully, quietly. With a slow turn of her head, she looked beside her. It was impossible to make out proper shapes, but the filter of stars above was enough that she could see the outline of someone’s back. And she had a good guess as to who it was.
“Ben?” she whispered, softly enough that he could pretend he didn’t hear it if he wanted to. Perhaps he was already asleep.
There was silence for a moment, but then she felt him move beside her. “What is it?” he whispered back, just as softly.
She smiled, relaxing. “Just checking.”
He turned around in his own bedroll until he was facing her. “Are you alright?”
She nodded, although she doubted he could see it. “I think so,” she murmured. “Is Qui-Gon back?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But he’s not in any danger.”
“That’s good.”
She sensed his hesitation. “You seem troubled,” he eventually settled on.
“I’m having trouble quieting my mind, that’s all.”
“We’re safe,” he whispered. Maybe he was having trouble doing the same. “Don’t worry.”
A bloom of warmth grew in her chest. He sounded so earnest, so confident, that it would be easy to trick herself into believing him. She desperately wanted to.
“I know,” she replied, then let out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he assured her. He was silent for another moment. “I can help,” he said then, even more quietly than before. “To calm your mind, I mean.”
She felt her mouth twitch. “How so?”
She heard him shift around, his sleeping bag rustling with the movement. Then she felt warmth by her cheek; the broad of his palm, not quite touching her.
“May I?”
Satine nodded again, and he must have sensed it, because she felt his hand settle on her cheek a moment later, gently cupping her jaw. She could smell his skin; work and sweat and dirt, and beneath it all, the scent of him.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered, and she did as he said.
Whatever he did was not sudden, not intense. For several heartbeats she felt nothing but the warmth of his palm—pleasant enough in its own right—but then a quiet, gentle serenity began to spread within her. It was subtle and soft, but inexorable, blanketing her body from within. The warmth of it took shape in her mind as all the beautiful things they had seen on Draboon—plains and sunrises and butterflies and creatures so fantastical she could hardly describe their shape.
She saw life. She felt life.
It made her gasp. Her own hand came up to grab his wrist, though not to stop him. Is this what the Force feels like?
A burst of affirmation blossomed behind closed eyelids, almost instantaneously. Neither of them had spoken, but she had asked a question, and he had answered it.
Satine felt her mouth spread into a smile. She wanted to laugh. Whatever shadows had been clinging to her mind were brushed away, too weak for the Light he was showing her. It was Light with a capital L, she decided. Even sunlight was not this brilliant.
She felt herself slump into her sleeping bag, the arc of her body drawn to his own. Her fingers tightened on his wrist, a plea for him not to let go. Again she felt that same burst, that same answer that was clearer than words.
It could have been only a moment or an hour after he’d touched her cheek, but she eventually drew together the focus to speak. “Thank you,” she whispered, barely heard over the steady sound of her own heartbeat.
She still could not see his face, but she could sense his smile, deep down in her chest. It bridged between them—that living register he’d spoken of. She wondered how Jedi did not weep from the beauty of it.
When Satine fell back asleep this time, still holding onto his wrist, she did not wake again until morning.