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Automixers, traders of spare ship parts, unceremonious tables with pots of steaming broth and paper cups — the market is the biggest on the planet and conveniently situated just outside the docking bays. The door of BAY 13 slides open with a soft hiss — the fizz of sparks from welders and the chirping of pit droids gives way to the clamour of a large, unorganised crowd.
Into this crowd steps the Mandalorian, a plain brown fabric carry bag slung over his shoulder and resting at his hip. The Child peeks out from the safety of his bag to shamelessly stare at the faces in the crowd and to smell the aromas coming from the food stalls.
Din walks, the Child in his bag sways with the movement. As they get further from their docking bay the crowd thins out, the stalls laden with items less practical and more frivolous — colourful materials, holocubes of other, prettier, greener planets, synthflowers and toys.
It is one such stall that catches the Child’s attention — Din had felt him sitting peacefully and comfortably against his hip but now he is squirming, an urgency to the action that has Din stop mid pace and look down.
Din follows the Child’s gaze, easily putting two and two together — there’s a stall on their left that has a selection of colourful children’s toys.
“We’re just here to stock up, kid,” Din wants to say — he has credits but they are not unlimited and they really do need some essentials for the ship — but the Child blinks up at him with those large, deep brown eyes and the protest dies before he has even voiced it.
Still, he hesitates. He has never bought a toy for the kid before. He finds, suddenly, that he wants to.
Impatient, the Child wriggles at his hip, one three-fingered hand stretched out towards the stall — and as Din processes his newest revelation, in the corner of his visor he can see one of the toys on table move of its own accord. It’s just a twitch, and thankfully the toy seller doesn’t notice, too busy blatantly staring at the Mandalorian in full Beskar armour that has just stopped in the middle of the street.
“Alright, alright,” Din says quietly. He covers the Child’s tiny hand with his own and squeezes gently. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
To the toy seller it must be a very odd sight — a Mandalorian in full, gleaming Beskar, walking up to his stall, pointing a gloved hand at the toys, and saying, seemingly to himself, “What would you like?”
He points at a wooden carving of a tauntaun, a stuffed frog, a box of wooden shapes — all are rejected out of hand. Finally he points at the only thing left on the stall that hasn’t been rejected — a small, navy drawstring bag.
“Bah,” the Child says.
Din by now thinks that he is getting the hang of communicating with this strange alien child, but he doesn’t understand this choice. Of all the things on this stall, this appears to be the least interesting, the least fun — it’s a bag . A kriffing bag, no bigger than the Child’s head.
“This?” he asks of the Child, just to confirm it, and gets an affirmative-sounding babble in response.
He prises open the bag with his fingers. Inside are marbles — some are clear glass with swirls of colour inside, like a galaxy frozen in time, while others are solid in colour. They are all of a size, and Din supposes that it means he could have his steel ball back. Still.
“You can’t want these,” Din says, baffled. Yes, they are pretty when Din holds the bag up and the clear marbles at the top catch the sunlight but as a toy they are not very practical for a moving spaceship like the Razor Crest .
The Child’s eyes bore into his soul and he knows he has lost this battle.
“You do,” Din says, a resigned note in his voice now. “Okay. I’ll get you the marbles but you have to promise me that you won’t eat these,” he warns, aiming for stern and in charge — a finger may or may not be waggled in front of the Child’s face. “Promise?”
“Ya,” says the Child, chewing on Din’s cape.
Din sighs and hands over the credits to the visibly confused toy seller.
Din returns to the Razor Crest carrying not only the Child, but the bag of marbles, a new blanket, some fresh soup, cookies and a bag of non perishable food essentials. He leaves the Child in the hold, surrounded by Din’s purchases (unwilling or otherwise), as he carries some extra boxes onboard that have been delivered from the market.
By the time Din returns from paying for the maintenance that was done to the ship in his absence, the Child has already dug a few of the marbles out of the drawstring bag, rolling them along the floor under his hand and cooing at the colours.
Din doesn’t disturb him, climbing up the ladder to the cockpit and starting the launch sequence.
They have cleared the atmosphere, passed the planet’s moons, and are well into open space — Din exhales, having left a strange planet without getting into any life or death situations — when there is a noise from the hold. It’s a screech, a high-pitched noise that could mean anything, really, but Din immediately decides that it means that the kid is in trouble.
His leap from the pilot’s chair leaves it spinning in his wake, blaster at the ready as he lands slightly off balance in his haste to reach the bottom of the ladder.
The panic recedes slightly when he sees that the Child is just where he left him. He has his back to Din, but his ears are alert and Din senses no tension in the hold — there’s nobody here but himself and the Child.
“Kid?” he asks, a lot of questions contained within the endearment. Lowering his blaster, he slowly approaches the Child.
As Din suspected would happen, marbles are rolling to and fro across the floor, bumping into doors and bouncing off again — but they are being ignored, the Child’s attention laser-focused on something on the ground right in front of him.
One marble isn’t rolling like the others, and as Din steps closer to get a better look, he can see why.
It’s hatching.
The ‘marble’ — or ‘egg’ as Din now knows it to be — has a huge crack running along its diameter, and is sitting in a sticky puddle of fluid. Something scaly and blue is curled up inside, slowly unfurling and pushing the two halves of the shell apart.
The Child makes that noise again, and Din now understands it to be a squeal of confusion or excitement — or, most likely, both.
He scoops up the Child, wrapping an arm around him — instinctively protecting from the unknown.
They watch — the odd marble bumping, ignored, into Din’s boots — as a tiny lizard-type creature emerges.
First they see the relatively large, triangular head with big eyes, and two rounded horn stubs in the middle of its face. It wriggles further out of its shell and two legs emerge, then feet with several splayed toes and suction cups. A slender body, two more pairs of legs, and at last a bulbous, pointed tail.
It’s a reptile of some kind, a lizard, but not of a sort that Din has encountered before. It is bright blue with a wide iridescent stripe running along the entire length of its body. It is, Din has to admit, a rather beautiful looking little creature. Even in the artificial lighting of the Razor Crest ’s hold, it shines.
It stretches out to its full length for the first time, looking up at Din and the Child.
Din squats awkwardly, balancing the Child as he goes, and holds out his free hand. The lizard’s tongue darts out, a feather-light touch to a leather-clad fingertip, before it scuttles away with surprising speed, giving no indication that it had been born less than a minute ago.
It zig-zags, barely dodging a careening marble, and decides to hide behind the drawstring bag.
It doesn’t appear harmful — in fact, despite himself, Din thinks that it is sort of cute — so he gives in to the Child’s excited wriggling and sets him down.
The Child tilts his head, and then his whole body, to try and get a better look at the hiding lizard.
He reaches into the sleeve of his tunic, pulling out a crumbled, half-eaten cookie that Din wasn’t aware that he had but looks suspiciously like those red ones from the stall next to the automixers.
“Did you—?” Din starts, although he’s pretty sure he knows the answer. He sighs.
“Bah,” says the Child, holding out the cookie. The lizard’s head appears from behind the bag, tongue flicking out of its mouth as if catching the sweet scent. Slowly it stalks forwards, head darting this way and that. Din doesn’t dare move in case he startles it again. It grabs at the cookie with tiny razor-like teeth.
As the lizard messily chews with an up-and-down motion that seems to require the use of its whole head, the Child turns to look up at Din.
Din knows that look, has already been on the receiving end several times today.
“We can’t keep it,” he says.
The Child stares.
“No.”
The lizard stares too, although the effect is somewhat dampened when its tongue flicks out to lick its eyeballs.
He feels the need to address them both when he repeats, “No.”
The Child whines.
“No, no pets,” he says — but he feels that his voice doesn’t sound confident enough so he crosses his arms for added impact. “No.”
The pair of them — with their large, pleading eyes — continue to stare despite the fact that he has folded his arms. Facing an army would be less unnerving.
Din sighs. “Fine,” he relents, arms dropping to his sides.
The image pops into his head of the Razor Crest overrun with small, iridescent blue lizards — the trials that he will now have to endure to keep the kid and the kid’s pet lizard safe and sound on their travels. Already he is making a plan, wondering where he could buy some sort of tank, what it needs to eat…
With surprising speed, the Child pounces on the lizard, lifts it to his mouth and swallows it whole.
The abrupt action takes Din a few moments to process — and as the Child lets out a satisfied burp, Din thinks that maybe he hasn’t gotten as good at communicating with the Child as he had previously thought.