Chapter Text
In her mother-tongue, the name Enfys means heavy.
This is her name, because she was born several pounds too small- a thrashing, weak thing, too young to be born, barely alive. Her lungs were fat with excess liquid and her heart beat too fast. She burst into this world as she was sure she would leave it; blood-slick and furious.
Her mother looked at her too-frail body through the glass of the mechanical incubator and said-- my daughter will be heavy and strong, like her mother before her.
Shadae Nest was many things, but never wrong.
The Savarians were wayfarers before they were farmers, and warriors before that. It is said that their children learn to fly before they learn to walk.
They're too young to ride a speederbike, but Enfys and her friend want to learn to fly so badly that they've absconded to the shoreline with one regardless.
Fennec is so precise, always careful; she never makes a wrong move, never drops anything, never stumbles or stutters. The older girl is, to Enfys, the image of what a Savarian woman should be; whip-smart and confident. There were quite a few children in their village, and the two among them; with only a year between them they made a logical pair of playmates.
"You get on first," says Fennec, standing by the speederbike, back hunched and hands cupped together expectantly. She wants her to step into her hold.
"Why?" demands Enfys, because she does not so readily accept her role as the younger one in their friendship. Preferential treatment is for babies.
"Because you're littler. You'll fit on the front better, I can sit behind you."
"I thought we were going to take turns."
"I never said that." Fennec scrunches her nose. "Come on, or I'll just get on and go without you!"
She much prefers to be underestimated than abandoned, so Enfys scrambles up her hand and onto the bike as fast as she can.
"You next!"
The older girl rolls her eyes and climbs on behind her. She wraps her arms around her sides to reach for the handlebars. They are nine and ten (going on eleven), respectively, and it is the first time Enfys has ridden a speederbike. Not that anyone gave her permission- Fennec just supplied the opportunity.
A kickback from the engine; it roars and pops once, twice, and then the handlebars twist and the older girl says to her "hold on tight," and they are off.
Off and away.
The wind is sharp. She'd never thought such a word might apply to the wind, but it does; it's cold on her face and it blasts her mass of curls away from her face and by the Force, it is the most beautiful thing she's ever felt.
Enfys is only a child when she discovers her first love-
Flight.
The seaside is bright, and great black-blue waves cascade against the rocky cliffs they ride along the edge of. The air is crisp and smells of salt. Gulls scream overhead and fly in endless circles. Enfys puts her hands on Fennec's where they rest on the handlebars, holding on tight. They are best friends, and this day on the seaside with the girl laughing by her ear will never end.
"Go faster! Faster!"
The bike hums as it kicks into a higher gear. Fennec's voice is steady.
"Hold on tight. I won't let you fall."
Most people in their village are moisture-farmers, engineers, and miners. The Nest family is not.
Her mother's quarterstaff cracks against hers. Enfys is still small- just a frail little thing, but they are only practicing the proper forms.
"Watch me, watch me darling." Shadae draws back, and she raises the staff back over one shoulder and, in careful slow motion, lowers it over Enfys' head. She taps her skull very lightly. "This would be the killing blow."
Enfys twitches back and away from the non-threat. "Okay. How.. how do I.."
"To block a downwards strike, you want to step to my side. Alright? You'll flinch away." Enfys follows her instructions as she speaks, moving at a glacial pace. "While you're doing that, drop your top hand so that you can swing up and deliver a blow with your own staff, just when it's parallel to the ground. Hit me in the side."
Enfys furrows her brow and tries to do as she's told, but she veers the wrong direction. Her mother's patient hand reaches down to pull her through the motions until she's done it twice over.
"When you do this, you both attack and avoid. See?" With a bright smile on her face, her mother hunches forward as if she's really been struck; her grunt of pain is entirely theatrical. "Good! And then- while I'm hunched over in pain, aaaah- you do what I was trying to do to you. You hit me over the head, or in the spine or kidney, from behind."
Enfys does it right this time. She's small, but she's clever, and she is nothing if not a dutiful daughter.
Shadae turns and taps their quarterstaffs against each other to close the duel, as is ritual. "When it is a real fight, you must spare no kindness for your enemies. Mercy costs its pound of flesh."
"Okay, mama."
Her mother laughs softly and presses a hand to her head. "Well done, my darling."
Fennec plops down on the floor at the edge of the bed. Enfys sits behind her, legs framing her shoulders, and fiddles with the red strings.
This is tradition among them, something parents teach their daughters with reverence. The braids are for protective purposes; the strings are both ornamental and structural. At least that's what her mother told her.
Fennec wants to learn. I want to learn- girl things, she'd said, specifically, and Enfys could barely suppress her glee.
"Just do it already."
"You have to sit still. Really still, no fidgeting."
"I will."
Enfys puts a firm hand on her shoulder to ground her. She pats her twice, then snaps the red band near her ear; Fennec flinches, then giggles, knocking her knee with her forehead. "You're so annoying. Come on."
"Okay, okay."
Enfys gently combs through her long, black hair, careful not to pull, and begins winding the strands into one another. Fennec leans into it.
"I don't know how you're supposed to do this on yourself."
"With a mirror," replies Fennec. "Or I guess you just do it enough that you don't have to look anymore."
"My mama could do it with her hands tied."
As if it's a competition, Fennec replies; "So could mine!"
The breeze is cool in the comfort of her home. She slowly works through every ornate little braid and knot, tying them off with the metal beads that Shadae gave her to use on herself. She'll give them back soon.
"I like the red. In your hair."
"It's what everybody wears."
Enfys weaves the first string between the braids. "It doesn't matter if it's what everyone wears. I like it on you."
Crimson Dawn's miners cracked open the surface of their planet like the shell of an egg.
The smell of sulfur pours out in green-blue billows of smog. The sea is coated with a thin sheen of black, shimmering liquid. Savareen has always been a desert, but they have always found ways to adapt to it. It's harder now.
Enfys doesn't really understand what it means, but her parents and their neighbors huddle around sensors that beep wildly when they get too close to the water sources, and the adults make worried faces. They turn frantic, and then they turn quiet. Very quiet.
Crimson Dawn sends guards through the village on a rotating schedule. She knows this because she has familiarized herself with it for the sake of survival. The guards are not out today. Something feels very wrong.
Fennec Shand holds the pair of binoculars in her hands and stares at her. "What do I need these things for?"
"I want you to look," she replies. They're sitting on a roof so they can speak safely, out of sight. "I want to know what's happening."
"Why don't you do it?"
Enfys looks at her boots. She is nine years old, and she's afraid. "Just look."
Dropping to her belly at the edge of the roof, Fennec peers through the binoculars. Enfys lies at her side and squints at the distant blur of shapes. "What's happening?"
To her side, the older girl has tensed. Her hands white-knuckle the metal. "Your-- your papa. Is he working at the mine today?"
"Yes."
Fennec drops the binoculars and rolls onto her side. She buries her face in her hands. Enfys shakes her shoulder. "What? What is it?"
She grabs for the tool and blinks as it slowly adjusts beneath her forefinger and thumb, twisting, and the hills are coming into view, the red sand and the craggy stone, twisting, metal clicking, vision scouring the exterior of the mine, and there is blood.
There is blood all over the dunes.
The guards from the Crimson Dawn syndicate are standing in an orderly line, lowering their guns, as the dead miners lower from their knees to their fronts, face down in the dirt. This is the first time Enfys has ever seen such violence and she's mournfully sure it will not be her last.
"Papa isn't there."
"You said he was," Fennec hisses.
"He can't be. He's not." Enfys doesn't understand. She can't. She knows what happened, and yet she sequesters it away in the back of her mind and curls protectively around her friend. Her face presses to her hair. They don't talk about the blood, or mention the names of the men that died today.
Enfys is nine-and-three-months when the village is purged.
She hears the screams from the distance; Shadae told her to kneel in the sea, just at the lip of the shore. She presses her back to the stone and listens as footsteps come frighteningly near and then disappear again. The barren desert trees rattle in the wind. The sky is black with smoke, and she recognizes some of the voices that beg for mercy.
She overheard the names of the Crimson Dawn mercenaries who hold the guns and the knives. They bark orders and call one another for help and she makes note of every name she can make out. Not all of them, but enough to list them in her mind over and over and over until she will never forget. To her left, a body is thrown over the shore and into the water.
An hour passes. She repeats the names until her eyes cloud with tears and her muscles ache.
Her mother's hand appears over the edge of the water, glove splattered with blood of many colors.
"It's over, Enfys."
Shadae hefts her up out of the water, clothes weighed down by the moisture, smelling of salt. She's heavy now.
The next five years are spent in the air.
The Savarians, always inventive, convert rain into water and build machines that suck the condensation from the air. They turn from boats and barges to great airships that hum as they hover over the great expanse of their poisoned planet. They replace their standard speeders with swoopbikes, so fast and powerful that every ride is a risk to your life.
The birth-rate plummets, and the elders get sick and die. Sometimes the adults, too, and there's rarely any warning. Just a bloody cough, chills, a headache, inflamed eyes, lungs that burn. It is quick, but far from merciful.
Her mother gathers the survivors and together they build a starship called the Fata Morgana. It is rough around the edges but it flies. Their feet barely touch the ground.
The wind whips around the deck atop their airship. It is a cold, bitter day, and there are no gulls in the air. The clouds block the view. Enfys slowly approaches the circle of pirates who huddle to listen to her mother speak.
"We will come in fast and low." Shadae Nest's voice is frightening through the modulator in her helmet, an octave deeper than her usual inflection. She points to the blueprints in the center of the table. "I need one of you to help modify the bikes for this maneuver."
Three of the crowd volunteer.
Many of the pirates' faces are familiar. They are people from her city-- neighbors, cousins, an aunt, fierce allies from a town nearby who suffered the same fate. Most who survived the day of the syndicate purge had their tongues cut from their mouths, so they are for the most part a very quiet collective, but connections can be made through the use of the Savarian sign-language dialect.
Fennec Shand is not among them. They did not recover her body, but many victims were taken or burned. In her mind, she has long since buried her childhood friend. The rest of the Shand family disappeared too, both parents gone, along with half the rest of the town's population.
There are other species among them as well, and on their last journey to a troubled planet east of their system they picked up other people whose lives were marred by the criminal syndicates of the Outer Rim. They call themselves the Cloud Riders, and they seek to hunt the syndicates to extinction.
The crowd splinters and spreads across the the Fata Morgana as they return to their posts.
"If you want me to look over your electroripper later, I can."
Affee, a Twi'lek with brown eyes and a leg made of metal smiles at her and touches the electroripper staff that she's holding. Her mother gifted it to her for her coming of age. It took a beating in their last raid.
Enfys twists it in her palm and passes it to her. "Why don't you show me how to care for it?"
Shadae Nest got sick. So sick that her warm, dark skin became mottled with bruises beneath the eyes and her eyes drooped with exhaustion. The days went by too fast as the illness struck her. One day she was fine, and another she was near death, her bed aboard the Fata Morgana framed by red-stained tissues.
Her mother is not one to buckle to the wills of her body, so Enfys finds her standing on the viewing deck looking out at the stars.
"Enfys."
That tone sets her on edge. Enfys comes closer, listening patiently as she clears her throat and rasps through the pain.
"I won't be here much longer."
She doesn't react right away. It hasn't really sunk in; that kind of dawning realization takes time that they don't have. So she takes it in stride, calm and steady, grasping her mother's hand. "You'll be okay."
It's got to be the truth. It's not. She clutches the lie with all her strength, and with the squeeze of her hand and a gentle, disapproving glance, her mother shatters it to pieces. "I'm going to die."
Her next cough is bloody and discolored. Shadae takes her helmet from where she's been holding it against her hip, holding it out to her. Enfys can feel her lip curl; it's like a slap to the face, just as cruel and abrupt.
"No."
Shadae lifts the helmet and puts her free hand against her cheek. "You have to take it."
"No. It's yours." She snarls and puts her hand against the brow of it, yanks her face away from her touch. "You can't put this on me. I-"
Shadae clears her throat, shakes her head. Her beaded braids click quietly together. "It's not up to me. I didn't choose this."
"I won't take it from you."
Her face grows serious. "You can take it from me now, or you can take it from what's left of me. That's the way it's going to be."
If she ever gets her hands on the men who ravaged her world for its resources and left them to die in the aftermath- she thinks she might tear them limb from limb, pull their teeth from their mouths, might set them alight. Or maybe she'll do something slower. More methodical. She's patient. She can be so patient.
Enfys pushes the rage aside just for a second, trying to keep a clear head, but all it does is let a sickening hot dread fill her up from gut to lung. "Nobody will ever respect me the way they do you."
"They will."
"They underestimate me. I'm young. I'm-"
"Let them. Use it to your advantage." Shadae presses the helmet into Enfys' hands. It's made of stark white bone; the fangs to each side belong to the Narglatch of the frozen planet Orto Plutonia, where her great-grandmother killed it. Carved into the brow is a reverse eclipse; shining light into darkness. It's a little on the nose. She loves it.
"Read it to me," says her mother, pointing to the engraved Aurebesh.
"You know what it says already."
"Read it, darling."
Enfys swallows, and clears her throat. She thinks she might be sick. "Until we reach the last edge, the last opening, the last star... and can go no higher."
"Keep going. When I'm gone- keep going."
She gives up and clutches the mask to her chest. "I promise."
Two days later, her mother dies in the pilot's seat. Her body is found still sitting, her wide dark eyes still open, watching the lights of hyperspace bend around the ship.
The Cloud Riders burn her ashes on the shore by the sea, where the black-blue waves cascade against the rocky cliffs.
She puts the helmet on her head. The syndicates must pay for what they've done to her world, and to all the lives they've ruined. Affee holds her hand as they watch the funeral pyre burn low.
They will have to journey on until they can go no higher.