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Who was feeding the Lothcat?
The question brought Sabine’s focus back into sharp relief again, just as it did every morning, or whatever passed for morning on the new planet, where she’d measured the time between sunrise and sunset as fifty-seven standard hours before her chrono ran out of battery.
Who was feeding the Lothcat?
Sabine pressed her knuckles against her eyes and drew a deep breath of the pod’s stale air. She could already hear Ahsoka puttering about outside, making busy with the stove and the caf pot. Further away, the voices of the Noti burbled like a distant stream. It had been a week since Huyang had powered himself down to save power.
She swung her legs out of her cot and fumbled for her boots. Someone had to be feeding the Lothcat. Someone had to have come by her tower. Or maybe they wouldn’t, because she had done her level best to discourage look-ins, well-wishers, do-gooders. Maybe the Lothcat had run away into the wilds. Would it even recognise her when she got back? If she even could get back.
Her clothes had softened, pilled with lint, after repeated wash cycles with the soap the Noti produced. She pulled her boilersuit on carefully, trying not to kick a hole straight through the worn knees. Ahsoka had already made herself a new outfit from the Noti’s supplies, had offered up a needle and thread to Sabine, but she’d refused. The gloss paint on her nails had long since chipped off and the purple dye in her hair had faded to a cool brown. The boilersuit and her armour were some of the only things she had left from their galaxy. If she didn’t wear them she would become unrooted, separated from everything she recognised as home.
Dressed, she switched on the pod’s handcrank lantern and pulled out her tin of paints. It had been gifted to her by the Noti a few weeks after they’d arrived, when she’d learned enough of their language to answer questions about who she was, where they’d come from, and why they were stranded like Ezra had been. It was a poor exchange, she thought, for them to lose Ezra and get her in return. Ezra could make friends wherever he went. Sabine did not have that same talent. However, they clearly liked her enough to have given her the set of paints and a few brushes.
She hadn’t found it in herself to paint anything yet - although she knew she should, even just to gift something in return. Instead, she got up in the mornings and painted herself, using the finest of the howler-bristle brushes to flick a line of dark brown-black across her eyelids, staining her lips and cheeks with red, dipping her fingertips in pale purple as an imitation of nail gloss. The paints were all natural, made from plants or earth or beetles, and they made her feel a little more like herself in such a foreign, distant land.
Outside, Ahsoka had finished her breakfast and was packing up her dishes.
‘Morning,’ she said. ‘Caf pot is still warm, if you want some.’
Sabine muttered a greeting in return and reached for the pot, pouring herself a cup. It had rained in the night, and the flattened grass around their pods glimmered with dew. Peridea - that was what the Noti called it - didn’t seem to have seasons the way Lothal had, and in the days since their arrival the temperature had been much the same, the rain had been the same, the sky had been the same.
Ahsoka stood, brushed down the front of her tunic, and looked out across the heath.
‘I’m going away for a while,’ she said, in that placid, emotionless tone that set Sabine’s teeth on edge. If Ahsoka felt anything about them being stranded on Peridea, she kept it well hidden. Sabine, by contrast, made regular trips alone away from their camp just to scream into the sky.
She collected herself and stoked the fire. ‘Where?’
‘I’ve sensed something in the force.’
‘A disturbance?’
‘More of a…movement.’
Sabine was used to her master being cryptic. It was a Jedi thing. She sucked in a breath and nodded. ‘Okay. A movement.’
‘I think it might be the fallen Jedi Knight, Baylan Skoll. I sense he has taken a new path.’
Neither of them had seen Skoll since the day Thrawn had left. Ahsoka had theorised early on that he had gone to live with the nomad clan on the other side of the ridge, but they’d watched the movements of the clan through the ship’s quadnocs several times, and the older former Jedi hadn’t been among them. Although his apprentice had.
‘What about the other one?’ Sabine asked.
‘The apprentice? She came close to our camp the other night.’
Sabine felt something flash in her head, a sudden dizzy feeling. ‘And you didn’t tell me?’
Ahsoka crossed her arms. ‘It was hardly worth it. She was only gathering water from the stream.’
‘She’s not with her master?’
‘It would seem she isn’t.’
A familiar pain flared just below Sabine’s ribs. Whether the apprentice had been merely gathering water or not, Ahsoka was lying about why she hadn’t mentioned it. If Sabine had been there, she would have run her lightsaber through the other woman’s gut in exchange for what she’d done on Lothal. She took up her cup and drank, focusing on the bitter taste. Ahsoka had burnt the caf, like she normally did, but at least they had caf.
Ahsoka, evidently sensing the darkening of Sabine’s thoughts, grabbed her pack and made to leave.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Huyang wouldn’t mind if you powered him up. May the force be with you.’
And that was it; Ahsoka left without fuss or fanfare, walking steadily into the distance, head held high. Sabine cradled the cup of caf, now cool, in her hands. The red pigment she’d applied to her lips had left a stain on the rim, bleeding into the ceramic’s natural grain.
*
Sabine packed the tin of paints and a few scraps of old fabric into her bag and headed out not long after Ahsoka. The suggestion that she power up Huyang - that he wouldn’t mind - had rankled her. Huyang had powered himself down for a good reason. Ahsoka clearly thought Sabine wasn’t strong enough to be left by herself, that her need to be coddled and supervised would override Huyang’s wish to preserve power for their journey home, whenever that would be - and it stung, but then again, most things Ahsoka said seemed to sting these days.
Sabine rode her howler out across the heath, thinking about the lothcat again, because if she was thinking about the lothcat then she wasn’t thinking about all the other things she’d left behind. If she was thinking about the lothcat then she didn’t have to think about Kanan, and if she didn’t have to think about Kanan, then she didn’t have to think about how she’d failed him by letting Thrawn escape.
It was too easy to spiral like this. Peridea was a big, empty planet, and there wasn’t much to do but think.
She pulled on the howler’s reigns and stopped close to the stream. Mud splattered against her legs when she jumped down, releasing a rich, earthy smell. A thin, reedy grass grew at the banks of the stream, and parts of it had begun to die off, turning a pale yellow that lay in stark contrast with the deep green of the healthy grass and the deep ochre of the mud. She stood and stared at her feet for a while, studying the colours, scraping a stone through the dirt with the toe of her boot. The Noti really deserved some artwork in exchange for the paints, something that conveyed her thanks, and she had vague plans to go out and sketch the distant hills or draw on of their pods, but this was what held her attention. Mud and dead grass. Decay and rot. After all, what was she doing on Peridea but rotting?
The howler growled behind her. She looked up, caught a flash of movement further downstream, and went for her blaster without thinking. It took her a moment to find the source. Skoll’s apprentice, Shin Hati, was crouched in the reeds, frozen, wide-eyed, clutching a canteen of water in her filthy hands.
Sabine let out a breath, blaster still levelled at the other woman. It was a useless gesture. The blaster had run out of charge days ago. But Shin stayed frozen. She looked wild, almost feral, her once-white hair grown overlong and faded to brown, a new sharpness in her face. A heavy cloak was bundled around her shoulders, making her look small, although Sabine had been close enough to know that Shin was taller.
Time seemed to stretch. Sabine’s arm felt heavy, and her grip on the blaster weakened. She remembered waking up in the clinic on Lothal, but not the fight before it. She remembered the residual burning pain of the lightsaber wound under bacta patches and scratchy clinic clothes, but not the actual moment of the wounding.
She holstered the blaster, turning back to look at the mud beneath her feet. When she looked back up, Shin Hati was gone.
*
Thinking about the lothcat meant not having to think about everything she’d left behind, but thinking about the lothcat still meant thinking about Lothal and being reminded that she was still on another planet, in another galaxy, with no way of getting home. Thinking about Shin Hati bypassed all these thoughts.
Sabine thought about Shin the entire journey back to the camp. She’d been alone. Her master had gone. She was dirty, and frightened, and why hadn’t she drawn her lightsaber? They’d been enemies before. Sabine hadn’t hesitated to go for her blaster - although she hadn’t drawn her own lightsaber, the only weapon she had left that actually might have done some damage.
Shin was sleeping rough, she decided, as she tied the howler up next to her pod. Clearly she no longer travelled with the nomad clan they’d seen her with before. She’d lost her lightsaber, or broken it. Her master was gone. She was alone. She was living in the dirt. She would be hungry, and cold, and probably thinking about the galaxy she’d left behind too, probably thinking about some stupid pet and who was feeding it.
Sabine bade the Noti an early goodnight and went into her pod without dinner, then to bed without taking off the makeup she’d painted on that morning, knowing she’d wake up with sticky eyes and chapped lips. She was rotting on Peridea. It seemed that Shin Hati was rotting too.
*
Sabine found Shin the next day asleep in a small depression of earth, a short walk uphill from the stream. She had no tent, no bedroll. She slept curled up on one side, like a child, head resting on her pack, cloak drawn up over her shoulders.
Sabine dismounted her howler, trying to avert her gaze. It was too intrusive, watching the other woman sleep, even though they were both out in the open.
At the sound of her boots hitting the mud, Shin sat up, squinting, one hand going to her belt. But there was no lightsaber there.
‘It’s just me,’ Sabine blurted out. The one you stabbed, she wanted to add, but it didn’t seem like the time to be abrasive; Shin had pulled the dirty cloak tight under her chin and was staring up at her in fear, her face ash-pale.
‘Just me,’ Sabine repeated, holding up her hands. She’d left her useless blasters back at the camp, although the lightsaber was stowed in her bag - just in case. ‘Are you hungry?’
Shin made a small movement, shoulders rising and rolling forward, as if trying to make herself smaller. Her gaze dropped to the ground.
‘I might be,’ she said eventually.
Sabine had to turn away. Shin’s voice was softer than she remembered, although she supposed neither of them had had much opportunity to be soft. There was a smokiness to it, a depth that didn’t quite match her outward brittleness. Sabine grabbed the saddlebag from the howler, feeling inside for the warm, leaf-wrapped packet of food she had prepared back at the camp earlier. Her fingers brushed against the hilt of the lightsaber.
She could do it if she really wanted. Shin was unarmed. She looked weak. All it would take was one quick cut, and then they’d be even.
Sabine pulled out the packet of food and tossed it onto the grass, followed by a canteen of fresh water, then closed the bag. ‘You’re hungry or you’re not,’ she said. ‘Take it. It’s safe.’
There was a moment’s pause. The howler made a soft braying noise and turned to sniff the packet. Sabine tugged on the reins, pulling it back.
‘If you don’t want it, I’ll feed it to the howler,’ she said.
Shin sprung forward and grabbed the food, disappearing it into the folds of her cloak.
‘Later,’ she said.
‘My master said she saw you collecting water from the stream,’ Sabine said, conscious of how stilted her voice sounded. She’d had too much time to think about what she’d say, and now couldn’t remember any of it. ‘It needs to be purified. Before you drink it. We have a purifier at the camp.’
‘I know.’
‘Your master left?’
Shin’s eyes darted up to meet hers. Sabine hadn’t intended for it to sound like a question. ‘My master just left too,’ she said, in a rush. ‘She was looking for yours.’
Shin stared at her for a moment, then looked away. ‘She won’t find him.’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Why bring me food?’ Shin asked. ‘You drew a blaster on me yesterday.’
‘You looked hungry.’
‘That’s not your problem though, is it?’
‘I felt sorry for you, alright?’ Sabine felt heat rising in her face. ‘You’re stuck here just as much as I am.’
Shin pulled the food packet from inside her cloak, unwrapped a corner, and watched the steam rise into the air. Sabine wasn’t sure the food - a mix of boiled root vegetables and claggy, porridge-like stewed grains - looked or smelled particularly appetising, but it was the best she could do with her limited skills and supplies.
‘I don’t have my lightsaber anymore,’ Shin said. ‘If you’d taken the shot, you probably would have succeeded.’
‘What happened?’
Shin took a bite, then another. She shook her head, mouth full. Sabine felt compelled to look away again. Watching her eat seemed just as intimate, if not more, as watching her sleep.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Sabine admitted. ‘My blaster’s out of charge.’
Shin wiped her mouth with the cuff of her grimy overshirt. Half of her meal had already disappeared. ‘I forfeited my lightsaber in a fight.’
Sabine bent to flatten out a patch of grass and then sat down a few paces away from Shin, who carefully re-wrapped the remainder of the packet of food and stowed it back under her cloak.
‘I lost the fight,’ she said sombrely.
‘I figured,’ Sabine muttered.
‘I was with the travelling clan,’ Shin continued. ‘They go by a code. I was challenged to prove myself or leave.’
‘Well, we’re with the Noti,’ Sabine said. ‘They seem alright with us sticking around.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever get to go back?’
Sabine drew her knees up to her chest, looking out across the undulating hills, the grass that seemed to stretch out in waves of green and brown forever until it met the steel-grey sky. The land that was so wide and empty that it looked lonely. Lothal’s landscape had been wide and empty too, but there had been something liberating about its barrenness, in knowing that you were always a few klicks of open road away from a spaceport to somewhere else.
‘We?’ she said eventually.
‘Where would you go to? I don’t know where you come from.’
Sabine felt a tightness in her throat. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just not here.’
‘Me too.’
They fell into silence again. Sabine wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them to her chest as tight as she could. There was a familiar ache there, somewhere between her lungs, that Shin’s question had brought on. Her vision blurred, and for a moment, the endless green landscape of Peridea looked like the glassy surface of Mandalore.
She squeezed her eyes shut and thought, like she always did, about who was feeding the lothcat.
‘I like the paint on your hands,’ Shin’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Is it intentional?’
Sabine opened her eyes and stretched a hand out to look at the purple stains on her fingertips. Most of it had rubbed away, but her nails still held most of their colour. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve always painted them. This is…improvised.’
‘I like it.’
‘It’s not the same.’
Shin swiped a finger across her browbone. ‘I used to have a little stick of black shadow I’d use on my eyes. Picked it up from a trader ages ago on a planet where everyone had painted faces. It ran out weeks ago. I put bleach through my hair too. My master thought it was funny. Said I was sticking out too much for someone who was supposed to be hidden, but he didn’t really mind. I never used to feel awake until I’d put shadow on my eyes. Never felt ready. Do you miss it?’
‘Miss what?’
‘Doing your face. Doing your hair. Making yourself look like yourself.’
Sabine looked back at the purple staining on the tips of her fingers and nodded.
‘It’s the first thing I’ll do when we get back,’ Shin said. ‘Turn back into myself.’
Sabine reached across for the saddlebag. The howler was lying on the grass, muzzle resting on its paws, and gave a little growl as she rummaged in the bag, searching for her tin of pigments. She pulled it out and prised the lid open, showing it to Shin.
‘I’ve made do with these,’ she said.
Shin leaned forward to look. There was no real rhyme or reason to the arrangement of colours. The deep brown-black Sabine used for eyeliner was made from a kind of clay that came from further upstream, and sat next to the pale purple she’d used for her nails, extracted from the petals of a flower that grew on the hills. Beside it was a dull orange that came from the same flower’s pollen, mixed in with a kind of wax that shone and glimmered when melted. Then there were several shades of earthy green, one of which was produced by crushing the moulted carapaces of a beetle that only thrived in summer. The whole tin was an embarrassment of riches, a representation of hours of harvesting, hours of work, precious resources. It was a kindness she wasn’t really sure how to begin repaying. Perhaps, she realised, as Shin inspected the colours, there was no need to repay it. It was just a kindness.
Shin ran a fingertip over the pigments, stopping at the last one; a rich, arterial red, garish in contrast to the other muted colours.
‘It’s made with berries,’ Sabine offered. ‘Poisonous ones. Only if you eat a lot of them, though. Apparently.’
Shin nodded. ‘What do you do with this one?’
Sabine reached for the canteen, unscrewed the lid, and let a few careful droplets of water fall on the red pigment. Then she dabbed it with her fingertip, picking up the colour as the water soaked in. ‘Here,’ she said, reaching forward, tilting Shin’s face up to the light with her other hand. Shin’s mouth parted to let her apply it to her lower lip, staining the chapped skin.
Sabine pulled her hand away. She swiped her finger along the cuff of her boilersuit, leaving a dark stain. Her face burned. Shin pressed her lips together, then smiled.
‘Like that,’ Sabine said. ‘It’s a start.’