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“Welcome back to Peridea.” Ahsoka joked as Sabine clambered out of the T-6’s engine compartment. She offered a cup of still steaming tea in one hand and a dirty rag in the other. Sabine used it to wipe off her hands. She had been trying to fix up the hyperdrive and find a way to upgrade it without blowing the entire system of the Jedi shuttle, for what could have been hours or days at this point, but it still remained un-boosted and incredibly fragile. It was hard to tell time passing from inside of the warm darkness of the ship’s mechanical heart.
“Do you want to know something awful Huyang just reminded me of?” Ahsoka asked as Sabine took the tea, the weak Peridean suns were setting or was it rising over the Noti settlement?
“Go on,” Sabine replied in a rough voice, her throat itching, the tea didn't help, she wasn't sure if it was from its tenuous use or from the vapours she had been inhaling for the last few weeks.
“We've been here for seventy-four days, and ten galactic standard hours.” Ahsoka chuckled, checking the holoreader in her gauntlet, “Make that seventy-five now. Happy Life Day!”
Sabine almost dropped the cup in surprise, “really,” she rasped “It is?”
Somehow now she was thinking about it, Sabine could feel every one of those days, she was exhausted. They had unleashed Thrawn upon the galaxy that long ago and since then they had been doing everything in their power to undo it.
Both of them and Huyang had been working nonstop to fix up the ship, to find something, some way to get off of this rock.
Kriff, Sabine had seen Ahsoka spend days in deep meditation trying to reach the Purgills or any other force beyond this awful, cursed planet but there had been nothing. Not that Sabine could really tell, so she had put everything she had into working on the ship instead.
And now it was Lifeday. That didn't feel right.
“Are you sure he didn't get his calendar scrambled with all the damage he's taken?”
“He's just as reliable as the last time we checked,” Ahsoka replied with a wan smile. “He's not scrambled yet.”
“Are you sure? I would give his servos a dust check if that helps?”
“It's not him, it really has been that long.”
Sabine sighed, flopping down into the alien moss that passed as the grass on most of the Peridean surface, “lifeday, I can't believe it.”
there should have been a reaction surely, Sabine should have felt something. Yet it felt like any other day all the same. When she had been younger, when Lifeday had been a little rebellion against the empire, back on the Ghost there had always been this actual, physical feeling that she had recognised. There was a tangibility about it she couldn't describe.
She always got excited to see Zeb and Ezra fighting to put up their bit of the decorations, to hear Hera singing alone to the cheesy music that planets would bootleg over the empire’s regular propaganda. It felt like the whole galaxy had been alive with a kind of energy, a kind of song or light that made every day feel just a bit more special.
But now there was nothing.
Everyone else she cared about was galaxies away, she hadn't ever realised how much she could miss people before the ghost, but now without them, it felt like a void had opened up inside her.
It was such a sudden strong feeling that even Ahsoka frowned, Sabine thought it must have been through the force until she caught a look at the fierce grimace she was wearing in the metal panelling of the T-6. Of course, Ahsoka recognised that expression. Surely she knew it as well as Sabine did, she had lost people too, and everyone else was on the other side of the galaxy and they never knew if they would see them again.
The sun was definitely rising as Sabine crashed in the Noti trailer that had once belonged to Ezra, everything was how he had left it. It felt far more like home than the mess of wires and Jedi artefacts inside the shuttle. There were little sculptures made of softwood and pebbles hanging from the ceiling that Ezra had left behind. They swung gently in the wind as Sabine slumped onto the bed. They watched over her, some had almost humanoid features, but it felt like they were keeping her as safe as her helmet and sabre were. Staring up at them she tried to cast her thoughts away. Where was Ezra now, surely he had escaped, gotten back to the republic to warn them, surely they were building a hyperdrive ring, surely he was back home on the ghost where he belonged. Spectre 6 sitting around the table with Hera and the other generals and of course little Jacen, eating Tip-Yip and telling stories, surely they were missing her the same way she was missing them.
She couldn't stop thinking about it, she wasn't sure if she had managed to fall asleep or not, but lying there, being taunted by the memories whilst her body ached and her mind ran at a million lightyears wasn't doing her any good.
She must have fallen asleep at some point, Sabine mused, the sun was high in the sky when she climbed out of the pod, it seemed very quiet, the Noti didn't seem to be scurrying around the way they usually did, and Sabine certainly couldn't hear their little clicking piping voices. She looked around, had something happened?
She snatched up the lightsaber, were they under attack? The anticipation didn't make her heart race the way she knew it did to others, in fact, Sabine felt calmer, more at peace in battle than she did in any kind of meditative trance. Every sense heightened, Sabine climbed onto the roof for a better view.
All was calm, all was quiet.
The wind was gentle on her face, rushing through her hair that was still growing out. She closed her eyes and just let the cold breeze play across her face. She couldn't sense anything wrong. Not that that really meant anything.
Distantly Sabine could hear voices, as they got nearer she could hear the distinct sounds of the Noti chanting rhythmically. Over the nearby hill, the voices were coming, along with the sound of something heavy being rolled. Sabine jumped down from the roof just as she saw the tips of Ahsoka’s blue and white montrals.
Behind her, a neat line of Noti were rolling a huge stone up the hill.
“Not helping?” Sabine asked as Ahsoka noticed her with a wave.
“They wouldn't let me.” the older woman replied, “but they're getting a little help,” she said with a wiggle of her fingers, “whether they accept it or not.”
Sabine watched them roll it past impressed, it was taller than her, taller than Ahsoka too by at least a head, and certainly far larger than the Noti but they moved it expertly, only made a little smoother by Ahsoka’s gentle guidance.
“What on earth is that for?” Sabine asked, rubbing dust from her eye as they rolled it into camp. The few Noti left behind that she had seen before, were pulling their homes out of the way, they followed behind like a strange parade before the stone was upended, its egg-like point towards the sky.
It looked like one of the mountains from Lothal, a little piece of home. Sabine thought of the Jedi temple, of back then she had no idea of the power within that place, or even within herself.
With the stone apparently righted correctly and positioned in the middle of the Noti camp a cheer went up. A few Noti even made a point to hug onto Sabine’s legs, a few of the younger ones were looking up at it with the same degree of surprise and wonder, and a little of that familiar confusion that Sabine had.
“What is this for exactly, do the Noti have Life Day too?”
“Not exactly.” Ahsoka replied, but was moving again before Sabine could get a good answer, “Now come help me carry some things down from the shuttle.”
“Do I get a choice?” Sabien replied, but she went willingly anyway.
“So what is going on?”
“It's a Life Day miracle,” Ahsoka replied smartly, “It's all for you actually, you miss it don't you, you don't need to say anything, of course, you do, I can see it in your face.” she continued with a sage-like expression, “I was telling the Noti chieftain all about it, about the kind of things that you're meant to do at Lifeday, and well he wanted to help.”
Sabine looked to the big rock, this was certainly a new part of Lifeday to her.
“It's meant to symbolise the tree of life, the way the Wookies originally celebrated. But there's no trees big enough on this planet that aren't all strange and twisted." Ahsoka continued, “And we didn't want to go into the witch-lands, so Noti suggested the next best thing.”
“Well, it's certainly a statement.”
“We can still decorate it.” Ahsoka laughed awkwardly, “I was actually hoping you could help us out with that.”
“Yes, lady Tano suggested you had left some art supplies here from your last visit,” Huyang announced in his tinny voice as he clambered up from the hold section with a duraplast box in his arms.
“Hey! That's where my good paint markers ended up.” Sabine exclaimed, dropping the cables that Ahsoka had handed her to paw through the box of her old things. Past a few homemade colour grenades, there were a handful of colours and a few cans of paint left, she gave them an experimental shake but everything seemed to still be liquid.
Box in her arms and the wiring in Huyangs they made their way back to the Lifeday rock. One of the elderly Noti was tending to a small fire as a few of her fellows built up a larger one beside her.
“They're really getting into the spirit of things,” Sabine whispered wondrously,
Ahsoka’s montrals twitched in response, “We had plenty of time to communicate as we moved the stone, they've never had a holiday like this before, they rarely stop moving long enough to celebrate, but with us here they say they've never felt safer.”
“So-”
“So, it seems they are throwing this celebration for you two, Lady Wren.”
“It's certainly in the spirit of Life Day, isn't Huyang,”
The droid motioned like a shrug, his lights flashing as he thought, “I've never seen a Lifeday quite like it, and you both know my historical record is most detailed and accurate.”
“We know.” Ahsoka reassured, “Do you remember how we used to celebrate in the temple when we were young? I feel like my memory needs jogging.”
Sabine let them talk, and with a few helping claws from the Noti, she began to work. Huyang and Ahsoka’s voices formed a pleasant backdrop as they talked about a day so long past. It was both dreadfully sad, and beautifully complicated, things changed, came in and out of fashion, great darkness came and went and eventually people bounced back, there were patterns within the stories. Sabine tried not to focus too hard on them as she painted.
With her cans of pain, she took wild streaks and zigzags in greens and a nice teal across the surfaces, maybe a little loth cat pattern here and there in a lilac marker. The inks and paints mixed and bubbled when they collided, some of them ran or worked in a way she didn't expect across the mostly smooth, close-textured dark grey rock. But that hardly mattered, with the cables Ahsoka had found they had strung the Noti’s pods up with lights that connected them all up in a brilliantly linked net of colours that encircled the fire and the Lifeday rock.
Some of the children had put their own handprints on the rock, small squiggles in bright colours near the bottom where they could reach.
It was a good idea.
Sabine thought to herself, a symbol of community, a mark that said; hey I was here, I was alive, i was a person, and I was not alone.
She drew a little picture of those she missed a little higher up, her mother, father, brother, and Ezra. Hera and Jacen and Zeb too. The loth wolff in its bold white she signed with her own hand print in a brilliant magenta. Then she began to help the others. She lifted up one of the Noti children for a better reach and then found three or four crawling around her feet wanting to go next. They made their mark, none of them were perfect, hey some of them were young enough that it wasn't much more than finger or claw painting, but they all meant the same thing. Isn't it great to be here ?
If Sabine ever got back to her galaxy then she was going to make this a tradition. Even the adult Noti wanted to leave something behind. A few of them wrote notes in their script she couldn't read, but most just left a colourful handprint or outline on the tree. Even Huyang tried, but it wasn't the best, so Sabine just drew him on with the best colours she had. His circuits almost blew in pleasant surprise when he saw it, or maybe he had seen the rude drawing someone had done nearby.
Ahsoka was watching the whole time, she used the force to raise a line of rope hung with brightly coloured clothing and rags as a Noti couple tied the other end to their pod. She looked happy, Sabine thought, but she still had that air of impenetrable sadness about her.
The rope soared through the air and tied itself to the next home down. Sabine watched it happen, a Noti child on her shoulders. Hoisting the kid down eventually, she whistled through her fingers, a loud clear note that made sure to turn heads.
“Come on master, you haven't had a go yet.”
Ahsoka laughed at that, “you don't need to keep calling me master,” she said with those ancient eyes fixed just past Sabine. “And looking now, I don't even know what to leave, you've all been working so hard,” she said that last bit to a child who attached himself to her leg with a bear hug.
Sabine shrugged, “it doesn't have to be groundbreaking, that's my job,” she smirked.
“Fair enough.”
Looking up at that monument Sabine wasn't sure how to read her teacher, she seemed sad, she was smiling, but hey you couldn't say that Sabine couldn't read beyond that.
“It's brilliant.” Ahsoka finally said, “You should be proud of yourself.”
“Yeah,” Sabine shrugged, lowering the kid down from her shoulders, “I know.”
“No, you don't.”
“What?”
“You have no idea how brilliant this is.” Ahsoka said quietly, “Even in my times I never saw anything that lived up to the truest spirit of the Jedi than this. Back in the order, well they would have been so amazed by your work. You may not be the strongest, but you understand everything we were working for.” she chuckled to herself, “You would have brought so much light to the order, though I doubt some of the old masters could have dealt with the surprise.”
“You miss them don't you,'' Sabine said, stating the obvious, maybe she should go back to the temple on Lothal now that she was thinking about it and give it this kind of treatment. “You never talk about them, I mean you talk about the order, but never what it was actually like.”
“It was something else. Something I feel we will never see again." Ahsoka murmured, “They were my family, the way the Ghost was yours.”
“It was your family too,” Sabine told her, reaching for a white paint pen,
“No, pick me a different colour I think.” Ahsoka told her, “But I'll use that one.”
Sabine exchanged it for a vibrant chartreuse-type green, it came out a bit more yellow when she tested it, like light through new leaves but Ahsoka agreed to it.
So very carefully Sabine traced around her master’s outstretched hand.
Ahsoka very carefully wrote something in Aubresh next to it in the white pen, but Sabine didn't quite catch what it said.
Looking back on it, with Ahsoka’s non-painted hand on her shoulder, the Jedi had been right, it really was brilliant, a rainbow riot of a piece, both mural and monument. A riot of colour and life in this barren landscape seemed to glow, emitting a brightness, a kind of light that maybe made even Peridia feel a little more alive. Sabine felt that glow within her, a deep pride and maybe even a little hope, and maybe a little flutter of that festive feeling perhaps.
Back on Kashyyyk where Lifeday originated, the day was all about family, joy, and harmony. These were all apparently values and tenets of Wookiee culture, as well as a little cultural arm-ripping. There it was celebrated with a feast of involved shi-shok fruits and sacred orga roots. None of those were available on Peridia, and neither was Tipyip, which was a bit more of a tragedy, but at least without it Sabine didn't have to think about Kanan and Hera trying to cook it, or the ration bar-type version that her parents back on Mandalore had tried to make when she was so young, but that didn't matter, she told herself. Even if they didn't really have much to eat, let alone to make a feast out of, it didn't matter, what mattered was the people she was with. That only did so much, Sabine was still human after all.
Someone had handed her a rat-type thing impaled on a skewer, something the Noti only got out on certain occasions and Sabine was sitting at the fire trying to toast it evenly when she got the feeling she was being watched. She turned to Ahsoka who was sitting nearby, she returned the look, a few shades paler, then dropped her eyes, looking at something in the distance before flitting back to the children.
Instinctually Sabine’s hand went to her blaster, she lowered the skewer onto the ground as carefully as she could to prevent it getting dirty. She braced herself as she rose, expecting to see raiders or stormtroopers. Or anything really, beyond a few shadows at the edge of the camp. But they were parked up under the gaze of a particle craggy mountain range so that really didn't mean much.
Then, ever so slowly someone, and something materialised out of the shadow’s like she was made from them.
There stood Shin Hati herself.
Sabine was too far away to read her expression, but she didn't care, she powered her sabre on, causing the Noti to gasp and leap back from the brilliant green blade.
Ahsoka didn't do the same, it didn't surprise Sabine at first, she needed to protect the others, but when Shin didn't ignite hers she wondered if she was missing something. In one of her hands, she was carrying something larger, something large furry and unmoving.
She was as unreadable as ever as Sabine got closer, but her eyes seemed even darker and more hollow than they had before and her sour face had managed to acquire a pinched, almost sad look like she had been crying.
Which Sabine wasn't sure was even humanly or physically possible for her.
“What do you want?” she snapped across the space between them, that wasn't much. Her voice was confident, or at least she hoped it was.
She didn't feel it, and to be honest she mostly just felt annoyed. Now? here? Of all times, this just felt like a kriffing insult.
I mean, she thought, it was fucking Lifeday.
Then Sabine noticed, well more like had to recognise that Shin had not reached for her sabre yet. Even though it was right there, Sabine could literally see it right there by her side. And you really couldn't trust these Darksiders, or Sith or rejected inquisitors anyway. That thing could be up in her hands in a second.
“Sabine- '' Ahsoka intoned, it was just loud enough for Sabine to hear it, but she didn't need it, she was ready, she was waiting for whatever Shin Hati had to throw at her.
Or was she?
Because what she threw at her was her lightsaber.
Raising her pale hands above her head, “truce.” Shin exclaimed.
Sabine thought she was hallucinating for a second. Was she dreaming or was this some kind of lifeday wookie miracle?
“Truce?” Sabine asked incredulously, “Are you fucking kidding me? You tried to kill me. You fucking stabbed me!”
If looks could kill then Shin was throwing daggers, and Sabine’s side ached in sympathy.
“You got better.”
Sabine’s response was not really words but that didn't really matter, it got the same message across.
“Why would you even want a truce,'' Sabine snapped, not lowering her sabre, stepping to the side as if to corner a dangerous animal, behind Shin there could be a sheer rock face if Sabine could manoeuvre her right.
Shin’s face fell she stared down at her feet, she looked guilty, sheepish even. Honestly, Sabine was surprised she even felt enough to have those emotions, she had certainly been playing the game of a dark sider long enough, sure she certainly wasn't the leader, but all the time they had to spend in each other's presence Sabine really hand got the feeling she had disagreed with what she was doing.
“I don't need to explain that.”
“Well you certainly do, you're not getting past me!”
Shin snorted, but her hands remained empty. “Take me as your prisoner then, but I brought you something first.”
Ever so slowly she raised her hands above her head. Sabine wanted to turn to see Ahsoka’s reaction but she could barely see her out of the corner of her eye.
Slowly, cautiously, not dropping her gaze the Mandolorian made her way over to the furry lump, she knocked it with her boot, but it did little more than roll.
“What is it?” she asked suspiciously.
Shin shrugged, “Meat, a meal maybe, I thought it would be rude to come to a life day party, without a gift for the host.” That last bit was said with a small but sharp smile, that Sabine wanted in all honesty to shake off her face.
“You-”
“Sabine, stop.” Ahsoka told her, her voice cutting through her battle-readied calmness, “Perhaps you should listen to her. It's life's day. It's a day for trust and community.”
“And family.” Sabine snapped, “and she helped to separate me from them.”
“Look at her.” she replied, placing an orange hand on Sabine’s shoulder forcing her to look away, “she's all alone, maybe she's lost her family too.”
Sabine looked between the two of them and the slowly creeping sun and threw up her hands.
“On your Lekku be it.”
Whatever the thing that Shin had brought had been once, it smelled delicious. Someone, maybe Huyang or one of the Noti had built a spit to roast it, but Sabine wouldn't let her eyes leave Shin Hati.
The other woman was ripping into her chunk of meat like an animal, wolfing it down with a ravenous hunger like she hadn't eaten in nights. In the dimming light, the meat almost looked raw in her hands. The sunset cast everything in a brilliant red-orange light that reminded Sabine far too much of her encounter with Shin’s lightsaber.
Between the two of them, tension was so thick you would have needed that lightsaber to cut it, Ahsoka didn't seem too bothered, she kept her eyes on Shin but all the same, she spoke as if nothing had really changed.
“You know some padawans back at the temple did this kind of thing for lifeday, their master’s all had their own different traditions. All had their own way of paying homage to who they were and where they were going.” she sighed, her sharp Togrutan canines had made quick work of the Peridian roast and now concocted herself before the fire as their storyteller. “My master, Skywalker he never had time for such things, he always had to be out, acting fighting out he had other things to do at the time, so me and a few other Padawans, we would sneak into the temple kitchens after hours and throw ourselves our own kind of party long after the masters had gone to join in with other festivities. There was this one Mirialan girl, one of my closest friends,” Ahsoka recounted with a sad, distant look in her eyes, “Barriss Orfee, her master always took her to Mirial, or at least the Mirialan quarter on Coruscant for their cultural celebrations, she would always sneak me a honey cake or two, made from the flowers that couldn't be found on another planet. I can still remember how they tasted now, so sweet,” she said eyes half closed in memory.
Sabine was expecting Shin to be sneering, or at least not to be listening, and yet there was a faraway look in her eyes as if she couldn't help but listen too.
“We both had sticky hands, hidden in a food larder trying not to laugh so that the cleaning droids would find us, or that the drunken masters wouldn't hear us as they staggered back to their quarters.”
Shin sighed heavily at that, Ahsoka wouldn't let Sabine put blinders on her, but she was unarmed and entranced by the story.
“It sounds beautiful.” she said quietly in a way that Sabine strained to listen, “The order, my master would tell me sometimes, but he never described it like a real place, more as an ideal.”
Ahsoka chuckled at that, “Of course he did. He's no Sith, just someone who wanted their path." She raised her cup to her lips and Sabine realised she was drinking the potent liquor that the Noti brewed from certain mosses, “sometimes, in desiring your path, wanting to walk a neutral line you forget that there are people on both sides.”
“But the Jedi were fools-”
“No,” Ahsoka replied, cutting Skin off, Sabine didn't know who to watch. It was like watching an intense battle of wills, “the Jedi were not fools, they were people. And you should know that, to wield this sabre,” Ahsoka said, tapping her side where Shin’s sabre hung.
“What about her?” Shin snapped back, pointing an accusing finger at Sabine, “She's no Jedi.”
“Excuse me!” Sabine replied in surprise, “I know more about the Jedi than you do!”
There was soft metallic laughter at that, it hung in the silence between them and the crackling of the fire.
“I know more about the Jedi than any living creature ever could, yet- and yet.” A spark went off in his neck, “I seem to have forgotten my point, I think I must be rebooted.”
“I will, in the morning.” Ahsoka told him, “But before I do, do you have any Lifeday music downloaded, to brighten the mood?”
Huyang’s eyes flickered for a second, “I have seventy-three Lifeday playlists downloaded from the temple archives, i shall play Mace Windu’s cooking playlist , as it is the most developed.”
Sabine had no idea what that meant, but Ahsoka laughed like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.
She found herself swapping stories about the rebel’s Life Days with Ahsoka whilst Shin stayed quiet but not unnoticed.
“I never did this kind of thing with Baylan.” She said finally, the sun was low in the sky and Huyang's music had taken on a quieter, more relaxed tone, “I was with him ever since I remember. I never had a life before him, not one I know.”
“And he never celebrated Lifeday?”
Shin shrugged, staring into the fire, the sky was taking on the same colour as it and the air was growing cold.
Sabine had been used to the warmth of the engines, but now she felt the cold run its fingers down her back.
“I didn't even know it was a thing,” Shin muttered, “didn't know it was something everyone else did.”
Sabine didn't know how to answer that, in her mind's eye she could see a young Shin, still with that silly bleach blonde bob, being pulled along by her master through a snowy street, eyes wide with curiosity. It was little more than a daydream or a fantasy, the Empire had never let life day be celebrated, they preferred to celebrate themselves, Empire Day or Ezra’s birthday as Sabine would rather call it.
“I didn't get to celebrate it for years either,” Sabine replied finally, surprising herself with her voice. “Mandalorians aren't much for celebrations of galactic harmony or festive décor,” honestly thinking about it, some twinkling string lights might have caused her mother to disown her a bit faster. “Then I was in the empire,” it was a dark period in her life, and it certainly didn't fill her with pride even now, Sabine felt shame colour her cheeks as she stared down at her boots, “years of my life spent in miserable monotony. But when I got out, I got to start again.”
When she looked up again Shin was looking at her, her face unreadable, but maybe a little less pinched and frosty as before.
“You, a stormtrooper?” Shin asked, and Sabine wanted to take back her previous thought, thinking positively of her.
“Never! How little do you think of me?” she snapped back before she could think, but Shin’s face had cracked into a little shit-eating smile.
“You could have been one though, your aim was bad enough, remember all those times you were trying to hit us?”
“A little fancy flying wouldn't have kept you safe forever.”
“I beg to differ.”
Shin’s next glare was vicious, but she didn't move to do anything rash and it didn't quite seem to reach her mouth.
“I'm glad you like my flying.” Ahsoka scoffed, she had taken up a seat just watching it happen, her Moss wine had been replaced with tea and now she just sipped it as she watched them with an annoying knowing twinkle in her eyes.
But whatever little secret she held onto was far too personal for Sabine to work out.
“You'll need my flight if we're ever going to get back.”
“Get back?” Shin asked incredulously, “You think you're going back?”
Ahsoka raised a brow, “we have to hope, especially today.”
Shin laughed, “They abandoned us, first the empire, then my master. There's no way off this rock.”
“Well, we have to keep trying.” Sabine interjected, “I don't like the idea of dying here, I would rather have died on Lothal than here, where I have nothing.”
Shin made a sniffling noise, and her next few words were spoken with a thick voice, “I have nothing whether I go back or not, but it's impossible, we've been abandoned.”
Sabine crossed her arms, she didn't know what to say, and if she was being honest, seeing Shin as distressed as she appeared made her uncomfortable, she was someone who had caused her so much pain, and yet somehow her heart ached for her. She knew what it was like to feel abandoned, and how to take a leap, to learn to trust.
So when Ahsoka put her hand on Sabine’s shoulder to nudge her into action she was already moving.
Hesitantly she crossed around the fire, to sit beside Shin. The ground was considerably harder here, but she did it anyway, the Noti shuffling around to let her sit as they continued with their conversations and suspicious looks at Shin, they hadn't forgotten her either.
Awkwardly Sabine put her hand on the other girl’s shoulder and tried not to look her in the face when she did so. She had never been the best with people.
Shin sniffed pathetically like a Loth cat that had fallen into a puddle.
“You know this is only for today right?” Shin asked quietly. “This peace- this truce, it's just for today, just Lifeady.”
“It's okay,” Sabine lied, then through slightly gritted teeth, “no one wants to be alone on Lifeday.”
“This means nothing.” Shin responded, “We are still enemies.”
“Not tonight. Not whilst were sat here, under the Lifeday tree.”
“Is that what that thing is meant to be?”
Sabine refused to respond to that.
Beyond the surface they seemed to have a lot in common, for example, they seemed to like the same couple of Lifeday songs, when Huyang started playing them, Sabine couldn't help but sing along in Huttese, Shin had surprised her, by murmuring along. But by the second verse, Sabine had her on her feet joining in. She tried to resist, to refuse, but the song was just too catchy. Anyway, it was far more fun with two.
There were a few Mando'a dialects that only Sabine got, but Shin seemed to know some of the more fringe ones. Her knowledge of languages seemed to be much more than Sabine had ever really expected.
Both of them had known snow when they were growing up, Ahsoka hadn't. Shili was a very temperate planet, she told them she hadn't even realised it could get that cold until she visited Illum, which was an ice planet, and one she expected them to have heard of, which Sabine certainly hadn't.
But Shin had never experienced the finer things of Lifeday, Sabine tried to explain Tipyip to her, or the gift giving or even the weird Wookie programs the republic tried to make popular when the tradition started up again. Shin had experienced much of it alone.
Baylon seemed to have little time for anything outside of his mission. Something Shin wouldn't even explain after a cup or two of Moss wine.
The sky had grown long dark by now and with Sabine’s fuzzy head the sky was full of twice as many stars as a few of the Noti who had not retired to sleep were poking at the fire.
Her arm was still around Shin, but now they were touching more.
Not like in the way they had before when they had been fighting, no now their hands were touching their sides, and as much as it made Sabine shiver to think about, she didn't think for a second about drawing her sabre.
“It's not going to be a Lifeday for much longer,” Sabine murmured looking up at the stars, Shin just muttered something unintelligible as she swirled her cup of warm Moss wine.
“You don't have to go, not really.” Sabine told her, “We can work this out, we can make a proper truce in the light of the day.”
“What's the point?” Shin asked looking up at her, her dark makeup smudged clean in places. “We can't leave, we can't stay, where's the point?”
Sabine sighed, “We won't have to stay forever, even if no one comes for us, I just need to fix up the hyperdrive and find a way to boost our power. Even if we have to build a hyperspace ring, we'll do it. I have people waiting for me.”
Shin didn't say anything for a while. “You could try boosi=ting your sensors instead,” she suggested, "get a signal out, call for the space whales, I don't know.”
Huh, Sabine though, why hasn't she thought of that?
“Are you going to go before the sun rises?” she asked suddenly.
“Why?”
“Because,” Sabune told her slowly, “you have to leave your mark on our tree.”
“Your tree?”
“This wonderful piece of art over here, you can't leave without it.”
“You're crazy,” Shin told her.
But giggling quietly, Sabine lifted her up, paint can in hand, as Shin left her hand print up near the top, close to Sabine’s own. In a shade of brilliant orange, the fire light lit up, like it glowed. Beside it, she signed her name. And drew the smallest snowflake she could. A little symbol of an almost home.
Sabine’s heart glowed to see it, though that could have been the Moss wine. She wanted to wake up the next day and see Shin. there was so much possibility behind her, so much of a future in her eyes. Sabine wanted to understand her, properly like she had from the moment they had met. To sit under her electrically fierce glare. To understand her.
But it couldn't be. As the paint dried and Lifeday came to a close, Shin Hati melted away into the night, clutching at a clove now stained orange. Thinking of a last Lifeday miracle she could perform, Shin vanished like a snowflake against bare skin.
And when the sun rose, there were several imperial ship parts where she had been.
Sabine was left wondering if it had been a dream. The next Lifeday couldn't come soon enough, she wanted her miracle back.