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Greez kept trying to make them take holidays. After what happened on Nur, he could hardly be blamed for wanting to take things easy for a bit.
A lightsaber would to the abdomen was no joke and not being able to go to a med centre without risking being arrested made it even less pleasant.
But at least Cal was walking again. He was a restless person, and compulsory bed-rest was his personal nightmare.
Cal wasn’t usually the kind to take breaks, but it was nice to spend time with the crew when they weren’t running for their lives. Not that being chased didn’t have it moments. It could fun sometimes, in a reckless barely-get-out-alive kind of way. But this time had been a bit too close to the ‘barely’ and even Cal had to admit that.
So holidays it was. Greez had chosen a picturesque planet; small, uninhabited, and largely devoid of resources, which made it an unlikely stop for anyone else. The atmosphere was thinner than usual, lending a slight sharpness to every breath. None of them were planning on exerting themselves much though. This was a time for stillness, for quiet.
Lakes and ponds lay scattered across the land like pieces of broken glass catching the last of the sunlight. Rolling slopes of soft, purple grass stretched out in every direction, swaying in the gentle wind. The occasional tree punctuated the horizon, dark silhouettes against a sky that deepened from pale blue to tinged with the start of the yellows of sunset.
Cal lay on his back in one of the larger ponds, the water cool against his skin.
It was too cold for Merrin, she’d refused with a shake of her head and a wrinkle of her nose before heading back to the ship, but Cal didn’t mind, he found something soothing in it. The shock of the temperature jolted his system, his heart beating faster, blood rushing through him like it had only just remembered how to.
Then, after a few moments the adrenaline dissipated, and he was left with just the blissful water all around him. Floating there, he felt weightless. The aches in his muscles, the lingering stiffness from too many days spent healing in bed, all seemed to dissolve. With every slow breath, the tension in his body eased, carried away by the gentle breeze skimming the surface of the water.
After a while, he pushed himself into a slow stroke. His arms and legs moved with effort, stiff at first, but loosening as he found a rhythm. He didn’t swim far, just a few laps across the still surface. He stretched each limb to its limit, revelling in the quiet burn of movement. It was the most alive he’d felt in weeks.
BD twittered at him from the bank, pacing in the grass with nervous little hops. Cere had given the droid strict instructions: don’t let Cal overdo it and definitely don’t let him swim out too far.
Cal just lifted a hand out of the water and gave BD a lazy thumbs-up. No words, just a quiet signal to show he was fine. He was staying close, taking it slow.
The droid let out another series of uncertain beeps but didn’t move. Eventually, he settled back down, still watching, but no longer fussing.
Cal smiled to himself and let the water hold him again.
Cal drifted. The water cradled him, cool and quiet, lulling his muscles into calm. He let his eyes close for a moment too long. The warmth of the sun on his face, the slow rhythm of breath, just a moment. Just a second more.
Then he was falling.
His stomach dropped and his limbs flailed, reaching, grasping. His hand shot out toward his lightsaber, but it was falling too, falling down a lift shaft, falling into a tomb. He couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t see it. Panic surged through him. He was exposed, helpless.
Then-
A face.
Dark, featureless, wrong, hovering inches from his own. A flash of red. A line of fire across his side-
He gasped and jerked upright, splashing hard as he thrashed back into wakefulness. Water surged around him. His breath came fast and shallow as he kicked to keep himself afloat, the pond suddenly feeling deeper, colder.
He blinked. The sun was still above. The sky was still blue. BD was back on his feet, chirping anxiously from the shore.
It had only been a second.
But his heart was pounding like he’d been in a fight.
His abdomen was aching again. A dull, familiar throb that cut through the lingering haze of the dream.
BD-1 buzzed and whooped at him from the bank, more insistent this time.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Cal called back, though the words didn’t carry much weight. He wasn’t fine but he didn’t need anyone running over to fuss. “It’s probably time I got out anyway.”
The water here was shallow, and he didn’t have to swim far before his feet touched the soft, silty bottom. He waded out slowly, the cool pond clinging to his skin.
On shore, he ruffled his wet hair with a towel before wrapping it around his shoulders, letting the sun and fabric do the rest. BD chirped quietly and fell into step beside him.
The ground underfoot was soft with spongy grass, cool and springy as he walked. It should have been refreshing. Comforting, but there was a strange loneliness to the landscape, not unwelcoming, just… empty. Cal wasn’t used to places like this. He had spent his childhood swallowed by the endless sprawl of Coruscant, then the industrial wreckage of Bracca, where the sky had always been choked with smog and metal.
He caught himself before his thoughts could follow that thread any further. This wasn’t the time to be ruminating on the past.
He reached the mantis and moved to his room in the back to get changed into dry clothes.
It was a perfect night, cool but not cold, the air still and comfortable. The kind of night that invited quiet contemplation.
Cere had picked up her halisket and was playing softly on the Mantis’s ramp, the gentle notes weaving through the air like a lullaby for a world with no one to hear it.
Greez sat just inside, cradling a cup of tea in his hands as he flipped through a collection of recipes he’d been meaning to try, muttering to himself about ingredient substitutions.
BD-1 was perched at the holotable, his small frame illuminated by the flickering light of the display as he diligently backed up his precious maps, chirping to himself in quiet satisfaction.
Cal appreciated the need to unwind but he was itching to do something. His lightsabre wound had almost entirely healed, but it still pulled uncomfortably sometimes, and he knew that he should be resting and recovering like Cere suggested.
He had a sneaking suspicion that they had deliberately picked a planet that was so safe and relatively featureless, so the temptation wasn’t there.
Warm and dry again, Cal stepped down the ship’s ramp. Cere sat off to one side, halisket resting in her lap, the last notes of her playing still humming faintly in the cooling air.
She looked up as he passed. “Good swim?”
He paused, turning slightly toward her. “Yeah. The water was great, it just…” He hesitated, words catching. For a second, he considered telling her about the flash in the water, the moment of panic, the memory or whatever it had been. But he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” she said gently.
Cal gave her a tired smile, then sat halfway on the ramp’s edge “It was just for a moment. I let my mind wander too far, and… I kind of panicked. Thought I was falling again. Couldn’t reach my lightsaber. Stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Cere said. “It’s memory. And memory has weight. It’s not meant to be ignored.”
She set the halisket aside, hands folded loosely in her lap now.
“You’ve been through more than most people could stand, and you’ve kept going. That’s strength, Cal. But strength isn’t just pushing forward all the time. It’s knowing when to stop and listen to yourself, to what your body and mind are telling you.”
He looked down at his hands. “I know. I just... I wish I didn’t keep carrying it with me. All of it.”
Cere nodded slowly. “We all carry the past. Jedi training teaches us not to cling to it, but not to bury it either. Take what you can from it. Learn from the past but live for the future”
Cal didn’t respond right away. The ramp was warm beneath his hands, the metal radiating the day’s leftover heat.
“Fear clouds judgment,” she added. “But it also points to something that needs healing. And healing takes time. Meditation helps. But so does honesty, with yourself, and with others.”
He let out a slow breath, not quite a sigh. “Thanks,” he said after a moment. “Really.”
Cere gave him a faint smile, then turned her eyes back to her halisket and picked it back up.
Cal stood again and moved further down the ramp.
The last of the sunlight had slipped below the hills, leaving the sky bathed in a fading wash of burnt orange that was quickly giving way to the deep blue of night. Shadows stretched long across the clearing, and a soft wind stirred the grass.
He didn’t know where exactly he meant to go, only that sitting still again didn’t appeal.
That was when he spotted Merrin, a short distance away. She stood half in shadow, gazing off toward the horizon.
“Hey,” he called softly.
She turned, one hand resting at her hip. “Hello, Cal.”
There was a pause not uncomfortable, just thoughtful. She looked like she’d been thinking about something for a while.
“Going somewhere?” he asked, stepping closer.
“I was thinking of walking for a while,” she said, glancing off in the direction she’d been staring. “There’s a hill not far from here. It looked peaceful. High ground. A good view, maybe.”
Cal followed her gaze, and sure enough behind a group of trees emerged a rolling hill not too far or steep but enough to poke out of top of the small thicket. He wasn't sure what kind of view they would get in the rapidly approaching night but a walk sounded good.
“Mind if I come with you?”
She gave a faint, knowing smile. “You’d follow me even if I said no.”
“Probably,” he admitted, grinning. “But I’d walk quietly.”
Merrin shook her head with a soft huff of amusement. “Then let’s go.”
They set off without any real urgency, the grass soft beneath their boots, the breeze light and steady. BD trilled a farewell from the ship but didn’t follow this time. It felt good to stretch his legs again.
As they stepped away from the Mantis, the warm glow of the ship’s ramp and viewports spilled out behind them, a golden contrast against the dark blue expanse of the night.
With each step, the light grew fainter, the soft sounds of the ship; Cere’s playing, Greez’s quiet grumbling, BD’s beeps, melted into the distance. Soon, all that remained was the whisper of the wind, threading through the taller grass, and the sound of their footsteps against the earth.
They didn’t speak much at first. The quiet between them wasn’t empty, just... settled.
The planet’s day-night cycle was brief, and already the sky had quickly deepened into an inky black, stars pinpricking the vastness above them. Cal let himself breathe in the scent of damp earth and distant blossoms, the air cooling quickly. And beside him, Merrin walked in silence, her eyes ahead.
They reached the top of the hill they had been heading for, and as they crested the summit, Cal’s breath caught in his throat.
The galaxy unfolded before him, an ocean of stars scattered like dust across the void. The black wasn't truly black; it shifted in layers, blue and violet and grey, pierced by starlight in every shape and size.
For a moment, he felt like a child again, small and awestruck, staring at the cosmos as if seeing it for the first time.
Cal had never really stopped to look at the stars. You couldn’t see them on Coruscant, not through the towering spires and neon haze. He remembered the first time he had truly seen them, when he left on the ship that took him to the Gathering, to Ilum, where he earned his kyber crystal. He stood pressed against the viewport, utterly transfixed. The sheer scale of it, the knowledge that each tiny speck of light was a system, a world, a place he might one day visit, it had overwhelmed him in the best possible way.
He had wanted to stay there forever, basking in the starlight that had travelled so far across across the void just to reach him. But all too soon, the ship had jumped to hyperspace. The stars elongated, stretching into endless streaks of blue, and the moment was gone. Replaced by lessons, plans, and discussions of what they were about to do.
Now he stood under the stars beside a nightsister.
He wonder, faintly amused, what the Jedi Masters would have said about that. Then again he wondered what they'd say about a lot of the choices he'd made. The thought slipped into something heavier. Grief crept in, slowly, then all at once. The galaxy stretched wide above him, endless and bright but he felt impossibly small beneath it. Small and full of something to large to carry.
He missed them. Stars, he missed them. His friends. His order. His Master. More than anything he wished Master Tapal could see the Jedi he had become. Would he be proud? Would he understand?
Then he felt Merrin's hand in his own. She gave it a firm squeeze, real and solid , and gently pulled him back from the edge of those thoughts.
He took a slow breath. He remembered what Cere had told him earlier "Learn from the past, but live for the future"
The grass beneath them was cool and slightly damp as they settled in, lying side by side without a word. The sky above them was infinite, and for once, there was nothing to chase, nothing to run from. Just the stars, just the night, just this.
Eventually, Merrin spoke, her voice quiet, almost reverent. “Do they all have names?”
Cal exhaled softly; his breath just visible as it condensed in the cool night air. “I don’t know.”
“There must be more stars up there than names could ever exist.” Merrin replied
He smiled faintly. “Most stars don’t have habitable systems around them. Some have names, important ones, the ones people have reached or charted. But I don’t think all of them do. There are huge parts of the galaxy that are uncharted”
Merrin hummed thoughtfully. “I used to think I wanted to see them all. But in a thousand lifetimes, I don’t think I would be able to.”
Cal let out a quiet chuckle, though there was a wistfulness to it. “I haven’t seen much of the galaxy either. Not really. I’ve spent so much of my life running, hiding. I don’t often get the chance to stop and look.”
Merrin turned her head toward him, studying his face in the dim light. “I never thought I would want to leave Dathomir,” she admitted. “For so long, it was the only world I knew. The only one I thought I needed.” She paused, then a small smile curved her lips. “But I’m glad I did.”
Cal met her gaze, his own expression softening. “I am too.”
She turned back to the sky. “On Dathomir, we have constellations; shapes and stories woven into the stars. But here, they are all different.”
Cal shifted slightly, propping himself up on one elbow. “Tell me about them.”
And so she did. She traced patterns in the sky with her fingers, painting stories in the darkness, sharing myths passed down through generations of Nightsisters. Some were tales of warriors and spirits, of battles fought long before she was born. Others were softer; stories of guidance and ancestors watching over their descendants. Cal listened, captivated, his mind conjuring images from her words.
They talked for hours, lost in quiet conversation and the vastness of the night. The wind began to bite at them, its chill creeping through their clothes. Cal hadn’t noticed it at first, too focused on her voice, on the stars, on the rare stillness of the moment. But then he realized he was shivering.
Merrin shifted beside him, rubbing her arms against the growing chill. “I would light a fire,” she said softly, “but I don’t want to ruin the light.”
Cal nodded in agreement. The stars above stretched wide and brilliant, scattered in dense, shimmering clusters that looked close enough to touch. Lighting a fire would only throw it off, send shadows dancing across the grass and smear the stillness with flickering light. Better to leave the night untouched, to let the stars keep shining just as they were, undisturbed. He wanted to hold onto this moment a little longer, just as it was.
“I feel like-“ but he stopped the though not sure how to really word what he was feeling right now, if it would even make sense.
Merrin didn’t press, but she looked over at him, waiting patiently. “It’s not often I ever feel like I can just stop and appreciate the present. It’s what Jedi are supposed to do, be part of the Force and live in the moment. But I’ve been running for so long, with… with everything that has happened. With everything that will happen next. It all feels like it's pressing in on me from both sides. Like there’s never any room for the present”
Merrin sat for a moment leaving just a pause to consider what Cal had said “Living in the past is something we have both been guilty of. Maybe we have both been living for the future a bit too much too.”
“I don’t know how to turn that part of me off though, I always worry about what comes next”
“Let’s start with tonight then.” Merrin said, her breath misting faintly in the cool air
Merrin stood, brushing stray blades of grass from her robes. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and before he could ask where she was going, she disappeared in a swirl of emerald mist.
The sudden absence of her presence left the night feeling even colder. Cal exhaled, stretching his fingers against the crisp air. It was only a minute, maybe less, before Merrin reappeared in another flash of green, materializing before him with a small, triumphant smile. In her hands, she carried a flask of something steaming and a thick, soft blanket. He recognised it as one of great grandma pyloons.
He took them gratefully, the warmth of the flask seeping into his fingers as he wrapped the blanket around the both of them. It smelled faintly of the ship, of Greez’s constant efforts to keep the Mantis feeling like home. Merrin settled in beside him again, close enough that he could feel her warmth against his side.
They shared the hot drink in quiet companionship, the rich aroma of warm spices filling the air between them. It was soothing, the heat chasing away the last of the night’s chill.
It didn’t take long before the short night began to fade. The first blush of dawn crept into the horizon, soft pinks and oranges bleeding into the edges of the sky. The stars that had seemed so endless only moments ago began to dim, retreating as the light of a new day took their place.
Neither of them spoke. They just sat there, wrapped in shared warmth, watching the sky change.