Song: "Departing Coruscant" from Attack of the Clones OST

"Here," Arna said, thrusting a suitcase at her. "How many robes should I bring?"

She smiled. "You can wash them in the springs. Bring three or four."

"In the springs? Kalee doesn't have running water?"

"Water runs, Arna. In the springs."

"Whatever." He sighed. "Where on Kalee are you from, anyway?"

A sigh. "Grendaju. Tiny island on the southern tip, so dress warm."

"What tribe?"

She hesitated. "They were killed."

"Every one of them?"

"Men, women, and children. I'm the last of the Qymaili. But there are still people of Grendajese ethnicity there."

"Is the island inhabited?"

"Absolutely," she said. A daze rested in her mind. I'm going home. I'm going back to Kalee at last. Even now, the first thing that darted to her head was the face of her Qymaen. She could not fool herself into believing she could live away from him for long.

Arna tensed again. "Who controls it now?"

"The Yamikhi tribe," she said, examining the furs that had been packed for her. "When the Yam'rii came to Grendaju and killed off the last of the Qymaili, they brought in the Kunbali prisoners they'd caught from the equator and forced them to learn the Huk language. The result of Kaleesh mouths speaking the Huk tongue made a pidgin language and a new group with it."

She exhaled through her mouth giddily. "Six years ago, Qymaen and I...."

She stopped, her throat closing at the memories of seeing her birthplace again, Qymaen's fur-wrapped hands clutching his beloved Czerka rifle as the Kharankhui forces fought to liberate the captured Kunbali tribes, of his lips pressed to her bloodied forehead as their fatigued forces cheered.

And of course, memories of delicately sliding snowballs down his shirt and snickering as he screamed bloody murder into the icy void of Grendaju.

Arna huffed and jolted her out of her thoughts. "Can you speak Yamikhi?"

She shrugged. "A bit, but that's all we'll need."

He nodded. "Eat this while I pack the ship."

✺✺✺

Ronderu never thought she would see an air-traffic control station hovering over Kalee. I suppose that conquering the Yam'rii planets gave the Khaganate some opportunities, she thought ruefully. Qymaen had likely had this built for commercial purposes, yet there were no other ships being checked at air-traffic control.

They are poor, she said. We are poor.

Arna rested his palm over hers. Nothing romantic. It's just a gesture of friendship. "It'll be okay. Can you translate?"

"Certainly." She stood, inhaled, and spoke in Kaleesh. The words rolled off her tongue awkwardly. "Permission to dock at the Bos'wellia spaceport."

"Insert your names and IDs now," a male voice said from the other side.

"I don't have an ID," she hissed at Arna after she'd searched for the Basic. "That was before Kalee required them."

"Well, you can register under mine," he said. "Register as my wife....or something."

"Go to hell." She stepped up to the microphone again. "This is a native of Kalee. I was displaced prior to the time when Kalee issued IDs. You may register me under the name Ru san Jinn."

A pause. "Very well. You may have to go to the Khanate of your tribe in order to receive a proper ID. As for your male passenger?"

"He comes, but does not understand Kaleesh," Ronderu said. Arna stepped upward and scanned his wrist under the proper area.

"You two are registered for transport." A hint of laughter. "But stay away from Kaleela, Jedi segserne. Khagan Khetsuu is not happy with you."

"I am quite aware," Arna said softly. "Thank you." He steered the ship downward and toward the entrance port of Bos'wellia.

✺✺✺

In a house with eleven parents and many tiny bodies forming within the wombs of the women who resided there, a cold sigh ushered its way through the rooms. Khetsuu gently pried his wife's arms from his body, tucked the blankets back over her, and stood.

There's a presence here on Kalee.

He wrapped himself in his linens, pulled on his robe, and stumbled out into one of the halls of his home. The Kaleela lodge had to be expanded due to the amount of people the Jai dynasty now contained.

Shia occupied the couch in the common room. Rón rested on her breastbone as she sucked her little thumb. When his wife saw him, her eyes grew cloudy with sorrow.

She loves you, Bent had said. She loves you more than you'll ever know.

After having married nine other women, he was convinced that she was the only one who did. The others saw him as merely an idol—it had been their fantasy to one day be wed to the great hero of the Huk War. But how many of them know who I truly love? How many of them even care?

Shia spoke. "Ron's grown thin. I fear we may have to go offworld to find suitable care for her."

She made room for him and curled up beneath his shoulder. It was a moment in which he could almost pretend that they were a couple again, just the two of them. Life had been so much simpler then.

"The offworld is a dangerous place," he said. "There is nowhere I could go."

"She'll die without proper care." His wife's voice quavered.

"I don't want it to happen," he said after a moment. "But I'm hated by the Republic, and I couldn't provide for you if you left." He sighed. "I'll figure something out. I have to be alone for a while." He stood to leave.

"Wild Space has forsaken us, hasn't it?" Shia said without looking up.

"No," he replied immediately. The lie burned his tongue, but he stifled it. Enduring pain is a noble act. Keeping her from feeling it—how much more.

"There's something you haven't learned yet," Shia said, her voice harder than diamond. She set their sleeping child down and stood. "Kummar refused to drill even the simplest of ideas into your head."

The flame rose to an inferno. "If you insult her again—"

"I will not be shy about the fact that she was a temptress," Shia snapped. "It was right in her name."

"You didn't even know her!" His voice reverberated throughout the room, thunderous and wrathful.

She shrunk back with a scowl. "I knew enough!"

A weapon. I need a weapon. But not for self-defense—Shia may be taller than him, but she was weak from lack of food. He could crush her like a toothpick. And for a moment, he wanted to. The crack of her bones and her screaming, the blood pooling beneath that translucent human skin, flashed across his mind.

Rón began to cry, and he wobbled, gripping the wall for support. Shia picked up the baby and held her close to her breast. "Spouses always figure out the truth eventually."

He paused at the doorway, longing to take back the long nights he'd spent wasting himself. But like Jenuwaa, like the Coruscant negotiations that had doomed Kalee to economic despair—and already his own family felt it—those nights were there to stay. Burned into his mind, his heart, his skin.

He wanted to leave his old self behind. He longed to start again.

"I know," he said, his voice wrought with shame as he exited the room.

✺✺✺

Arna parked the ship in a small spaceport, and the two of them exited onto the snowy expanse of Grendaju. The island where Ronderu had been born and reared was only eighty kilometers in length and fifty kilometers in breadth, and used to house the largest Grendajese tribe on Kalee, the Qymaili.

Now, the Yamikhi—a tribe composed of various Kunbali tribes that had been left to starve by the Yam'rii—went about their business. While it had been almost seven years since she'd set foot on Grendajese soil, the air had never felt so....mournful.

Arna set a hand on her shoulder. "I brought us something to eat."

"There's plenty of food here."

He shook his head. "Can't you see it?"

Women were slumped against the walls of the enormous trees where small businesses had once bustled and thrived; men shivered in only their linens, clutching their offspring close to their chests.

These were sick people. Weak, their golden faces sunken and their eyes bloodshot.

A cry sounded from beside Ronderu—the cry of a girl her own age getting dragged off by a group of muscular men. "Give me your lightsaber," she said firmly.

"I can't," he said. "It's a Jedi weapon."

But before he could stop her, she snatched the blade from his belt and went after the men.

The green rod of light flashed from the hilt. Logic, Ronderu. Calm yourself. If you kill them, you'll have to face Khetsuu, and you'll be banished from Kalee.

Qymaen.

Khetsuu.

The saber, missing his heart, lopped off the hand. The traffickers stopped and stared at her. As stars specked her vision and her regulator tried to catch up to her heartbeat, she looked the amputee in the eye. "Let her go," she gasped in Kaleesh.

The man's eyes suddenly brightened, and he let go of the girl, who shivered in the snow. She, too, had been exposed in the cold—back when she herself had been young.

The three men bowed before her in the snow. "Our khaneme," one whispered, taking hold of her ankles in a form of submission. The amputee's stump bled onto the snow, and she searched his eyes for recognition.

"She's alive," another murmured.

"Kummar is back?" the amputee coughed. "I must alert Khetsuu."

"Who are you three?" she snapped, gesturing with Arna's saber.

"Former members of your cohort, my lady," the third man said. "We....I...." he swallowed. "We lost our places after your death....er, disappearance—"

"And who is this woman?" Ronderu said sharply.

"N....Naidvar, my lady," the woman said, curling up tighter in the snow. "Khaysi jai Naidvar."

"I see," she growled, the surname Jai echoing in her mind. "You three. If word gets out that Kummar is back, you must treat it as a rumor. Say no words about my return. If you do...." she swung the saber. "There will be hell to pay with you. Am I clear?"

The men nodded vigorously and backed away. Ronderu took her in her arms and pressed her hand to the girl's cold cheek. "And you are one of his wives?"

"Yes, madam." She coughed. "You are....Kummar? I'd only heard legends about you. I....assumed you never existed. Forgive me, my lady."

Legends, she thought to herself. So Qymaen had never even mentioned her to his wives. "The legends were true," she said. "But I am no more than an illusion from the cold."

"An illusion...." Naidvar mumbled. Ronderu studied her aura and sensed three more small heartbeats with hers. The woman's pregnant. Oh, gods, what am I going to do? Deliver her to Qymaen? And now that she's recognized me, who knows how he'll receive me?

"Yes," she whispered. "I died at Jenuwaa."

"But then—how did you fend off the men?"

"The Force is strong with me," she said, as that appeared to be the standard Jedi answer. "What were they planning to do to you, young one?"

"There are cannibals roaming these parts," she said. "They are even worse up in the jungles, where it is harder to tell where they're coming from." She rested her head in Ronderu's lap. "Have....have you come to save us, Kummar?"

Ronderu longed to say yes to that question. But it was best not to live up to her byname as the deceiver. "I can't save Kalee anymore. That is up to Khetsuu."

"But he's failed us," she said.

"Not yet," Ronderu said firmly. "You're pregnant, aren't you?"

It was rude for her to ask, but she didn't care. Naidvar paused, then nodded. "Stand. Where is your ship?"

"It's over there," Naidvar said, her teeth chattering. She pointed to a small shuttle, perhaps large enough for two or three people at most. "I'll be fine if I get some food. I'm due to report back to Kaleela soon."

Ronderu helped her to the doorway. The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop herself. "Give Qymaen my best regards."

"I....I will, Kummar," Naidvar said. "Goodbye." And with that, the ship left, and she was left alone.

◈◈◈

Did you know....

● Ronderu was a living legend among her people. After Jenuwaa, some people questioned whether she'd ever existed in the first place.

● The Yam'rii were never punished by the Republic for their crimes.

Tell me what you think....

● What do you think Khetsuu will do when he finds out about Ronderu's visit?

● What do you think he will do about the starvation problem on Kalee?