Inside the mind of Lorn
The world bends like heat across glass. He knows this place isn't real, but it's familiar. Warm light glances across crumbling stone arches and drifting petals, a dream-born ruin of Mirater stitched from memory and regret. The stars overhead pulse like heartbeats, too close, too loud. Lorn breathes and feels nothing fill his lungs. He's dreaming again.
She is already there.
Isla sits where the dream garden meets a dry ravine, bare feet dipped in an illusion of water. Brown hair coils at her shoulders, her face, that uncanny mix of Virginia's grace and something Lorn doesn't know how to name, watches him with the ageless calm of someone who has never truly lived and never truly died.
"Why don't you want Naboo in the Alliance?" she asks. No hello. No smile. Just her usual dropkick of a question.
Lorn closes the space between them and sits, arms resting on knees. He watches his reflection in the fake water, younger somehow, but hollow-eyed.
"Because it's a slow funeral." he says. "First the alliance. Then the military expansions. Then the fighting. I won't drag Naboo into another war if I can help it."
Isla flicks water with her toe. "You already have. You just don't know it yet."
Lorn frowns. "I'm tired, Isla."
"That's why I visit you when you sleep." Her tone is dry, almost bored. "The Sith are encroaching. You don't have the luxury of avoiding alliances. You need friends, not ghosts."
He doesn't respond. He's counting ruins in the distance, old memories calcified into dreamscape rubble. This place used to be beautiful. Or maybe it never was, and he's only remembering it through the haze of all he lost.
"You think if you stay still long enough, war and conflict will forget about you." she continues. "But that's not how this goes."
He lets out a quiet sigh. "I didn't ask for advice."
"I didn't ask to be your conscience." she shoots back. Her voice softens, barely. "But here I am."
They sit in silence for a while. The stars blink.
Then she shifts gears, like she always does, like she's pulling truths out of him one by one with the delicacy of a scalpel. "Why did you try to replace Briana?"
Lorn stiffens.
"Because she's not in the right state of mind." he says after a pause. "Because she believes in certainty too much. Because I thought-" he hesitates, the word dragging splinters. "I thought she was becoming like... like some of the others I've followed before."
"You mean the ones who led you into war. The ones who had you believe their cause was for anything but power and control." Her eyes narrow slightly, reading between everything he doesn't say.
He nods once.
"She's not like them." Isla says. "She's better than you think. And she's what your Order needs. You were scared. That's why you moved against her."
Lorn's jaw tightens. He doesn't argue. He's learned not to bother, Isla doesn't offer opinions. She delivers conclusions.
"When she comes to speak to you again," Isla continues, "don't make excuses. Apologize. You still respect her. You just didn't trust her decision."
He lowers his gaze. Shame coils like a vine.
"She's wiser than you."
Oof.
Lorn almost smiles. Almost. "You ever think you could work on your delivery?"
"We only have the opportunity to briefly speak in your dreams," Isla says, tilting her head. "Try not to get your feelings hurt."
And then, like mist with somewhere else to be, she begins to fade. Lorn tries to hold on, but he never can.
Her voice lingers last. "You don't have to save everyone, Lorn. But stop pushing away the people trying to save you."
When he wakes, he's already halfway to regret.
