With the Shadow gone, Bithia tended to the old woman. Her age-hooded eyelids fluttered as she came out of the trance she’d been put in. “Oh, I… my head…” She touched her brow. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“It’s all right, m’am,” Bithia reassured her. “You tripped and fell. Here.” She helped the woman up and into her chair. “Aside from your head, are you in pain anywhere else?”
“My arm—feels like I slammed it on something hard.” She touched her elbow where it had collided with the floor as the Shadow forced her to catch the falling holocron. As Bithia examined the limb, the old woman wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell? Am I wearing perfume?” With her free hand, she plucked at the collar of her shirt, sniffing. “It smells like a candy I used to eat when I was a little girl… How strange. I don’t own any perfume like that.”
Smiling, Bithia set the spray bottle on the table. “It’s called Chthonic. I made it myself.”
“Well, I like it. But… why did you spray it on me?”
“You asked me to.”
The old woman looked puzzled, then shrugged, accepting this answer.
Nimdok slowly peered in from around the corner, holding his shirt over his nose and mouth. Bithia turned to him and laughed. “Sorry I didn’t warn you. I just knew I had to act fast.” At the old woman’s questioning glance, she added, “To catch the holocron, I mean.”
“Is that what happened?” the old woman queried.
“Yes. I accidentally knocked it off the table, and you, Ms…”
“Winsworth,” Nimdok supplied, his voice muffled by his clothes.
“Ms. Winsworth, you jumped up to catch it, lost your footing and fell.” She turned to the holocron. “Speaking of which, we were looking to buy this device from you.”
“Oh, that old trinket? I’ll give it to you for… hm, three hundred?”
“Two hundred,” Nimdok bartered. Bithia shot him a glare. “Two hundred fifty.”
Ms. Winsworth shrugged. “That sounds reasonable. Unless you suppose it’s worth more than that?”
“Considering that nobody seems to know where it came from, likely not,” Nimdok said. “I am a historian, and I’m mainly interested in it for its historical value. There’s some strange unidentifiable writing along the edges which I mean to have deciphered by a linguist—”
“You don’t need to convince me, young man,” Ms. Winsworth said. “Any chance I get to rid myself of all this crap is one I’ll take. Only, would you mind calling a doctor for me first? I feel a little light-headed, and if that fall was worse than it looks...”
After paying for the holocron and calling a doctor, Nimdok, Bithia, and Miri left the shop and headed down the busy street outside. Nimdok, no longer shielding his face, was grinning from ear to ear.
“What’s so funny?” Bithia snapped. “It looked to me like you would’ve sold your soul to some freaky shadow demon thing in exchange for a Sith artifact if I hadn’t come in to stop you.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “Maybe Arimanes would’ve sold his soul, but not me.”
“Arimanes,” she muttered. “Who was the one talking in there? Was it Arimanes or Errik? Who the hell am I talking to now?”
His smile faded. “Bithia, we’ve been over this before. It’s… more complicated than just one person interacting with the world at a time.”
“If that’s the case, then both of you might as well be dead.”
Nimdok stopped walking. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we are dead.”
She turned around to face him. “All right, then. Nothing has changed. I should take Miri home to Alderaan and continue as if nothing ever happened.”
He stared at her. No words passed between them, but the look alone said everything. Miri stood between them, looking up at either of her parents’ faces with a furrowed brow.
“Don’t act like it isn’t the right thing to do,” Bithia continued. “You know she would be safer with me. This arrangement between us, with me flying around the galaxy with you while you put yourself in danger—”
“I said I wouldn’t have let anything happen back there,” he interrupted. “I meant it.”
“You shouldn’t have been in a situation like that to begin with. Not with Miri around.” She threw her hands in the air. “You know what? Forget it. This isn’t working.”
“What exactly do you want?” he pressed. “Do you want me to just hand Miri over to you? I’d rarely ever see her if you took her back to Alderaan. We agreed to this arrangement so that we could both be with her.”
“I want my life back!” she exclaimed. Her cry was loud enough that several onlookers having dinner at a nearby café turned to stare.
“You want things to be the way they were?” he muttered. Rather than getting loud, his voice lowered to a growl as he grew more indignant. “You want me to be the way I was, and you to be the way you were, when everything was much simpler. I get it, Bithia. I want that too, a lot. But it’s impossible. I’m sorry.”
“You’ve said that already. Multiple times.” Unable to weep, Bithia contented herself with crossing her arms over her chest and looking miserable. “It’s not your fault, anyway. Not… you as you are now, at least.”
Nimdok pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Let’s just get home.” He looked around. “Where are we, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Let me check.” A local map appeared before her eyes, showing the route back to their ship. The traffic had gotten even worse as the coronation began.
“Where is Miri?”
At the panic creeping into his voice, Bithia’s head jerked, the map disappearing from her field of vision. “She was right here,” she said, turning all the way around as she scanned the thickening crowds. They were standing by one of Naboo’s many rustic bridges, this one arching over a waterway. A set of stone stairs led down to the water’s edge, a bank of yellow sand lapped at by small waves. Nimdok was already running down the steps.
“You’ve got to be fething kidding me,” she muttered, following him. “Of all the days she could’ve gone missing, it’s today…” Ahead of her, Nimdok nearly stumbled, caught himself, then sprinted along the water’s edge. He seemed to know where he was going. She followed, soon overtaking him in speed.
They found Miri further upriver, standing in bare feet and wet pants. She was shivering. Her socks and shoes lay in a pile nearby. Bithia was the first to reach her, questions leaving her mouth, while Nimdok scooped the girl up, carrying her away from the water’s edge.
“I was just playing,” Miri protested, afraid she would get in trouble. “It’s hot outside but the water is cold. I thought it would be warmer.”
“Miri, why did you leave without telling us where you were going?” Bithia asked. “We didn’t know where you were. You scared us.”
“You were arguing,” the girl replied, as though it explained everything. In a way, it did.
Bithia retrieved the socks and shoes and followed Nimdok, still carrying Miri, to the steps, where they set the girl down and let her put them back on. Silence fell between them, broken only by Bithia asking, “How did you know where she was?”
Nimdok sat beside Miri. He raised his head from his hands before replying, “We have a connection.”
“What do you mean? Like a Force bond?”
“No, it’s… familiarity more than anything else.” His eyelids lowered. “I can sense where she is, how she feels, and what she’s thinking much more easily than with other people. It works both ways—we can even communicate telepathically. I never told you about it, because I was afraid you would see it as unfair. Like I had some special connection to Miri that you could never have.”
“I’m getting used to things being unfair,” she muttered. Taking a moment to glance at the map again, she suppressed a groan of frustration. “The way things are right now, it would take us hours to get home. We’re better off waiting for all the coronation buzz to die down.”
