Book of Days

[Rain]

Dathomir
Late Evening – Early Morning

He is a firefly; a little flame dotting the shadowed terrain from where he descends the hillside. Held in his hand, nestled within the hollowed horn from a verne’s crest, it burns steadily, pulsing in a slow thrum-thrum as a heart might. For it is not the red of Promethean fire, of boys spiting their fathers and usurping natural orders, nor of men using nature for fuel to prolong the day so that they may assert their own destiny.

It is smoldering jade. Soul ichor.

It burns not from without, but within.

He nurtures this flame alone, keeping it alight for its own sake. Who else would keep it for him?

Rain watches himself from outside himself; a ghostly apparition. It is his dreamer’s perspective on this catatonic wandering…down into the valley, midst the stones. Beneath moss, marks by rancor claw adorned the rockface, evidence to this inorganic assembly. The forbidden geometry of squares and rectangles, putting the sky into boxes, mapping time as it passed, chaining independent breaths to each other through shared history. It is/was a Nightbrother artifact, a stonehenge.

A Book of Days.

Bathed in the indigo of night riding starlight, he watched as his vacant form raised the green luminescence to uncover a symbol etched into one of the phases, an inherent understanding resonating out in the distance along with his awareness of the evening’s chill.

Rain closed his eyes and awoke, now present in his corporeal form – cold and curious. “Solstice,” the Stonehenge presented, matter-of-factly, but none of the moons were in this house, having already moved on to the surrounding neighbors.

Stindaron would arrive tomorrow, perhaps the day after.

Now is the time to meet new people, but be wary – some may not have your best interest at heart.

He was milling about in the panoramic calendar, intuitively divining its message despite how sorrowful it made him, how mortal and disconnected he felt.

This was not how his Sisters experienced time. They did not need to cage the cosmos in meaning and scientific analyses, intellectually grasping at what their hearts felt unfathomable. They were of it, this cycle of moon phases and seasons and tides and menstrual cycles, beyond the petty pandering for narrative and definition.

How old was his mother? Shriveled, terrifying, bird-like – gazing upon him with eyes stark and black as a shark’s. How old were these hills?

Timeless.

Idly, with his feet on the ground and his head in the firmament, Rain wondered-- Was he part of the planet or part of the sky?
How lost had he been to begin thinking this way?

That was fine, he decided, taking a seat on a fallen pillar. If he could not feel the World, then let him feel its absence. Glancing down, Rain took notice of a small nest, three eggs tucked inside and he leaned down to scoop one out. He cracked the membrane, and slurped its contents into his mouth.

Let there be a hole where his heart should be, let his religion be trying to fill it. In the lack of something sacrosanct, perhaps nothing, too, could then be holy.

In the still of the night, one could hear the crunch of tiny bones being gnashed between his teeth.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

[member="Rain"]

Lira sat in the very corner of a small freighter hurtling through the atmosphere of Dathomir. In the opposite corner sat [member="Hal Terrano"], frowning and brooding as always. The Echnai watched him for a time, bright green eyes settling on him with a calm that told of deep thought.

He was more silent than usual.

It wasn't that he was quiet, quiet was ordinary for Hal Terrano. It was the fact that he was silent. He made no noised of movements, no grunts, no sounds of breathing. For all she knew Hal had replaced himself with a life sized mannequin and had used that for this mission instead of himself.

Of course she knew that was ludicrous, but the more silent he stayed, the more likely it seemed.

She let out a huffing sigh, slumping herself against the back of the freighter as it began to shake, hard.

They were very nearly through the atmosphere now, very nearly to the surface. She got a sense of foreboding darkness hanging over her, a push of some sort on the very ethos of her mind. Lira supposed that Dathomir was one of those worlds, like Korriban or Byss, where everything was just...darker. She frowned slightly.

Was that why they were here?

Of course she understood the general purpose of their mission, the state goal of they they had actually come here. The gather information for the Archives. That was simple, but, why Dathomir?

Granted Lira was rather ignorant on the ways of this world, but everything she had read made it rather...insignificant. Still, if Hal thought it worthwhile, then she doubted the trip would be for naught. Perhaps they would discover something interesting here and walk away with some grand adventure. Lira certainly hoped so, she needed a distraction.

“Hal.” She tried to snap him out of his daze as the Freighter came to a sudden lurching stop. “Hal were there.”

 

[Rain]

What a poor hunter he was, Rain quietly reflected, a trail of littered eggshell strewn about the stone and tall grass behind him. They had even told him as much, the Nightbrothers, in his brief time spent among them. But he never quite understood. The spirits always knew where he was. They were all tethered together.

So from whom was he hiding?

The Fanged God had begun to rise on the horizon, his radiant crown asserting his title, his glory, the rank and file of the beasts beneath him. Rain’s disembodied self hopped from egg shell to egg shell, trailing behind its zombie.

Their society had been insufferable, his own disconnection magnified by group consensus. Value was measured in property, Love in things, and the passing of Time was so concretized, seconds spoke in thunder across the cultural imaginary. The Nightbrothers saw Life/Change routinized in seasons – Hunting season, planting season, harvest season, chronicled in history and counted in age. It poisoned everything it touched, transforming the mystery of the bear, the brackaset, the verne, the baz nitch, into rotations of predictable, monotonous slaughter.

An abstract pull tugged almost tangibly from behind him; a spirit, pinging him for contact, growing in urgency as he watched his physical body reach into the folded nest to retrieve the last of the eggs. He closed his eyes and awoke, ceasing this action immediately.

Pain. Sharp, but negligible pain on his forehead, his neck, his shoulder. A mother bird, frantic, attacking him to save what remained of the life she had built. His body attempted to shield himself as Rain departed into his dreamshape to meet the mother on another plane. The two worlds overlapped, their presences echoed, superimposed on their lifeforms as spirit ichor greenfades.

Rain lifted a hand to the bird, free of hostility, welcoming; dirt enclosing around water to make a lake. This was the truth of things that was unable to be fractioned. The bird spirit obliged, settling into his hand, as their dreamselves came in-sync with the observable world.

To the credit of his brothers, they worshiped these spirits and utilized every piece of their kill, offering to the Fanged God the parts they did not use to gain favor and invoke the muse. But in the end, Rain could not deny that he felt it a lie. The Hunt was a glorified testament to their personal ability, and this hollow penance they paid to the spirits was simply to ensure that they returned next year. So, unable to rationalize these feelings, he left.

“<Do not return>,” Rain stated in his way, taking in the bird in both hands and abruptly snapping its neck. “<I would only hurt you again.>”

Casting the wasted form onto the ground, he continued his wandering of the edge of the earth.

An impulse in his hand twitched to grab the remaining egg, but something in his heart stayed it, and instead, he tucked it away, wrapped carefully in the nest its mother had built for it.

 

[Hal Terrano]

He was steeped in thought.

He was steeped so deep that he was ready to drown.

Manaan had happened, sadly. It had brought forth a new level of ominous to the Galaxy and worse, Hal had had an altercation with Avalore and it wasn't one of those sexy altercation that ends up in angry shagging against the wall. Ha! Can you imagine? No, Hal can't either. That in part was one of the problems, one of the problems that without mercy had been brought up.

"OH FOUND A BIT OF A PERSONALITY THERE DID YOU?! IT'S ABOUT FETHING TIME!"

It was fine, he could usually take it. If it came from the mouth of a Sith or even another Jedi it would have just been words. Brushed aside, shrugged off, inconsequential but it was the fact that it came screaming from Avalore Eden that hurt.

Then it all went downhill.

Mangled confessions of feelings that were so blunt, it was as if Terrano had fired his cannon of almost three decades of suppression at the healer.

She walked away, and he fell.

He fell where nobody could see him, or find him or help him. Then again he wasn't the type of person that it was easy to help. The shame of failure had sat upon his shoulders and dragged him down to the ground where even now he was still struggling to get back up onto his feet. It would have course, been so much easier if Hal was want to talk about things but he had barely spoken after his outburst, withdrawing into a shell so cavernous that it wouldn't be outrageous to suggest that he wouldn't be coming back out again.

He was snapped out of his daze by Lira's voice.

“Oh,” he replied, “right.”

Off the shuttle they went, ready to embrace the pursuit of knowledge on the admittedly dangerous world. After all, knowledge was the only thing left he had to embrace.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

[member="Hal Terrano"] [member="Rain"]

Lira watched as Hal left the shuttle, her bright green eyes having a quality of concern.

She didn't know what happened to him on Manaan, she had not asked him or Avalore what transpired on the surface of the planet. Her own selfishness had kept her from doing that. However it was clear that something was effecting him, something was making it difficult for him to concentrate, for him to focus.

The young Jedi Knight followed after her Master, soft boots padding onto the shuttle floor until they reached the hard ground of Dathomir. There was a sense of foreboding there, of prodding and pushing. She frowned slightly, being reminded of the sense of Korriban.

Hal seemed to be standing absent minded just outside the shuttle.

Was he feeling the same thing? Or was there something else on his mind, something that was plaguing his thoughts and pushing at him?

“Master.” Lira said as an automatic bridge. “Should we start at the ruins?”

That was why they were here after all, ancient Dathomiri magic research. Nearby was a set of ruins, a village once held by the Dathomir Witches, one that had been destroyed during the Clone Wars. There had been scattered records throughout the Ossus Archives about it, and before Manaan Hal had thought it a thing to research, to expand the Cato Neimoidia Archives, give it something Ossus lacked.

They began to head in that direction, quick practiced steps.

Lira still felt something was wrong.

 

[Rain]

Rain preferred footwraps to shoes, perhaps trying to stay rooted to the earth despite his natural inclination to let his mind soar. He may have even been too successful, he often posited, staring up at the Fanged God’s realm at the clouds passing over head, the same, familiar crush of grass and stone underfoot.

Had it been the planet that was moving, while he remained in place?

Dathomir rotated on its axis, pulling Rain to what the pair of newly-arrived would eventually refer to as “ruins.”

However, this word…this word was not the truth. Rain took a seat upon what may have once been a stone bench, realigning himself with these Old Ways.

What remained was a few dilapidated huts, woven together of stone, stick, and tallgrass. Holes had found their way into the roofing, the archways of entry had all but collapsed, and the stone ramp, reaching toward a central altar by which all other structures had been planned around, had lost many of its stairs to the erosion from rainfall.

But this was by design – these ingredients were temporary, expected to one day return to the Mother. What fool believes his empire to stand for eternity? What chick remains in its shell forever?

It had stood proudly, it had provided, and it had been outgrown.

In this way, it was so much nobler than anything standing to this day and yet still might fail.

No, this place was not “ruined” at all.

Another tug, a friendly fairy pulling on him from the Indigo, drawing the color from his eyes so that he may better see the parallel world in which he also walked. His form stared blankly at the ground and he awoke in dreams.

They saw him before he saw them, even in this realm beyond sight. They beckoned, the three of them, to the lonely bastard boy, speaking to him without speaking in this realm beyond words.

“Look, a maleling --- born of the wind,” She said in feigned interest, peering at him through squinted eyes, adding even more wrinkles to her already shriveled, bitter, old face. “Are you the ghost that’s been haunting these hills? Hmm? Always so sullen and morose...” She antagonized Rain, leaning on her broom for support. Even shrouded by her black, hooded robe, her hunched, crooked posture was apparent.

“Bit cute, ennit?,” She said noncommittally, open to interpretation. She was young and beautiful, playing make-up, wearing hunter’s gear, a bow. “You have a dark side, handsome? Little mystery always gets me weak.” She spoke like a siren, simultaneously seductive and dismissive. She promised excitement and mystery and a lust for life in a fleeting, one-time-only fashion that compelled risk-taking behavior…as if it were the only way to be alive. He would have told her anything she wanted and he knew it.

The third matriarch just smiled warmly at him, bouncing up and down in an effort to burp the baby in her arms. Based on the way her blouse fell from her shoulder, it was clear she had been in the middle of feeding it. “Where is your kind, maleling? Why do you choose to wander these hills all alone?” She was quite apparently pregnant, and under the bent logic of the Dreaming, a passing thought suggested it may have been with him.

These notes were not gambled upon the powers of individual observation. They were built-in, inscribed upon their nature, written in guts. Abandoning his gross matter, the humble ghost adventured up the steps to meet the three.

[member="Hal Terrano"] [member="Lira Dajenn"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

Every time he shook off a concern from his back a new one seemed to cling on just so he could be kept struggling below the surface.

When for a moment, just a moment he wasn't picturing the back of Avalore as she left the Ahto City library without him the thought of being unworthy for his Jedi robes hit him just as hard. It was a juggling act of struggles, the issues balled up within his chest finally coming out to play and Hal couldn't keep balance.

I am a hypocrite Jedi.

Once more Lira's voice plucked him from his haze. His brow furrowed in frustration, aware of his own lack of concentration.

“Yes.”

They were on the move, feet on autopilot towards the ruins that Lira had so helpfully directed them towards. He wasn't lacking direction now too, was he? One foot in front of the other, you can at least muster that much.

As the pair of Jedi came across the ruins his mind was so tangled in his own selfish web that he hadn't even notice the patter of other presences in his mind.

[member="Lira Dajenn"], [member="Rain"]

 

[Lira Dajenn]

@Rain @Hal Terrano

Lira wasn't a sensory Jedi, at least not a good one.

She got the vague impressions of life within the force, but in her head she couldn't quite pinpoint or even begin to locate where they were. It didn't help that Dathomir itself gave off a sense of dread that seemed to clog every pore in her body, something that made her feel rather disgusting. The two Jedi moved quietly towards the ruins, Hal remaining more silent than a statue that had sat in the same place for the last thousand years in an old cupboard.

“Master...” Lira said quietly as they walked, shaking her head. “Is something wrong?”

A difficult question to ask Hal Permanent Frown Terrano, but one that was necessary.

Suddenly her ears perked up.

Though she was not wearing her armor, and though she was not the best tracker in the Jedi Order, Lira had a decent sense of hearing, and as they approached the ruins she definitely heard something. The sound of fluttering voices could be heard, the grating noise of people speaking about...something that she couldn't quite make out.

Her eyes shot over to Hal, as her footsteps came to a dead stop.

 

[Rain]

Bits and phrases bled into the realm of waking, carried on the back of the wind in alternating patterns of intrigue, warmth, and sublime terror. The Jedi could hear aspects of the conversation, though it was not in Basic, and it was not in words. It was like watching a holovision from the other side of the wall. Like eating a meal through its description on the menu.

The witchboy remained seated on his bench, transfixed on the grass before him with his eyes of a dead man.
His fire was elsewhere.

“I am never alone. Dathomir is inundated with spirit – I am always with my kind,” Rain stated confidently, despite the vein of doubt that marbled within his resolve…on display for all with the eyes to see it in this Fade.

The Maiden rolled her eyes. The Mother smiled in warm condescension, while the Crone smirked, darkly amused. A three-pronged attack, decimating a young man’s ego. They would not be told what they wanted to hear by some clever ghost who didn’t even believe it.

“…I am in exile.”

The Mother looked concerned as she rocked her baby, which seemed to have resumed suckling her breast. A series of scripted action in perpetuity, like an automaton in a Disney ride, reperforming for each new passing trolley. Iconic. Casually, Rain noted that, here, it was night time – three of the moons quite obviously present, each in distinctly different phases.

“Oooh, a wild one – Whatchu do, then?,” the Maiden flirted/teased, never one to lose the psychological highground.

The cloaked one shook her head, dismissive of Rain’s claims. “I know your mother, maleling. She is old…wise…You, however, are young.”

He remembered her vividly, her long nails, her patchy scalp. He was a young boy again, trying to share her meal…the smell of the raw verne, the fresh berries, sweetened by the staggeringly hunger brought on by Winter. The growl, the fury, slashed to ribbons by her nails, trying to play dead there in the dark.

Back in the Land of the Concrete, Rain’s body began to seethe; the blood, boiling in his face, flushing his skin in unspoken anger.

“If she has punished you…hmm…,” the Crone faked a thoughtful pause though she already knew the truth,”…There is reason to suspect you are not being punished at all…You see punishment in growth?”

His mother, cradling his tiny, bloody form, licking his wounds while he whimpered. She hurt him, he protested, struggled against her hold…

“Why have you not gone to your brothers, lovely?”

He remembered how she snarled and bit a piece from his face.

“Yeah, why not? Good bunch people. Fun. Sporty, like,” she said, drawing her blade. Shadow-fencing to her left.

“He thinks he’s better than them…Don’t you, boy?”

“Haha -- What? But he’s so scrawny, yeah?,” she laughed and passively destroyed him in that way that she did.

The Crone did as well, reaching one of her scraggly digits and pushing it into his chest, “Mmhmm…With a little hole in his heart…,” fingering the wound that had now manifested on his phantom avatar. "So fragile and incomplete, hopeless and lost. Weak."

Rain growled and swatted her hand away, immediately being met by the Maiden’s knife to his throat. “Go on, then, touch her again, right – Be the last thing you’ll ever do, I promise.”

The other two were passive to this display. This blade was not real. Their forms were not real. She could not cut him anymore than he could be cut.

No, what would actually happened would be so much worse…

“Do not worry -- It is a common trait among you and your brothers. You’re perfectly normal,” The Mother, with her glowing smile and radiating warmth. “You need only find the thing to complete it.”

“Maybe I could fill it for you, maleling,” the Maiden grinned, removing her dagger from his throat and returning it to its scabbard.

“…And yet, with so much to do, in the face of your 'exile,' you dally here, in these hills….Is it that you think you will be young forever?”

“I—“ He suddenly turned his head in search, a wasted gesture as though he might actually be able to see them from here.

The triumvirate grinned, aware that he’d felt the Jedi approach.

He closed his eyes and awoke.

[member="Hal Terrano"] [member="Lira Dajenn"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

A blink.

“Yes,” he answered back in perfect monotone, not actually digesting the nature of the question but rather engaging in a conversational autopilot. Hey, at least he's honest.

Both so off their game they flirted with the ethereal, caught in Dathomir's tangled overgrowth of the dark side. Were there voices? How many presences did he half-heartedly catch? Four? Or just one? Closer inspection would tell them the latter. Perhaps in the future the eyes above might read between the lines, and also just read the lines properly. Pair of absolute wazzocks.

Lira stopped walking, a wise degree of caution shown. Hal on the other hand did not, decidedly shedding his wisdom in favour of taking one thoughtless step in front of the other. Something was definitely wrong, no denial there. Nobody could stop this dismal train.

Thankfully Hal was not so blind as to miss the sight of the man on the bench. Not that he would have been too worried. Dathomir was in a strange place in the current scene of the galaxy. Traditionally they would have made home to dark witches, but here in Mandalorian space where the disposition was decidedly against the dark side it was a lot safer to be a Jedi here. Not completely safe, but safe enough.

Hopefully.

Funny how the benched man managed to seem more dazed than even he was. Surely not possible through conventional means, like morose conflict of the soul.

Hal's brow furrowed, a natural reaction to most everything and he looked to Lira (who had hopefully followed) expecting the woman to engage the stranger in the conversation because let's face it, talking was definitely not Knight Terrano's strong point.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Lira looked at the man on the bench, being slightly embarrassed that she hadn't noted him earlier.

Her Masters thoughts were a reflection of her own, they were distracted. It was a deadly thing here on Dathomir, and Lira felt somewhat discouraged by that fact. Nevertheless she looked at the man, her eyes inspecting him as though he were a marble statue. She tried to get a read on him, Friend? Enemy? Neutral?

It was hard to tell.

She wasn't exactly the best at these sorts of things.

A brief glance over to Hal showed what he was expecting. He had never been the most talkative kind of person, so it was expected that she would make conversation with this man. For a moment Lira bit her lip, trying to think of how she could simply begin, it's not like they knew the local customs or anything. She didn't want to cause insult.

“Hello.” It was impossible to insult with a simple hello.

Right?

 

[Rain]

Rain didn’t move, save for a flick of his eyes in Hal’s direction, meeting his pupils with a matching glassy-eyed gaze. The Hagspawn had barely even registered the Knight’s existence, seeing reflected in the Jedi that same hollow quality that Rain recognized within himself; that same hollow quality that he had projected upon the world.

Boys in Man Armor.

It was only when his orbs shifted over to Lira that Rain appeared to wake up, his brows larking in near-shock, like a stoner suddenly realizing he was being spoken to. Really, that was exactly what was occurring. Initially, Rain was confused by the “Hello.” As much a stranger to the greeting as Americans are to “Bonjour,” he understood what it meant – It was just, for whatever reason, he always imagined it sounding differently in his head.

His mouth moved, but no words had come out. For a second, he appeared to die. When he returned, however...”Blessed be thy feet, that have carried you to this place.”

There may or may not have been a darkside aura emanating from him. Having been raised within a Nightsister clan, perhaps it was unavoidable…but the aura would be curiously lacking in self-awareness, with qualities that were imperceptible without the proper frame of reference…the only indication of their existence lay in the ripples they created.

He did not smile when he spoke, and there was very little shift in his facial expression throughout, even as his speech took on a sporadic sing-song cadence.
Glancing from left or right, he took account of the ruins in which they sat, plugging them into a motive for a Jedi presence.

“You are…here for stories of the Has-Happened; the past,” he declared-asked, concealing his personal position on the matter.

[member="Hal Terrano"] | [member="Lira Dajenn"]

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Lira wasn't exactly sure what to say to the man, and the hesitation showed on her face.

She pondered for a few moments, looking at Hal, then glancing back at the man. She knew she would have to lead this conversation, but the odd way that the man spoke made her hesitant, that with the general feel of this place made her uneasy. The press of his words created an urgency to her, and quickly Lira forced herself to get over the trepidation in her head.

“Yes.” She suddenly blurted out.

They were indeed there because of the past, because they were researching the Nightsister clans and the things that had happened here.

Lira cast another glance at Hal, then back towards the man.

“I am Lira.” She introduced herself, might as well be friendly. “This is Hal.”

No need to mention that they were Jedi, not yet anyway.

 

[Rain]

The seconds between wasted words passed without awkwardness, the space between Now and Now an illusory, intangible, unnecessary thing that held no weight in his world, nevermind holding anxiety. It was curious to him, however, how the little one kept looking to her pet Jedi, as if something so broken could possibly illustrate to her anything other than a fractured perspective, a fractured climate, a fractured world, a fractured universe.

Her name was Lira, his was Hal. Words, brands, without definitions, meanings to be left blank until filled with deeds, trespasses.

Lira (noun) – Nervous, self-doubting; primal lightning, divine inspiration, coursing through her small being in abundance. Taught not to trust herself, her wisdom, through brands of “untamed” and “unrefined” by the Fanged God and his Kingdom that would see such electricity bottled in lightbulbs and holovision sets.

Hal (noun)-- Fearful, prone, lying in the fetal position; propped upright by a code, a uniform, a sword. Rain recognized him as a Jedi because Hal made sure he did. He made sure everyone did. What would there be otherwise?

“I am..,” he began, gesturing to himself, but there was delay. His clan did not isolate with names. They carried epithets indicative of one’s character, one’s role, but it was not earned. It was known; cyclical, eternal, preordained. But this was not restricting. How could one lose Freedom without a Not-Freedom? How could one be jailed without “Not-Jail?”

Dathomir is. Simply.

“…Falling Water?,” he guessed, working through the problem. His epithet was not translating correctly, Galactic Basic Standard lacking the vocabulary to express an apparently foreign concept.


[member="Lira Dajenn"] [member="Hal Terrano"]

 

[Hal Terrano]

You might as well have replaced Hal Terrano with a cardboard cut-out for how useful he was in the realms of polite conversation.

He wasn't exactly the Jedi you'd send in for warm greetings or ice breakers. Not that he couldn't speak, but the blunt to-the-point manner in which he delivered his lines often caused offence and only sold the man as cold and uncaring. Fine for zero emotion negotiations, bad for meeting mysterious locals.

The man they spoke to was the exact opposite of Hal however, words flowing like poetry instead of a battering ram of single word answers.

Hal floated in and out of the brief introduction, words barely registering until he caught the sight of the native gesturing to himself. What was he trying to say? His name? Did he not know his own name? Hal's brow creased, as he tried to chew the concept of not knowing your own name. It was like old salted bantha leg. Tough. Was Dathomir really that strange? A good thing he was here on a mission of knowledge, really.

Falling Water?

“Rain,” Hal said suddenly, interrupted any flow that the conversation might have had.

[member="Rain"], [member="Lira Dajenn"]

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Lira jumped slightly as Hal suddenly broke into the conversation, looking at him with both eyebrows up.

“Rain?” She parroted him for a moment, then a look of realization dawned across her face. She looked to the boy that they had stumbled upon, her eyes falling on him and studying him for a few moments. “What are you doing out here Rain?”

She decided to act friendly.

Lira didn't really have much experience with diplomacy or cultures outside of her own, but she decided that the best course of action was to be nice and friendly. She had no idea of the motivations this man held, nor did she have any idea that he was a practitioner of Nightsister magics, Lira was hardly good at sensing the intent of others, and with the general atmosphere of Dathomir it was even harder.

 

[Rain]

His brows ruffled and his thoughts hushed, stifled by the half-second glare he shot in Hal’s direction. “Rain” fit like a collar secured too tightly around his throat, and he thrashed at it like an animal, synapses firing through a language too literal and separated to possibly convey what he needed to say…but, like an animal, he had to give. No hands in the matter.

The name stuck. "...Yes."

Of Hal, Rain slightly disapproves.

“What are you doing out here, Rain?,” she asked, innocuous enough.

But he’d been hearing it a lot lately. And while he bore her no grudge, it stung him a little.

“Where else would I be?” His melody closed with that weird waver of someone about to cry.

This was his magnetic center…but more and more, he was being pushed through it, his home cracking into splinters of egg white shell.

He became curt.

“The Has-Happened does not tether; it feeds. This place is only Here… and the Now.”

And just like that, the color receded from his eyes and Rain appeared to turn to stone.

_______________________________________​

[member="Hal Terrano"] | [member="Lira Dajenn"]​

 

[Hal Terrano]

Rain didn't seem entirely too impressed with Hal. Of course, the reasoning for this would have went miles over the blond man's head. After all, how else could you describe falling water? He couldn't call him waterfall, that would have just felt silly.

Score Dathomiri naming conventions off the list of things that confuse (and possibly frighten) Jedi Knight Terrano.

Were these ruins his home? It seemed to be that way from his response. Hal turned his head to look around them, actually seeing through his eyes as opposed to just facing a direction and saying go to his Robot Republic limbs. Only now did he notice his surroundings, that scratch of the dark side, less sinister but far more primal. He was all for simple, clean living but this seemed to dial it back too much. I at least like my birds cooked first.

Rain continued to speak in riddles, mildly infuriating Hal to the point of arms folding across the chest. He looked to Lira, and then back at the native creature, who was at this point channelling his inner-gargoyle.

“I do not understand.”

[member="Rain"], [member="Lira Dajenn"]

 

[Lira Dajenn]

[member="Rain"] [member="Hal Terrano"]

Lira looked over to Hal for a few moments, her own gaze shifting back and forth between the two men. She wasn't exactly sure what Rain was talking about, but she guessed that the man was speaking in metaphors rather than riddles.

Perhaps he was saying that he did not want to speak about his past?

That was Her guess, though it wasn't a very good one. Her lips thinned for a few moments, and Lira looked over to Hal one more time before she decided that if anything was to happen, she would have to take the initiative. Hal Terrano was better at solving riddles, but Lira Dajenn had a knack for communication.

“So this is your home?” She paused for moment as the man froze, eying him, then taking a step closer. “Can you...”

She paused again, wondering why he was so still, but decided that it was best to try and engage him. “Can you tell us what this is?”

Lira gestured all around them.

Perhaps he would be more clear, perhaps he would keep speaking in riddles, but the more the man talked the more Lira and Hal would learn about it.

 

[Rain]

Lira would come to find, as her questions went unanswered, the Rain was gone from his head…or, at least, as it manifested in this realm, at this place, in this time. He tilted his head to the side as the young knight approached, watching her like a curious dog, but it was different. There was something missing in his eyes. This was, quite simply, not the way people looked at other people.

Rain had returned to the Dreamtime to find himself in the process of being abandoned, the trio’s position in non-space in some sort of flux. But there was no real distance here. There was no time.

Their leaving was not an actual state, but a message.

He wanted to call to them, to tell them to Wait, but the words weren’t really present in Dathomiri. The Universe does not wait for you. The cycles do not stop. Such vanity, such insistence on one’s self were a Nightbrother delusion, a Skyfather lie. When all things are one thing, you’re always where you need to be.

The Crone cackled cruelly, “Watch as he rolls so ridiculously, so hopelessly in vain…but, my boy, the apple, once fallen, may never return to the tree.” She vanished into the twilight.

The Maiden was less vindictive, more hopeful…”Though you only lose what you cling to!” But, as per her nature, always elusive. She, too, disappeared.

It was the Mother who took the time, actually turning to face him, her smile as loving as always.

“Remember – Your home will always be here,” she said, kneeling in condescension as though he were a child, though they were equal in height. Had this not been a dream, the conflicting proportions would have shattered his mind “But for now, lovely, there is only death. I look forward to hearing your stories when you return.”

And with that, she was gone.

Rain collapsed in the field from where he had been chasing them, only to find he had not moved at all. He was still sitting on that bench, where Lira was playing the role of diplomat, and Hal, the role of stick in the mud.

He lingered there for a moment, watching them, their expressions in the Dreaming.

[member="Lira Dajenn"] | [member="Hal Terrano"]​