The Smithy was finished. Every hook was hooked up, every tool was well placed, the fire roared and the coals glowed and Ginnie Ordo was the proudest little girl in the known universe. Her living area on the top slate stair sported a thick woven mat of winter grass and wintergreen branches, which filled the air around her with a pleasant and warm fragrance. Her sleeping bag was much warmer for the insulation beneath her, and everything was finally right with the youngest Ordo.
She'd begun to hammer out the durasteel from the crates into practice stools, a small sleeping bag side table and the beginning securing bolts for a door. Of course the cave was offset from any natural path a person would decide to go, but a girl couldn't be too careful and a place without a door was silly! But how to make the door without putting a big 'investigate here' sign up? Ginnie decided it was best to make the door look like part of a mountainside. But how?
She began to pick up the rock dust, pebbles and smaller rocks from the area and built the durasteel door in a mottled and bulbous shape, overlaying it with the jagged rocks, dust and pebbles until it looked like a natural face of stone shaped for the opening of the Cathedral. The hinges were the hardest part, being only a small girl in such a big cave, she had to dig into her telekinetic prowess to keep the door in place long enough to bang the hinge bolts in place. The hammer crashed down on the bolts, metal squeaked and sparked and by the time the noon day sun had faded to a balmy afternoon, Ginnie Ordo pushed at her door and latched it in place.
"Fwwooooofff!" The girl cried, sliding against the durasteel interior of the door from the inside safety of the cave. The light which had peeked in from out the cavern's entrance had been excised by the structure, taming the whites and greys and buttery yellows of Ziost's sunlight with the oranges, deep yellows and reds of the fire. Ginnie rubbed her brow and took another bath, before cladding herself in her Beskar'gam and crawling through a secondary entrance some meters off from the door, which was little more than a narrow tunnel no larger than the child and her Beskar, no larger than a place the Tuk'ata pup could run through. By the time the Tuk'ata would reach full size, would it be able to squeeze through? Ginnie hoped so! For now, though the hole functioned and Ginnie brushed her armour off and looked at her handiwork from the outside.
"Huh! That looks better than I thought it would. Hey, Daddy'll be so proud I double latched the bolts and forged them right. I sure am hungry, let's go look for some more wood, buddy. This time I'm gonna use the wood to build a proper workbench and table for my alchemical tools." Searching out, the child finally found a smaller tree farther off from her cave. No use cutting the trees down by the entrance! That might lead people right to her!
This was a secret cave, after all. A secret cave in a dark and seldom ventured forest on a planet few wanted to approach. That did Ginnie just fine. Chopping down trees with a lightsaber was the easiest thing Ginnie'd done since she landed, and after she'd cleaned the 3/4ths meter wide trunk of its foliage and branches (which the Tuk'ata ran off with toward their Cathedral den one at a time, silly thing), Ginnie pushed at the trunk in hopes that it would roll.
It didn't. "Oh boy!" She pushed and pushed, moving it by inches, "Milligiddy this ain't easy!" and after moving the log a few feet, remembered that she could use the force itself to help her. So it was the girl moved the first logs to the entrance of her Cathedral forge. The tuk'ata had been in and out through the crawling tunnel, and Ginnie crawled through herself to open the latch on the door. She'd have to forge a better locking mechanism later, and pulled the log through. With that done, the child latched the door shut once again and took off her Beskar'gam upstairs in her platform room. She dug through her knapsack until her hand touched the most special, very best item she'd brought with her.
It was a sacred relic to the Mando'ad'ika and as she smelled the wintergreen mint and fir nettle tea begin to boil down the steps, Ginnie sat on her sleeping bag and held the small cube in her hand. It swelled with blue light, and as Ginnie pressed her thumb along it's edge, the holocron hummed to life.
A lifesized image of her brother roared to life and glanced down at the wide-eyed child. "The life and history of Castle Ne'tra's Forge isn't for your eyes, vod'ika." the projection said.
"I know you didn't want me to know, Isley. I know you're probably alive or dead somewhere and cringing at your little sister learning the Alchemical arts, but I gotta, Isley. I gotta." With tears in her eyes the girl poured out her soul to the mirage of [member="Isley Verd"]. She told him tales of her battles and her fears, of finding [member="Ordo"] on Serenno and being taken in as a daughter of Clan Ordo. She told him of the Mandalorians and the Nexu on the Ordo Ranch, of her mother and how proud and glad she was to have one. Then, as she wrapped her hands around the thrumming, humming holocron she told Darth Metus of Ordo's Fall and the death of @Gilamar Skirata.
"So I gotta fix it, Isley. I've got a vod and I love them and they love me and you're not around no more and I gotta fix it. I've got to get Daddy walking and I've got to get Mommy to stop being so sad. I've got to make up to the Mandalorians before they deem Clan Ordo Dar'manda. And you're the last thing I have of my real life flesh and blood brother and I miss him even though he turned into a jerk, but he had his reasons. Please teach me. Please."
The image on the holocron and the child on the sleeping bag stared into each others' eyes until the sun had fallen on Ziost and the only illumination in the space was the blue hum of the holocron and the orange glow of the fire below. A lazy tear rolled down her cheek and stopped, the projection of Isley moved to touch it but stopped. It was but a shadow of the man, the only light he'd owned and here the Troublemaker Kiffar felt her brother's desperation and pain. As she held the Holocron she felt the memories and sights of Isley crafting it, of it's journey to her hands. It was by no means the exhaustive holocron taken from Castle Ne'tra by the gang of robbers, but a smaller one preserved in the lower tunnels the child found the day she'd left.
"Dry your eyes, vod'ika." The apparition said at last and Ginnie obliged. "Take me to your fires and I will teach you to install the proper energy to this place. To prepare it for Alchemical work."
"Thank you, Isley." She whispered, and that night slept by the dwindling fires after hours of listening to her brother's holocron until her head had grown heavy and she'd fallen to slumber with the lilt of Isley's moving lips.
