Private The Quiet Return

[Emberlyn Rekali]

House Veruna: The Hidden Estate
Designation: Rekali Private Holding – Eastern Terrace Sector
Location: Outskirts of Theed, Naboo
Status: Sealed / Privately Maintained / Recognized under dormant noble charter

There was no parade. No salute. Just footsteps. Just her.​

Theed hadn't changed.

Its skyline rose clean and soft against the morning light, sun catching on domes gilded in age and artistry. Birds cut lazy arcs through the blue above, and the waterfalls still sang the same hymn they always had—an endless chorus tumbling from high cliffs into mist-veiled rivers below. Naboo was a world that remembered beauty, even when the rest of the galaxy forgot everything else.

And beneath that soft sky, Emberlyn Rekali walked unseen.

No banner marked her return. No broadcast carried her name. Theed's people moved past her as if she were part of the stonework, one more silhouette among vendors and officials, diplomats and children. She liked it that way. Needed it that way. If someone looked too long, her eyes shifted. If someone smiled too openly, she looked away.

The satchel never left her shoulder. Her gait was clean, practiced. No limp. No tremor. But every motion came wrapped in something weightless and heavy all at once—like the hush of distant thunder just before the break.

She had come back with nothing. No orders. No mission. No uniform.

Just a name that no one had said in two years.

The great avenues had not changed. Not the sound of speeder bikes sweeping past in hush-toned elegance. Not the scent of river lilies growing wild between polished stones. But Emberlyn felt the difference in herself—like the air here was thinner, sharper, more real than anything she'd breathed since Exegol.

It wasn't peace. Not really.

It was the illusion of it.

And illusions had always sat uneasy against her skin.

She passed the same corner café where Mira used to sit, back when she still smiled sometimes. The table was still there—different people now. New conversations. Different futures. The space where her mother once existed had been filled by strangers, by time. By indifference.

Emberlyn didn't stop. She didn't need to. The ghosts here weren't loud. They didn't scream like the ones in space. They just lingered—soft and spectral, hovering in reflections and old stone.

It wasn't long before she reached the edge of the old Veruna holdings—overgrown, half-forgotten estates tucked behind high walls and thicker silence. The security fields recognized her without sound. No red lights. No alerts. Just a soft hiss as the gate accepted her presence and opened inward.

It had been nearly a decade.

Nothing inside had moved.

The air was stale. The furniture, untouched. Dust lay like fog across crystal and cloth. Screens blinked softly with outdated logs, and in one sealed room, the journal of Mira Rekali remained locked in its biometric cradle—waiting. Untouched.

Emberlyn didn't reach for it.

Not yet.

Instead, she walked through each corridor slowly, as though mapping it anew. Her fingers brushed old control panels, brass inlays, and the faded engravings of a family crest that no longer meant anything to her. Every room was a capsule. Every object a question she wasn't ready to answer.

Only when she reached the water garden did she pause.

The pond had gone still. Algae clung to its edges. But the stones were still there—the path she used to train on, barefoot and silent under the morning sun. She stepped onto it. One stone at a time. Muscle memory moved her forward, but something deeper pulled her still.

Halfway across, she stopped.

The breeze carried nothing. No voices. No mission. No Force guidance.

Just quiet.

And it was deafening.

She closed her eyes—not to meditate, not to reflect—but to listen. Really listen. To the sound of her breath. The weight of her limbs. The hum of a world that had gone on without her.

She was alive.

But that didn't mean she'd returned.

Not fully.

Naboo had not changed.

But Emberlyn Rekali had. And she wasn't sure yet what that meant. Only that she was here. Still breathing. Still walking. And somewhere beyond these still waters and soft skies, the war hadn't ended.

It had simply gone quiet.

Like her.

 

[Emberlyn Rekali]

There was no welcome. Only dust.​

She didn't linger in the garden.

The stones felt too small beneath her feet. The quiet too heavy. The stillness wasn't peace—it was stagnation, stretched across a decade of inaction.

Back inside, the hallway lights followed her, casting soft halos ahead of each step. The estate didn't hum. It watched. Waiting to see if she'd stay.

The kitchen offered nothing.

The coolers were long dead. The preservation units offline. Everything left inside had withered into expiration. Sealed rations, Mira's last dry stock, powdered nutrients—all collapsed, fractured, or molded in silence. She didn't speak. Didn't sigh.

Just closed the final drawer and walked out.

Her satchel waited by the entry bench like it always had. She shouldered it again. Not because she meant to go far—just because she hadn't yet figured out how to let go of it.

The gate opened with a hiss and a blink of green. Theed sprawled below in gold morning light, its domes warm against the sky. Voices drifted up from the streets—vendors, droids, travelers. The world moved on.

She followed the slope downward, taking side streets where the noise grew without pressing in.

And when the market came into view, so did the place she hadn't meant to pass:

The Scars of Remembrance.

She slowed.

Not out of grief. Just reflex.

The plaza beneath her feet darkened, scorched and fractured in veins that shimmered faintly under the sunlight. Blackened stone, warped by orbital fire—testament to a day Naboo had nearly fallen. The ground itself remembered what the air had done.

Emberlyn stepped lightly across it.

Not reverent. Not indifferent.

Just… aware.

Names were carved along the edges now—people who had been here. Who had died. Locals. Soldiers. Friends of others. The Force did not hum. The wind did not shift. It was just quiet.

But not empty.

She kept walking. Past the etched stone. Past the ghost-heat clinging to air that should have forgotten it by now.

Into the market.

Where color returned. Where scent and motion tangled together again.

She moved without pause, gathering what she needed—bread, fruit, something hot and wrapped in wax cloth. Enough for a day. Maybe two.

No one looked at her twice.

And for now, that was enough.

The city had scars.
So did she.

Neither of them had healed.
But both had survived.

Rik Perris