Orryn's Journal

The hum of the Flickerfox’s engines was the only sound in his quarters. Ace sat on the edge of his bunk, elbows on his knees, staring at the book in his hands like it might vanish if he blinked too long.

Vinorl had pressed it into his palms before they parted. The leather was worn smooth at the corners, and the binding barely held together. His thumb traced the edge of the cover, hesitant, as if touching it too roughly might erase her words. His mother’s words.

Ace drew a slow breath, the kind he took before a fight, and opened the first page:

I saw him today. A man sitting in the forest,
where the trees bend low and the fog curls thick.
He wasn’t from the clan. His cloak was plain,
his beard too long, his eyes too tired.

I thought he would tell me to go back.
He didn’t. He just looked at the water,
like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear.

I didn’t speak either. I only watched.
The silence felt strange at first,
but not heavy like the elders make it.
It was quiet in a way that didn’t hurt.

I don’t know who he is.
But tomorrow, I think I’ll go back.

I asked him today.

I've been sitting with him for many moons now,
by the lake where the water never moves.
Sometimes we talk, sometimes we don't.
But he listens. Not the way my sisters do,
waiting for omens in every breath.
He just… listens.

So I asked him what he was.

He told me; Jedi.
The word felt strange in my mouth,
like something sharp and secret.
He said there are others still,
but he is not among them now.
He set their name down to find clarity.

I don't understand all of it.
But I think I understand him.
He carries a weight, like I do.
Not the same, but heavy all the same.

The clan says the Jedi are enemies.
But he does not feel like an enemy.

Today they told me the truth of why I was born.
Not riddles. Not whispers. Plain.

I am the vessel. My blood is the loom.
And through me, she is meant to come...
the Final Weave, the daughter who would end the old pattern
and begin a new one, with every sister bound to her will.

They said she will silence the matron's word,
break every other clan,
and weave the galaxy in her image.
No man will rule, no clan will rise, no thread will escape her braid.
All magick will fall until only hers remains.

The way they spoke… it was worship.
But their eyes were hungry.
I think they want her not as daughter, but as cage for us all.
A weapon, not a child.
An end, not a beginning.

They say I should be proud.
That this is glory, to carry her.
But I do not feel proud. I feel hollow.
Like I was never meant to be myself,
only the shadow before someone else's dawn.

If I am only a vessel, then what is left of me?
And if she ever comes, what will be left of anyone else?

Two years since they told me the truth.
Two years since the word vessel became heavier
than my own name.

Every ritual, every whisper,
reminds me that my body is not mine.
It belongs to a daughter who does not yet exist.
They call her the Final Weave.
They say her cry will silence the clans,
her breath will end all rivals,
and her shadow will stretch over the galaxy.

The sisters look at me with pride.
The elders with hunger.
None of them look at me as I am.

I wonder if the prophecy is truth,
or if it is only power spoken in circles
until it sounds like destiny.
If a thousand voices say a lie,
does it become a thread?
Does it bind you the same?

Sometimes I dream of her.
The daughter they wait for.
She has my face, but not my eyes.
When I try to speak to her,
she does not answer.
She only watches.

If she ever comes,
will she hate me for bringing her here?
Or will she hate me for wanting her not to?

I met someone.

Not a sister, not a spirit, not an echo of prophecy.
A man.

He came to Dathomir like a shadow,
not from the clans, not bound by their rules.
A wanderer, carrying something heavy in his eyes.
But when he looked at me, it wasn't hunger.
It wasn't the gaze of the elders,
measuring what I could give to their loom.

It was different.
It was alive.

He asked me my name.
No one has ever asked like that before.
Not as a test. Not as a title.
Just my name. Orryn.

When he spoke to me,
I felt my chest tighten,
as if the cage I've lived in had cracked a little.
It frightened me.
It thrilled me.

I don't know who he is.
Not yet.
But when his hand brushed mine,
I wanted it to stay.
I wanted more.

For the first time in my life,
I felt like I belonged to myself.

His name is Isley.

We have not been apart for long in many weeks.
Every stolen moment is fire,
and I have stopped trying to put it out.

He does not speak much of where he came from.
When I ask, he turns his eyes away,
like the answer is written somewhere far behind him.
But I see it; the hurt that never leaves him.
The way silence hangs on him heavier than armor.

There is a darkness in him too.
I feel it when his voice hardens,
when his hands tremble, then still.
It frightens me.
Yet I cannot stay away from it.
It draws me as much as it warns me.
Like a cliff edge I cannot stop standing on.

When he smiles, rare and fleeting
it feels like a secret only I am allowed to keep.
When he touches me, I remember that I am not a vessel,
not a thread, not a cage.
I am alive.

I will not let him go.

He is gone.

Isley did not say when he would return.
Only that duty had called him,
and that I would understand one day.
I do not.
All I understand is the ache where he was.

The nights are longer without him.
I keep looking for him in every shadow,
listening for his voice in the wind.
But there is only silence.
It hurts more than I thought it could.

And yet, he left me something.
A gift.
I am with child.

When I lay my hand upon myself,
I feel it... a rhythm.
Not mine. Not his.
New. Steady. Alive.

The sisters would call it an omen.
The elders would measure it as prophecy.
But I do not care what they see.
This life is not theirs.
It is mine.
It is his.
It is ours.

Even if he never returns,
I will not let them take this from me.

Our child continues to grow inside me.

The elders are pleased.
They speak in smiles and hushed excitement,
convinced I have honored the loom
and kept to the pattern they wove for me.
They think I carry the Final Weave.
They whisper that her cry will change the fate of clans.

I do not correct them.
But I know better.
I can feel it.
Something is wrong... or different.
The threads do not pull the way they are meant to.
The moons are dim, the stones are silent.
And when I place my hand on myself,
I do not sense the daughter they long for.
I sense something else.

This truth both thrills me and terrifies me.
Thrills me, because this child is mine, not theirs.
Terrifies me, because I know what they do
to anything that does not fit their weave.

At night I still miss Isley.
I miss the warmth of him,
the way his voice softened when he spoke my name.
But I also remember the shadow in him,
a darkness I could not name but always felt.
Sometimes I am afraid I will look upon this child
and see that same shadow staring back at me.

I have given him a name.

Vayun.

He came into this world beneath an eclipsed sky,
his cry louder than the chants that sought to silence him.
Hair white as bone, skin warm as his father's,
eyes that opened wide as if they already knew.

The elders called him wrong.
Male.
Ruin.
I heard the word on their lips even before they spoke it.
So I ran.
I will never stop running if it means he lives.

Now he sleeps against me as I write,
small and weightless,
yet heavier than all the prophecy they tried to bind to me.
I look at him and see no Final Weave,
no vessel, no cage.
Only my son.

I know what must be done.
If he is to survive, he must grow where their shadows cannot reach.
Hidden. Free. Unbound.
That is the gift I can give him.

I go to Vinorl only for aid,
for the ship that will carry us away from Dathomir's grasp.
The choice is mine.
The path is his.

Isley, if ever you read this,
know that you left me with more than memory.
You left me with hope.
Even with your shadow,
you gave me a light I would burn all of Dathomir to protect.

Vayun.
Live.
Be the story they never saw coming.