Private A Beginning Without Intention

[Nitya Xeraic]

Nitya took a single step forward, unhurried but carrying an unmistakable quiet welcome. The forest behind her swayed in a slow, observing rhythm, as if it approved of the moment unfolding. She studied the man before her with a calm, open stillness—the kind that didn't demand answers, only offered space for them. Her posture remained relaxed, hands loosely folded in front of her, as the warm light from her doorway pooled softly against her back.

"You've come far to reach this place," she said, her voice low and serene, a gentle ripple through the clearing's quiet. "Oralis Prime doesn't sit on many paths." She let the silence stretch naturally after that, not intrusive, simply present, as though allowing the forest to breathe with them. When she spoke again, her tone held a thoughtful certainty. "And you don't strike me as a man who wanders without reason."

Her glowing eyes lifted to meet his fully, then—steady, composed, open. The breeze stirred a strand of dark hair across her cheek, but she didn't break eye contact, instead offering a soft inclination of her head in greeting.

"My name is Nitya," she said, the introduction given, without ceremony. "This hermitage is my home."

She let that settle for a moment, her voice easing into something warmer, quieter. "If you seek rest, you'll find it here. And if you seek conversation… I can offer tea and quiet. This place holds plenty of both." She paused again—not awkwardly, but thoughtfully—her expression softening at the edges in a way that suggested a willingness to listen without expectation.

"And if you seek something else," she added gently, "you may tell me when you're ready. There's no hurry here. The forest is patient." Another faint breeze brushed between them, the canopy overhead whispering as though echoing her words.

Turning slightly, she motioned toward the doorway of her simple stone-and-wood hermitage. Warm, golden light spilled across the threshold, illuminating polished stone floors, carved shelves, and the faint curl of steam from a kettle near the hearth. It was a small home, but one crafted with intention—quiet, balanced, safe.

"You're welcome to come in," she said as she stepped aside to give him room. "Strangers rarely arrive here without purpose. And the forest rarely guides someone to my door without meaning."

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

Amadis had been walking, a long hike across an unfamiliar world. While their sky was dry for now. Kei remained damp from the rain he'd passed through, his clothes marked by the forest around him, with a cut across his palm. Force guided you somedays whether you wanted to listen or not.

Further he got from civilization, easier everything felt. He'd told Ra he would work with her; life had to be more than justice. Trees. Life. Forest and wind on his face felt like the home he used to know. Kei wore beige and green traveler's gear, a backpack, an old open green jacket, and thick boots, with his father's hololocket and a scar or two. Matsu would scold him for not wearing armor, he carried enough armor on his shoulders as it was.

Weariness clung to his face, a tired man out of time and place. As the stranger approached, Amadis lifted his head and gave a firm nod.

"Didn't realize, Nitya." Kei apologized directly. "Kindness. Thank you." His voice was humble, low, weighted. Old Kei had purpose to spare; this Kei had been hollowed out of love and life, the pieces that mattered carved away.

A grin covered it, braced and friendly, strained. "Lovely home." He dropped his eyes to his boots. "Get mud on your floor." He stood firm at the doorframe; her place reminded him too much of what he'd lost. Beautifully kept. Peaceful. Just minus the laughter of children, and her touch.

Thurion or Coci would tease him for being an old sentimentalist. The threshold felt like a line he wasn't supposed to cross.

"Ship had to leave" he added, "Urgent mission. Was planning to camp." He looked up at the sky, a sense of the next rain coming soon, lowering his eyes to meet hers.

Amadis's force signature felt pulled back from the brink, undeniably dark. He had killed and could kill again, never on a whim, never without reason. His heaviness and guilt were framed, contained, carried. Every decision mattered. Even walking into a room.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

Nitya watched him with the patience of someone who had learned to read silence more fluently than words. Kei's presence didn't crash against hers the way some wounded souls did; it settled, low and heavy, like a stone dropped into deep water. Dark, yes—but not cold. Not cruel. A darkness carried, not wielded.

She stepped slightly back from the doorway, giving him more space instead of less, as though the threshold itself were a weight he needed room to approach.

"You owe me no apology," she said softly, the glow of her Zorren eyes warm despite the cool air. "Names are only the last thing people learn about each other."

Her voice carried no judgment, no pity.
Just truth wrapped in quiet kindness.

At his comment about mud, she glanced down at his boots—scuffed, damp, marked with a long journey—and then back to his face.

"Mud washes," she murmured, tone almost like a smile. "Loneliness doesn't."

It was the closest she came to teasing, but her expression held understanding rather than levity. She could feel the hesitation in him like a physical barrier, could see the way his eyes lingered just inside her home and then pulled back, resisting instinctively.

She'd known many who hesitated at thresholds.
People who had lost too much.
People who feared stepping into peace they didn't think they deserved.

"You weren't planning to camp," she said quietly—not accusing, just observing. "You were planning to endure."

A pause—soft, steady.

"You have endured enough."

The wind shifted, brushing cold air between them. Nitya lifted one hand, not touching him, simply gesturing gently toward the interior—light, warmth, the faint scent of juniper from tea already steeping.

"Kei," she said, speaking his name now that she'd learned it, letting it settle gently in the air between them, "you're not intruding. You're welcome."

Her voice lowered, grounded and sure.

"You may come inside.
Or you may sit on the step until you're ready.
Both choices are yours.
But you do not have to stand alone in the doorway."

She held his gaze—not pulling, not pushing—just meeting him with the steady calm of someone who had spent years learning how to heal in silence.

"And if the storm comes," she added softly, glancing toward the sky he'd looked to, "I would rather you not be sleeping under it."

Another small breath, gentle as a hand resting lightly near his.

"You can keep your boots on."

A faint warmth touched her voice again, the smallest seed of humor nestled inside the stillness.

"I've survived worse things than mud."

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

Amadis thought of Taiden when she spoke, wisdom you listened to whether you were trying or not.

Endure
"Yeah."
Endure the storm, endure the galaxy, endure for the rest of his life.

She was right. Proximity to her meant the truth, he exhaled, looking across the stone floor. A drip of moisture, the outside storm running down his face when he looked upward into her eyes, braced grin straining.

I would rather you not be sleeping under it.

"Seen a lot of storms."

Light scarring to his face, the eyebrow, the chin, the subtle way his leg moved a half-second slower than it should. Hands close, a fingertip from touch, familiarity, or tenderness half-buried. Turning, he sat on her step and undid his boots, placing them inside the door, staring up at the weather. Amadis sat for a while, heavy and full of weight. Choices not so simple.

I've seen worse things than mud. Her humor edged in; the grin almost came back as he looked outward.

"Yeah. I'd never bring them into a home." That word again, catching in his throat.

A space where the outside dangers stopped at the door. That's what her place reminded him of, how she'd created her sanctuary on a remote world, with peace, love, and care. He'd not sully that for all the comfort in the galaxy. Kei stood up and walked beside her, close but not touching, distant but not distant at all; wet footprints of the storm, but no mud.

Amadis looked across the walls, the stone, any fire, or simple detail. He strode ahead, good to feel in a, "place you built, with your own hands." Kei looked at a picture, a decoration, or the wall design. "Remember the first log, or stone?" You old sentimentalist.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

Stormwater slid down his face in thin rivulets, catching the lamplight as it traced the scars that told pieces of his history. Nitya watched him with the kind of attentiveness that wasn't intrusive but present—a recognition of weight carried far too long. His admission, small as it was, settled into the air between them like a quiet truth neither needed to name.

"Storms leave marks," she murmured, her golden eyes studying the slow movement of his hands, the care he gave to the simple act of removing his boots. "But so does surviving them."

She stepped slightly aside as he placed the boots just over the threshold, respecting both his care and his boundaries. When he sat on the step for a while, she didn't speak. She stayed near—close enough to be a presence, far enough not to crowd him. Her silence held shape: not avoidance, but understanding.

When he finally stood and moved beside her, close without touching, she exhaled softly, almost imperceptibly, as though his choice eased something quietly inside her.

"It is a home," she said gently, following his gaze across the stone walls and carved wood. "But only because it's been tended—not because of the walls themselves."

He walked ahead, taking in the small details: the hand-smoothed stones lining the hearth, the woven mats she repaired by moonlight, the shelf where a single carved figurine rested—weathered, precious, and clearly old.

His question touched something rooted deep.

"Do I remember the first stone?" Nitya echoed, stepping up beside him, her voice quiet but warm. "Yes. I remember carrying it from the riverbank. It was heavier than it looked. I chose it because it felt… steady in my hands. Stronger than I felt, at the time."

She reached out, brushing her fingertips over the rounded stone that formed the base of her hearth—her very first piece.

"I wasn't sure I would stay," she admitted. "When I placed that stone, I thought this might be a temporary shelter. A pause." Her hand fell to her side, her expression softening. "But every storm I weathered here made the foundation stronger. One stone at a time."

Her eyes lifted to his, tender but steady.

"You don't have to bring storms into my home, Kei," she said softly. "Just yourself. Whatever part of you is ready to be inside."

A pause, gentle as the hush before snowfall.

"And if today, the threshold is as far as you can go… I'll sit there with you."

The offer was quiet.
Serious.
Unrushed.

A soft space for him to breathe without being asked for anything more.

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

"Tended by someone who cares." Amadis said firmly.

Wasn't sure I would stay.
He wasn't sure he'd walk in.

"Put the first stone down, others can follow. Before you know it." He looked around them the room then back to her, long and steady. Like happened, not planned, never could tell what happened next. Till he turned away again, looking down at her hand, close, then the stone she'd lifted. He rested his hand upon it, fingers rough, cupping the edge.

Strange feeling.

Eerily familiar. Uncomfortably so. Welcoming and Safe in a way he didn't deserve. Storms left marks, he hadn't survived his, not in any way that counted.

When her eyes met his again, there was a quiet searching warmth to them.

I'll sit there with you.

"Like to sit awhile." Amadis asked. "if its not imposing miss." A grin softer than usual, an odd mix of recognition and sadness around the edges. So the practical man in him stepped up. Funny thing was, the less people asked, the more he wanted to do.

"What do you need out here miss?" Action. Out of the blue and blunt. If nothing else it'd give him an excuse to come back, and to give her something for his stay.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

Nitya watched the way Kei's hand settled against the stone she had once carried from the river, the roughness of his fingers brushing its surface with surprising care, and something in that small gesture—simple, unforced, almost reverent—reached a part of her that had been left untouched for a very long time. When he asked to sit, she shifted slightly. She lowered herself to the step beside him, maintaining a respectful distance yet allowing herself to be closer than she usually permitted with strangers, because somehow his presence felt less like an intrusion and more like an invitation to be understood.

"You're not imposing," she said quietly, her voice a soft thread woven through the sound of rain outside, "you're choosing to be here, and that… that is something different than simply taking space."

For a while, she let the quiet stretch between them, not out of hesitation but because she had lived long enough alone that silence had become a companion she no longer wished to dismiss too quickly. The storm outside whispered against the stone walls, and the glow of her lamplight cast warm shadows that flickered across Kei's features, softening the weariness etched into him. When he finally asked what she needed—a question so blunt, so earnest, so unlike the careful small talk most favored—the honesty of it struck her more deeply than she expected.

"There is very little I truly need in this place," she began, her gaze dipping to her hands as her fingers folded gently together. "I have shelter that keeps out the storms, a hearth that warms the evenings, enough food and tea to sustain me, and the Force to guide every quiet step I take." Her breath deepened slightly, steady and contemplative, before she lifted her eyes again. "But what I lack… what I have lacked for a long time… is company."

She paused, but not to search for words. Only to let the truth find its shape.

"I do well in solitude," she continued, her voice softening until it nearly blended with the hush of the rain, "but even those who choose a quiet life are not meant to be entirely untouched by others. I thrive on the rare moments when someone crosses my threshold—when the silence shifts, even briefly, to make room for a second presence. It keeps me from becoming something too distant, too inward, too shaped by isolation alone."

Her golden eyes met his once more, and the warmth in them was steady, unflinching, and quietly earnest.

"So if you are asking what I need out here," she said, "then the truest answer is simple: I need the reminder that life does not exist only in the stillness I surround myself with. I need a voice besides my own, a heartbeat besides my own, a shared cup of tea or a shared moment of simple presence, even if the words are few."

A breath.
Soft.
Certain.

"And if the person willing to be that presence happens to be you, Kei… then I would welcome that more than I expected to."

The confession lingered between them—not heavy, not hopeful, but warm, honest, and unafraid to exist exactly as it was.

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

Company. He didn't look. The fragility and vulnerability in the admission pulled something in him.

Amadis directly took her left hand in his right, unless she pulled away. Unexpected. The distance between them there and not. No words. Sitting there watching the storm in the distance. The softness of her smaller hands, the contrast to the rough skin of his, a firm but gentle grip.

He wouldn't speak for a while, silent even if she did, until silence broke like the thunder ahead.

"We're not meant to be alone."

He said to the storm. Some enjoyed isolation, he had on Kashyyyk, but when it came down to it, people did all kinds of things to avoid being completely alone or feeling it. Surrounding themselves with friends, families, addictions, false promises, hope, and delusions. Loneliness was a silent killer half the galaxy fought.

And when he turned to her that time, apart and not, there was a look in his eyes that only saw her. Just her. Nothing else. The softness of her skin, her hand, her eyes, learning every feature on her pretty face. And then the weight hit him.

"Lost." What had he lost? "Everyone. Not over it." Not by a hundred years. Probably never would be. A thumb rubbed across her palm, and he let go of her hand gently.

"Here. Feels like." A betrayal of her memory. A home he shouldn't be in. "Hard to say." He wanted to be here, lose himself in the warmth of another, a safe home, and forget about it all. But he never would.

Amadis was for life. He never gave up on anything true. Until it gave up on him. He wore the same colors Coci had given him when she gave him a home in the Silvers lifetimes ago, he flew the same broken-down old ship that had become a second home in the stars, and when he said the words.

"Not going anywhere."

That's what he meant. Right on this step. Inside her home and not. Hand resting on the stone step like a wounded bird without wings.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

Nitya did not pull her hand away when he reached for it; in truth, the gesture caught her so completely off guard that her breath stilled in her chest, not from fear, but from the fragile tenderness of it — a touch offered without demand, expectation, or presumption. His fingers were rough and warm, familiar in a way that made no sense, and her own hand settled into his with a natural ease she had not felt in many years, her smaller fingers folding lightly into the space he created for them without resistance.

She didn't look at him at first, choosing instead to look out into the storm with him, letting the silence unfold between them like a long-held breath neither of them realized they'd been carrying. The warmth of his hand seeped slowly into her skin, and each heartbeat she felt through his palm seemed to reach a place in her chest she had kept untouched for far too long.

His words — We're not meant to be alone — were spoken to the sky, but they found her just as surely as if he had whispered them directly into her ear.

"We're not," she answered, her voice so quiet it nearly blended with the distant rumble of thunder, yet steady enough that there was no mistaking the truth in it. "Even those of us who try to make peace with solitude still carry the ache of being unseen."

When he finally turned to her, she lifted her gaze to meet his, and in that long, quiet moment, she saw the entirety of what he carried — the scars on his face, the grief pooled behind his eyes, the storm-worn edges of a man who had lost far more than he ever deserved. And beneath all of it, she saw the softness he tried so hard to keep covered, the part of him that still knew how to hold a hand gently, the part that still looked at another person as if they were worth remembering.

She held his eyes without shying away from the weight in them.

"I know what it is to lose more than you can name," she said, her words flowing slowly, shaped by years of unspoken memory. "And I know what it is to believe that you're meant to carry that loss alone because letting someone share even a fraction of it feels like a betrayal of the life you once had."

The thumb brushing across her palm sent a quiet tremor of warmth through her, and when he let her hand go, the absence of his touch lingered like an imprint, warm and aching.

"You're not betraying anyone by standing in a place that feels safe," she continued, turning slightly so she could see him more clearly, her golden eyes soft with something that lived halfway between compassion and recognition. "You're only acknowledging that the part of you which survived still wants to live. That doesn't dishonor those you lost, Kei. It honors the love that shaped you."

When he said, "Not going anywhere," she felt the meaning beneath the words — a promise, not of permanence, but of presence, of choosing to remain in this moment with her, in this space neither of them had expected to share.

Nitya reached out slowly, deliberately, and laid her hand over his where it rested on the stone step — not gripping, not claiming, just resting, the warmth between them a gentle, steady current that bridged the space he'd left when he released her hand.

"You can stay," she said, her voice warm and certain, carrying the quiet strength of someone who did not give promises lightly. "For as long as you choose. I don't ask anything more of you than that."

Her thumb brushed once across the back of his hand, a small motion, almost imperceptible, but full of understanding.

"You are not lost here, Kei. Not tonight."

And outside, the storm softened, as if the world itself recognized the truth between them.

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

Man can fight for recognition for a lifetime. Some souls never see it from wives or children. He saw it in her eyes. She knew that everything he was had shattered. Sometimes recognition is all it takes. Someone to see you. Like he tried to do for her and her home. The ache of being unseen.

Honors the love that shaped you.
He tensed up like he could rip out a roar, pull down the clouds, and grind them into the earth.

Carry the loss alone.
They were not dead. It wasn't over. His eyes were distant in that loss. She might, for the first time feel some unease as it began to crack open.

When her hand touched his, it settled in an uneasy balance of softness and storm. That fine balance rocked across the top of his hand, like adding wings to a boulder's worth of grief. The brush of her thumb tender, soothing, softness quelling an internal battle so deep it had split his soul in two.

You are not lost here, Kei. Not tonight. You can stay.
He took her hand again, and turned his palm over. This time his grip was firmer, real and raw, emotions elevated. The ache of being untouched.

"I killed them." He told her. "Nobody else."
In his head he said the words, but they weren't spoken. A sword in the heart, which he would never release.

A stupid grand gesture trying to save a people he'd never see again; like he had to be the one to sacrifice or save them instead of getting his family out first. Kei's arrogance and stupidity had cost them their lives. The grip was a heavy mix. Finding this softness and care in an unexpected wilderness under a storm. Atop the guilt and shame. Gentle and strong but…

Broken. If not lost here, not tonight.

A long pause there again. Making a conscious choice to kiss the back of her hand. If you asked him why, he wouldn't know. Emotion, not reason, brought his free hand to touch her cheek, turning inward to face her, resting his palm unless she flinched. This was grief; he knew it.

"Why are you here."

He asked. Looking into those beautiful golden eyes, breath closer across her tanned skin. Grief but...

"Why now."

...Hope.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

When Kei's fingers closed around hers, not tentative but weighted with an honesty that rarely surfaced without cost, Nitya did not tense or draw away; instead, she let the moment settle between them, the warmth of her hand a steady counterpoint to the turbulent breath rising in his chest. She felt the shift in him — the way a man breaks open not with violence but with truth —, and she simply remained, a stillness that invited him to stop bracing himself against the world.

His grief was not quiet. Even unspoken, it swept through him like a winter gust, sharp and cold and too familiar for her to mistake. Yet she met his eyes without hesitation, letting her presence soften enough that he could see she wasn't startled by the force of it, nor frightened by what lay underneath. The touch of his thumb against her palm, his hand rising to her cheek, the kiss he pressed to the back of her hand — all of it carried the echo of a man trying to hold something that had slipped from his fingers long ago.

When he asked why she was here — why now — she did not rush to fill the air with answers, she let a breath glide out slowly, the kind that eased tension rather than fed it, and tilted her face just slightly into the warmth of his hand, a quiet acceptance of the intimacy he offered and a reassurance that it was not misplaced.

"I came to Oralis Prime because I needed silence," she said at last, her voice low and steady, flowing with the same gentle certainty she brought to every deliberate choice. "Not the kind that hides you from life, but the kind that lets you hear yourself again, without the weight of expectations or the noise of other people's needs pressing in from every direction. This place allowed me to breathe for the first time in years. It reminded me of who I am when the galaxy is not demanding anything from me."

Her fingers shifted subtly, not pulling free of his hold but tracing lightly along the back of his hand, a motion both grounding and compassionate. "But peace is a lonely thing when it stretches on too long. Visitors are rare. Companionship is even rarer. So when you walked toward my home through a storm, carrying a presence that felt… familiar in ways I didn't expect, I listened. Not because you asked anything of me, but because something in the Force pressed gently at my awareness, telling me to pay attention."

She held his gaze then — unwavering, unguarded in a way she rarely allowed herself to be — and the golden hue of her eyes warmed with quiet understanding. "You speak as though you are lost, as though the weight you carry has carved something out of you that will never return. But I do not see a man undone by grief. I see someone who has survived his storms, even when they left scars far deeper than the ones on your skin. I see someone who still chooses to stand, even when the memories want to drag him to his knees."

Her voice softened further, the gentleness not fragile but resilient, like a hand resting over a wound without seeking to claim it. "If you ask why now… then perhaps it's because now is the first time either of us has been able to hear the answer. You wouldn't have stayed before. And I wouldn't have opened the door."

Her thumb brushed along his cheekbone with a touch both careful and deliberate, neither pulling him closer nor pushing him away — simply anchoring them both to the moment. "Sit here with me," she murmured, her tone threaded with sincerity rather than invitation. "Let the storm do whatever it wishes outside these walls. You don't have to hold everything alone tonight."

She did not release his hand.

She did not close the distance more than he already had.

She remained beside him — present, steady, warm in a way that did not ask, did not demand, did not claim, but offered a grounding that had nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the quiet possibility of a future he had not yet allowed himself to imagine.

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

As her faced tilted, his hand cupped, supporting and holding, like an earthquake could have happened and it would still be there. Kei didn't brace against the world in that moment; he braced for her. And when she brushed his face, the world slowed into a deep silence. Which cut everything else away. He didn't break that contact or say anything, a kiss would have been natural, thumping in his chest to reach for her fully in his arms.

But her words came back to him.

"Those needs can swallow you whole." Amadis nodded. He recalled a time when all he did was bring boxes to refugees, dig pipes for their water and farmland, and build their bridges. It had been a good life, but other people's. And ultimately one the galaxy had rejected them for.

Reminded me of who I am.
"And who are you Nitya?"

He asked openly, moving closer to her side. She had been right. With no needs here, the silence gave you time to think. The need to do something for another could be a distraction from the feeling within. He wouldn't let it be the same for her here. She braced in a different way, like a healer would.

Releasing her cheek, Amadis's arm found her shoulders, a strong, firm hold, not crushing, embracing, resting around her, safe and held. He looked out again as the cloud drew closer, the subtle patter of rain in the distance. For the first time tonight, he gave her space to be more open.

"My life, taken me many places." He brought her palm up in front of them, his own still holding it, fingers together. "None like this." A stone step, half in and out of a world he had forgotten, sitting inside a wound that she soothed.

"Appreciate the comfort. Needed it." But saving another, being the healer, you could mistake that for something else on both sides. When the wound was gone, the relationship went with it. So when he turned to her again, he left himself at the door.

"Enough about me." Or why or how.
Eyes searching her face, "what makes your heart sing, keeps you up at night worrying, scares you, gives you hope?"

He wanted to know her. Not just the healer. The woman. No more taking tonight; he was going to listen to her world for as long as she'd talk about herself, and then some.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

For a long, steady moment, she didn't look away from him. His arm settling around her shoulders didn't startle her; it felt less like an intrusion and more like something the moment had been quietly shaping toward—two people leaning into one another not out of desperation but out of recognition. She let the closeness settle naturally, her body aligning with his without tension or hesitation, her hand gently cradled between both of theirs as the distant patter of rain drew a quiet circle around them.

He asked who she was.
Not the surface, not the role, not the mask.

The woman.

Nitya exhaled slowly, her gaze lowering to the joined hands before them as though she could read her own truth in the lines of her palm.

"Who I am," she began, the words slow and contemplative, as though she had never been asked the question in a way that invited honesty rather than performance. "I suppose the simplest answer is that I'm someone who's been shaped by two very different halves of a life. The first half was full of loving parents, warmth, and a home that felt safe. My childhood wasn't hard. It was…good. Gentle, even. I was never alone, never without someone to guide me."

She paused, her gaze softening with the kind of ache that comes from touching something treasured.

"And then, when I was sixteen, everything shifted at once. My father died. My mother disappeared. People who meant well stepped into the gaps, but none of them stayed. My mother's partner promised to teach me and then changed his mind. My uncle took me to face my transition and then… forgot me there. Others made offers that evaporated as quickly as they came."

Her thumb brushed along the back of his hand again, though the motion felt more like a grounding for herself than for him.

"I went from a life full of people to a pattern of almosts. Almost taken in. Almost guided, almost wanted. And each time the ground fell away a little more beneath me. Not because anyone thought I was dangerous or wrong—just because life pulls people in different directions, and I kept being the one left standing in the quiet."

Her breath slipped out softly, not bitter, not sharp—just honest.

"So I came here. Not because I was running from anything, but because I was tired of asking the galaxy to make space for me when it never seemed to know how. Peace is simpler. Silence is kinder. The forest doesn't forget you on the side of a mountain."

When she lifted her eyes again, they were warm, steady, and fully present in the moment between them.

"But I'm not closed off and not broken. Just…careful. I learned to shrink my presence so the world wouldn't keep shifting under my feet. I learned independence so I wouldn't be disappointed when someone walked away. I learned quiet so I wouldn't take up space no one intended for me."

Her shoulder eased subtly into the curve of his arm.

"What keeps me awake at night isn't fear. It's the thought that maybe I am meant for something more than the solitude I've built around myself—but I no longer know how to reclaim that without losing the safety I've earned."

A small, barely-there smile touched her lips then.

"And what gives me hope is this—someone sitting beside me because they want to, not because they're obligated. Someone who listens. Someone who asks who I am, not what I can offer."

She dipped her head a little closer, breath brushing the space between them.

"That is who I am, Kei. Someone who once belonged everywhere…and then belonged nowhere…and is finally beginning to wonder if there is something in between."

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

Her family splitting, he nodded firm a couple of times. Sometimes splitting had to happen. Breaking and coming apart for whatever came next. Where she tried to find herself or her place.

Listening to all of it. Amadis pressed his arm firmer.
She had "been through a lot. Forests have a way of remembering you were there." Keeping it simple in the footprints.

She spoke about those who gave her promises that never came. Father figures, or mentors, and a pattern through her life that came from the same uncertainty. Words didn't mean much. Only what people did.

"Can't be with anyone else fully, till you can be with yourself." Like the unfortunate cliche it was. Because life can teach you that, "you come first, its not selfish, it's needed." It taught the exact opposite too.

People give you that line, but till you've lived it, it seems like a cliché. When you are comfortable with yourself, when the expectations or anxiety had gone, the behavior triggers we all carry are settled or worn in, then all that is left is you, the real you, and you understand. Like "good parents or a happy home could steer you towards, a broken one can hide for a lifetime."

I no longer know how to reclaim that without losing the safety I've earned.
Safety came in many forms but from people… You "don't work that out alone." He took the lead here. "Safety from people comes from safe people."

But your "not saying that to me." Amadis said, looking at her again, the hand not letting her go, keeping it so she could see and feel it, "saying, finding someone who sticks around is hard." He nodded, "yeah it is, people come and go, life pulling at them a hundred different ways, you've seen it, so much coming at them that even they don't know who or where they are." So when someone stuck around, imperfect, flawed, but present, people hung onto that as the rarity it was.

Her hand he held, her soft strokes, and her easing against his shoulder drew him down into his protective nature fully. "Out in the forest, it's simple, life isn't chaotic or crazy Nitya, so the people are easier to understand." When she talked about shrinking her presence, it rallied something in him, "life taught me humility too, plenty of times, humble is part of it."

Someone sitting beside me because they want to, not because they're obligated. Someone who listens. Someone who asks who I am, not what I can offer.

"Everyone wants something, some don't know what it is. You do now. Clear and true." Selfish and humble. Took a lot of pain to get there. "Took guts to say that. Proud of you." Might not mean much from someone she'd just met, but she'd been open and vulnerable, just put herself out there. And he wanted her to know she had space for that.

As her head dipped closer, his did too
"Never stop telling me who you are."
He felt her breath closer, her thumb brushed, and he gripped her hand firm, held.

Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

His arm settled more firmly around her, and she let the warmth of it anchor her in a way she hadn't expected when the evening began. The storm outside was distant now—sound softened, winds gentled—yet the storm inside them both felt clearer, more honest, more seen. When he told her he was proud of her, something in her chest tightened, not with pain but with a quiet, startling gratitude she hadn't felt in years. Praise had always come to her for composure, for control, for discipline, rarely for truth.

Her thumb brushed his knuckles again, slower this time, a small unconscious acknowledgment of the steady hold he kept around her hand.

"There's more," she said softly, not as a confession but as an offering he had earned by listening without asking for anything in return. "I didn't come here only because people left. I came here because I was tired of measuring my worth by whether people stayed. I wanted to know who I was when there was no one to take care of, no expectations to meet, no duties to prove myself worthy of."

She exhaled, leaning just slightly deeper into the curve of his shoulder, enough that her temple brushed the line of his jaw before she settled again, close but unhurried.

"I found peace here. I found discipline. I found myself again… but I also found the edges of my loneliness. Not the kind that stings or gnaws, but the kind that sits quietly beside you and asks if this is really all your life is meant to hold."

Her fingers curled more securely around his, a calm entangling rather than a grasp.

"And tonight, for the first time in a long while, I find myself wanting to share more than silence with someone. To offer more than duty or wisdom or presence. To be known, not as the quiet woman in an old Jedi temple, but as…me."

She turned her head slightly, enough that the tip of her nose nearly brushed the side of his, a deliberate softness that invited closeness without assuming it.

"You tell me to keep showing you who I am," she murmured, warm breath blending with his. "I will. But only if you allow me the same in return."

Her fingers shifted, brushing lightly across the back of his hand, then settling again.

"Who are you, Kei?" Her voice was soft, but there was no hesitation in it, no fear of what she might hear. "What shaped you into the man sitting beside me? What carved those lines in your hands and that heaviness in your breath? What do you carry when no one is watching?"

Her forehead dipped closer—slow, deliberate, the space between them thinning to the faintest thread without crossing it.

"I want to know you," she said, steady and sincere. "Not the warrior. Not the wanderer. Not the man who has survived storms. I want to know the person who came to my door tonight and stayed."

She didn't push further. Didn't pull him in. Just remained there, her breath mingling with his, the offer quiet and open—a space for him to step into, if he chose.

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

Amadis checked his protective side to an external one and gave her room to breathe; arm around her, protected, safe but free to speak. He had a nasty habit of cutting in too early; sometimes it saved people, sometimes… he exhaled the ache for the loss always there. He heard it all, and he didn't interrupt, giving that safe protective space. Her closeness, stirring him, the soft brush of her head against his jaw narrowing his attention to every word she said.

Duty. Discipline. Wise Healer. Care. Humbleness. Quiet Softness. Resilience. Beauty and a desire to be seen, held, and loved. He parted her hair and kissed her forehead, releasing her hand only to cup her cheek, looking at her, "Not alone." Kei stated firmly and then took it again. "I see you."

Who was he? A tired old grin beat out the scars.

An old fool. A failed husband and father. A warrior with delusions of standing, a head too stubborn for his own good. He put aside his self-pity for tonight, the soft brush of her nose soothing, his cheek rested closer, speaking with low intensity.

"No more or less than you see."

But that touch, that softness, made it easier somehow and deserved more. Rallying an old undying sentimentalist streak.

"Family were from Panatha. " A planet that no longer existed, "Never knew my mother. Lived on the move, starship to starship with my father. Eventually." He exhaled, "lost him, never knew where." He took out his family hololocket and let it sit over his clothes. It was white framed with silver at the heart, hung with a silver chain, a picture of his father inside when he opened it. Lost father, lost son, lost wife, lost daughter. This could be a long story. Although she didn't ask for the storms he'd survived, he knew no other way to tell it.

"Woke up with a new crew on an old freighter," A very old story too, and a freighter he still flew, "keep in contact with one of them. Joined the republic, straight into a Sith attack," his very first day, "was told military and Jedi don't mix, so young and dumb, tried to do something and we were shot down hard. But…"

He looked again at the storm leaving. "Republic fell from the infighting. Jedi orders splintered into many." He wasn't responsible for the hundred voices or their own preferences, but young Kei was one of the matches that lit the fire.

"Fought the Sith for a while, lost some people, friends, when it all calmed down, Coci offered me a home with the silvers," Which had gone through different incarnations over the years. "Great lady, all heart, miss her." He smiled, deep in sentiment.

"Silvers and the SSC did a lot of relief work, helped people, fought back against the oppressive empires and tyrants, but in the end…" he looked back to her, "hated us anyway, because we made mistakes, we were human." Lot of mistakes, because the Silvers had gone a lot of miles and some over rough roads.

"Settled down on Kashyyyk." And now he almost withdrew, but he stayed there, "raised a family, Mathayus, Amelia," he didn't say Elara's name. Eyes distant and remembering. "Patches, Zacka, built our lives by a lake, out of wood and stories, friendship and love." Three picturesque wooden huts, three families, old friends, and wookiee friends for leagues around them.

Stopped in a crushing weight of emotion. Not about to tell her how the Mandalorians butchered them all. His own need to protect and stand rather than quietly evacuate getting them all killed.

"Now I'm here. Sitting on this step with you." After going on a revenge streak that hadn't really ended. Not if he was honest; he'd given his word, and he'd hold it as best he could.

Amadis's eyes returned to hers, face close again. "Simple truth Nitya, don't give up on anyone, until they give up on me." He still held her hand through the rising emotional swing, the history, all of it. Kei wanted to say: family is everything to me, but he couldn't because they were dead. He was just as she saw here, "there is nothing else." An absolute fatalistic view, which his son had also inherited; if only Kei knew he still breathed, but for how long who knows?

Truth was Kei couldn't see himself anymore, a man without an identity.
Nitya Xeraic

 

[Nitya Xeraic]

His arm stayed around her, solid and protective without ever turning possessive, and she let herself ease into that warmth as he spoke, listening to the rise and fall of a life shaped in equal measure by loyalty and loss. The brush of his lips against her forehead made her eyes soften—not with surprise, but with recognition. Only a particular kind of man offered a gesture like that. A man who loved deeply, suffered deeply, and still instinctively reached to shield others even when he no longer knew how to protect himself. There was a quiet ache in it, a tenderness that spoke of everything he had carried and everything he had not let break him, and she held it gently, the way one holds something precious that has weathered too many storms.

When he showed her the hololocket, her breath stilled for a moment, not out of pity but out of respect. She knew the weight of cherished things held close to the chest, the way a single object could root a life that had drifted too far.

"You have lived many lives, Kei," she murmured, her voice steady but woven with a thread of warmth, "and survived losses that would have hollowed lesser men. You speak of yourself like you are nothing more than the fractures left behind… but everything I hear tells me you were shaped by love long before you were shaped by grief."

She brought her free hand to rest lightly over his heart—barely touching, just a warm presence beneath his collarbone.

"I know the Silvers," she continued quietly. "My mother served among them. Jairdain Ismet-Thio. She was a diplomat, a seer, a healer—far more patient than I could ever claim to be. We lived on Kashyyyk for a time while she served with the Silver Jedi, back when their temple still stood among the wroshyr branches. My earliest memories are of that world: the canopy light, the Wookiees who knew my name, the feeling that the whole planet breathed."

Her gaze flicked briefly toward the storm beyond the doorway.

"But when my father's mind began to fail, when his health deteriorated faster than any of us could bear, we left for Commenor. The Silvers formed a presence there as well—a second home of sorts—and my mother took up work as regent until my brother was grown. She always said the Force guided us there because he deserved peace in the years he had left."

She swallowed softly, emotion blooming gently rather than sharply. "And she was right. It was the last place we were whole as a family."

Her golden eyes lifted back to him, steady and warm. "So you see…our paths are not as distant as you think. I grew up in the shadow of the same Orders that shaped you. I lived among the same forests. I loved and lost in ways that echoed the edges of your stories. And like you, the galaxy kept asking me to become something new long before I understood who I already was."

She leaned in—not to claim him, not to take anything from him, but to rest her forehead softly against his temple, a gesture intimate and grounding.

"You carry your past like it's a confession," she whispered. "But what I hear is someone who built homes wherever he went. Someone who loved fiercely, who tried to save what mattered, even when fate made it impossible."

A pause, gentle.

"You say you don't give up on anyone until they give up on you." Her fingers curled lightly around his once more. "Then don't give up on yourself."

Her breath brushed softly across his cheek as she drew back enough to meet his eyes fully. "You are not a man without an identity, Kei. You are a man between lives. And that is not the same thing." Another soft beat. "And if you want…I will walk beside you while you find the next one."

She didn't kiss him. Didn't claim anything more. But the closeness lingered—warm, steady, promising without pressure. A beginning that felt like it belonged exactly where it was.

Kei Amadis

 

[Kei Amadis]

And they sat together, in a moment of shared connection and solace, for what seemed like hours. Holding and comforting each other on that very step as time faded away, perhaps it in some way healed something inside of Kei that he hadn't seen in a long time, and who knows, in a galaxy far, far away, maybe that meant more than she realized tonight.

The desire for his revenge lessened, life was allowed again, and Kei thought for a small time that maybe he could find more again. Its strange what one decision can do, who you talk to and who you don't; take a chance, walk into a doorway, hug someone, change a life or find someone new; it might just help heal years of loss and grief you'd stacked up so hard it broke you in every step.

"Nitya." He said, looking into her radiant eyes one final time, and kissed her cheek.

"Thank you." Amadis held her eyes one final time with his gaze, that intensity still there, only now it was fully appreciative of the woman she was and the tender care she'd shared with him. He honored it, and her, cupping her hand and then letting it rest.

Amadis got up, brushed himself down, offering a hand to help her up, and smiled, some of the weight lifted. And if she allowed it, he walked towards a shed or barn to spend the first restful night he'd had in a long while alone and under the stars.

He hoped he'd see her again. But tonight, he had to rest.

Fin for Kei.
Nitya Xeraic