Rin watched the last of whatever hesitation had held Muad to the log disappear beneath a smile, and something warm answered it in her before she had any reason to question why. Perhaps it was simply the night. Veradune possessed a talent for making joy feel uncomplicated when people allowed it to be. Music rolled across the grass in bright, irresistible waves, laughter rose beside the sparks of the bonfire, and above them another burst of fireworks scattered color through the darkness like someone had thrown a fistful of gemstones into the sky. Or perhaps it was the particular sight of Muad Dib, a man she had first met half-dead beneath the trees of Batuu, bowing before her beneath violet-blue light as though the invitation between them had become something far more ceremonial than either had intended.
His offered hand remained between them.
Rin looked at it for a moment, then back into those luminous blue eyes, and the grin already upon her face deepened. There was something beneath the warmth of friendship now, something she had become aware of without quite deciding what to call it. She knew it was there. She was not so naïve that she could mistake the small lift beneath her ribs whenever his attention returned to her, or the way she had found herself studying him more often than simple curiosity required. Yet knowing a feeling existed did not mean it needed to be caught, examined, and named before it had finished becoming whatever it intended to be. Rin had spent most of her life learning not to force roads into destinations before she reached them. People, she suspected, deserved the same patience.
Her gaze dropped briefly to the bottle still resting in her other hand. There was enough left to make finishing it more than a token gesture, but Rin seemed entirely unconcerned. She tipped it back and drained what remained in several easy swallows, fruit and spice leaving another pleasant trail of warmth behind before she set the empty bottle down beside her. Two drinks were hardly enough to trouble a Zorren, but between the liquor, the music, and the simple pleasure of being home, something in her had undoubtedly grown lighter. When her attention returned to Muad, his hand was still there, waiting patiently between them.
Rin placed hers into his.
His fingers closed warmly around hers, and some quiet part of Rin remembered another night when that same hand had possessed none of that strength. She remembered cold skin beneath her touch, the terrible stillness of a body that had very nearly been surrendered to death, and the weight of him when his own strength had been unable to carry him. The memory came and went like a shadow crossing firelight. There was nothing helpless about the hand holding hers now. It was warm and steady and alive, and the simple contrast touched somewhere unexpectedly tender within her before she let the past remain where it belonged.
She rose from the log in one smooth movement, her tail uncurling from the grass and sweeping naturally behind her to find its balance. Firelight slid over her features as she stepped closer, still holding his hand, and for once she made no effort to disguise how thoroughly she was enjoying herself.
"Though I should probably warn you," she added, golden eyes bright with playful humor.
"I was hoping we'd get the chance."
The dancers had multiplied while they talked. What had begun as loose circles around the cleared ground had become a living tide beneath torchlight, partners gathering into one another as naturally as streams joining a river. Arms circled shoulders and waists, bodies turning close together before opening just far enough for a sweeping step or turn and drawing together once more. Some knew every movement before it arrived, their bodies carrying traditions learned so long ago that thought no longer seemed necessary. Others clearly did not and compensated with enthusiasm, laughter erupting whenever feet tangled or a turn went charmingly wrong. Nobody seemed particularly concerned with perfection. The dance belonged as much to the clumsy as the graceful, provided they were willing to surrender themselves to the rhythm and to the person moving with them.
Rin allowed Muad to lead her toward them, though there was an undeniable lightness in her step that suggested she required little persuasion. The closer they came, the more the music ceased to be something merely heard. Percussion rose through the earth beneath their feet while strings and pipes wound above it, and hands clapped somewhere within the crowd to mark a rhythm that seemed to pass from body to body. Torchlight flashed against faces, jewelry, glass bottles, and luminous eyes, while the bonfire painted one side of the dancers in gold and surrendered the other to moving shadow. All around her were sights and sounds that belonged naturally to home, not because every face was known to her or every song unchanged from those she remembered, but because there was something unmistakably familiar in the way Veradune celebrated beneath an open sky.
At the edge of the clearing, Rin glanced toward Muad. His hand was still around hers, warm and certain amid the whirl of music and bodies flowing past, and her smile softened with the simple realization of how much she liked that small point of contact between them. She knew the language of gatherings like this, the invitation carried in an offered hand, the subtle shift that drew two people closer when the rhythm changed, the moment a hold should loosen into a turn and the beat upon which two bodies naturally found one another again. Some things lingered in memory no matter how many years one spent away from home. Then the rhythm caught them, and Rin stepped backward onto the dancing ground without releasing him, drawing him after her with an easy pull of their joined hands.
"Come on, then," she said, laughter dancing in her golden eyes.
"You did ask."
The music took her almost immediately, and with it disappeared the last of the distance between them. Rin moved into the close hold the dance invited without hesitation, one arm finding its natural place around him as his settled around her, their joined hands becoming only one part of the connection guiding them through the shifting rhythm. Whatever restraint Muad had seen in her upon Batuu belonged to another place and another responsibility. Here, beneath the open sky of the world that had first taught her how to walk, she moved as though the melody had reminded her body of something it had known long before words. Her steps found his rather than testing them, adjusting instinctively until two separate rhythms became one, her tail sweeping and curling behind her in graceful counterpoint whenever they turned.
There was an intimacy inherent in the dance that Rin neither manufactured nor avoided. They moved close because the music asked them to, separating with a turn only to be gathered together again, sometimes with scarcely enough space between them for the night air to find passage. Rin quickly discovered how Muad moved when neither of them was running toward danger, how the shift of his shoulders foretold a turn, and how the slightest pressure of a hand could become an entire conversation between one step and the next. She allowed herself to be led when the movement belonged to him and answered naturally when it returned to her, finding an unexpected pleasure in how little either needed to explain. When they parted, she already knew the rhythm that would bring them together again. When they turned, there was something deeply familiar in the pattern beneath her feet even as the man moving through it with her was wonderfully new.
There was freedom in Rin that Muad had not yet had the opportunity to see. Her laughter came more readily here, sometimes born from nothing greater than the dizzy sweep of a turn or the infectious joy of those dancing around them. Firelight caught the warm tawny fur of her tail as it curved through each movement, while the breeze teased loose strands of hair across her face before another turn swept them away again. This was Rin without a road to watch, without injured strangers depending upon her, without a caravan whose safety occupied some quiet corner of her attention. For these few hours, there was nowhere else she needed to be and nothing waiting beyond the edge of the fire that required her vigilance. She could simply be home. She could laugh when the music carried her too quickly through a turn, move without measuring what lay beyond the next step, and when the dance gathered her close to Muad again, find no reason at all to wish herself anywhere else.
One turn brought them together more smoothly than the last, and this time Rin became aware of the closeness in a way she had not during those first instinctive movements. His warmth reached her easily through the cool evening air. His luminous blue eyes were considerably nearer now, their strange light catching against gold as her gaze lifted to meet them. Around them, dancers turned, and fireworks flowered overhead, music surged, and laughter broke brightly beneath the stars, yet for the space between one step and the next her attention narrowed unexpectedly to the man holding her. There was no alarm in the realization, no sudden need to retreat behind the careful composure she wore so easily elsewhere. If anything, she found herself lingering within that small moment before the dance carried them onward.
She knew there was something here. Not what it was, not where it might lead, and certainly not what either of them would call it tomorrow. Rin had no desire to answer questions neither of them had truly asked. She knew only that something had begun as little more than an unnamed spark beside the wreckage of his ship, easy to overlook amid blood, broken metal, and the desperate work of keeping him alive. It had been given room to grow along a dusty road, beneath a rain-soaked pavilion, through music shared in the dark, and now in the warmth of his arms beneath the firelit skies of her home. Every unexpected meeting seemed to give it a little more room to breathe, and every time she discovered Muad somewhere she had not expected him to be, she found herself a little more pleased that he was there.
Rin did not look away from that realization, but neither did she chase it. She simply smiled as the music carried them onward, allowing herself the rare luxury of enjoying something without asking what it would become. She had spent too many years upon too many roads to believe everything beautiful needed an immediate destination. Some things deserved simply to be traveled for a while, allowing each turn to reveal what waited beyond it in its own time. There would be other roads and other mornings for questions. Tonight there was music beneath her feet, fireworks scattering brief constellations across the heavens, the familiar earth of Veradune beneath every step, and someone she had never expected to find waiting on the other side of the fire.
For tonight, it was enough simply to dance with him.
Muad Dib
Ra'a'mah
after a long sit down in which he'd been informed of the current state of the galaxy, and given a chance to be part of something new, something that could help keep him going despite having nothing.
Kalit D'wari
. The old general may as well have stuck out like a wampa on Kashyyyk, feeling he'd presumably be just as out of place as his new friend. Socializing was a... new concept for a man such as himself. The closest he'd ever gotten to it long ago was that of in the heat of battle, in the trenches alongside his men. He'd never been one to attend 'events', even if from time to time he'd allow the occasional Life Day celebration, though he usually kept his distance. 
