Rin Taal
Character
Muad did not release her.
The realization came with the quiet tightening of his arm around her waist, drawing back the small measure of distance Rin had offered him and returning her easily to the warmth she had only just begun to leave. She went willingly, the movement so natural that there was scarcely a moment in which they seemed separate at all. When his forehead lowered to hers, Rin's eyes closed beneath the gentle contact, her lashes brushing his as the world beyond the shelter of the willow softened into music, distant laughter, and the muted thunder of another firework blooming somewhere above the trees.
For a little while, she simply remained there.
There had been so much movement between them since Batuu. Roads and speeders, rain and violence, music beneath canvas, then the inevitable departure they had both accepted because there had never seemed reason to imagine otherwise. Tonight had been no different at first. They had found one another unexpectedly across a fire, danced until the rest of the celebration seemed to disappear around them, and then somehow nearly allowed another goodbye to happen simply because both had assumed that was what travelers eventually did. Now, beneath the willow with Muad holding her as though releasing her had become the one mistake he had no intention of repeating, Rin wondered why either of them had been in such a hurry to obey an ending that neither actually wanted.
His answer about the ale drew a soft breath of laughter from her; the sound caught between them by their closeness, but whatever teasing reply had begun to form never quite reached her lips. Muad continued before she could offer it, and the humor in her expression gradually changed as she listened.
I'm holding you, Rin Taal, in my arms.
There was something unexpectedly powerful in being distinguished so simply.
Not a Zorren woman encountered beneath a moonlit tree. Not some beautiful stranger whose nearness had inspired a passing hunger. Her. Rin Taal, specifically and deliberately, with all the pieces of herself he had encountered since the night she found him dying beneath the trees of Batuu. He did not want merely a kiss, and somehow those words carried considerably more weight than if he had taken the one both of them knew she would have allowed.
Her golden eyes remained upon his as he eased his face away from hers, though the rest of him remained close. The faint drag of his nails against the small glimpse of skin beneath her clothing sent a quiet shiver along her spine, subtle but impossible to mistake for the touch of the evening air. Rin did not hide the reaction any more than she had hidden the way she had lifted her face toward him moments earlier. There seemed little purpose in pretending now. Desire existed between them, warm and increasingly difficult to mistake, but it was only one current within something far deeper that had been gathering long before either of them recognized where it might lead.
Perhaps that was why she found herself smiling again when he accepted her invitation.
There was no grand declaration in her response, no attempt to answer the enormity of nowhere else in this universe, or any other with something equally sweeping. Rin had never needed large words to make something true. The warmth spreading through her chest needed no poetry spoken aloud, nor did the quiet happiness she felt knowing that when she left this place tonight, Muad would be walking beside her.
"Then come with me."
The words were soft, carrying none of the teasing that had colored her earlier invitation, though warmth remained woven through every syllable. Rin held his gaze another moment before her smile slowly deepened, something quietly luminous entering her expression as another explosion of color opened above them. Gold spilled across the pond and caught within her eyes, briefly turning them into reflections of the sky itself before the light dissolved into darkness again.
This time, when Rin eased from his embrace, it was not a retreat.
Her hand traveled down his arm until her fingers found his, slipping between them with the easy familiarity they seemed to have acquired over the course of a single evening. She did not immediately pull him onward. Instead, she stood beside him beneath the willow for one last quiet moment, their shoulders nearly touching as she looked across the pond toward the distant glow of the celebration.
From here, Veradune seemed to breathe around them.
Music wandered through the trees in softened fragments, too distant now for every word to be understood but familiar enough that Rin knew the songs without needing to hear them clearly. Firelight flickered beyond the rise, illuminating brief silhouettes whenever revelers crossed between the bonfires and the darkness beyond. Another burst of laughter rose above the music before disappearing into the night, while fireworks continued to flower intermittently across the heavens, scattering brilliant colors over rooftops, ancient trees, and the mirrored surface of the pond.
Rin had come home expecting exactly this.
She had expected familiar faces and familiar songs, meals pressed upon her by people convinced that a century and a half had somehow failed to teach her how often she ought to eat, bottles placed into her hands before she could object, and stories traded beside fires until someone inevitably began playing music. She had expected to sleep beneath a familiar roof when the celebration finally ended and, sometime afterward, to return to the road because that was what she had always done.
She had not expected Muad Dib.
Of all the things Veradune might have offered her upon this particular homecoming, somehow it had placed a man she had thought she would never see again on the opposite side of a fire and waited to see what she would do about it.
Rin's fingers tightened gently around his. She had her answer now.
Her gaze lingered upon the celebration a little longer, not with reluctance to leave it but with the quiet affection reserved for something that did not need to be held tightly because it would still be there when she returned. Veradune was home. The music would continue after she walked away, the fires would burn until the celebration exhausted itself, and somewhere near the sparring ring someone would almost certainly require the attention of the medic before the night was through. Life here would carry onward exactly as it always had.
Tonight, however, Rin was ready to leave the festival behind.
She turned toward Muad, and whatever thought had briefly occupied her gave way to the warmth that seemed to come more easily whenever she looked at him now. "We should go before your terrible hunger becomes fatal," she murmured, the familiar glimmer of humor returning to her golden eyes. "It would be embarrassing to explain that I rescued you from a crashed ship only to lose you to an empty stomach."
Her smile widened before she turned toward the path.
Lanterns marked the way beyond the willow, their warm pools of light scattered beneath ancient trees and along gently rising stone paths that eventually disappeared among the buildings beyond. Rin knew every turn without thought. She had walked these paths as a child, returned to them throughout the long decades that followed, and watched the trees grow broader while generations of shorter-lived visitors changed around them. Tonight those familiar paths felt subtly different, not because Veradune itself had changed, but because for the first time she would be walking one of them with Muad beside her.
She took the first step without releasing his hand.
Behind them, the festival continued beneath a sky painted in fire, its music following for a time before distance slowly softened it into little more than a melody carried upon the night air. Rin did not look back again. There was nothing behind her she was trying to escape and nothing ahead she felt any need to rush toward.
For once, the road between one place and another was exactly where she wanted to be.
And this time, they walked it together.
Muad Dib
The realization came with the quiet tightening of his arm around her waist, drawing back the small measure of distance Rin had offered him and returning her easily to the warmth she had only just begun to leave. She went willingly, the movement so natural that there was scarcely a moment in which they seemed separate at all. When his forehead lowered to hers, Rin's eyes closed beneath the gentle contact, her lashes brushing his as the world beyond the shelter of the willow softened into music, distant laughter, and the muted thunder of another firework blooming somewhere above the trees.
For a little while, she simply remained there.
There had been so much movement between them since Batuu. Roads and speeders, rain and violence, music beneath canvas, then the inevitable departure they had both accepted because there had never seemed reason to imagine otherwise. Tonight had been no different at first. They had found one another unexpectedly across a fire, danced until the rest of the celebration seemed to disappear around them, and then somehow nearly allowed another goodbye to happen simply because both had assumed that was what travelers eventually did. Now, beneath the willow with Muad holding her as though releasing her had become the one mistake he had no intention of repeating, Rin wondered why either of them had been in such a hurry to obey an ending that neither actually wanted.
His answer about the ale drew a soft breath of laughter from her; the sound caught between them by their closeness, but whatever teasing reply had begun to form never quite reached her lips. Muad continued before she could offer it, and the humor in her expression gradually changed as she listened.
I'm holding you, Rin Taal, in my arms.
There was something unexpectedly powerful in being distinguished so simply.
Not a Zorren woman encountered beneath a moonlit tree. Not some beautiful stranger whose nearness had inspired a passing hunger. Her. Rin Taal, specifically and deliberately, with all the pieces of herself he had encountered since the night she found him dying beneath the trees of Batuu. He did not want merely a kiss, and somehow those words carried considerably more weight than if he had taken the one both of them knew she would have allowed.
Her golden eyes remained upon his as he eased his face away from hers, though the rest of him remained close. The faint drag of his nails against the small glimpse of skin beneath her clothing sent a quiet shiver along her spine, subtle but impossible to mistake for the touch of the evening air. Rin did not hide the reaction any more than she had hidden the way she had lifted her face toward him moments earlier. There seemed little purpose in pretending now. Desire existed between them, warm and increasingly difficult to mistake, but it was only one current within something far deeper that had been gathering long before either of them recognized where it might lead.
Perhaps that was why she found herself smiling again when he accepted her invitation.
There was no grand declaration in her response, no attempt to answer the enormity of nowhere else in this universe, or any other with something equally sweeping. Rin had never needed large words to make something true. The warmth spreading through her chest needed no poetry spoken aloud, nor did the quiet happiness she felt knowing that when she left this place tonight, Muad would be walking beside her.
"Then come with me."
The words were soft, carrying none of the teasing that had colored her earlier invitation, though warmth remained woven through every syllable. Rin held his gaze another moment before her smile slowly deepened, something quietly luminous entering her expression as another explosion of color opened above them. Gold spilled across the pond and caught within her eyes, briefly turning them into reflections of the sky itself before the light dissolved into darkness again.
This time, when Rin eased from his embrace, it was not a retreat.
Her hand traveled down his arm until her fingers found his, slipping between them with the easy familiarity they seemed to have acquired over the course of a single evening. She did not immediately pull him onward. Instead, she stood beside him beneath the willow for one last quiet moment, their shoulders nearly touching as she looked across the pond toward the distant glow of the celebration.
From here, Veradune seemed to breathe around them.
Music wandered through the trees in softened fragments, too distant now for every word to be understood but familiar enough that Rin knew the songs without needing to hear them clearly. Firelight flickered beyond the rise, illuminating brief silhouettes whenever revelers crossed between the bonfires and the darkness beyond. Another burst of laughter rose above the music before disappearing into the night, while fireworks continued to flower intermittently across the heavens, scattering brilliant colors over rooftops, ancient trees, and the mirrored surface of the pond.
Rin had come home expecting exactly this.
She had expected familiar faces and familiar songs, meals pressed upon her by people convinced that a century and a half had somehow failed to teach her how often she ought to eat, bottles placed into her hands before she could object, and stories traded beside fires until someone inevitably began playing music. She had expected to sleep beneath a familiar roof when the celebration finally ended and, sometime afterward, to return to the road because that was what she had always done.
She had not expected Muad Dib.
Of all the things Veradune might have offered her upon this particular homecoming, somehow it had placed a man she had thought she would never see again on the opposite side of a fire and waited to see what she would do about it.
Rin's fingers tightened gently around his. She had her answer now.
Her gaze lingered upon the celebration a little longer, not with reluctance to leave it but with the quiet affection reserved for something that did not need to be held tightly because it would still be there when she returned. Veradune was home. The music would continue after she walked away, the fires would burn until the celebration exhausted itself, and somewhere near the sparring ring someone would almost certainly require the attention of the medic before the night was through. Life here would carry onward exactly as it always had.
Tonight, however, Rin was ready to leave the festival behind.
She turned toward Muad, and whatever thought had briefly occupied her gave way to the warmth that seemed to come more easily whenever she looked at him now. "We should go before your terrible hunger becomes fatal," she murmured, the familiar glimmer of humor returning to her golden eyes. "It would be embarrassing to explain that I rescued you from a crashed ship only to lose you to an empty stomach."
Her smile widened before she turned toward the path.
Lanterns marked the way beyond the willow, their warm pools of light scattered beneath ancient trees and along gently rising stone paths that eventually disappeared among the buildings beyond. Rin knew every turn without thought. She had walked these paths as a child, returned to them throughout the long decades that followed, and watched the trees grow broader while generations of shorter-lived visitors changed around them. Tonight those familiar paths felt subtly different, not because Veradune itself had changed, but because for the first time she would be walking one of them with Muad beside her.
She took the first step without releasing his hand.
Behind them, the festival continued beneath a sky painted in fire, its music following for a time before distance slowly softened it into little more than a melody carried upon the night air. Rin did not look back again. There was nothing behind her she was trying to escape and nothing ahead she felt any need to rush toward.
For once, the road between one place and another was exactly where she wanted to be.
And this time, they walked it together.
Muad Dib
