Private Go Tell it on the Mountain

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Never Hide Your Heart"​

The mountain rose above Katarine like a challenge.

She stood at its base with her hands tucked into the pockets of her black bomber jacket, staring up at the jagged stone disappearing into the mist above. Somewhere inside that mountain was what they had come for.

Or at least, that was the idea.

It had been a week since Katarine arrived at New Genesis, and if she was being completely honest with herself, she had spent nearly every spare moment of it with Ellion Corsair

She didn't regret a second.

After believing him dead for centuries, after everything that had happened between then and now, she felt almost greedy for his company. There was still some part of her that expected to wake up and discover that none of it was real. That Ellion wasn't here. That this place wasn't real. That she hadn't somehow stumbled into a second chance she had long ago convinced herself she didn't deserve.

But Ellion had responsibilities. He was a member of the Council now, a fact that still filled her with a strange mixture of disbelief and pride whenever she thought about it. He had duties to this community, people who depended on him, and Katarine had no intention of becoming a distraction from any of that.

Besides, she wanted to contribute too. New Genesis had welcomed her without demanding explanations she wasn't ready to give. It had offered her safety, purpose, and something dangerously close to home. Sitting around waiting for Ellion to finish Council meetings while she drank caf and contemplated following him everywhere like a lost tooka was probably not the best way to repay that kindness.

So when Muad Dib had approached her about helping someone close to him, Katarine had agreed.

That decision had been considerably easier than deciding how she actually felt about Muad. The former Sith remained an uncomfortable puzzle.

There were parts of her history with him she could not simply erase because he had apparently decided to become helpful. Katarine had spent too many years learning that people were rarely entirely one thing or another, but understanding that philosophically and actually trusting the man were two very different matters.

Still, he had asked. She had said yes, and now she was standing at the base of a mountain on Svivren waiting for a woman she had never met.

Katarine shifted her weight and glanced toward the path behind her. Apparently the woman she was to help needed a lightsaber. That, at least, Katarine understood.

Her fingers drifted unconsciously toward the weapon hanging at her side. The hilt wasn't hers. Not really. It belonged to Ellion, or had, once, and though she had grown accustomed to carrying it, there was something strange about wielding another Jedi's weapon indefinitely.

Her own lightsaber was gone, destroyed by her own hand when she had taken the Barash Vow. At the time, destroying it had felt necessary. Symbolic. Final. Then again, Katarine had made quite a few decisions lately that had seemed final at the time.

Apparently the galaxy had a sense of humor.

She pulled Ellion's lightsaber from her belt and turned the hilt slowly in her hand, studying it for a moment before clipping it back into place.

Maybe this trip wasn't only about helping Muad's friend.

Maybe it was time. Time to stop borrowing pieces of the life she'd lost and begin building something that belonged to the life she had now.

A new crystal.

A new lightsaber.

A new beginning.

Katarine exhaled slowly and tilted her head back toward the towering mountain. "Well," she murmured to herself, "hopefully you aren't planning on killing us."

The mountain offered no reassurance. Kat narrowed her eyes at it. "Good talk."

Then she heard movement along the path behind her. Kat turned toward the sound, slipping her hands back into her jacket pockets as she waited to meet the woman Muad had sent her here to help.

Rin Taal

​

 

[Rin Taal]

The mountain had been visible long before Rin reached the woman waiting beneath it, a great rise of stone disappearing into mist as though Svivren had decided the sky needed something substantial to hold it up. Rin had spent enough of her life crossing mountains to know better than to take their silence personally. They were rarely interested in whether the people climbing them felt welcome. Still, her golden eyes traveled upward while she followed the path, studying the broken contours of stone and the pale veil gathering around the heights before lowering again to the solitary figure ahead. Muad had told her enough to know whom she was looking for, though not enough to make this meeting entirely predictable. That seemed appropriate. Very little involving Muad Dib remained predictable for long.

The thought brought warmth to Rin's expression that would have been difficult to hide even if she had wanted to. Thyferra was behind them now, though not so distant that her body or memory had forgotten it. Neither had the dyad. Somewhere amid everything that had happened since Olanet, the connection between them had ceased to feel like some impossible phenomenon she needed to understand before she could trust it. It was simply Muad now, woven through a part of her life no one else occupied. They had chosen each other without the Force making that decision for them, and Rin no longer doubted that choice belonged entirely to them. This journey, however, belonged to her, and the distinction mattered.

Marta had taught Rin to listen to the living world long before she possessed language for many of the things she could feel within it. The Force had been roots beneath bare feet, weather shifting against her skin, the pulse of injured flesh beneath careful hands, and the warning carried through an animal before danger appeared. It was something intimate and numinous, less a doctrine than a presence woven through everything alive. Yet her understanding had changed. The dyad had opened possibilities Marta could never have imagined or prepared her for, while the invasion had done the opposite and taken the Force from Rin entirely for a time. That absence had taught her something too. She had remained herself without it, still capable of protecting people, fighting, healing with her hands, making decisions, and surviving. When the Force returned, Rin found herself wanting to understand it better rather than cling to it harder.

Then there was the lightsaber. Rin's tail moved in an easy counterbalance behind her as she approached the waiting woman, her clothing chosen for climbing rather than ceremony: sturdy trousers, weathered boots, and a fitted shirt beneath a practical jacket. Her long, multi-hued brown hair had been gathered into braids that would hopefully remain out of her face once the mountain began demanding both hands. She carried the weapons she understood, but there was no lightsaber hanging among them yet. A lightsaber had never been an ambition of hers. She had spent more than a century protecting people perfectly well without one, and she had no intention of pretending a different weapon would suddenly transform her into something she wasn't. Perhaps that was part of the reason she had agreed to come. Rin wanted to understand what she was becoming before deciding what place the weapon had within it.

Muad could have introduced her to any number of people who could explain lightsabers and crystals. Maybe even done it himself. Instead, he had sent her to Katarine, and Rin suspected that choice possessed more layers than he had bothered explaining. Katarine could apparently help her find what she needed inside the mountain, but she was also someone who had known Muad outside the comparatively narrow slice of his enormous life Rin had been allowed to see. After meeting Derek, Rin had become considerably more aware of how much history could hide inside one man, and considerably more curious about it.

Katarine turned before Rin quite reached her, apparently having heard her approach. Rin slowed naturally, taking in the dark clothing, the lightsaber at the woman's side, and the alertness of someone who had been waiting alone beneath a mountain without appearing particularly troubled by the fact. A small smile touched Rin's mouth as she stopped at an easy conversational distance and offered her hand. "Katarine? Rin Taal." Amusement brightened her golden eyes. "I'm going to assume Muad actually told you I was coming and didn't simply tell each of us enough to get us standing beneath the same mountain."

Her gaze slipped toward the mist-shrouded heights before returning to Katarine. The mountain's enormity should perhaps have made the task feel ominous. Instead, Rin felt a nascent excitement beneath her caution, something she had not expected when Muad first suggested this. "He told me you could help me find a crystal. I know enough about lightsabers to suspect finding one and understanding why I'm carrying one probably shouldn't be two separate questions." She paused, searching for the right shape of something she had only recently begun asking herself. "I've used the Force for most of my life, but never the way a Jedi would describe using it. Lately I've started wondering whether knowing what I can do with it is the same thing as understanding what it is to me."

That felt closer to the reason she had come. Rin had no intention of emerging from the mountain transformed into a Jedi, nor was she searching for someone else's doctrine to replace everything Marta had taught her. She wanted another perspective, perhaps one different enough from her own to reveal things she had never thought to question. The crystal was part of that search, not its entire purpose.

"So I suppose I'm here for three things. A crystal, if the mountain decides to cooperate, and a better understanding of myself and the Force." A trace of mischief entered her expression before she continued. "And since Muad was foolish enough to introduce me to someone else who knows him, probably a few stories he neglected to tell me."

Derek had already taught her that those stories could be hilarious, painful, bewildering, or all three at once. Rin no longer expected any account of Muad's past to fit neatly beside the man she knew, and perhaps that was part of why she wanted to hear them. Loving someone who had lived so long meant accepting that she had entered his story very late. She did not want to erase everything that had come before her. She wanted to understand more of it, just as she had come here hoping to understand a little more of herself. With that thought warming the curiosity already alive in her eyes, Rin tipped her head toward the mountain and smiled. "Whenever you're ready."

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Never Hide Your Heart"​

The pleasantries were exchanged, and Rin explained the reasoning behind her quest. Katarine listened carefully, quietly pleased that the woman was willing to look deeper rather than settle for whatever answer sat on the surface. That alone spoke well of her.

Kat supposed this was the part where she was expected to say something mystical, poetic, and suitably profound for a Jedi Master.

"Whatever lies before us will be shaped, in part, by what we carry with us. The mountain may challenge you in ways you don't expect, but if we make it through to the other side, hopefully you'll find the answers you came looking for."

Not too bad. She guessed she still had that old Jedi wisdom.

Together, they began the climb. That, of course, was part of the journey too. The crystals were not simply waiting at the base of the mountain for anyone who happened to want one.

Near the summit, hidden deep within a network of caves, lay the Force nexus they were searching for. Somewhere inside that darkness their crystals might be waiting.

If the crystals decided they were meant to find them.



Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin's mouth curved at Katarine's answer. It possessed enough Jedi wisdom to sound appropriately portentous without telling her very much at all, though perhaps that was the point. Whatever waited above them could hardly be explained from the bottom of the mountain. "Hopefully seems like a reasonable standard." She glanced toward the rising slope before adding with quiet amusement, "I've found mountains aren't especially interested in guarantees."

The climb itself suited Rin considerably better than standing below and wondering what might happen. She settled into the ascent with the practiced ease of someone accustomed to rough country, choosing footholds almost instinctively and letting her tail shift behind her as a natural counterbalance whenever the trail narrowed. She did not hurry Katarine or turn the journey into a competition. Instead, Rin paid attention to the mountain around them: the changing texture of stone beneath her hands, the thinning air, the muted susurrus of wind slipping through crevices, and gradually, something less tangible.

The Force had always felt alive to her. Marta had taught her to recognize it in roots beneath soil, weather gathering beyond the horizon, an animal's fear, or the quiet persistence of injured flesh trying to mend itself. What waited higher on the mountain felt different. Not absent of life, but concentrated somehow, a resonance becoming more distinct with every stretch of elevation they gained. Rin resisted the temptation to reach toward it simply because she could. If this place was meant to test what she carried with her, she suspected grasping for answers before they were offered would accomplish very little.

By the time the dark mouth of the caves came into view, her earlier humor had quieted into anticipation. Rin stopped near the entrance and looked into the darkness, golden eyes adjusting while her other senses stretched naturally toward whatever waited beyond. Somewhere inside might be the crystal she had crossed worlds to find.

Or nothing at all.

Strangely, that possibility did not disappoint her as much as she might have expected. She had come wanting answers, but the climb had already reminded her that wanting something and being entitled to receive it were very different things.

Rin glanced toward Katarine, a small smile returning.

"Well. We made it to the other side of the easy part."

Katarine Ryiah

 

[Katarine Ryiah]

"Never Hide Your Heart"
​

Katarine stopped beside Rin at the mouth of the cave and glanced back down the mountain. From this height, the path they had taken had nearly disappeared beneath the mist. Jagged stone descended into pale nothingness, swallowing every difficult foothold and narrow ledge they had crossed along the way. It was strange how small the climb looked from here.

Most things did, once they were behind you. Kat drew in a slow breath, letting the cold mountain air fill her lungs while her awareness drifted outward. The Force was stronger here. She had sensed it throughout the ascent, faint at first, like something stirring just beyond the edge of hearing. The higher they climbed, the more distinct it became. Now it pressed gently against her senses, ancient and patient, flowing through the stone beneath her boots and the darkness waiting ahead.

For a moment, Katarine simply stood within it.

There had been a time when she would have accepted that feeling without question. The Force had once been the foundation beneath everything she understood about herself. Jedi. Knight. Master. Guardian. The titles had changed, but the path had always seemed clear.

Until it wasn't.

Centuries had passed without her. People she loved had died. Orders had risen and fallen. She had taken vows meant to close chapters of her life forever, destroyed her own lightsaber, walked away from pieces of herself she thought she no longer needed.

Yes somehow she was still here, Ellion was alive. She had found something dangerously close to a home. Somewhere inside this mountain, perhaps, was a crystal waiting for her. The thought brought the faintest smile to her lips.

Maybe the Force wasn't asking her to reclaim the woman she had been. Maybe it was asking who she intended to become.

Katarine turned toward the darkness.

The cave entrance seemed almost unnaturally black compared to the gray daylight behind them, but the Force within it was unmistakable. It shifted against her awareness with strange currents she couldn't entirely define. Familiar enough to recognize. Unpredictable enough to respect.

Rin's comment finally drew a quiet chuckle from her. "The easy part is behind us." Kat stepped toward the entrance, one hand brushing absently against Ellion's borrowed lightsaber at her hip. "Now comes the true test."

She paused just before the darkness swallowed her and glanced back toward Rin.

"The cave tests everyone who enters. Not always in the same way. You may see visions. Hear voices. Memories can become… unusually convincing. Time can behave strangely too. A few minutes might feel like hours, or you may walk for what seems like five minutes and discover considerably more time has passed."

Her gaze shifted into the cavern. None of that frightened her exactly. She remembered enough about places like this to know that confidence and certainty were not necessarily advantages.

"The important thing is to listen. Somewhere in there is a crystal calling specifically to you. Not the brightest one. Not the largest. Not necessarily the easiest one to reach."

A small, knowing smile touched her features.

"You'll know."

Rin Taal