Private Grain & Stardust | Flashback

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Ukio - Several Months Ago

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

​

Morning had long since settled over the fields. The mist had burned off hours ago, leaving Ukio wide beneath a pale sky. The plains moved in slow waves wherever the wind passed through the grain. Beyond the farmhouse and irrigation channels, an old repulsor harvester sat open in the dirt where it had died two days prior, half its casing removed and its internals exposed to light.

Ace was beneath it again. One shoulder against the earth, sleeve pushed back, metallic left forearm buried deep in the machine, articulated fingers working through the cramped housing while his right hand braced the assembly in place. Metal clicked softly under his touch. A wire shifted. Something resisted. Ace paused, adjusted, and attempted it again.

The work had become almost meditative in a way he would never have described aloud. There was comfort in systems that broke for reasons that could be traced. Machines made sense... people less so. A faint chirp sounded from above. Tic.

"I know." Ace murmured, though whether he was answering the droid or himself was unclear.

He shifted back out from beneath the harvester enough to sit up, wiping a streak of grease from his hand onto an already stained cloth. Parts lay arranged near him in deliberate order; couplings, tools, a cracked regulator they had spent most of yesterday arguing whether to replace or salvage.

He glanced over the disassembled engine again, still thinking. The farmers had assumed it would take a specialist from Sashasa. Instead some drifter passing through had crawled under it and refused to leave the thing dead.

His gaze wandered beyond the machine, out over the fields. The wind moved through them in long silver-green ripples. Somewhere distant came the faint mechanical rhythm of another harvester at work.

It was quiet. The real kind. He had never spent much time in places where silence carried life instead of warning. That still felt strange, but it wasn't unpleasant. Ace leaned forward, reaching for a hydrospanner beside him before stopping when he noticed it wasn't where he'd left it. His eyes narrowed faintly. Then, without turning:

"You moved my tools, Lorn." He looked down at the loosened coupling in his hand and gave it another turn, voice lower now, almost absent. "I was close to getting this stabilizer to behave."

Tic made a small series of tones, as if offering commentary. Ace's expression shifted just enough to suggest amusement.

"Don't start."

He settled back beneath the machine once more, shoulders disappearing under the chassis, voice carrying from under the frame.

"Pass me the coupler when you find it." There was a brief pause, and after a moment, Ace added: A pause. "And not the broken one."

The wind moved through the grain again. Tools rested in the dirt. Somewhere overhead, a small flock crossed the open sky. And for a while, it was only the quiet sounds of fieldwork and the muted rhythm of Ace working beneath the old machine, as though this, somehow, had become natural.

Lorn Reingard​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Acier Moonbound​

"Huh? Wha?" Lorn muttered, barely cracking an eyelid as Ace's voice drifted up from the dirt. He didn't move. The aging Guardian had zero interest in technology or the inner workings of a harvester. He hadn't grown up needing those skills and frankly didn't want them now. He was a naturalist by temperament, more comfortable with the wind than a wiring harness.

A coupler? Lorn could guess what it looked like, but why bother? He figured the best use of a younger set of hands was to give his own older bones a break in the sun. They were supposed to be mediating a dispute between feuding farms, not acting as free labor.

Maybe the neighbors had sabotaged the machine, or maybe it just gave up. Either way, once Acier took charge of the repairs, Lorn saw his opening for a nap.

He had moved the tools specifically to clear a spot where the breeze caught his hair just right. It was the perfect place to soak up the warmth.

"Get it yourself," Lorn mumbled, shifting his weight to get comfortable again. He stayed still for a moment, listening to the rhythmic clinking of metal on metal coming from the chassis. "Where did you even learn to fix these things, anyway?"

 

[Acier Moonbound]

Location: Ukio

Equipment:
Field Gear | Lightsaber | Tic | Cybernetic Arm

Ace hadn't even realized Lorn had drifted off. His attention had narrowed so completely around the stubborn rhythm of the repair that the world beyond the exposed engine had fallen away with it.

So when Lorn's answer came, Ace finally pulled himself partway out from beneath the harvester and turned. And stopped. Lorn was asleep, not meditating, not thoughtfully resting his eyes in some lofty Jedi way. Sleeping.

Ace stared for a moment, grease on both flesh and metal, trying and failing not to look incredulous. Then he rolled his eyes and a faint breath escaped him through his nose, almost a laugh.

The Sword of Shiraya. He didn't know much about what the title actually carried, only that it was evidently a serious thing. Revered, something that made him important. And yet, someone as important as him was taking a nap in farm fields. Somehow, that was… deeply amusing.

Tic let out a chirrup from the engine housing as if sharing the judgment.

"Right." Ace muttered.

He pushed himself upright, stepped away from the machine for the first time in a while, and wiped grease from his hands with a nearby rag.

"Aren't you supposed to be handling some dispute?" He asked, looking over at Lorn now, voice dry but lighter than the words themselves. "Why are you sleeping?"

Tic hopped down with a metallic clink and nosed at a misplaced hydrospanner in the dirt before nudging it toward Ace's boot like a dutiful assistant trying to repair a failed operation. Ace looked down at the droid.

"You're more help than he is."

A pleased trill answered him. He bent to gather the tools, reaching for a narrower driver before Lorn's question reached him. That made him pause for a moment. Long enough that the wind moving through the grain could be heard again.

Ace looked back toward the opened guts of the harvester rather than toward Lorn when he answered. "This mechanic. Mira."

He crouched again beside the machine and slipped the new tool into the housing, working as he spoke.

"She taught me when I was a kid. How to fix things. How to slice too."

The words came easily, though he hadn't expected to be saying them. He adjusted something deeper in the assembly. Then, after a moment...

"She was…" His voice thinned just slightly in thought. "Kind of the closest thing I had to a mom."

He paused, frowning faintly at a stubborn fitting.

"Or what I thought a mom would be."

The tool turned again and a small hum rose from the harvester as power briefly stirred somewhere deeper in the system. Ace kept working a few seconds more before speaking again, almost absent as his attention split between memory and machine.

"Why?"

Lorn Reingard​

 

[Lorn Reingard]

Tags: Acier Moonbound​

One eye cracked open just enough to see Ace standing there, covered in the grime of a machine that should have been scrapped years ago. The boy's judgment was palpable, but Lorn wasn't bothered. Sunlight was a rare commodity in their line of work, and he intended to spend it wisely.

"No," Lorn corrected, his voice heavy with sleep. "We are supposed to be handling a dispute. Not just me. But there is no we when you won't move from beneath that blasted pile of bolts."

A dry chuckle escaped him when Ace mentioned the droid was more helpful. It was hard to argue with facts; droids were designed to be useful, whereas Lorn had spent most of his life ignoring such technology. He shifted his weight, letting the warmth of the dirt seep into his back. The internal quiet he'd been chasing was finally within reach, even if the kid was intent on poking at it.

"Well," Lorn said, finally sitting up and squinting against the glare. "Sometimes, when you spend time with someone, it's nice to know a bit about their past. Especially if one of us is supposed to be mentoring the other. You don't always have to be so closed off."

The sarcasm felt familiar, a comfortable shield. He watched the way Ace handled the tools, seeing the ghost of this woman, Mira, in the precision of the boy's movements. It was a domestic kind of skill, something born of stability and care, things Lorn had lost track of a lifetime ago.

"Where is this Mira now?" Lorn asked.