Private One More Mile

[Rin Taal]

Rin had barely recovered from the warmth his first words brought when Muad managed to steal whatever answer she might have given by stopping her at the edge of the shade. She followed his gaze across the valley, taking in a view she had known since childhood and somehow seeing it differently simply because he stood beside her. She had watched storms sweep across those distant hills, followed the river through more seasons than she cared to count, and knew villages hidden among the trees that were impossible to distinguish from this height. Yet when Muad told her that none of it would be the sight he chose to remember, her glowing golden eyes left the landscape entirely and settled upon him.

"You make it very difficult to pretend you don't affect me when you say things like that."

The gravelly clearing of a throat spared her from deciding whether she wanted to say anything more revealing. Rin's ears twitched before turning toward the familiar sound, and the smile already threatening to betray her widened as Chek approached. She knew that expression. More importantly, she knew the ritual that was about to unfold, and when Muad released her hand and stepped forward to meet it, Rin folded her arms loosely and settled in to watch. There was no reason to rescue either of them. Muad certainly didn't need it, and interrupting Chek would probably only make the old Zorren start over from the beginning out of sheer principle.

Seconds passed. Then more of them. Neither man moved, neither spoke, and Rin's tail eventually began a slow sweep behind her as amusement became increasingly difficult to conceal. She had seen Chek take the measure of strangers before, although there was something particularly entertaining about watching him do it to Muad. She could feel Muad through their bond, could sense enough to know that he understood what was happening, and that only made the entire thing better. By the time Chek finally released that characteristic hmmph, Rin had resorted to biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

Apparently, Muad had passed.

Her composure disappeared altogether when Chek abandoned him and opened his arms to her. Rin went willingly into the embrace, wrapping both arms around the enormously broad man as far as they would comfortably reach and pressing her cheek briefly against his. The familiar scents of leather, metal, stone dust and smoke surrounded her, stirring memories that seemed impossibly distant until she was standing here again. Chek had always smelled faintly of his forge, no matter how long it had been since he'd stood before it, and some things apparently remained constant even across centuries.

"I've missed you too." She leaned back enough to look up at him, golden eyes sparkling with restrained laughter as his assessment of Muad progressed from puff bird to song bird, show bird, hatchling and, eventually, man. "For the record, I didn't choose him based upon his resemblance to any sort of bird."

The final instruction earned Chek a warmer smile, though Rin's gaze slid toward Muad when the ancient Zorren referred to him as the young man she'd brought with her. She wasn't going to help him with that one. He had spent enough time teasing her about their respective ages that watching someone else effortlessly place him among the youngsters felt like a gift she intended to treasure for as long as possible.

"Maeve and Corren are well. Asil is still Asil, which should tell you almost everything you need to know, and Caelan is..." Rin hesitated, considering the safest possible summary of her youngest sibling before giving Chek a helpless little shrug. "Caelan. I'll catch you up properly inside."

She reclaimed Muad's hand as they followed Chek beneath the overhang, her thumb brushing once across his knuckles before she leaned fractionally closer. "Congratulations," she murmured, amusement warming every word. "You aren't a puff bird." Her tail flicked behind her as she glanced sideways at him. "And apparently you're young again. This visit is already going very well for you."

The home beyond the open receiving area had been carved rather than constructed, but there was nothing crude about it. Generations of hands had worked the stone until walls and floors carried a smoothness that machinery could never quite reproduce, and darker paths beneath their feet quietly revealed where countless footsteps had traveled most often. Alcoves cut into the walls held shelves crowded with pottery, books, tools, carved figures, and objects whose age was impossible to guess because nothing had been arranged like a museum piece. Everything was simply part of the house. An ancient bowl worn smooth around its rim still held fruit. Blankets woven in intricate geometric patterns lay across chairs polished by centuries of use, while tapestries divided the chambers farther within. Openings carefully carved along the outer walls invited sunlight and mountain air inside, leaving the entire home pleasantly cool despite the warmth beyond the overhang.

There were pieces of both its occupants everywhere once someone knew what to look for. Chek's work appeared in hinges, brackets, tools, and small repairs that had survived longer than some governments, while Marta's presence was harder to categorize. Bundles of dried plants hung beside shelves of medical supplies, but nearby were stones, feathers, bones, pieces of wood, and dozens of other objects that seemed meaningless until one understood that many had been teaching tools at one time or another. Several staffs leaned against one wall beside walking sticks and practice weapons. An articulated anatomical model rested on a shelf near handwritten volumes whose bindings had been repaired more than once. Nothing separated medicine from the Force, or survival from philosophy, because Marta had never taught Rin to think of those things as separate disciplines in the first place.

"Marta?" Rin called as they entered, although she doubted there was much chance of surprising the woman in her own home. Marta had always possessed an irritating talent for knowing someone was approaching before they announced themselves, and Rin had stopped trying to determine whether that came from sharp Zorren senses, the Force, or simply several centuries of being extremely difficult to sneak up on.

The woman who emerged from behind one of the hanging tapestries could hardly have contrasted Chek more completely. Marta stood several inches taller than Rin, slender without appearing delicate, her posture so naturally straight that age seemed to have negotiated with her rather than conquered her. Silver-white hair fell nearly to her waist in a loose braid threaded with tiny beads of wood, stone, bone and polished crystal, while a scattering of darker strands remained as quiet reminders of whatever color it had once been. Fine lines gathered around luminous golden eyes and deepened with the beginnings of a smile, lending warmth to a face whose high cheekbones and gently pointed ears still carried the unmistakable beauty of their people.

Her clothing gave away little about what she actually did. A loose sleeveless tunic fell over comfortable trousers, practical enough for climbing a hillside, kneeling beside an injured traveler, or spending an afternoon teaching beneath the trees. Several narrow cords circled one wrist, carrying small objects Rin recognized as gifts accumulated over a very long life rather than ornaments deliberately chosen to match. A feather. A carved tooth. A polished blue stone. Something that might once have been part of a shell. There was no lightsaber at her waist, no ceremonial robe and nothing identifying her with any of the great traditions that had spent millennia defining what someone touched by the Force was supposed to become.

Marta had never needed any of them.

For others, she was a Wilder, a healer, a tutor, or simply the old woman people sought when the Force manifested in ways they didn't understand. For Rin, Marta had ever been her teacher, friend, guide, and any number of things she needed. Everything she understood about the Force had begun with this woman, though Marta had never allowed the Force to become a shortcut around learning how the world actually worked. Before Rin learned to encourage flesh to mend, she learned anatomy, how to clean and close a wound, set and splint a broken limb, recognize shock and understand when an injury was beyond anything she should attempt to treat herself. Before she reached into the forest through the Force, she learned its plants and animals, tracks and seasons, the warning signs hidden in changes of wind and the subtle differences between a forest at rest and one gone silent because something dangerous had entered it.

The elemental lessons had been much the same. Marta taught her what water did before asking Rin to influence its movement, what shaped the wind before she tried to alter its course, how earth carried and surrendered weight, and what fire required in order to live. Marta never taught her to command any of them. She taught Rin to understand what was already there, to listen before reaching, and to recognize that forcing the living world to obey was very different from asking it to move with her. There had been no ranks, no titles to earn and no moment when Marta declared her training complete. There had simply come a day when Rin realized the questions Marta once answered for her were questions she could answer herself.

Some of her earliest memories of training involved sitting beside Marta beneath the trees and being absolutely convinced the older woman was deliberately trying to irritate her. Whenever Rin demanded to know what she was supposed to be feeling, Marta told her to listen. When Rin insisted that she was listening, Marta told her to listen better. If Rin asked what she was listening for, Marta had occasionally made matters worse by telling her that she would know when she heard it. The younger Rin had found this method infuriating. A century and more later, she had been forced to admit that Marta had known exactly what she was doing.

Seeing her now reached somewhere deeper than nostalgia. Rin had traveled across worlds, survived things neither of them could have anticipated when those lessons began, and become a woman whose life looked very different from anything she had imagined as a child. Yet some fundamental part of who she was had been shaped here. Marta had taught her how to heal, how to fight, how to survive, how to touch the Force and, perhaps most importantly, how to find her own answers instead of borrowing someone else's. She had never tried to make Rin another Marta. She had simply given her the foundation from which Rin could become herself.

"There you are."

Whatever age and wisdom Rin had accumulated disappeared from the gesture that followed. She released Muad's hand and crossed the remaining distance without hesitation, wrapping her arms around Marta and holding her for several long seconds. Her eyes closed as familiar arms surrounded her in return, and for that little stretch of time she wasn't a guide, hunter, wanderer, or a woman who had crossed half the galaxy. She was simply Rin, home with someone who had known her long before she knew herself.

When she finally drew back, her smile had softened considerably. "I know. It's been too long." Her ears dipped slightly with the admission before rising again as she glanced back toward the two men. Chek already looked as though he'd made at least three judgments about Muad and was reserving another dozen for later. Marta, Rin suspected, would require considerably less staring to notice far more.

"But I brought someone I wanted you both to meet."

Rin returned to Muad rather than beckoning him forward, slipping naturally against his side as her hand found his again. There was no uncertainty in the gesture and no attempt to disguise what he meant to her. If anything, introducing him here felt strangely more significant than bringing him through her parents' door the previous night. Corren and Maeve had raised her, loved her, and given her the home she always returned to. Marta had helped shape the part of Rin that eventually ventured beyond it.

"Marta, Chek, this is Muad Dib." Her fingers tightened gently around his as affection softened her expression. "We met on Batuu under circumstances that were considerably less pleasant than this. He crashed into the forest, nearly died, and somehow that turned into him following me home."

The teasing smile she offered Muad lingered for only a moment before becoming something quieter. Rin still didn't have a name for everything she felt when she looked at him. Perhaps she wasn't supposed to yet. For once in her long life, she was content not to have the answer immediately.

"I'm rather glad he did."

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

"For the record, I didn't choose him based on his resemblance to any sort of bird," Muad smirked as he sent memories along their bond. Are you sure it didn't have to do with the any number of times you got me naked? His self-satisfied grin was more than obvious. Though he was amused, he didn't take away from the interaction between Rin and Chek. And he did take a peek to see if her ears had changed color. While he sensed the humor Rin felt at Muad being lumped in with the 'young', he didn't reply, only continued smiling. When she took his hand, he leaned sideways, allowing their arms to brush. Her whispered words drew another smile. "But what if I wanted to be a puff bird?"

The home was a completely different aesthetic from the Taal communal home. Firstly, it wasn't in the forest. Each floor, ceiling, and wall was painstakingly crafted from the mountain itself. And while the communal home was a generational residence, Marta and Chek's home was a multigenerational masterpiece. As they walked deeper, he could tell where rooms were widened over centuries, ceilings raised, and some of the furniture was drawn straight from the rock. A tall table with stone benches. A long couch carved from the rock was softened with cushions, pillows, and throw blankets. Even the light fixtures were shaved stone so thin the light shone through with a soft glow. A massive chandelier hung from the depths of one room, carved stone etched with delicate figures that reminded him of one of the temples on Tython. Intricate designs that bordered on artistic unfolded stories that existed long before the written word.

It was easy to see the handiwork of Chek. Every place seemed to have some form of metalwork and carpentry that spoke of timeless patience. A masterclass of seeing the form hidden within natural resources before callused hands and a keener eye drew forth the beauty from within. He paused at a side table and looked at a pyramid of sandstone. While he always had an eye for dimensions and a natural talent for construction, this was beyond his comprehension. Small blocks, no larger than a fingernail, fit against one another tightly, leaving no grooves. In itself, not an incredible feat, but when the overall size of the pyramid was nearly five feet tall, it was incredible. Every small tablet was shaved to perfection, each layer lay tight against the other, and the weight would have been great, hence the stone pedestal raised from the mountain itself.

Chek had paused, black eye watching Muad with feigned disinterest. Most passed by the pyramid with only the smallest of glances. It appeared to be the least of the shaped stones in the home. But what Muad saw was often overlooked. The pyramid had taken him ninety-seven years to craft lovingly, each miniaturized stone no larger than a scrabble piece of tile. To the normal being, an entire lifetime. For those with incredible lifespans, like Marta and Chek, little more than a breath. For a moment, he compared his accomplishments to the enduring and personal works within the home he stood in. Then he decided there was no comparison. It was two different worlds. Though in the work of the pyramid he discovered a slow patience even he couldn't imagine.

When Muad followed Rin onward, there was a loosening in Chek's expression. The old Zorren had seen more than Muad would have fathomed. As they entered the room where Marta came out from the hanging tapestry, Muad noticed the singular glance between the couple and the almost imperceptible nod of the smaller man's head—a conversation shared in a mere look. Rin's hand had left his as she moved to the older woman. But Muad would have released her fingers even if she hadn't. The older woman's presence permeated the atmosphere. Not in the physical world, but through the Force. The waves that came off her nearly staggered Muad.

It was like being in a lake. Most would splash along the shore. That was most non-Force sensitives. Unaware of the power of the lake. Others waded in and took part in the joy of the water. Splashing in something only the ones on the shore could dream of doing. Then some swam and ducked under the pristine waters. A new world opened before them. Discovery and majesty. That was where most masters delved. Only a few would dive deep, to the bottom of the lake. Only a few were capable of such immersion. They were only the extremely powerful who had large quantities of time to explore the deep. Muad, through time, inherent ability, and stubbornness, learned how to explore the depths of the ocean floor. But what he felt from Marta was something he'd only experienced a handful of times.

She wasn't just an explorer on the ocean floor. She was the very presence within it. The pressure that gripped those who delved deep. She was the pressure—a being of inherent natural power, long life, and the time to explore the currents. Muad had met few like her, and every time his own insignificance humbled him.

Then Rin and Marta hugged, and he saw more than he thought he would see. While Maeve was Rin's mother, Marta was her spiritual mother. He began to understand how powerful she was, with the subtle intricacies of the Force phenomena before him. Their bearing was very similar. A peaceful stone on the stream bed able to endure the current with silent patience while affecting the current by their very presence.

As the women parted, he noticed their hands each raising to brush a loose strand behind an ear, the softest hint of a smile. Even the way they walked was a reflection of one another. Maeve may have given her life and appearance. Corren the steadfastness of the forest. But it was Marta who was remade in Rin. She reclaimed his hand and introduced him to the pair as Chek eased over to stand beside his wife, Marta's hip resting against his upper torso. Muad glanced at Rin, eyes glowing brightly.

It was rather more complicated than that, but the gist rang true. "She found me and I … couldn't let her go." His blue eyes turned to look at the older couple as his eyes finally rested on Marta. "Imagine my surprise when I sense a conduit in the Force. A person intricately tied to the Living Force, a being whose power has grown. Not in decades or centuries. Or even in a few thousand years."

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

The memories Muad sent across their bond did precisely what he had apparently hoped they would. Warmth crept upward through Rin's ears before she could prevent it, the pale fur doing absolutely nothing to conceal the change from anyone who knew what to look for. She refused to give him the satisfaction of looking away, narrowing her golden eyes instead as his smug question followed after them. "You seem to be forgetting that you were a willing participant in every one of those occasions," she returned through their bond, maintaining considerably more composure there than her ears suggested she possessed. His self-satisfied grin only made matters worse, and when Rin caught Chek taking a suspiciously interested glance toward her ears, she turned the same narrowed look upon the older Zorren. "Don't encourage him. He already thinks he's very funny."

The brush of Muad's arm against hers softened the accusation before she could maintain it for long, particularly when he asked what would happen if he wanted to be a puff bird. Rin tipped her head and regarded him with exaggerated consideration, her gaze traveling over him as though the possibility deserved serious evaluation. "I suppose we could ask Marta whether there is anything she can do about that," she allowed, her tail making an idle sweep behind her as she squeezed his hand. "Although I don't think you'd make a very convincing one. Puff birds are quiet." She managed to keep her expression solemn for perhaps another second before amusement betrayed her, made worse by the knowledge that Chek had witnessed enough of the exchange to know precisely why her ears had changed color.

The teasing faded naturally as they moved farther into the home, not because Rin's mood changed but because Muad began slowing to examine things she had long ago stopped thinking of as remarkable. She had crossed these rooms too many times to remember the first occasion, passing stone shaped by familiar hands and additions that had accumulated across generations until the mountain itself seemed to have grown around the people living within it. Some portions of Chek's work she remembered watching take shape, while others had existed before she was born and had simply always been part of what this place meant to her. Seeing Muad experience it for the first time made her look at familiar details again, occasionally following his gaze toward something she might otherwise have walked past without a thought.

When he stopped beside the pyramid, Rin made it another step before realizing his hand was no longer within hers. She turned and found Muad studying the structure with far greater attention than most visitors ever afforded it, and her gaze shifted almost immediately toward Chek before returning to the pyramid. Rin had known the piece for so long that its presence had become ordinary despite the extraordinary patience required to create it. Every tiny block had been shaped precisely enough to settle against the next, the whole built one painstaking piece at a time by someone for whom patience could be measured very differently than it was for most beings. Muad appeared to recognize something in the workmanship that others might have overlooked, and a faint smile touched Rin's mouth as she watched him linger over what was perhaps one of the least immediately impressive creations in the room. She didn't interrupt his examination, simply waiting until he moved onward before falling comfortably into step beside him again.

Whatever else occupied her attention disappeared when Marta emerged from beyond the hanging tapestry. Rin went to her without hesitation, releasing Muad only because embracing the woman properly required both arms. There was a familiarity to Marta that reached considerably deeper than the years Rin had spent away from her, and being held by her carried Rin backward through memories that had shaped far more of her life than she could have explained in a few sentences. Maeve had given her life and loved her as her daughter, but Marta had understood the part of Rin that experienced the Force before Rin herself possessed the words for it. She had taught her that sensing pain did not obligate her to immediately reach for it, that healing required understanding before action, and that possessing the ability to alter something did not automatically grant the wisdom to do so. Much of the patience Rin now considered simply part of herself had first been Marta's patience extended to a child who had desperately needed someone capable of teaching her what she was experiencing.

When they eventually parted, Rin pushed a loose strand of hair behind one ear almost simultaneously with Marta making a similar motion. She might not have thought anything of it had she not noticed the intensity with which Muad was watching them, and curiosity touched her expression before she reclaimed his hand. The brightness of his eyes told her something about the exchange had caught his attention, though she made no attempt to pry the thought from him. Their bond had already become intimate enough without Rin treating every passing impression as something to be examined simply because she could.

His admission that she had found him and he couldn't let her go caught Rin more thoroughly than she expected. Muad could have made a joke of it, particularly after spending the walk inside ensuring her ears had barely been given an opportunity to return to their normal color, but there was no teasing attached to the words this time. He said them while standing before two people who mattered deeply to her, with her hand resting within his, and Rin's fingers curled a little more firmly around his as affection passed freely through their bond. Whatever was developing between them remained too new for Rin to have decided what to call it, but pretending there was nothing there had become increasingly ridiculous.

"You make it sound as though I gave you much choice," she murmured, looking toward him with a faint smile that undermined the teasing words entirely. The answer was easier than trying to explain why hearing him admit even that much in front of Marta and Chek had affected her, particularly when she suspected at least one of the two older Zorren needed considerably less explanation than Rin might have preferred.

Muad's attention shifted fully toward Marta afterward, and Rin watched some of the humor leave him as he seemed to properly take in the woman standing before them. She had never experienced Marta the way someone meeting her for the first time might. Long before Rin possessed enough understanding of the Force to comprehend how extraordinary her teacher was, Marta had simply been Marta. She was the woman who had corrected Rin's hands during her earliest lessons, made her identify plants until there was no possibility of confusing one for another, refused to solve every childhood injury merely because healing it would have been easy, and somehow always knew when Rin was pretending she wasn't tired. The enormity of what existed within Marta had revealed itself gradually enough that Rin had never experienced the sudden discovery that seemed to be unfolding for Muad now.

His description of her as a conduit intricately tied to the Living Force drew a small smile from Rin, particularly as he progressed from decades to centuries and then dismissed even a few thousand years as insufficient to explain what he sensed. Her gaze slipped toward Chek for a moment before returning to Muad, amusement warming her expression without making light of what he was saying. Hearing someone with Muad's experience recognize the depth of Marta's connection reminded Rin just how unusual the woman beside her truly was. It was simply difficult to reconcile the reverence creeping into his description with Rin's memories of sitting beneath Marta's watchful eye while being made to repeat some lesson she had been entirely certain she already understood.

"You're going to make her sound terrifying if you keep going," Rin murmured, affection softening the humor as she looked from Muad toward Marta. "Though you're not wrong. I had the advantage of knowing her before I was old enough to understand any of that." There was something almost strange about hearing Marta described through Muad's perception after so many years of knowing her simply as Marta. Rin understood the depth of her connection to the Living Force now, but that knowledge existed alongside thousands of ordinary memories that made it impossible for her to regard the woman with quite the same awe coloring Muad's words.

Her smile turned toward Marta, carrying the easy fondness of someone who had long ago stopped separating teacher from family. "To me, she was the person who made me spend an entire afternoon sorting roots because I insisted I could tell two nearly identical medicines apart without checking them properly. I couldn't, and she knew perfectly well I couldn't before we started." Rin's ears dipped slightly at the memory before her attention shifted toward Chek, suspicion entering her expression as she remembered another part of that particular afternoon. "And you laughed. You were supposed to tell her making me sort the entire basket was excessive." The accusation held no genuine grievance, only the comfortable familiarity of something that had become funnier with the passing years.

Her thumb moved absently along the side of Muad's hand afterward, the small gesture occurring without conscious thought as her attention returned to Marta. Only when Rin became aware of it did she realize how naturally she had remained close to him since reclaiming his hand. There was no sensible reason for that realization to make warmth threaten her ears again after everything Chek had already witnessed between them, yet apparently her body remained determined to betray her whenever dignity might otherwise have survived.

Rin resisted the impulse to move away. Whatever existed between herself and Muad was too new for her to have settled upon a name for it, and the handful of days since finding him hardly seemed sufficient for something that had somehow become this complicated. Yet his presence beside her already felt comfortable in a way she had not expected, and his earlier admission still lingered warmly beneath everything else crossing their bond. She found me and I couldn't let her go. She wasn't entirely certain when holding his hand in front of Marta and Chek had ceased feeling like something she ought to explain, but she found that she didn't particularly want to.

Instead, Rin gave his fingers another gentle squeeze and looked toward Marta as Muad continued trying to put into words what he sensed within her. She had brought him into a place deeply connected to her childhood and placed him before two people who had helped shape much of the person she had become. Now he stood beside her, fascinated by Marta, attentive enough to Chek's craftsmanship to notice what others overlooked, and openly admitting that he had not wanted to let Rin go. Whatever Marta and Chek eventually made of the ancient man whose hand she was still holding, Rin suspected she was rather interested in discovering it herself.

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

"You have been broken many, many times. The pieces of who you are have been put together, rather haphazardly. Not from a healer's touch and knowledge. A warrior's spirit of necessity." Marta's words flowed as gently as a brook. And yet, there was truth in it. The woman approached Muad and raised a slender hand with long, tapered fingers to his temple. She paused without touching. "The cord of your life is long. Even by our standards. But," she smiled the ghost of an expression Muad had seen many times on Rin's face, "not as long as ours." Her eyes flickered to Chek before returning to the blue-eyed man. Her golden eyes flickered over his face before she reached out to test an invisible line that hung in front of his nose. A disconcerting look flickered on her face.

"There are many paths you have walked. Echoes etched in the fabric of who you are. Normally I can sense a direction and a length to the days of people I meet, or see with my vision. Yours is different. Nearly unique. I see possible futures and paths that splinter. Just like our Rin. But where her life force spirals along these paths … yours … disappears. You have many possible futures matched only by your possible endings. And oddity. You could live thousands of years, or a single day. If you choose to stop a life of violence, you will live to see ages pass in front of your eyes. If not, the violence will one day claim you."

There was not an air of mystery about the woman, only a certainty she could feel. Her words gave her no pleasure nor sadness. They merely existed. And he felt the truth of her words. He who lives by the sword must die by the sword. Muad remembered the words of the Sith oracle spoken a thousand years earlier. Words confirmed by a Heavenshield of the Silver Jedi. And most recently, repeated by a Nightmother of great power to see beyond the veils. He inclined his head, accepting her words for the value contained within them. Words he would remember when he took his last breath.

Then she looked down at their clasped hands before rising to Rin's golden gaze. Marta just watched and felt before reaching out to pull the younger Zorren into another embrace. Words were quietly spoken into the pointed ear. "I am happy for you, dear. Embrace the time you have, for it may be shorter than either of you hope." Again, the words were quietly spoken without an emotional shadow. But there was a bittersweet feeling all the same. Her head turned, and she smiled at her husband; unspoken words communicated without sound. Chek grunted as Marta turned back to the couple in front of her. "Chek will take your young Muad to his forge. I believe he will find things there entertaining before I finish lunch. Rin? Would you assist me?"

Muad turned his head and kissed Rin's cheek gently before he released her hand and followed the short and wide form of Chek from the room. He looked back once, and then he was gone, following Chek into a hallway carved into the stone. Marta had returned to the tapestry and moved it aside with a graceful sweep of her arm, pinning it back with an old, ornate clasp, before moving to the kitchen where a massive island of stone rose from the ground as a counter. She retrieved a knife and slowly began cutting a length of tuber as her eyes rose to the woman who once ran through her home as a child, before becoming a youth with questions filled with impatience, until she had become the woman before her. A woman who had found who she was through travel and experience—a young woman who filled Marta's heart with pride and love.

Pausing in her slices, she pointed the blade toward Rin's chest and arched an articulate brow before continuing her cutting. "What happened there, child?" Her question was twofold. A query about the small scar from a spike and a deeper question about her heart, and the connection she could clearly see between the young pair. Something more than just a mere bond. She would have more questions for Rin, but after she heard from the woman who was like a grandchild to her and Chek.

Meanwhile, Muad followed Chek down the twisting corridor until it opened upon a cavernous room. Tools, weapons, and other more intricate creations decorated the two walls of the room. One side lay completely open on the side of the mountain, while the opposite side held a hearth and forge; old metal pipes and clay funneled air from the exposed wall to the bed of coals that burned in the forge. Muad moved from knife to sword before reaching other creations. Artistic figurines, hammer-forged bowls, plates, cast iron pots, and other gadgets. Each was a work of art from a master. A black eye narrowed before Chek growled out, "choose one." Muad glanced back at the smaller man before looking back to the walls as he studied each piece thoughtfully.

His eyes were drawn to the exquisite craftsmanship. And his fingers curled slightly as he imagined the weapons in his grips, the balance impeccable. However, they didn't call to him. Slowly he trailed along, every item subjected to the same amount of scrutiny before moving on to the next. Idly, he wondered if this was another test, but the thought fled as each piece he looked at grew more delicate. And then he saw it, hanging from two silver chains on a wooden peg hammered into the hole drilled into the mountain.

Two silver chains that sparkled from the way the sunlight crashed upon its twisted cords. At the bottom of them hung two silver medallions the size of his thumb. But upon closer inspection, he saw no design. Only a polished to perfection silver medallion that reflected his own face as he leaned close. There was a beauty in their simplicity. But compared to the hundreds of other items, they didn't compare. Muad straightened and made to move away. And yet, something about them would not allow him to leave. He bent again, glowing eyes following the twists in the chain. It truly was art. And even in the plainness of the medallions, there was something there he couldn't quite place. Muad glanced behind him where Chek stood as an impassive stone outcropping of the mountain. Muad raised an eyebrow in question, and Chek snorted, then nodded his old head, sending white braids swaying in the motion.

Fingers plucked one of the chains from the peg, and he raised the medallion closer to his face, gaze searching for what exactly called him to it. After a moment, the surface of the medallion seemed to ripple, and a face slowly etched upon the surface. It was Rin, sculpted by slight raising of the silver and indentations. Muad could see her mouth moving as she spoke, an errant strand of hair falling in front of her face to conceal an eye before fingertips moved into view as she swept the strand up and away. Her eyes flickered down to something in her hands before rising and looking at a point somewhere over Muad's shoulder. The man turned to Chek. "What is this?"

Chek shrugged his shoulders with the slowness of settling rock. "Is that your choice, boy?" Muad looked down into his hand and saw the small crease of Rin's nose, a sign of concentration. His lips slowly stretched into a smile as his heart warmed from within. There was no other choice. Not songsteel blades or intricate war hammers. Not a bejeweled chalice or a bird crafted of multihued ores so thin that light glowed through them. This single item spoke to him. And then he saw Rin, which sealed the deal. His eyes flicked up as he grinned. "Yes. I'm sure … old man." The older Zorren stood impassively for several seconds before he shook his head in bewilderment. "I've made that offer to hundreds who have stood where you do, for centuries. And you, Muad, are the only one to look at, let alone choose, that piece. One of the only things in here crafted by Marta and me together. Rin saw something in you. Marta saw something in you. I believe I see it too."

He crossed the distance of the room and neared the man; one hand, the size of a gauntlet, moved to the dipping neckline of his shirt, where sausage-sized fingers pulled a matching silver medallion from within. "I made these, and Marta sang the words of power. The medallion only shows one thing—your heart's desire. Guess I now know what your intentions are, boy. Take the other one. Give it to whomever you like. Just know that the medallion will always show your heart's desire. Sometimes, that knowledge is surprising."

Muad looked from the medallion to the ancient before making a deep bow. "Thank you. I'm honored." Carefully, he slipped the silver chain over his neck and tucked it within his shirt. The medallion sent a warm sensation through his skin, right where it lay over his heart. Retrieving the second necklace, he pocketed it with care.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin remained quiet while Marta examined Muad, although silence did not mean she was unaffected by what she heard. Some of it confirmed things she had already begun to suspect. His body alone told a history of violence written over itself so many times that separating one injury from another had become difficult even beneath a healer's touch. Marta saw considerably deeper than flesh, however, and the image she painted of Muad as something repeatedly broken and pieced together through necessity made Rin's fingers tighten almost imperceptibly around his. Possible futures were nothing unfamiliar to her, either. She had lived with the strange branching nature of her own path for long enough that Marta comparing Muad's possibilities to hers might ordinarily have fascinated her. Instead, Rin found herself caught upon the places where his disappeared. Thousands of years or a single day. Marta delivered the possibilities with the same quiet certainty she might have used to describe approaching weather, neither condemning the life Muad had lived nor softening what that life might eventually cost him.

Rin's gaze moved toward him while Marta spoke of violence eventually claiming him, searching his face without pretending she could know what lay behind the inclination of his head. That didn't make hearing Marta's prediction any easier. The possibility of Muad living for thousands of years should have made the other extreme feel distant, yet somehow the words a single day were the ones that lodged themselves unpleasantly in her thoughts. Before Rin could decide what to do with that feeling, Marta's attention shifted toward their joined hands and then toward her. She barely had time to recognize the change before she was drawn into another embrace, and the words whispered against her ear left her very still within it.

I am happy for you, dear. Embrace the time you have, for it may be shorter than either of you hope.

Warmth touched Rin's ears for an entirely different reason than Muad's teasing had caused earlier. There was no denying what Marta meant, nor could Rin pretend the older woman had misunderstood whatever she saw between them. Rin hadn't even decided what to call it herself. Muad had come crashing into a forest and into her life along with it, yet somewhere between danger, laughter, arguments, shared memories, an increasingly intimate bond and far too many occasions involving his apparent aversion to clothing, something had begun taking shape without either of them stopping long enough to define it. Marta apparently required no definition, which left Rin without an immediate response before the older woman mercifully shifted the subject and announced that Chek would take Muad to the forge.

Rin's gaze moved toward Chek and then back toward Muad, amusement beginning to displace some of the unease Marta's prediction had left behind. "Try not to encourage each other," she told them, although she wasn't entirely certain which man the warning was intended for. Muad's kiss against her cheek sent warmth into her ears all over again, and Rin watched him leave with Chek, her eyes following him when he glanced back. She remained looking toward the empty corridor for a heartbeat after he disappeared around the bend, aware that their bond still left some sense of him resting against her awareness even with stone increasingly separating them. It had become familiar remarkably quickly, and perhaps that should have concerned her more than it did.

When Rin turned back, Marta was already heading toward the kitchen. She followed her through the tapestry and into a room that carried its own collection of memories, settling naturally near the stone island as Marta retrieved the tuber and began cutting. There had been a time when Rin would have filled the silence immediately, usually with whatever question had been consuming her that particular day. Age and experience had taught her that Marta's silences were rarely empty, and Rin had become considerably better at waiting to discover what occupied them. The knife pointing suddenly toward her chest made her look down, however, and her fingers rose almost automatically toward the small scar left by the spike, brushing the fabric over it before her golden eyes returned to Marta's arched brow.

"That?" Rin asked, although she knew immediately that Marta meant more than the scar, which was precisely why she chose to answer the easier question first. "A spike. It went through farther than I would have preferred." She watched Marta resume cutting before her expression grew more thoughtful and her fingers lingered near the scar. "Muad healed it. He did something I still don't entirely understand. He changed himself, and some of whatever allowed him to recover from what happened was given to me as well. It cost him more than he admitted at first."

The last part carried enough lingering irritation that Marta would have little difficulty determining Rin's opinion of Muad concealing his condition. Rin watched another slice of tuber fall beneath the knife before releasing a quiet breath, already knowing that explaining the scar was not going to satisfy the woman standing across from her. A faint smile touched her mouth as she finally admitted, "And I know that isn't the only thing you're asking." Her gaze drifted briefly toward the corridor through which Muad and Chek had disappeared. "I don't know, Marta. I found him when he came crashing into a forest. There shouldn't have been enough time for..." She stopped, ears shifting as she searched for a word and rejected several before settling upon the only answer that seemed remotely honest. "Whatever this is."

Rin looked back toward the older woman, finding the rest somewhat easier once she had admitted that much. "But I miss him when he isn't beside me, even when I can still feel him. I worry about him more than is probably reasonable, although he gives me plenty of reasons for that. He makes me laugh, and he makes me want to strangle him occasionally. Sometimes within the same minute." The corner of her mouth lifted with the admission, but the humor gradually gave way to something more vulnerable as Marta's earlier words returned to her thoughts. "And when you told him his life could end tomorrow..." Her fingers curled lightly against her arms before she finished more quietly, "I hated hearing it. Is that what you wanted to know?"

Marta continued slicing for another moment before setting the knife beside the partially cut tuber. "Partly. You have always wanted time to understand things before accepting them. When you were little, you would ask the same question six different ways because you believed one of them might reveal the piece you had missed." She gathered several pieces together with the flat of the blade and moved them aside, a faint smile touching her face as her golden eyes returned to Rin. "You still do."

"I don't ask the same question six times," Rin protested, though Marta needed only look at her before she reconsidered the claim and sighed. "Not usually."

"You are trying to understand this before allowing yourself to experience it," Marta observed as she resumed cutting, earning a shift of Rin's tail behind her as the observation landed considerably closer than she would have preferred.

"Experience without understanding is how people make terrible decisions."

"Sometimes," Marta conceded without interrupting the steady movement of her knife. "Understanding without experience is how people spend their lives waiting."

Rin had no immediate answer to that, and Marta did not press the advantage. She simply continued preparing the meal as though she had commented upon nothing more consequential than the proper way to slice the tuber. After several moments she nudged another one across the stone toward Rin and placed a second knife beside it with a simple instruction to, "Cut." The familiarity of the command pulled a reluctant smile from Rin as she reached for the knife and began working beside the woman who had once taught her hands to do precisely this sort of thing.

"You know, most people would simply ask whether I like him."

"Do you?" Marta asked without missing a stroke.

Rin's knife stopped halfway through the tuber as warmth immediately crept into her ears. Marta's mouth curved faintly, while Rin glared down at the vegetable as though it had personally conspired to place her in this situation. "Yes," she admitted at last, the word quieter than most of what she had said but entirely lacking uncertainty. She resumed cutting after a moment, concentrating rather more intently upon the task than it required before adding, "Quite a lot, apparently."

"I know," Marta replied, and Rin's ears grew warmer still. She continued cutting rather than give the older woman the satisfaction of seeing exactly how thoroughly two words had managed to embarrass her, though the color of her ears had already rendered the attempt fairly pointless.

---

Chek allowed the significance of the medallion to settle without immediately adding anything to what he had already revealed. The old Zorren turned away and crossed toward the forge, where he picked up a length of metal resting beside the coals and examined it beneath the shifting orange light. For several moments the only sounds within the cavernous room came from the low crackle of the fire and the wind moving through the open side of the mountain, until Chek finally broke the silence. "Marta told you that violence will kill you. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps ten thousand years from now. The number doesn't matter much to me." There was no judgment in his gravelly voice as he turned the metal between his thick fingers before returning it to the workbench. His golden eye shifted toward Muad, then dropped deliberately toward the place where the medallion now rested beneath his clothing. "That does."

Chek selected another piece of metal and carried it toward the forge, using a pair of tongs to settle one end among the coals. The bellows drew air through the old system of pipes, brightening the orange glow around the metal as he continued. "I've offered that choice to hundreds who have stood in this room. Warriors usually choose weapons. Sensible people choose something useful. Greedy ones choose whatever they believe is worth the most." A low grunt escaped him as he adjusted the metal before turning fully toward Muad. "You chose the plainest thing on the wall without knowing what it was, and then it showed you Rin."

He folded his heavy arms across his chest, though there was nothing threatening in the gesture. Chek did not seem interested in playing the part of an overprotective elder warning a younger man away from someone he loved, particularly when the medallion had rendered that sort of interrogation rather pointless. "I don't need to ask what your intentions are. Marta and I made those medallions a very long time ago. They don't show what someone wants for an afternoon, and they don't flatter the person wearing them. They show what the heart reaches for when everything else is stripped away." His gaze remained steady for another moment before he turned back toward the forge. "Rin is not fragile. She does not need me deciding who she should care for, and she certainly does not need anyone deciding what pain she is allowed to risk. She has been making her own choices for a long time. But choices have consequences."

Chek retrieved the heated metal and carried it to the anvil, the first fall of his hammer ringing sharply through the forge before another measured strike followed it. "For most of your life, I imagine dying was your concern alone. Perhaps there were people who would mourn you, perhaps there weren't. I don't know you well enough to say, and I won't pretend otherwise." He rotated the metal and brought the hammer down again, his movements unhurried despite the weight behind his words. "That changes when someone begins building part of their life around yours."

The hammer eventually stilled against the edge of the anvil as Chek's golden eye settled upon Muad again, his expression as immovable as the mountain surrounding them. "Marta told you what she sees at the ends of your paths, and I saw what that medallion showed you. Those are two pieces of information I would think very carefully about if I were standing where you are." He lifted the hammer again but did not immediately return to his work. "I'm not telling you to stop fighting, and I'm not telling you to become someone Rin would find easier to care about. If she wanted easy, she would have chosen easy. Judging by the man she brought into my home, she clearly did not."

The faint trace of dry amusement disappeared beneath the next ringing strike of the hammer. Chek worked the metal several more times before returning it to the coals, then wiped one broad hand against the heavy apron covering his torso. "What I am telling you is not to treat your life as though it remains yours alone to throw away. I've lived long enough to watch people convince themselves that dying for someone is the greatest proof of love they can offer, when usually they're leaving the harder part to the person who survives them." His gaze dropped briefly toward the hidden medallion before rising again. "Don't make Rin love a dead man while you're still breathing."

Chek left the words there rather than explaining them further. There was little value in burying something simple beneath additional philosophy, and Muad could decide for himself what to make of it. Instead, the old Zorren reached toward a nearby peg, pulled down a second heavy leather apron and tossed it in Muad's direction before turning back toward the forge. "Lunch isn't ready yet. If you're going to stand in my forge, you can make yourself useful."

Muad Dib

 

[Muad Dib]

Muad listened to the older man's words. They carried the weight of truth. Plainly given. And heavier than he cared to admit. Therein lay the problem, as Chek so obviously gave it. He had personally witnessed the complete joy of two people coming together to unite under a single banner. And he had seen the devastation in the aftermath of one of their decisions leading them into a war they never came back from. Too many times to count. Despite Muad having no plans to die, he knew with his lifestyle and profession it was a likelihood. For a normal person, every time they went into battle, their life was on the altar of the gods, chance, and fate—unpleasant odds for any being.

But he was not just any being. He readily threw himself into the deepest fray, against the most insurmountable foes, and led by example at the front. The odds, then, became much slimmer. The fact that he had cheated death for a millennium made every fight that much more likely he would draw the short straw. He pissed off gods, took too many chances, and denied fate by choosing his own path. In truth, he had used up any shred of remaining luck he possessed. The estimation of thousands of years was ignorantly hopeful. Reality was never something he ignored, and his reality meant that when his end came, it would be bloody, surrounded by the bodies of his enemies who found him before it was his time. It was a vision that filled him. One he had seen as a child. And one that revisited him often.

But if he were to lay down his sword … a flicker of sadness lingered in his eyes. He could never do it. It wasn't the way he was made.

When Chek barked at him to collect the heavy leathers and get to work, Muad laughed loudly. "Mate, I've been around a forge. If you want me to put on ten pounds of leather to heat to death at the bellows, I know better. I won't fall for that trick. Or is it a test …?" He smirked as he moved to the peg. But instead of liberating the massive leather apron, he slipped his tunic from his body to hang over the apron and moved to the side of the forge where the massive bellows lay. The heat from the forge wrapped around his form, immediately making it hotter than the desert of the Dune Sea on Tatooine. "Like the ancient Je'daii Horn Alkor once said on Tython, if you can't take the heat, get out of the forge."

His right hand gripped the long handle to the right of the bellows, low near his waist, and his left gripped the opposite handle high near his head. With a wink tossed to the old smith, he began the process of pulling one down while pushing the other up. Once they reached the end of their path, he reversed the motion, pushing up and pulling down. He worked the bellows, utilizing his whole body instead of just his arms. He twisted, allowing his weight to draw one side down while curving his torso and stretching up onto the balls of his feet to push. The rhythm began, slow and steady, as he found the tempo. Nearly ten minutes stretched as the muscles in his body ached and screamed. The threshold loomed before him. A moment when most athletes surrendered. But those who persevered through the agony hit their stride, rode through the pain, and found the feeling often associated with running—the runner's high.

And he found it. Now his body worked on autopilot, the motion as effortless as breathing. Chek tossed more coal onto the fire, the bar of metal used to organize the burning coals as he added another handful here, another small pile there. Though he nurtured the coals, his black eye remained on the man at the bellows. The leather apron was a test and a challenge. It would have added unnecessary weight in a cumbersome garment. And it would have kept the body heat from escaping, causing the person to swim in their own sweat. But it would have caught the occasional spark from landing on a shirt and catching it on fire, or slipping under a shirt and burning the holy hell out of the person. However, Muad declined the apron and shucked his shirt. It showed an amount of wisdom and experience, not to mention the awareness that he would catch a spark every few pumps in the bellows and didn't mind the brief moment of pain.

For the first time, Chek smiled at the young man. "Keep her blowing. I need it hot for the metal." The old smith turned away from Muad, content in the knowledge that the bellows no longer needed his attention. Neither did the young man.

Muad continued working the bellows, the mindless motion now a rhythm he did not need to operate mindfully. Which gave him time to ruminate on the elder man's words. His body flowed through the established motions, every muscle burning as he engaged his whole figure in the process. The pores across his skin opened and sweat poured out, only to instantly be dried by the blast furnace. Heat surrounded his body and consumed the liquid that appeared on his form. Despite his body temperature being elevated and the breath of hot air coursing into and through the fiery coals before washing over him, the brief moment sweat touched his skin before evaporating just as quickly brought a cool second of relief. An occasional ember leaped from the burning coals and brushed his skin to leave an ashen kiss on his torso to remember him by. Soon enough, more ash and soot could be seen than skin.

Muad loved every minute.

By this point, most Force users would be cooling themselves through their innate abilities. Or even controlling the fire itself, rather than working the bellows. But to the blue-eyed mad man, it felt like cheating. And he enjoyed physical labor that pushed him to the limits of his own body, without the Force. Then there was the fact that he had used the Force even more sparingly since Batuu. Burning through his energy and reserves had dropped him to the point of severing his connection to the Force. And he was wary of what had nearly happened while also still concerned about the aftereffects of the Crystal's presence. Regardless of the inner turmoil concerning the Force, he fully embraced the current workout.

"I heard you. Before." As he began speaking, his words came out in the cadence of his breath, inhaling while working the bellows in one direction, then exhaling as he worked them in the opposite direction. He chose to keep the tempo at the faster pace instead of exhaling with the motion of the bellows, pausing for an inhale, then exhaling as he worked the handles in the opposing direction. It kept the fires burning hotter with no rest in between while also giving him a better, high-energy workout.

"It's not in me to lay down my sword. I'm not incapable of it … I just know that if I were to, a dozen would have to rise to take my place. And another dozen for the next fight. And another dozen after that. Part of the reason to fight is that I love it. Another part is because it protects people who can't do what I do." He worked the bellows and breathed. "And part of the reason is that I know many more would have to take my place. Others who don't have the skill and experience I possess, and thereby would die." More breathing as he worked the bellows. "If it were just the fight I love, I'd walk away. For Rin. But it's not … and I can't. I won't let others die in my stead."

Chek merely listened as he slipped on leather gloves and grabbed a ring and hammer. He tested the color on the metal bar of stock before burying it to continue to heat as Muad continued. "I don't fear death. I never have. I don't search for it, but neither do I hide from it. I … I never considered it. One day it would find me, either tomorrow or a day so far removed it is measured in decades or centuries. Even before, when there were people who would mourn me, death was only a thing that happened as easily as living. But … I see what you mean. How it would affect someone who loves me … how it would affect Rin."

Chek removed the bar, which now glowed white. He turned to the anvil and dropped the hammer, slowly flattening the stock bar to thin and extend it. Once the color began to change back to red, cooling in the afternoon air, he turned and thrust it back into the coal, a lone nod to imply that the other man could now speak. Now that the din of hammering was momentarily paused. "I don't intend to make Rin love a dead man while he's breathing. But maybe … maybe I shouldn't allow her to fall in love with a man whose death has been foretold to be bloody. Especially if it could be sooner than we both hope …"

Meanwhile in the kitchen …

Marta wiped the blade on a dish towel before leaning her slender arms against the stone Island they worked at. "Then what are you waiting for?" The crow's feet at the corners of her eyes crinkled with humor as the hint of a smile creased one side of her lips. "Once you grew past the exuberance of youth, you inherited more of Corren than you may realize. He has the capacity to be slow and methodical. I watched him grow from a rash boy into a patient man. I have also watched him agonize over decisions that he knew were right. Lengthy deliberation has its place. It can also prove the undoing of many situations."

She took the bowl with the sliced tubers and went to the sink, rinsing them thoroughly. Once she was done, she moved back to the island, golden eyes merely glancing at the still pink ear tips. "The decision you find yourself at is yes or no. And if I know you, there is probably a list of pros and cons floating inside that head. And a deliberation of appearance." She paused, taking a smooth stone from the built-in drawer and ran the blade across it several times. "You came here to visit. And to bring your young man. Were you looking for an answer to unspoken questions? And if you asked me about him, what would you feel if I said yes? How would you feel if I said no?" The wisdom of the ancient Zorren took away whatever power her responses would have had, and turned them around. What would Rin feel about either response? What power would grow with surety? Confirmation or staunch denial.

Rin Taal

 

[Rin Taal]

Rin's knife slowed against the tuber as Marta spoke, though she didn't immediately look up from what she was doing. There was something deeply unfair about the ease with which the older woman could take a question Rin had not actually asked, turn it completely around, and leave her holding an answer she had apparently been trying very hard not to examine too closely. The comparison to Corren earned the faintest tightening at one corner of her mouth because Rin could not even dismiss it as inaccurate. She had watched her father take his time with decisions that mattered, weighing one consequence against another until certainty emerged from patience. Rin had always considered that one of his strengths. Hearing Marta suggest she had inherited enough of it to turn patience into avoidance was considerably less flattering.

"I don't have a list," Rin protested mildly, though her knife remained suspiciously stationary against the cutting board for someone who was supposedly concentrating upon lunch. Her ears shifted when Marta mentioned deliberating over appearance, and the pause that followed gave the denial considerably less credibility than Rin might have preferred. "Not a written one."

The concession drew a quiet breath from her as she resumed slicing. She had considered the differences between them because pretending otherwise would have been absurd. Muad had lived longer than entire civilizations. Rin had found him after he quite literally crashed into a forest that she was a partial steward of, and since then events had progressed with a speed that would have sounded ridiculous if she attempted to explain them to someone who hadn't experienced any of it. They had fought beside one another, shared memories and emotions through a bond neither of them seemed particularly inclined to abandon, argued over his almost impressive ability to conceal injuries without technically lying, and somehow become comfortable enough that his hand finding hers no longer required conscious thought. There had also been enough occasions involving Muad's complicated relationship with clothing that Rin was beginning to suspect modesty had simply missed him entirely. None of it looked especially sensible when arranged in order, but sense had very little to do with the warmth that settled within her whenever she felt him through their bond.

Marta's final questions pulled Rin's attention away from the tuber entirely. Her golden eyes rose slowly toward the older woman as she considered what she had actually hoped to find by bringing Muad here. "I came because I wanted to see you and Chek," she answered first, because that much was uncomplicated and true. "And I wanted him to see this place. To meet the people who..." Rin hesitated over the phrasing before continuing more softly, "who know me in ways most people never will."

That admission brought another realization close behind it. She could have returned alone. She could easily have left Muad elsewhere and visited the mountain without introducing him to Marta or watching him wander through Chek's handiwork with the fascination of someone seeing it for the first time. Instead, bringing him here had felt natural enough that Rin had barely questioned the choice until Marta began asking her why. Her gaze lowered again, though she wasn't particularly interested in the tuber anymore. "I don't think I came here intending to ask whether I should..." She searched briefly for a word that didn't imply more certainty than she possessed. "pursue this. Whatever this becomes. Although I suppose some part of me wanted to know what you thought of him."

Rin rested the knife against the board and folded her hands lightly around its handle rather than continue pretending she needed all of her attention for vegetables. Marta had asked two very simple questions. How would Rin feel if she approved, and how would she feel if she didn't? The first answer required almost no thought. "If you said yes, I'd be relieved." She let the admission settle before turning toward the harder half of it, only to discover that answer came more easily than expected as well. "If you said no, I'd want to know why. I'd listen to you because I trust you, and if you saw something dangerous that I hadn't, I would take that seriously." Her fingers shifted against the knife handle while she considered it for another moment. "But I don't think I'd stop."

There was the answer she had apparently been circling without realizing it. Rin stared at Marta for a moment after saying it, almost irritated by how simple the truth became once spoken aloud. She had spent considerable effort considering possibilities, risks and differences only to discover that somewhere along the way she had already made the decision that mattered. "That's what you were trying to make me say, isn't it?" There was no genuine accusation in her voice, only recognition and the faint exasperation of a former student discovering that an old lesson had somehow been disguised as a conversation over lunch preparation.

Marta continued sharpening the knife with the same measured rhythm, giving Rin nothing to hide behind but her own thoughts. "I was trying to make you hear yourself."

Rin gave her a look that suggested the distinction was technically accurate and therefore especially irritating. "That sounds like something you would say."

"It sounds like something you needed."

Rin opened her mouth, considered arguing, and decided that doing so would only prove Marta's point about inherited deliberation. Instead, she reclaimed the tuber and resumed slicing, though her expression had softened considerably. "I like him. I know that much. I want to see what this becomes, and apparently I would still want that even if you told me it was a terrible idea." Her ears warmed at hearing herself put the thought quite so plainly, but she forced herself to continue rather than retreat into embarrassment. "That doesn't mean I think none of this matters. He's lived for an impossibly long time for a human. He runs toward things most sensible people run away from, and after what you said earlier, I know there might be consequences to caring about him that I haven't had time to understand yet."

The knife moved steadily now, giving her hands something useful to do while the rest came more quietly. "But I don't think avoiding him because I might lose him someday would make the loss any less real. It would just mean throwing away whatever time we could have had before it happened." For the first time since Marta had whispered her warning, Rin found that the possibility did not press quite so painfully against her chest. She still hated it. The image of paths simply ending around Muad had not become more acceptable because Rin had found a way to reason through it. Yet Marta had not told her that he would die tomorrow. She had told her that he could, just as another possibility stretched thousands of years ahead. Rin could either spend whatever time existed between those possibilities fearing which ending awaited him, or she could actually live within it.

Marta's expression softened as she set the sharpening stone aside. "There you are."

The familiar words caught Rin in a way she hadn't expected. She had heard them here countless times before, when childhood frustration finally gave way to understanding, when some hurt sent her retreating into herself, or when Marta had simply waited for an impatient young Rin to think her way through something rather than providing the answer for her. There had never been judgment behind those three words. Marta never used them to tell Rin she had finally become the person Marta wanted her to be. They had simply been an acknowledgment that wherever Rin's thoughts or emotions had carried her, she had found her way back to herself.

Only now did Rin realize she had taken the words with her when she left Veradune.

A small smile slowly appeared as she thought of the number of times she had said them since. To someone waking beneath her hands after healing, to someone emerging from fear or pain, or simply to someone who had become lost within themselves for a little while and finally returned. Rin had never consciously imitated Marta or even stopped to wonder where the phrase had come from. It had simply become part of her, another small piece of home she had carried into the galaxy so naturally that she had forgotten it had ever belonged to someone else first.

"I've been saying that for years."

Marta's mouth curved slightly. "I know."

A soft laugh escaped Rin as she shook her head, something warmer settling behind her smile while she returned her attention to the tuber. "I never realized I got it from you."

"We carry more of the people who raise us than we notice."

That answer quieted Rin in a way none of Marta's teasing had managed. She thought of Corren in the patience Marta had identified earlier, of Maeve in pieces of herself she probably recognized even less readily, and now of Marta living in words Rin had carried across worlds without ever wondering where they began. Leaving Veradune had never meant leaving all of it behind. Some pieces had simply become so thoroughly woven into her that she no longer recognized where Rin ended and the influence of those who had raised her began.

For several comfortable moments the kitchen settled into the old rhythm she remembered, knives moving against stone and ingredients gathering between them while conversation no longer needed to fill every silence. Yet part of Rin's awareness remained stretched elsewhere through the mountain, following the familiar thread that connected her to Muad. She did not intrude upon him or attempt to pull thoughts across their bond, but knowing he remained somewhere beyond the carved corridors with Chek had become a quiet constant beneath everything else. The distant rhythm of the bellows and occasional ringing impact of a hammer carried faintly through the stone, sounds Rin had known for most of her life made subtly different by knowing Muad was there to hear them too.

---

In the forge, Chek worked the heated stock beneath the hammer while the bellows continued feeding the coals. He had listened without interruption as Muad explained why laying down his sword was not as simple as choosing peace over violence. There was sense in what he said, even if Chek suspected sense had been used to justify more than one bloody path over the centuries. He did not challenge the claim that Muad's absence from a battlefield might require others to stand where he otherwise would. Chek had lived too long to pretend there were never monsters that needed someone willing and capable of facing them. It was Muad's final thought that interested him considerably more.

Chek drew the glowing metal from the coals and laid it across the anvil, turning it once beneath his tongs while he considered the admission that perhaps Rin should not be allowed to fall in love with someone whose death might already be waiting for him. The hammer came down in several measured blows before Chek returned the stock to the heat, and only when the ringing faded did he finally look toward Muad. "You were listening right up until the end. Everything you said about the people who might have to stand where you stand may be true. Maybe a dozen would die doing what you can do alone. Maybe a hundred. I'm not going to insult either of us by pretending I know the answer to wars I haven't seen."

He reached for another handful of coal and scattered it carefully across the fire, his black eye reflecting the orange glow when his attention returned fully to Muad. "But then you decided that because your path is dangerous, you ought to make Rin's choice for her. That part is nonsense." There was considerably less humor in the old Zorren now, though there was no anger either. The judgment was delivered with the same blunt certainty he might have used to identify a flaw in a piece of metal. "You heard me tell you she is not fragile. Marta told you much the same thing in her own way. If you decide you do not want Rin, that is your choice. If you decide you cannot give her something she needs, tell her and let the two of you sort through it. But don't dress fear up as sacrifice and call it kindness."

The heated metal glowed brighter beneath the coals as Chek watched it. "You know what it would do to her if you died. Good. You should know. Caring about someone means understanding that your choices can hurt them." His thick fingers tightened around the tongs before he pulled the stock free again and settled it upon the anvil. "But you don't protect someone from grief by refusing them happiness first, and you certainly don't get to decide whether the time she might have with you is worth the pain she might feel when it ends."

The hammer descended, its impact ringing through the forge and along the carved corridors leading back toward the kitchen. Chek returned his attention to the metal afterward, allowing his words to stand without trying to force an answer. He had offered Muad his thoughts. What the man chose to do with them belonged to him.

---

The distant strike reached Rin as she carried the bowl toward Marta, and her eyes flickered briefly toward the corridor before she set it upon the stone island. It wasn't concern that drew her attention. Chek's hammer had been ringing through these halls since long before Rin was born, and there was something almost comforting about hearing that familiar rhythm again. The difference was the quiet awareness threaded beneath it, the knowledge that Muad was somewhere at the other end of those corridors with the man who had been part of Rin's life for as long as she could remember.

Marta caught the glance easily. "You are listening for him."

Rin's gaze returned to her, a small crease forming between her brows. "I'm not listening for him. I'm aware of where he is."

"Of course."

The particular neutrality of Marta's response made Rin narrow her eyes, although there was no real annoyance behind it. "You're enjoying this far too much."

"I am enjoying you," Marta answered, taking enough wind from Rin's attempted indignation that she simply stared at the older woman. Marta reached across the island and briefly covered Rin's hand with her own, the touch gentle and familiar. "You left here wanting to discover what existed beyond these mountains. I hoped you would find knowledge. I hoped you would find purpose. I hoped you would find people worth bringing home. You did."

Emotion caught Rin unexpectedly, quiet enough that she did not immediately know what to do with it. She turned her hand beneath Marta's until their fingers met and held the older woman's gaze, the years away seeming to compress into the simple familiarity of standing here together again. "I missed you. Both of you," she admitted, her smile growing gentler as she squeezed Marta's hand. "More than I realized until I walked through the door."

For another moment Rin remained there, surrounded by the old familiarity of Marta's kitchen, the distant ringing of Chek's forge, and the faint presence of Muad somewhere beyond the stone. So much had changed since she had last stood here, including Rin herself, yet returning did not feel like trying to fit herself back into a life she had outgrown. She had carried pieces of Veradune and the people who raised her everywhere she went, sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in something as small as three familiar words spoken to someone finding their way back to themselves. Now she had returned carrying pieces of the life she had built beyond Veradune with her, and somewhere down those carved halls, one of those pieces was standing beside Chek's forge.

Muad Dib