Private The Hushed Grove

[Isla Reingard]

​

Isla sat with her knees drawn up, chin resting on them, watching as the hours burned away. The transport was dead, resting lopsided on the moss-thick trail between Theed and the Sanctuary like a stricken beast. The Padawans - eight of them, plus the wrung-out pilot and one unbothered knight - had long since moved from mild irritation to theatrical despair. A few had begun dueling with sticks. One was trying to levitate a particularly defiant beetle. Another had curled up beneath a tree and declared he would only respond to the title "Lord Sleep."

Isla did not participate. She never did.

She stared out past the broken clearing, toward where the light bent oddly between the branches. The forest in this region was old. She could feel it, not in the crumbling bark or the roots like clenched fists - no, she felt it underneath all that. A low hum, distant but urgent, like something singing to itself far underground. It coiled around her thoughts, familiar and wrong. It was not the song of safety.

She stood. No one noticed.

She turned, quiet steps over pine needles and trodden leaves, and paused beside Eerie. Her hand brushed her friend's sleeve. Just enough pressure to mean something. Just enough not to explain.

Isla didn't speak. Her eyes did the asking. Come.

And then she was moving, slipping past the tree line as if the forest had been waiting for her, drawing her in with invisible threads. The hum grew louder with every step, and the Force felt close - like breath on her neck, like a whisper in a forgotten tongue.

Eerie Omera​

 

[Eerie Omera]

Mismatched blue and green eyes surveyed the clearing. From the wounded transport and its pilots wounded pride. To the Jedi Knight that radiated calmness. Her eyes, however, landed on the group of padawans that she was part of. Chaotic was one way too describe it. From sword fights with sticks, all the way to Lord Sleep. A banquet of madness was what it was.

Okay, she had to admit, the sword fighting did sound fun. However, she mostly used that experience as more combat training than fun. Alright sometimes it was one in the same. Turning away from the padawans, she stepped a further sway from the group. Her bare feet leaving small footprints in the soft ground as she tread over leaves and soft needles.

Once she was further away from the calamity in the clearing. She paused. Closed her eyes, then reached out with the force. At first she felt the age of the forest. The ancient trees spoke in the own words without making a single sound. Then...the hair kn the back of her neck rose up. Something even older then the trees stirred within the force. Something...oh, she couldn't put a word on it.

Her eyes snapped open when someone touched the sleeve of her shirt. Mismatched eyes turned to see Isla standing by her for a moment. When their eyes locked for a brief second, Eerie fully understood what her friend wanted. She more then likely felt the same disturbance she had. Without a word, she followed after Isla.

Isla Reingard

 

[Isla Reingard]

​

Isla moved like a thought half-formed - quiet, persistent, not yet spoken aloud. The forest thickened around them as they went, the air turning cool and damp, laced with the smell of rot and bark and something stranger. Not wrong. Just… displaced.

The hum beneath her ribs had grown teeth.

She stepped over a twisted root and let her hand skim the side of a tree, its bark rough and slick with sap that smelled faintly metallic. Not blood. Not quite. But close enough for memory to notice.

She glanced back, just once, to make sure Eerie was still there. She always was. Like some ghost Isla had conjured into being and then forgotten how to let go of.

They walked for another minute—maybe ten. Time was a funny thing when the Force pulled at your heels.

Then Isla spoke. Not a whisper, not a command. Just a question hanging in the green-shadowed hush between them.

"You don't feel like you're from here," she said, brushing past a curtain of vines. "Like me."

She didn't look at Eerie as she said it. Her voice didn't need eyes.

Another step. Another shiver through the Force.

"Where are you from, Eerie?" she asked, her tone unreadable - just curious, like someone picking up a stone that might have teeth underneath.

Eerie Omera​