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​

 

[Eerie Omera]

This part of the forest was old, very old. Eerie had a strong feeling that people haven't been through here in a long time, of ever. They spoke to her in a way she couldn't describe. Faint intangible whispers in the force as rough as their bark hides. The forest was alive, but silent.

Eerie turned towards Isla Reingard as she spoke. Her question was less of one and more of a statement. It was true that she didn't quite feel at home here. Something about the place made her feel...distant. like she couldn't properly connect with the other padawans. Maybe it was a cultural thing, or she had different life experiences.

"Yes, I...sometimes feel out of place here. There are times where I feel homesick or feel restless but don't know why." She eyed the other girl for a moment. So she feel the same as her. Two wary souls trying to fit in. "I'm from Thalia, an agricultural colony for my peoples home planet of Arsenae."

 

[Isla Reingard]

​

Isla listened without interrupting, though her eyes stayed on the path ahead - if it could be called a path. More like the forest had chosen to part just enough to let them through, the way a dream lets you walk without knowing where you're going. Eerie's voice threaded through the trees like something fragile and important, and Isla tucked the words away like she always did.

Homesick but you don't know why. That made something twist in her. Not quite pain. More like recognition.

"Arsenae," Isla repeated, softly. "That's beautiful. Sounds like the kind of place people leave and then dream about forever."

She paused, sidestepping a tree root that jutted out like a warning finger.

Then she stopped walking. The forest opened before them like a held breath.

There, half-swallowed by moss and time, sat a colossal head carved from stone. It lay on its side, as if dropped from the sky or discarded by something greater. The features were worn but still visible - eyes closed, mouth serene, ancient and unknowable. Lichen spread like scars across the brow. Vines tangled around the crown like a mourning veil.

Isla stepped toward it slowly, one hand raised, as if greeting something sacred or asleep.

"It was waiting," she said, not even bothering to sound surprised. Her voice dipped into that otherworldly hush she carried sometimes, when she wasn't entirely speaking to people. "I've seen this. Not here. But I've seen it."

The hum in the Force was now a pulse.

"Do you feel it too?" she asked, barely louder than the wind.

Eerie Omera​

 

[Eerie Omera]

Eerie gave a faint smile as Isla commented on her home. Her gaze grew a little distant as she spoke softly. "It really is.."

She came to a halt in the clearing. There it lay in the mud and leaves, vines wrapped around it holding it securely in its place and time. She had only seen statues like this in pictures, never in person. Something radiated from it, drawing them in. Exactly what, Eerie didn't know.

The rough surface was cold beneath her hand as it traced the scars of time. Her gaze turned to Isla as she spoke. Waiting for them. That sounded...ominous in a way. "What do you think it wants?"

Isla Reingard