First Reply The Things We Carry

[Perseus]

The forest never truly went quiet on Yaga Minor.

Even now, with the convoy pushing slowly through the old logging paths, I could hear it around us constantly. Wind moving through massive canopies overhead. Water dripping from leaves still soaked from the morning rain. The distant groaning creak of ancient trees shifting somewhere deeper beyond the road. Every now and then the low rumble of engines broke through the natural sounds as transport haulers struggled through mud and uneven terrain carrying what little remained of civilian lives.

Furniture. Crates. Tools. Scrap metal.

Everything people decided was important enough to carry forward after the Diarchy collapsed.

The road itself barely deserved the name anymore. Half-flooded in places. Roots splitting through old pavement. Reconstruction crews had managed to clear enough for transports to pass, but not much more than that. One wrong turn off the marked route and the forest swallowed visibility almost immediately.

Which meant my eyes never stopped moving. Tree line. Ridge. Brush movement. Possible firing angles. Old instinct. Constant instinct.

The convoy stretched longer behind me than I liked. Civilians walked beside overloaded transports while Mandalorian escorts rotated positions around the column. Some watched the rear. Others moved ahead checking the route for unstable ground or abandoned Diarchy positions.

I stayed near the center.

Close enough to intervene if something happened. Far enough from the civilians that most avoided trying to speak to me. That part came naturally.

The armor helped. People saw the helmet, the weapons, the size of me, and usually decided silence was safer. I preferred it that way. Civilians moved unpredictably when they were nervous. Watching them was harder than watching soldiers. Soldiers understood danger. These people were trying to rebuild lives while carrying half of them in the backs of transport haulers.

A child laughed somewhere behind me.

The sound felt strangely out of place in the middle of the forest. My attention shifted automatically toward it before returning to the trees again. The convoy slowed shortly afterward as one of the lead vehicles struggled through a stretch of thick mud, tires spinning uselessly while workers shouted directions over the sound of grinding engines.

Movement to my left pulled my attention immediately.

Not hostile.

A civilian woman trying to keep her footing while carrying a child against her chest and dragging a supply case behind her at the same time. Exhaustion showed in every step she took. Mud clung halfway up her boots already. She stumbled hard when the case caught against a root. I moved before thinking.

One hand caught the crate before it tipped fully into the mud while the other steadied her shoulder automatically. The woman muttered a tired apology under her breath, trying to regain balance while shifting the child awkwardly in her arms. Then she did something I wasn't prepared for.

"Can you—?"

The question barely left her mouth before she carefully handed the child toward me so she could get her footing back beneath herself. I froze for half a second. Blasters. Knives. Bodies. Those things made sense in my hands. This didn't.

The child couldn't have been more than a few years old. Small enough that I suddenly became painfully aware of the weight behind my own hands as I took them carefully against my chestplate. Every movement felt too rough. Too heavy. Like I might somehow damage something that fragile simply by holding it wrong.

But the child didn't seem afraid. Wide eyes stared up at the dark visor of my helmet with open curiosity instead of fear. One small hand rested against the front of my armor like the beskar plating was nothing more threatening than stone. The woman adjusted the crate strap on her shoulder with an exhausted sigh before looking back up toward me.

"Thank you."

Simple words. Casual. Trusting.

I didn't know what to do with that. So I just gave a small nod through the helmet and handed the child back carefully once she was steady enough to carry them again. The convoy began moving shortly afterward. My attention returned to the forest almost immediately. Tree line. Movement. Sound. Habit dragging my thoughts back toward vigilance before they could linger too long on anything else.

Still...

For the first time since entering the forest, part of me noticed something other than potential threats.

The child had never once looked afraid of me.

 

[Neryn Ka]

Tag: Perseus ​

Neryn ran a hand along the hardened bark of a tree, his very touch causing the plant's surface to blacken and wither under the searing heat. They'd begun moving, and so must he.

The Diarchy's fall had been a recent, but relatively tame one as apocalypses went. Neryn fancied himself a historian and something of a journalist, and when he wasn't destroying things directly, observing and documenting their fall was the next best thing.

Such powers never fell entirely without ceremony, though. While the Diarchy had not collapsed in a wave of deliberate terror and wanton butchery like the late Imperial Confederation, it must surely have seemed like the end of all things to those under their banner. That was regrettable, in its way, but better to pass at the zenith of one's glory than to fall into decay and decadence. Fire was always preferable to rot.

Neryn had tracked these convoys for weeks now, always careful to stay out of sight. Still, he was certain he'd been seen more than once. The winged spawn had his skills, but subtlety was not traditionally among them.

A small but vocal few had come to realize they were being followed, and not by something benevolent. The occasional glimpse of smoldering fires in empty eye sockets, the rustle of a leathery wing as its bearer scuttled back into the oppressive shadow of the trees. Maybe even the slight reflection of moonlight off ancient armor and weapons. The signs were there, but the wise chose to ignore them.

After all, they were prey now. That was the fate of the weak when the strong could no longer protect them. If one could not escape their hunter, then the only other recourse was to avoid looking at or speaking about it, in hopes it would lose interest and go away.

A child's reasoning, but Neryn had observed that most adults practiced this as well. "If I do not acknowledge it, do not speak of, then perhaps it will solve itself" went the common ideal. The little folk of the universe simply wanted to be left alone, in the end.

They never were.

The galaxy had been a remarkably unstable place lately, with nations collapsing one after the other in rapid succession. The Black Sun, the Diarchy, the Imperial Confederation. All ashes now, scooped into the trashcan of history alongside so many others. Good. That was the way of all things, to perish by fire in their appointed time.

Neryn had been there to watch many of these fiery downfalls (or participate in them) and the "Raggedy Man" had joined the coterie of the many dark and foreboding legends that circulated in the wilder parts of the galaxy.

So it was here. In the end, herds attracted predators. That was an iron law of the natural world, whether one liked it or not. The best predators, however, were careful, patient.

Neryn had noticed that something was with them, something he could not entirely perceive.

A lot of that had been going around, lately. Still, he had learned. When tracking those invisible in the Force, one could take clues from the environment. Seeing others speak to thin air was a fairly solid clue.

He'd been busy staring malevolently at the invisible-thing (or where he imagined it was), trying to discern any hard detail, when he was almost certain they had looked back. That animal sixth-sense of being watched hit him full force, and he sprang hastily backwards into the dark like a startled Loth-cat, hackles raised.

Neryn was paranoid and distrustful at the very best of times, and nothing inspired distrust quite like invisibility.