bethagain

He comes back, always, a few hours later. He hands over a smiling child who waves back at him and then promptly falls asleep in Din's arms.

We checked out the new market, he says. We visited a goap farm. We watched ships take off and land. We tried all the flavors at the sweet-ice shop.

Din hadn't known there were so many things to do on Nevarro.

The child's usually clutching some new thing, too, at least until he conks out. Din has to take it from his hands before he drops it.

One time it's a soft grey blanket, just the right size for the child's bed. "Sometimes children get scared in the night," Karga says, handing over a larger bundle. Soft grey cloth pokes out from a tear in the wrapping. "Now he'll be comfortable if he wants to sleep with you."

Another time it's a pair of warm slippers, sized and sewn to fit the child's feet. "I didn't know if he'd wear them," Karga says, placing another package in Din's hand. "These are your size. You'll have to show him how."

Once, it's a packet of ground leafpepper, sharp-smelling from a meter away. "I've heard this is popular in your Mandalorian dishes," Karga says. "I thought he might like to try it."

-

"He'd never buy those things for himself," Karga says to Dune.

They're sharing the last of the Tathan firewine that Din dropped off on his last visit, shrugging that he didn't drink the stuff and maybe Karga would want it.

Din couldn't possibly know that he'd been a young man on Tath IV, could he? Karga paid good credits to get that erased from his chain code, long ago.

He turns his glass, watching the last few bright-green drops slide along the bottom.

"What else does a child need?" he asks Dune.

“A game?” he asks. 

Grogu nods as the wind stills and the light freezes in place, outlined by the leaves of the tree. A-ha! He charges forward, water splashing everywhere, and stands triumphantly in the pond squinting in the sunlight.

Din chuckles, reaching down and patting Grogu on the head. “Good job, kid. You got it.”

--

Grogu notices the problem with the tree first. He stares up at it, then rests his palm against its trunk. Its light in the Force has dimmed a little, flickering in his mind. He senses bright pinpoints of other life taking from the tree. He frowns. It feels wrong. 

He goes and gets his father, holding his leg. “Tree?”

“It’s an infestation, I think,” his father says. He studies it closely while walking around its trunk, brushing a gloved hand against the branches and the yellowing leaves. He plucks something off a leaf and brings it down to Grogu to inspect. A sturdy insect. Grogu sees wiggling legs, a big head with mandibles for chewing, a spiky little tail. He leans forward and swallows it whole. It tastes spicy-sharp.

Din chuckles. “Let’s hope it’s not poisonous. Though we haven’t found anything yet that upsets your stomach.” He rests his hands on his hips, and Grogu can feel him concentrating. “We’ll have to see the gardener in town. I don’t know much about plants.”

Grogu looks up at him curiously, then points at his mouth, then his stomach. “Eat!” he says proudly. 

“That’ll work for the bigger ones, kid, but there’s probably something we have to do to take out the eggs.”

Oh. Grogu nods, understanding, then leaps up and snatches another insect off the trunk to shove into his mouth.

They take one of the blurrg into town, where Din leads them to the gardener at the edge of the city. Her property sprawls with shrubs and bushes and trees, little pillowy gray-green plants in small pots, big spiky things in pots bigger than Grogu. The Force feels rich and green here. It makes him think of Sorgan and Nal Hutta, where the plants were so lush and brilliant. He wonders if it will ever feel that way at their home.

His father explains the problem with the tree. Yellow leaves, the chewing insects. The gardener nods. She teaches them that some insects are good, but too many leave the tree out of balance. Din buys nets and a special spray, tools to keep the insects back under control to a healthy level. And Grogu knows that he'll help out too. His stomach grumbles, ready to assist.

-- 

The tree flourishes, the chewing insects kept in check. The pond’s moisture filters into the surrounding soil and new plants begin to arise, neighbors to the tree. Mosses, scrub grass, lichens. The tree can taste their connections to the soil as it makes its own. It grows stronger, sending out new leaves, new twigs, new branches to shelter the beings below who have brought it back to health.

--

Grogu perches near the top of the meiloorun tree, tongue sticking out in concentration so far that it brushes against the metal of his training helmet. He pulls it back into his mouth, smacking his lips to mute the taste of metal.

It has taken time, but the once spindly branches have grown thicker and stronger into sturdy boughs. The tree now stands well above the height of their homestead, and the leaves are lush and green, creating a curtain that keeps him well hidden. It’s a good place to keep watch. And to practice other things.

He keeps one hand on the trunk for balance. His father should be coming back this way any moment. 

There. He’s not used to seeing the top of his father’s helmet, but the gleam of sunlight on the beskar makes him easy to spot. Grogu waits until Din approaches a little closer -- 

He leaps!

Through the Force and his training, he hits Din’s shoulder like a blast. Beskar clangs on beskar. Din grunts and takes a huge step forward, brought off-balance, but he manages to stay upright. He flings his arms up to grab Grogu. “Ha!” he gasps, winded. “Good one, kid. That would have knocked over anyone else.”

Grogu laughs, squirming out of Din’s arms and dropping to the ground. He’s too big to be held like that now. “I tried,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re tough, old man.”

“Still younger than you,” Din scoffs. 

Grogu groans. “You always say that.”

“Because it’s true,” Din points out. He tilts his head. “That was good form. Enemies will always underestimate you for being small, but this kind of attack is a good way to take advantage of your size.”

“I could do even better with a Rising Phoenix,” Grogu wheedles. “Right?” He looks up at Din hopefully.

Din’s wearing his helmet, but Grogu can see the way his father’s eyebrow arches anyway. “Well... maybe it’s time to pay a visit to the Shriek-Hawks.”

Grogu leaps up in excitement, ricocheting off Din’s shoulder and back into the branches of the tree. Din grunts. “You might be small, but you used to be smaller,” he calls, rubbing his shoulder. Grogu just hooks his legs over a branch and sits there, swinging his feet in delight.

He should try to be serious. If they’re really going to see the Shriek-Hawks about a Rising Phoenix, Grogu knows he’ll need to earn it. There will be trials, training, drills. But for now he sits in the tree, giddy as anything.

--

The training Phoenix is hard to work with by design. The Shriek-Hawk trainers explained to him and the other foundlings that the sensitivity of a fully functional jetpack would likely get them killed without dedicated practice. It was what Grogu had expected, but that doesn’t make it less frustrating. He’s already crashed it twice today, even though it only gets up a few meters off the ground.

Still, he’s determined. They made this one especially for him and his small size. He has to get this right. He gets up before Din and practices flying past the blurrgs, trying to make the jetpack obey the instructions he gives it through his gauntlet, his movements, his balance. The wind buffets against his robes and armor. For a moment he’s in the air flying suspended and free, his heart and mind fully attuned to the Phoenix --

And then he bobbles his hand on a current of wind and the Phoenix banks straight down. 

He flails, kicking out and scrambling his hands, caught in an instant of pure panic as the ground rushes toward him.

But the Force is there too, flowing around him like the wind, and he leans into it, steadying his heartbeat and his reactions. He breathes. Shifts his hand, tilts it just so, speaks to the Phoenix. 

It obeys, swooping him up out of his fall. He lets out a sigh of relief until he realizes he’s hurtling towards the meiloorun tree. He braces himself and manages to hit only a few branches before catching his hands around one, coming to a stop with a jerk as leaves flutter to the ground. He swings back and forth on the branch for a second, feet dangling, before he manages to clamber up onto the branch into a sitting position.

Grogu tries to catch his breath. Okay. Maybe he can see now why his dad held off on this for so long. And why his dad has never seemed the most skilled with the Rising Phoenix. This is hard. 

He leans against the trunk of the tree, looking down at the pond, and decides maybe it’s time for a little break. 

He’s about to hop down to the pond by using the Force when something in the green swaying leaves catches his eye. A burst of orange and fiery red, glowing in the early morning sun. His eyes widen.

It’s a fruit!

He reaches out, cupping his hand carefully around it, testing the rind for ripeness. The meiloorun hangs heavy in his palm, looking just as good as the best ones in the market.

“Wizard,” he says softly, and pulls it free.

His stomach rumbles. He hasn’t had breakfast yet. But this -- the first fruit from the tree -- he knows it deserves to be shared.

He leaps down to the ground much more gracefully than he would have had he used the jetpack. It’s but a quick walk to the cabin, and he opens the doors, looking for Din. 

He finds his father brewing caf, just pouring hot water over the ground beans. Grogu’s nose wrinkles up. Even through his helmet, the stuff still smells awful. He wonders if he’ll ever like it himself, but doubts it.

“Look,” he says, holding it out. 

“It’s a meiloorun,” Din says, nonplussed. Then he pauses. “Wait. Is that --?”

“It’s from our tree,” Grogu says proudly.

“Well,” says Din, his voice unexpectedly rough, “that’s something.”

“Come on! Let’s share it. Out here, in the sun.”

Din laughs. “Who are you, and what have you done with my kid?”

“I mean it.” He heads back out to the pond, finding a seat on his favorite flat rock. He sets the precious fruit beside him and takes off his training Phoenix, shrugging his shoulders. That feels better. It’s always hard getting used to a new piece of armor, no matter how much he has looked forward to it.

Din joins him, finding a seat in the morning shade. It takes him a moment to get down to the ground and get comfortable. Longer than it did once. He reaches out to take the meiloorun, testing its weight between both hands. “Looks good.”

“I remember when we visited the gardener,” Grogu says.

“You remember that?”

“Of course.” He shrugs. “She said it takes years for these trees to bear fruit.” Din nods. “And our tree was young when we moved here.” 

Din nods again, looking at him steadily.

“It’s just --” Grogu tries to find the words. It’s hard, as hard as controlling a jetpack. Maybe harder. “We’re lucky, aren’t we? To be here long enough to see this.” 

He thinks of a life on the run, hiding his powers in darkness, the vast loneliness and cruelty the galaxy can hold -- and he thinks of his buir, fighting for him year after year after year, fighting to create a place of safety for him. And he has. And now their tree, once a slender sapling, stands strong and proud and bearing fruit, sheltered and sheltering both. 

“We are lucky,” Din echoes softly. He reaches down and pulls out his vibroblade, cutting through the fruit's rind and splitting it in half. He hands one half back to Grogu.

Grogu lifts his helmet, resting it on his lap. Grogu raises the fruit and slurps some up. Sweet, tangy juice fills his mouth, the fruit’s flesh a delicious jelly. It’s so much better than the ones he’s had from the markets. He closes his eyes and savors every bit of the mouthful.

He looks up to see his father lowering his helmet after scooping out a portion. Din swallows. “Thank you. It’s… perfect.”

“Yeah,” Grogu says, taking another bite. “Thanks for sharing it with me.” They eat the rest of the fruit in peaceful silence, juice sticky on their gloves, as the blurrgs make their morning rumbles and the breeze flutters the leaves on the tree. The Force sings around them, fixing this moment in Grogu’s mind: the flavor, the scent, his feet at the water’s edge, the breeze against his face, the shade of the tree above, and his father, at his side.

--

The tree’s fruit returns year after year, plump bodies ripening when the days grow long and the sunlight is fierce and the lava flows quieten. The first year the fruits are few and quickly eaten by the beings who keep the homestead. The second year the fruits begin to multiply. The tall being and the small one eat many fresh, but they also bring their creatures to the shade to eat what falls upon the ground, and they collect many to save and preserve for later. 

But they are not always there to collect the fruit, and the meiloorun has other visitors: beings who come to watch over the creatures in their pen, small animals skittering over the stones, insects buzzing and eating what is left behind. The seeds find shelter in the stones at the water’s edge, and as the summers pass the seedlings begin to rise.

--

The tree is now one of many. Younger, stronger trees stand in a shaded grove, their leaves a rustling voice within the breeze, their branches fine and strong and lissome. They will stand for many years, their green a lushness against the lava stones. The tree is comforted in being amongst its kind, though it is now shriveled and wizened, with only the smallest crown of leaves adorning its twisted branches. A single meiloorun hangs from its lowest branch, its last effort. 

Soon will come the time of ending. But death is not the end for a tree; the flying things will drill into the hardened wood to make nests for their offspring, the boring-beetles will find shelter in the trunk, the fungi will begin the long slow work of digesting the wood. The tree has no fear nor sorrow for what is to come. It knows that endings are only new beginnings.

There comes the roar of engines, the smells of fuel and ozone. The tree knows them less and less now in its final summers, but still it remembers returning ships.

Vibration, pressure, chemical changes, shifts in light, the mysterious hum of the greater forest: they combine into knowledge and familiarity. The tree knows the ones approaching. It has known them for a very long time.

The small one walks slowly, a wooden stick tapping beside his footsteps. The large one’s vastness undulates against the stones and moss and grasses. The large one stops first, granting the small one the last few steps to the black stone cairn, sheltered here within the grove beside the pond. The day these stones were laid was countless summers past. The tree remembers the scent of metal strange and pure, its residue translated through the soil; it remembers many footsteps on the stones, and words spoken into the winter wind and slow soft rain.

“It’s good to see you again.” The small one’s voice has changed over the long years, once young and uncertain, then strong and hale and hearty, now creaking with age. The tree knows how this feels too. The small one rests his hand against the stones of the cairn, perhaps remembering the being who used to stride these paths with him so long ago. 

“All is well,” the small one says. He is quiet for a moment. “But I will not take another foundling,” he says. “That time for me has passed. Vi kelir cuyir tome tug'yc nusujii, buir.”

He bows his head until it touches the stones. The sound of metal on stone is soft, but rings out sweetly.

The small one returns to the side of the large one. “Time runs so swiftly now. I am glad to see him once more,” says the small one. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“Of course,” says the large one. “I’ll always be grateful for what he did for me. For both of us. I've never forgotten."  

“It’s good to remember. These were happy times.” The small one rests his hand against the old tree, and the song of the great forest swells, rich and real and brilliant, sunbeams and cold clear water and velvet loam, bud and leaf unfurling and blossoms in the sweetest kindest spring. The tree’s last tiny leaves shiver with a gentle joy, though the breeze has stilled.

“Look,” says the large one. “The first fruit of summer.” He reaches up to the old tree and pulls down the ripe meiloorun. 

An ending for the tree, or a new beginning: a tree knows much, but perhaps not this. Perhaps it is not to be known.

“Would you like to share it, old friend?” 

“Some things were meant to be shared.”

The two old friends sit at the water’s edge within the sheltered grove. They share the fruit together, and the seeds fall into the soil below, waiting for their time to begin.

-------------------------------------

(Notes: Vi kelir cuyir tome tug'yc nusujii, buir translates to We will be together again soon, Father in Mando'a.