Kiffu smelled like hot iron and dust and storm-burned air.

  Not the clean kind of desert, either. This was the brittle smell of a world that had been getting hit in the face by static storms for a few million years and never really forgave anyone for it.

  We walked down the ramp into hard white light. Heat wrapped around us like something with hands. The ground under my boots was cracked stone baked almost smooth, faint lines of old circuitry carved by long-gone water. Wind tugged at my robe, dry fingers full of grit. Meral stopped just off the ramp. For a moment she just stood there, eyes closed, breathing in like she’d been holding her lungs empty since we left Yavin.

  “This is it,” Toran said, squinting toward the horizon. “Nice. Bland. No trees. Five stars, would overheat again.”

  He was joking, but his voice sounded smaller than usual. Kiffu did that to you. Big sky, big emptiness, big static crackling faint at the edge of hearing.

  Meral opened her eyes. Her clan’s settlement unfolded ahead of us — a cluster of low, stone-built structures clinging to the edge of a shallow canyon. The walls were the same color as the rock, but the Tesska banners gave them away: long strips of dyed cloth strung between poles, deep red with a black, stylized handprint crossed by a single diagonal line of silver. They snapped in the dry wind, making a sound halfway between fabric and paper.

  Figures were already moving toward us from the nearest building. I felt Meral tense beside me, like she wanted to run toward them and away from them at the same time.

  “You don’t have to go alone,” I said quietly.

  She tightened her grip on my hand, just once, then let go and squared her shoulders.

  The man who reached us first was tall and broad in the way that made you think of doorways and things that didn’t get moved easily. Skin the warm bronze of Kiffar complexion, dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck, the clan tattoo sweeping bold across his right cheek: a diagonal slash of red, mirrored slice of black, silver fleck at the center. His eyes went straight to Meral, and every other expression he’d been wearing —worry, something like impatience— burned off in a second.

  “Meral,” he said.

  “Father,” she breathed.

  He didn’t do the holodrama thing, no sprinting embrace. He stepped forward, put his hands on her shoulders, and looked at her like he was checking if she was all there. Then he pulled her into his chest so fast she squeaked.

  For a second she was rigid in his arms. Then everything let go. Her hands fisted in the back of his tunic. Her face vanished into his shoulder.

  “You took too long,” he murmured into her hair, voice rough. “You always take too long.”

  “You always worry too much,” she mumbled back.

  “That is my job.” He released her just enough to look her over again. “You are too thin.”

  “She’s fine,” Toran said. “We fed her.”

  Meral’s father finally seemed to notice the rest of us. His gaze flicked from Toran to me, then to Tionne. He took in the robes, the lightsabers, the posture.

  “Friends of my daughter,” he said. Not quite a question.

  “Yes,” Tionne said, stepping forward with a small bow. “Tionne. Jedi Knight. This is Kae’rin and Toran, padawans. Trainees. We’ve come with Meral because—”

  “Because she needs help,” he finished for her. “We know.”

  A woman came up beside him. She was a little shorter, a little slighter, but her presence hit just as hard. Same clan mark, different pattern: the silver fleck sat lower on her cheek, closer to her mouth, like the echo of a smile. Her dark hair was braided with thin copper wires that caught the light.

  “Meral,” she said.

  Meral wiped her face with her sleeve, even though nothing could hide how red her eyes were. “Hi, Mom.”

  Her mother shook her head in a tiny, disbelieving motion and cupped Meral’s face in both hands. “Oh, little storm,” she said softly. “What did they do to you?”

  Meral flinched. “It’s not their fault—”

  “I know.” Her mother kissed her forehead and then pulled her into a hug that made the first one look almost polite. “You should have called sooner.”

  “I thought it would stop,” Meral’s voice muffled into her shoulder.

  Her mother’s arms tightened. “Stubborn. Just like your father.”

  “Excuse you,” Meral’s father said mildly. “She is exactly as stubborn as both of us together.”

  A small ripple of warm laughter ran through the cluster of people behind them — neighbors, cousins, a few kids older or younger than us, all trying to watch without staring. The kind of crowd that springs up anytime something unusual happens in a place where most days look the same.

  Someone nudged a little boy forward, maybe eight or nine. He took two steps, looked at Meral, and chickened out, half-hiding behind Meral’s mother’s leg.

  She reached down and hauled him fully into view. “Jarik, say hello to your sister. She came all this way.”

  Jarik scowled at being manhandled, then lit up when he finally got over shy. “Meral! You’re actually alive!”

  “Mostly,” she said tiredly. “Jarik, this is not how you greet people. ‘Nice to see you’ is also an option.”

  “But I wasn’t sure,” he said seriously. “The last holocall you sounded weird.”

  “Thank you for that excellent emotional insight,” she said, ruffling his hair. He made a face but leaned into it.

  Meral’s father turned back to us. “I am Darin Tesska,” he said. “This is my wife, Shira. My son, Jarik. The rest of these nosy people are Tesska, too, but if I introduce every cousin now, we will still be standing here at sunset and the food would have gone stale.”

  “That’s a threat,” someone called.

  “It is a promise,” he said dryly.

  Tionne smiled. “Thank you for receiving us. We’re grateful for your hospitality.”

  “You brought my daughter home,” Darin said. “That is enough reason.”

  Shira’s gaze sharpened, shifting from Meral to Tionne. “You said she needs help.”

  Tionne nodded. “Her psychometric sensitivity has increased since a recent mission. It’s… overflowing. We have some techniques at the Praxeum, but nothing like what your people developed over generations. We thought it best to ask those who know.”

  Shira’s jaw tightened. “You did the right thing,” she said. “Come. We will talk inside. The dust here listens too well.”

  That was the first time I realized they treated the ground like it might be eavesdropping.

  ? ? ?

  The Tesska household was built like it expected to survive anything.

  Thick stone walls, rounded corners to deflect the worst of the wind, small high windows that could be shuttered when the storms came. The main room was long and low-ceilinged, with woven mats covering the floor and thick cushions lining the walls. Color lived in the textiles — bold reds, blacks, and silvers echoing the clan mark, woven into geometric patterns that tugged at the eye.

  The air inside was cooler, the heat turned from something that slapped to something that held.

  Shira shooed us toward the cushions and disappeared through an arched doorway. We heard the clink of metal cups, the rustle of storage baskets. Someone smaller —maybe Jarik— banged into a pot and received a muttered scolding in return.

  Darin sat. It wasn’t a collapse so much as a controlled sinking, like he’d been on his feet too long and finally decided the ground would do its job. Meral sank down beside him. Toran and I took the space opposite. Tionne settled near the door.

  Neighbors filtered in just far enough to gawk and then were headed off by an older woman with thick arms like braided rope, who announced that if people wanted news, they’d get it later, after she decided what they were allowed to hear. The woman and Darin shared a look that said she’d been doing that since he was young.

  “This is my aunt Rala,” Meral murmured to us. “Don’t cross her. She once beat a man unconscious with a stew ladle.”

  “Honored to be in your home,” Toran said gravely when she glanced our way.

  She grunted, apparently satisfied, and went to guard the doorway.

  Shira came back with a tray of cups and a kettle that smelled like someone had convinced a spice merchant to liquefy his entire stock. She poured for everyone, including us. The drink was dark red and thick, almost syrupy. When I sipped it, it hit my tongue with a combination of smoke, citrus, and something that burned all the way down.

  Toran coughed. “Delicious,” he rasped, eyes watering.

  “You’ll live,” Shira said. “If not, less food to cook.”

  “Mom,” Meral muttered.

  “So,” Darin said, looking at Tionne. His gaze slid over Toran and me again, measuring, weighing. Not hostile. Just careful. “Tell us everything.”

  Tionne did. She didn’t dramatize. She didn’t soften the edges either. She talked about Kessel, about the stress of that mission, about the way Meral’s psychometry had started… leaking. How objects that should have been silent suddenly shouted. How the training staff had buckled her knees.

  Meral stared down at her cup the whole time. Her jaw moved, but she didn’t interrupt. When Tionne finished, the room felt tight, even though no one had moved.

  Shira put her cup down very carefully. “You should have called earlier,” she told Meral.

  “I didn’t want you to worry,” Meral said miserably.

  “That is not how worrying works,” Shira said. “When your child leaves, you worry every day. Calling does not increase worry. It only changes its shape.”

  Jarik made a face. “What does that mean?”

  “It means hush,” Aunt Rala said.

  Darin exhaled slowly through his nose. “We knew sending you to the Jedi meant they would not understand everything,” he said. “Your gift is not… common, even among our people. But we hoped they would at least notice when it was hurting you.”

  “They did,” Tionne said softly. “Just later than we wish we had.”

  His gaze softened a little at her honesty. “You cannot fix what you do not see,” he acknowledged. “But you brought her home. That matters.”

  He turned back to Meral. “You agree that you must learn to quiet the echoes?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her voice was barely audible.

  “Then we will take you to the Darrun temple,” he said. “If they will see you.” His mouth tightened. “They are… particular about who they help.”

  “The keepers there work only with Kiffar,” Shira added. “Sometimes only with certain clans. They believe psychometry is as much blood as it is mind.”

  Tionne inclined her head. “We are prepared for their caution. We don’t ask to see their secrets. Only to ask for guidance for Meral.”

  Darin nodded. “You will need a guide to reach them. The Red Wastes are not forgiving to offworlders.”

  Toran perked up. “That’s us.”

  “And sometimes not forgiving to locals,” Darin added dryly.

  Meral glanced at him. “Who will take us?”

  “The Rangers,” he said. “Who else?”

  ? ? ?

  The Ranger outpost sat half a kilometer beyond the settlement, perched on a rocky rise with good sightlines in every direction. Functional, not pretty: a squat tower with antenna arrays, a wide, low garage, a yard full of equipment that looked like it had survived three wars and at least one attempted barbecue.

  We walked there in the late afternoon, the sun a white coin rolling toward the horizon. The wind had picked up, carrying with it the faint tang of ozone that everyone on Kiffu recognized as a warning.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Darin walked in front, shoulders settling into something I recognized as official posture. Shira stayed behind to start packing supplies. Tionne moved at my side, robes brushing lightly against the dust. Meral walked on my other side, quiet but more present than she’d been on the ship. Toran scouted slightly ahead, as if the path might suddenly ambush us.

  When we stepped into the outpost yard, a man looked up from where he was checking the underside of a landspeeder.

  “Darin,” he called. “You bringing me more work or less?”

  He stood as we approached, wiping his hands on a rag. He was older than Darin by a decade or two, weather-carved, with laugh lines that had seen both joy and bitter wind. His clan mark was faded, the colors less bright, but his eyes were sharp.

  “Ekrin,” Darin said. “I am bringing you both.”

  Ekrin snorted. “It’s always both with you.”

  They clasped forearms, the gesture rough and familiar. Ekrin’s gaze slid to Meral, softened, then snapped curious at us. “This your Jedi trouble child?” he asked.

  Meral bristled. “I’m not—”

  “Yes,” Darin cut in. “This is my daughter, Meral. She needs the Darrun temple.”

  Ekrin’s eyebrows climbed. “That’s a long drive for a conversation.”

  “She doesn’t need a conversation,” Darin said. “She needs training. Calm. Control.”

  “And less old death in her head,” Meral muttered.

  Ekrin’s expression turned serious. “Ah. One of those.”

  He looked at her longer then, as if weighing something that wasn’t on the surface. Finally, he nodded. “The temple doesn’t always welcome visitors. But if anyone has a chance, it’s you. Your clan’s always been loud in the stone.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Meral said wryly.

  Ekrin turned to the garage and hollered, “Talon! We’ve got work.”

  A moment later, someone slid out from under another landspeeder — a young man, close to our age, with dust in his hair and a smear of grease across his cheek. He wore light Ranger armor over loose desert clothing, sleeves rolled to the elbow. His clan tattoo was narrower than Meral’s, the lines sharp and angled, like someone had scratched them with intent.

  He bounced to his feet, in that loose-limbed way that says here is a body that knows where all its weight is at any given moment and has decided none of it is wasted.

  “You could say please,” he told Ekrin.

  “I could,” Ekrin said. “I won’t.”

  Talon grinned, then noticed us and straightened a fraction. His eyes flicked over Tionne, lingered on our lightsabers, then shifted to Meral. Something like recognition lit there — not as in he knew her, but as in he understood at least the outlines of what she was.

  “Meral Tesska,” he said, with a small nod. “We’ve met your father’s worry for years. Nice to finally meet the source.”

  Meral snorted. “You must be Talon Rask. The Rangers talk.”

  “They do nothing but talk,” he said. “I act.”

  “You nap in tool sheds,” Ekrin countered.

  Talon ignored him. “Darrun temple, right?” he said to us. “That’s what you’re after?”

  “Yes,” Tionne said. “We’ll need a guide.”

  “You’ll need two,” Ekrin said. “Storms are rolling faster this season. We take two speeders. I’ll lead. Talon’ll run second.”

  Talon’s grin flashed. “See? Still useful.”

  Ekrin squinted at the sky. Thin bands of cloud were already forming, stretched taut between distant mesas. Lightning flickered faintly inside them, like nerve signals.

  “We leave at first light,” he decided. “Storm’ll hit hard by midday tomorrow. Best to be at least halfway there before it catches us.”

  “Storm?” Toran echoed, a little too eagerly.

  “Static storm,” Talon said. “Lightning that doesn’t know when to stop. You’ll see.”

  “Do we get fried?” Toran asked.

  “Only on bad days,” Talon said cheerfully.

  “Comforting,” I muttered.

  Ekrin gave us a long look. “You Jedi know how to follow orders, or do we have to staple you to the seats?”

  “We’re trainable,” Toran said. “Mostly.”

  Meral elbowed him. “We’ll listen,” she said to Ekrin. “We didn’t come here to make your job harder.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because my job’s hard enough already.”

  We spent a few minutes going over routes, distances, storm corridors. The Darrun temple lay out in a network of red canyons — days away on foot, a solid half day by speeder if the weather cooperated.

  It wouldn’t. The way Ekrin watched the sky said he knew that already. When we turned back toward the Tesska house, the wind had picked up again. Fine grains of sand hissed along the ground like something alive.

  “Tomorrow’s going to be fun,” Toran said under his breath.

  “Your definition of fun worries me,” I said.

  “Me too,” Meral added.

  But she was smiling when she said it.

  ? ? ?

  Preparing for a journey on Kiffu took less time than I expected and felt more like a ritual than a task.

  Shira moved through the house like she was dancing with invisible partners — pulling down old packs, checking the seams, tossing them to Toran to carry to the front room. Meral dug out her childhood storm hood from a chest and made a face when it barely fit. Jarik tried his on and refused to admit this was the same one he’d worn when he was six.

  “You look like a dust weasel,” Meral told him.

  “Good,” he said, muffled. “Dust weasels don’t get struck by lightning.”

  “That is not how any of that works,” she said.

  They argued in the automatic, comfortable way of siblings, and for a few minutes it felt like any family getting ready for a long trip.

  Tionne sat with Darin at the low table, going over supply lists with the kind of thoroughness that only comes from having seen too many missions go wrong for stupid reasons. Water, rations, medical kit, emergency beacons. Shira added little packets of herbs “for calming” and “for grounding,” which Tionne accepted with the gravity of someone being handed talismans rather than plants.

  Toran tried on the storm hood Shira handed him. It was a faded red, with a built-in face wrap and a transparent visor that could polarize against lightning glare.

  “How do I look?” he asked.

  “Like you stuck your head in a tarp,” I said.

  “Rude,” he said, adjusting it. “I look mysterious.”

  “You look like a Jawa that lost a fight with a laundry line,” Meral said.

  He gasped. “Betrayal.”

  Shira handed me a hood of my own. The fabric was heavier than I expected, threads woven with fine metallic filaments that tingled faintly against my fingers.

  “It will ground some of the charge,” she said. “Not all. Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  She watched me for a second longer than comfortable. “You care for her,” she said quietly, eyes flicking toward Meral.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She nodded once, satisfied. “Good. She’ll need people who remember she is more than her gift.”

  That stuck with me longer than I liked to admit.

  Later, when the packs were full and the lists were checked twice, Tionne gathered the three of us in a corner.

  “Before we go out there,” she said, “I want us to practice something simple.”

  She had us sit cross-legged, knees almost touching, hands resting on our thighs. The sounds of the household washed around us — Jarik rattling something in the kitchen, Shira arguing with Rala about whether we were bringing enough water, Darin outside talking to Ekrin about storm fronts.

  “Close your eyes,” Tionne said.

  We did.

  “Feel your breath,” she continued. “In, out. Not forcing it. Just noticing.”

  I let my awareness settle, acknowledging the way my lungs filled and emptied, the way my heartbeat slowed a fraction with each exhale.

  “Now,” she said, “feel where you touch the floor. The weight of your legs. The pull of gravity. The stone under all of us. That’s what we return to when echoes run wild. The body. The ground. The breath. Those are yours. Not anyone else’s.”

  I felt Meral’s tension ease slightly at my side.

  “If you feel something that isn’t yours,” Tionne said, “you don’t have to fight it. Fighting is still a kind of holding. Let it pass through. Like wind. You don’t stop the wind. You let it move around you.”

  “Unless it’s full of sand,” Toran murmured.

  “Even then,” Tionne said, a smile in her voice. “You turn your face. You shield your eyes. But you don’t try to hold every grain.”

  We sat like that a while, breathing, listening, letting the noise of the house wash over us and away.

  For once, my brain didn’t try to sprint three steps ahead. It just… sat.

  When we opened our eyes again, the room looked exactly the same. But Meral’s shoulders had dropped a few centimeters, and the space around her felt a little less like it might crack.

  ? ? ?

  Night in the Tesska settlement came in layers.

  The first layer was the dimming of the sky, the bright white of the sun sliding down toward the horizon, smearing the stone ridges in copper and blood. The second was the way the wind changed feel, carrying cooler air down from higher ground. The third was the lights coming on, one by one, behind shutters and in doorways, little pockets of gold in all that red and black.

  After dinner — flat bread baked on stone, spiced vegetables, a stew that tasted like it had been cooking since before the Republic existed — we sat outside on the low wall that marked the edge of the household’s courtyard. Meral perched between me and Toran, feet swinging above the drop to the rocky slope below. Tionne sat a little farther back, lute in hand, plucking quietly at strings until the notes blended with the wind.

  Static flickered on the horizon, distant storm veins glowing faintly in the darkening sky.

  “I used to sit here when I was little,” Meral said. “Watch the storms. Aunt Rala used to tell us stories about how the first Kiffar stole the lightning out of the sky.”

  “Did they?” Toran asked.

  “She said they did,” Meral said. “She also said dust weasels could talk if you bribed them with enough meat. So I’m not sure she’s a reliable source.”

  “Have you ever met a dust weasel?” Toran said.

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t prove she’s wrong,” he said.

  She groaned. “This is what I get for bringing you two into my home.”

  “You chose this,” I said. “No take-backs.”

  We watched the sky in companionable silence for a few breaths.

  “I’m scared,” Meral said suddenly.

  The words came out flat, dropped between us like a stone.

  Neither of us pretended not to hear.

  “Of tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Yes. No. Of… all of it.” She hugged her knees to her chest, resting her chin on them. “What if I go all that way and the temple won’t see me? What if they say this is just who I am now, and I have to live with hearing other people’s worst moments every time I touch something? What if they say I shouldn’t be a Jedi at all?”

  “Then they’re wrong,” Toran said.

  “You don’t know that,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said calmly. “I do.”

  She looked at him, eyebrows knitting. “How?”

  “Because I’ve watched you,” he said. “Here. At the Praxeum. On Kessel. You care too much about other people to be anything but a Jedi. You’re going through this because your gift got pulled too far too fast, not because you’re broken.”

  She swallowed. “It feels like I’m broken.”

  “I know,” he said. “That’s the worst part.”

  She turned her gaze to me. “What do you think?”

  I thought about all the ways I could say the same thing and have it still sound insufficient.

  “I think the Force doesn’t waste people,” I said slowly. “If it brought you to Yavin, to us, to Kessel, to this moment… then it’s not done with you. And if there are parts of you that hurt right now, that doesn’t mean they’re useless. It means they need help.”

  She considered that for a long breath.

  “And if the temple says this is permanent?” she asked.

  “Then we’ll learn how to live with it,” I said. “Together.”

  She blinked fast. “You make everything sound like it’s survivable,” she said.

  “It is,” I said. “Doesn’t mean it’s fun. But it’s survivable.”

  She let out a shaky laugh. “That’s not as comforting as you think.”

  “It’s the best I’ve got,” I said.

  We fell quiet again.

  Tionne’s music drifted over us — soft, minor-key patterns that fit the red sky and the flickering stormlight. Not a lullaby. But something close.

  “Whatever happens tomorrow,” Meral said, eyes on the horizon, “thank you. For coming.”

  Toran bumped her shoulder with his. “Don’t get sentimental on us. You’ll ruin your image.”

  She shoved him lightly. “What image?”

  “Terrifying Kiffar who will dig through your soul if you don’t laugh at her bad jokes,” he said.

  She snorted. “My jokes are not that bad.”

  “Good,” he said. “I like having monopoly on that.”

  “You’re a menace,” she muttered.

  I leaned back on my hands and watched the lightning trace faint skeletons in the clouds. Somewhere out there, the Darrun temple sat in its canyon, old stone full of old echoes waiting for one more to join them. I didn’t know what we’d find there. I didn’t know how much they could fix, or how much they’d refuse to even try.

  But I knew this: we were going. Together.

  ? ? ?

  Dawn on Kiffu came with no softness at all. The sky went from black to red-gold in what felt like three breaths. The air was already hot when we stepped out of the Tesska house, packs on our shoulders, storm hoods slung loose. The wind carried the metallic smell of a storm brewing faster than anyone liked.

  Ekrin and Talon waited in the yard with two landspeeders. Up close, the speeders looked even more like they’d been held together by stubbornness and prayers. Scarred hulls, patched wiring, sand-worn repulsorlift housings. But their engines hummed with a low, confident growl.

  “Morning,” Talon said. He was already wearing his hood, pushed back from his face. The copper threads in the fabric caught the light.

  “Morning,” Meral said. Her voice had that brittle edge it got when she was bracing for something.

  Shira hugged her again. “You come back,” she said into Meral’s hair. “Whole, not just alive.”

  “I’ll try,” Meral whispered.

  “Don’t try,” Shira said. “Do.”

  Darin clasped her forearm. “Remember your grounding,” he said. “Breath, body, stone. You are more than other people’s ghosts.”

  Meral nodded hard.

  He turned to me and Toran. “You watch out for her,” he said.

  “Always,” I said.

  Toran saluted with two fingers. “We’re very professional,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, I believe you,” Darin said.

  Jarik stood a little apart, scowling at the ground. When Meral went to him, he kicked a rock and refused to look up.

  “Hey,” she said. “You going to say goodbye?”

  “You’re just leaving again,” he muttered. “You just got here.”

  “I’ll come back,” she said.

  “You said that last time,” he whispered.

  She flinched. Then she pulled him into a hug he didn’t fight nearly as hard as he pretended to.

  “Next time,” she said into his hair, “you can come visit me. On Yavin. You can fall out of trees with Toran. It’ll be great.”

  “I don’t fall out of trees,” Toran said.

  “You would if we let you,” I said.

  Jarik sniffed and looked up. “Promise?” he asked.

  “Promise,” she said.

  He nodded, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and stepped back, trying to look older than he was.

  Tionne slung her pack over one shoulder. “Time,” she said gently.

  We climbed into the speeders. Ekrin took the lead vehicle with Tionne. Talon drove the second with the three of us squeezed into the back — Meral in the middle, Toran on one side, me on the other.

  The engines rose in pitch. Dust scoured out from under the hulls as the repulsors lifted us off the ground.

  The settlement dropped away behind us, banners snapping one last time like flags of a war we’d left for someone else.

  Ahead, the Red Wastes waited — stone and storm and old, buried things.

  Meral pulled her hood up, tightening the strap under her chin.

  “I’m scared,” she said, so quiet the wind almost stole it.

  Toran leaned close enough that his shoulder pressed into hers. “Good,” he said. “Means you’re paying attention.”

  I reached for her hand, fingers closing over hers inside the rough fabric of the glove.

  “We’re with you,” I said.

  She squeezed back.

  The speeders shot forward.

  And we rode into the wastes.