Lost Property Box

Chapter 15

44 BBY

Kote wakes up half buried in sand. He panics, scrambling out from under the growing dune. He is smaller than he remembers – but in a way, he is doing his best not to remember. Not to think. He cannot fall apart here, in the open. He must find somewhere safe. He follows the setting suns to the edge of a small settlement.

(He does not think about how white seems so much whiter, and the shadows so much darker. He does not think about how his face feels the same, but the textures are wrong. Just wrong. The sun burns even less than it used to, and he'd always burned little, even for a Vod.)

(He especially doesn't think about his people. His brothers. His 212th. Best not.)

Its squat, circular dwellings had flat funnel shaped roofs, looking almost like steel tents from the outside. Trapper would have known why. He'd been good at that kind of thing. (Except Trapper isn't here, nor is Boil, or Waxer, or Crys or Woolley or- Right, don't think about it.) There are people there – Kote ignores the way they look at him, he is substantially shorter than they are, and despite his apparent youth, his glare would be fierce with his scar so fresh.

And then he stops. Looks up.

A Goran in Red and Gold greets him at the edge of the outpost, the stirrings in the Mandalorian Force known as 'Manda' directing her to the newest, and possibly only current, member of her tribe.

"Greetings, Rising Glory. I am the Goran of the Children of the Way. The Ka'ra have guided you to me. And I will guide you to your Aliit." She extends an arm to the confused, dehydrated boy. "If I can."

Kote isn't sure he deserves this second chance. He got his Vode killed. All of them. (Even their General. Who couldn't have been a traitor- Not. Thinking. About it.)

He takes her arm anyway. He does not introduce himself; she already seems to know who he is.

(The Mandalorians watching from their ramshackle houses nod in approval, a tall warrior lending the Goran a speeder. "Keldabe is smaller than Sundari these days, Warrior of Old Times," one had said. "But is still the heart of Manda'yaim. You will find safety in numbers among the ones who wear the armour you do.")

He asks of her armour, her creed, as she drives them towards the city n the horizon.

"I am a Follower of the Way," she states simply, tilting her head to watch the odometer. Kote clings tightly to her back, pushing away the shame he feels at needing protection with the practiced steel of the soldier he was. "I do not take of my helmet or my armour for anyone other than my Aliit and my Riduur, of which I have none. You are a child of Mandalore," he tenses in his seat behind her, wind snatching at the coiled shawl given to him by one of the Mando'ade farmers. "No matter what others claim, you are, and have always been. Perhaps I am here to prove it to the Galaxy. Perhaps I am here to fight those who would deem you unworthy. I don't care."

The great turrets of Keldabe come into view. "I have chosen my fate – to watch over foundlings, and you in turn will help me find others. This is the Way."

He mouths it at her back. "Is this the only Way?"

(And his accent is so different – thicker than it used to be. Like it had been when he was young and the Alphas had spoken to him only in Mando'a, for some strange reason. It makes him feel how young he must look.)

"No," says the Goran, voice thick with warm humour as she slides their sand speeder towards the city docks. "But it is mine."

Honesty... Kote could work with that.