The Dragon in the Dying Star

𝐒𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐬

Chapter XIII: Setting Suns

Neither the Jedi nor Padme could miss the stark contrast when they took her sleek starship out of hyperspace and saw the brown planet of Tatooine looming before them. How different it was from Naboo, a place of green grasses and deep blue water, with cloud patterns swirling all across it. Tatooine was just a ball of brown hanging in space, as barren as Naboo was alive.

"Home again, home again, to go to rest," Anakin recited, a common children's rhyme.

"By hearth and heart, house and nest," Dejah added.

Anakin looked over at her, pleasantly surprised. "You know it?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"I don't know," Anakin said. "I mean, I wasn't sure if anyone else... I thought it was a rhyme my mother made up for me."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Dejah said. "Maybe she did - maybe hers was different than the one my mother used to tell me."

Anakin shook his head doubtfully, but he wasn't bothered by the possibility. In a strange way, he was glad that Dejah knew the rhyme, glad that it was a common gift from mothers to their children.

And glad, especially, that he and Dejah had yet another thing in common. "They haven't signaled any coordinates yet," she noted.

"They probably won't, unless we ask," Anakin replied. "Things aren't very strict here, usually. Just find a place and park it, then hope no one steals it while you go about your business."

"As lovely as I remember it."

Anakin looked at her and nodded. How different things were now than that decade before when she had been forced to land on Tatooine with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in order to effect repairs on their ship. He tried to manage a smile, but the edge of his nervousness kept it from appearing genuine. Too many disturbing thoughts assaulted him. Was his mother all right? Was his dream a premonition of what was to come, or a replay of something that had already happened?

He brought the ship down fast, breaking through the atmosphere and soaring across the sky. "Mos Espa," he explained when the skyscape of the city came into sight against the horizon.

He went in hard, and some protests did squeal over the comlink. But Anakin knew his way around this place as surely as if he had never left. He did a flyby over the edge of the city, then put the starship down in a large landing bay amid a jumble of vessels of all merchant and mercenary classes.

"Yous can't just drop in uninvited!" barked the dock officer, a stout creature with a piggish face and spikes running down the length of his back and tail.

"It's a good thing you invited us, then," Anakin said calmly, with a slight wave of his hand.

"Yes, it's a good thing I invited you then!" the officer happily replied, and Anakin, Dejah and Padme walked past.

"Anakin," Padme chided as they exited onto the dusty street. Ever the diplomat, she was sure she could have found a solution. But Dejah knew Anakin was in a hurry. The worry for his mother was driving him.

"It's not like there are dozens of ships lined up to fill the bay," Anakin replied, feeling pretty good about himself and the ease with which he had Force-convinced the piggish officer. He waved down a floating rickshaw pulled by an ES-PSA droid, a short and thin creature with a wheel where its legs should have been.

Anakin gave it the address and off it went, pulling them behind in the floating rickshaw, charging along the streets of Mos Espa, expertly zigging and zagging to avoid the heavy traffic, and blasting forth a shrill sound whenever someone didn't get out of the way.