Chapter Text
Scarcely five hours after it had risen, the sun set on the shortest day of the year, all pale gold and soft orange and delicate pink scattering across the clear sky and shimmering over the snow covered mountains. Davijaan tipped his head back as he walked and felt the warmth across his face even through the biting wind.
He and Cody had left the Yang family dinner only a few minutes ago, stuffed full of unfamiliar foods and overwhelmed by well wishes and each with a small gold bead Mrs. Yang had pressed into their hands with a solemn nod. It hadn’t just been Loren and her family, it had been what seemed to be every Yang in the village, and they’d all wanted to meet the boys living up at the old Lin place.
Davijaan had enjoyed it more than he’d expected to. It hadn’t been at all like a clone gathering, but it had been loud and happy in the same ways. The house— not Loren’s family’s but her uncle’s— had been brightly lit and fastidiously clean and smelled like the pine trees on the slope. Cody had held up pretty well, all things considered, and spent most of the meal talking quietly with Loren’s grandfather, seated across from him. He’d glared at Davijaan’s concern earlier in the day and sworn he’d be fine, but Davijaan was sure he’d find a quiet place to hunker down at some point during the night’s celebration.
As the remains of the meal had been cleared away and the shadows had begun to lengthen, the family had rushed to get ready for the temple ceremony. Cody had decided that was their cue to leave, and Loren had seen them off with a smile and a wave and a call of, “Bright night to you!” which they had hesitantly returned. The road had been cleared of snow and the walk was short.
When they spilled out of a side street and into the village square there were a handful of people sweeping away last night’s dusting of snow and spacing out narrow composite boards over the icy stone.
“Need any help?” Cody called, steps quickening as he headed towards the group standing around a stack of lumber, Davijaan right behind him.
They turned to face the newcomers, and then one young man stepped forward and waved.
“Hey, Odd Ball! Didn’t expect to see you here! Is this your brother? Bright night to you both!”
Davijaan blinked. “Aron?”
His sort-of-acquaintance-sort-of-coworker grinned and dipped his head in acknowledgement, and then gave a deeper sort of greeting bow to Cody. “Grandparents are Amuara folk, so we’re always up here for year’s end,” he said as he straightened. “And if you two have time, we could always use extra hands. You’re Cody, right? Come on over!”
After brief introductions and instructions, Cody and Davijaan helped Aron and an assortment of others also not attending the temple ceremony to cover over the square with smooth pinewood boards, nailed down to the composite framework bolted into the ground. It made a sort of raised floor, just high enough to sound hollow when Davijaan stomped on it.
On the north side of the new floor a smaller raised platform was built, like a stage, with a long bright blue cloth hung behind it. On the west side the grocer and the librarian unloaded a cart full of portable heaters and chairs. When the floor was finished Davijaan and Aron drifted over to help.
“Set them up in a sort of circle— no that’s not— here let me do it.” The librarian, a Mx. Wu, took the little round heater right back out of Davijaan’s hands and set it exactly where they wanted it, and then gestured for him to hand them the next one. Davijaan met Aron’s gaze over their head and raised an eyebrow. Aron shrugged and rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. Davijaan handed over the next heater.
“Library’s the cleanest building in town,” he muttered to Davijaan a few minutes later as he passed with an armful of chairs. After watching Mx. Wu arrange each individual heater in a crisp semi-circle as precisely the same distance apart as could be managed without a way to measure, he believed it.
Cody came over to help set up the chairs around the heaters, and Mx. Wu’s determined expression melted into a smile. “Cody boy,” they said, and patted him on the arm. “Bright night to you. Good to see you here. Takes a lot of attention to detail to get events like these up and running. You're just the sort we need helping out.”
Cody smiled a smile he must have stolen directly from General Kenobi and said, “Always a pleasure to help, Mx. Calen.”
Mx. Wu flushed a surprisingly flattering shade of indigo.
“Calen!?” Davijaan hissed as soon as they moved their attention on to the chairs.
Cody shrugged. “I go to the library sometimes when you’re at work.”
He blinked. “Really? Why?”
“Mr. Yang suggested taking walks, so I try to take one every day. The library is a nice endpoint.”
“Huh.” That made a certain kind of Cody sense. He’d gone to the Jedi Archives once to just see what they looked like. Davijaan couldn’t care less. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Never came up.”
With a sudden flash of clarity Davijaan understood why that answer annoyed Loren so much.
“Well. Do the walks help?”
“They don’t hurt.” Cody adjusted a chair in a way suddenly and obviously reminiscent of Mx. Wu. “And it’s nice to see all the different skies.”
Once the little seating area was arranged they were put to work setting up trestle tables at the south of the square, hanging ropes of small round lanterns from bordering shop fronts, and helping a handful of musicians unload crates and bags from their speeders and arrange themselves in front of the stage.
As the sky shifted from blue and gold to black and grey, only a thin band of a yellow so dark it was almost orange rimming the horizon, people began to drift into the square.
At first it was business owners, each bearing a clear, round lantern that they lit and hung over the door of their shop or office. Some also set out a basket of snow-damp twigs on their porches. And then all at once families started to arrive, children darting around and exclaiming over how the square had been transformed and parents setting out food and drinks on the trestle tables, some in warmers and some nestled in trays of chipped ice.
Everybody was wearing gold jewelry, and as more and more lanterns were lit and the square began to glow as brightly as day the crowd flashed and glimmered as it moved. Music started, just loud enough to be heard over the chaos of conversation.
Aron peeled away when his family arrived, and Cody stuck near the musicians and the stage. Davijaan had intended to stick near Cody, but made the mistake of stepping out into the still growing mass of villagers to look for Loren and got trapped somewhere in the middle. He recognized more people than he was expecting to, and many came over to say hello and wish him a bright night, but mostly he wandered, not sure what he was supposed to be doing or what was going to happen next.
People were still arriving, but slowly, and the square was almost at capacity. An older woman climbed onto the stage and made a loud ringing announcement in Pantoran, welcoming everyone and declaring it sundown. Or, something like that. He was picking up Pantoran pretty quickly, Mr. Yang assured him, but most people took one look at him and switched to Basic, which was helpful but also frustrating.
Whatever she had said, the crowd cheered, and as she descended the stage music began.
It was mostly drums and different kinds of wind instruments; a quick beat and an encouraging melody. A significant portion of the people in the center of the square paired off and arranged themselves in lines, and when the music shifted, started a dance.
It was fast and excited and somehow precise, couples spinning and weaving around each other in a larger pattern he couldn’t follow. The neat lines from the start dissolved into circles, and then triangles, and then intricate patterns that never lasted long enough for him to puzzle them out. Some couples were concentrating very hard on their footwork and some were carrying conversations over the music.
“Hey, Odds!” Cody shouted over the music. “Want to?”
Davijaan looked at him like he was crazy, because he was, but Cody didn’t back down. “Neither of us know the steps!”
“We’ll figure it out!”
And then Cody was pulling him out into the whirling mass of dancers, and after a few halfhearted attempts to get his hand free Davijaan followed, laughing.
He made Cody lead, because this was Cody’s dumb idea, so he could be the one to figure out which direction they were supposed to move in. Cody pouted, but kept a calculating eye on the couples surrounding them as he dragged Davijaan clumsily through the first steps of whatever this dance was supposed to be. It wasn’t too bad, actually. Nobody was looking at them funny.
Davijaan had always enjoyed dancing, before, in their rushed classes on movement on Kamino and in Coruscant clubs. This was altogether different from both of those kinds of dancing— all about footwork, all about larger patterns, all about staying in time with your partner— but it made him feel the same way. Steady and real and at the same time light enough to fly.
After the second round Cody turned to him with a grin. “You just have to get—”
“The timing right, I know.” Davijaan smirked. “Counting seconds and steps instead of just moving with the music, aren’t you?”
Cody rolled his eyes, but his smile didn’t disappear all through that round and the next.
Eventually it was Cody who pulled them back out of the crowd, a break in the music sending half the couples to the tables of drinks. Instead of letting go Davijaan hugged his brother tight, and Cody hugged back.
“Thanks,” he whispered. “For dragging me out to the middle of nowhere.”
Davijaan rocked them back and forth a bit, and didn’t say, thank you for letting me.
They followed the migration to the tables and served themselves cups of hot spiced drink of some kind. It was tangy like Pantoran tea, but also fruity, and sweet. Cody asked an older man also serving himself a cup from the pot what it was called, and got sucked into a conversation about local berries and how they were grown and preserved. Davijaan, shivering, took his cup over to the heaters.
Not many people were over there. It looked like mostly parents with small children and a few older people. Davijaan sipped his drink and surreptitiously studied a woman whose hair was almost entirely white, only a few pink stands in her elaborate bun betraying the original shade. He wondered if she had ever lived anywhere other than these mountains.
He finally sat down next to a heater and set his cup carefully under his chair. The temperature had plummeted in the last hour; any warmth long gone with the sun. His heavy jacket was doing a good job of keeping the wind off, but he was still not used to being in this kind of cold for this long.
He had no idea why the village thought it was a good idea to hold a party outdoors in the middle of winter, but then again there weren’t many large buildings around here. And nobody else seemed to mind the cold too much. They certainly weren’t bundled up the way he and Cody were. Probably the dancing. Or they were used to it. He shivered at the thought of getting used to this weather and pulled his gloves off and stuck his hands practically on the glowing coils of the heating mechanism.
The music picked up again, and when he looked back to the dancers he saw Cody and the librarian whirling past. He snorted, and watched them for a bit before finding Aron in the crowd, dancing with an older woman who looked quite a bit like him. Mother? Sister? Aunt? His gaze started skipping between other couples as he pondered the possibilities.
And then he saw Loren.
She was dancing with one of her brothers. Bereth, from the two triangles tattooed across his cheekbone. She’d let her hair down from the bun she’d had it in at dinner, and it fanned out around her face in a shimmering blue curtain as she spun, the dangling charms of her beaded gold headdress catching and flashing in the lamp light. She was laughing. Head tilted back, face bright and clear and open. Even as she stayed in step with her brother, with the other dancers, there was a stillness to her he couldn’t name. Something grounded; her movement flowing over dirt and stone and wood instead of floating above it.
It made him feel—
“Enjoying the view?”
Davijaan jerked his head around to glare in the direction of the voice, sputtering, “What? No, I—”
“Oh, so you think she’s ugly?”
“Are you blind!?”
“No,” muttered the young woman sitting next to him, in lightly accented Basic. “But you might be.” She gave him a critical once over and sniffed. “Hm. You’re Odd Ball?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, tired of people knowing his name before he’d had a chance to give it to them. “Maybe I’m Cody. How would you know, you’ve never met either of us.”
“If you were Cody you wouldn’t have gotten so huffy that I guessed right.”
Davijaan scowled, and then tried to smooth his face into a smile, or at least into something neutral. He was pretty sure from her unimpressed eyebrow he did not succeed. So he was out of practice, so what.
“Yes, I’m Odd Ball.” He gave her a nod that was sharper than he meant it to be. “And you are?”
“Fenna Chen.”
She nodded in return, and he used the moment to take her in fully; dark purple hair and geometric tattoos and bright yellow tunic, hoverchair and embroidered blanket. His first instinct was to ask where she’d served in the war, and then he had to frustratedly crush that reflex and remind himself she was a civilian and there was more than one way to get injured, and then his eyes snapped back to her hair as his brain finally caught up with—
“Chen?”
Fenna smiled. “My mother is quite the fan of yours.”
He grimaced. She laughed.
He’d run into Mrs. Chen a handful of times— once in the grocer's, and that had been kind of terrifying— and she was always perfectly polite, but regarded him and his clumsy answers to her probing questions with an air of quiet disapproval.
“I don’t even know what I did,” he groaned.
“Oh, don’t mind ma.” Fenna waved dismissively. “She’s just annoyed that you and your brother wouldn’t jump through all the hoops she set up for people who move here.”
“But… I thought nobody moved this far north?”
“I think you’re the first off-worlders in her lifetime, actually. Still. She’s not on the village council for nothing. Making people jump through hoops is her joy in life.”
He nodded, slowly, comprehending at last. “Sounds like some officers I know.”
Fenna opened her mouth, and closed it. He smiled. “Yes, my brother and I are former GAR.”
“Well everybody knows that, I just wasn’t sure if it was polite to ask questions.”
“Funny, you didn’t seem very concerned with politeness earlier.”
It was her turn to scowl, but there wasn’t any heat behind it. Half of him cringed at talking to some random civilian like this but the other half was pleased that she wasn’t offended.
“Well this is helpful!”
And he looked up to find Loren approaching, steps still light and fluid. “Fen!” she exclaimed, and launched herself at the hoverchair. Fenna hugged back, laughing.
“Hey, Lo, bright night to you. Good to see you again!”
“Good to see you too!” Loren pulled away and sat down on the other side of Davijaan, effectively trapping him. “I assume you two have introduced yourselves?” He nodded, hesitant.
“Fantastic!” She bumped her shoulder into his. “Fenna is the friend I mentioned.”
“Ah.”
“Oh don’t worry.” Fenna patted his arm. “She told me all about you, too. Good to finally put a face to the name.”
Huh. Well then.
Before he could either run or sink down into the chair, Loren asked Fenna a question about her work— something about numbers analysis for a business— and Fenna launched into a story about misfiled flimsiwork and incompetent assistants and he settled back to listen, fascinated. Misfiled flimsiwork had been very rare in the GAR. Or maybe just in the 212th, where Cody’s insistence on doing things right extended even to the filing systems.
The music rose and fell and the conversation shifted from work to social life to family life to hobbies. They both made an effort to include him, but he didn’t have much to say, and was content to listen to the ins and outs of their lives. He’d heard a lot of what Loren shared about living at home again and looking for a new job, but she left out the details of her growing frustration with the situation when she told Fenna about a disastrous interview, and he wondered why.
Every once in a while he would glance around and find Cody. He hadn’t danced with anybody else, but he was always talking with someone new. Eventually he looked over to find Cody looking back.
His brother was standing alone next to the table, refilling his cup. He tilted his head at their little group, asking if Davijaan needed rescuing. Davijaan shook his head once. Cody nodded and disappeared back into the crowd.
“Your brother’s cute.”
Davijaan twitched violently and turned to sputter at Fenna. “He’s? Identical to me!?”
“No, he has that scar,” she pointed out, half joking and half patronizing, “which I assume everybody was too polite to tell me about. Makes him look like a hero from a holofilm or something. Dashing.”
The memory of Kote’s blood seeping out between his fingers hit him like a punch to the gut— the sharp edge of the shrapnel in his brother’s skull digging into his palms as he pressed hard against the wound, his hands too small and too dirty, Kote’s head lolling to the side before Rex scrambled to hold it steady.
He cleared his throat. “Don’t you dare tell him that. If he gets it into his head that he’s the handsome one I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Loren pressed her lips into a thin line. “Fenna,” she said, chiding.
“What?”
Loren just shook her head. And then music started to pick up again, and she jumped to her feet and grasped his wrist, eyes on Fenna. “I don’t mean to abandon you, but—”
Fenna waved her away with a smirk. “Have your fun, and come find me again later. I’m going to go see if Ma Gao brought her tea jellies.”
“Save me one!”
“We’ll see!” Fenna fiddled with her controls and floated serenely off in the direction of the tables, and Loren turned her attention back to him.
“I saw you and Cody dancing earlier. You looked like you were having fun. Want to give it another go?”
“Absolutely!” He shot to his feet. “I mean— I don’t know the steps very well yet—”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let you trip and fall!” She grinned, and pulled him back out into the crowd just as the dance began.
He was familiar with the basic steps after his turn around with Cody, but not this new pattern. And the steps were not yet entrenched muscle memory. Loren took his hands and took the lead, smoothly and without comment, and drew him though the weaving patterns of couples across the floor. They kept time without the frantic energy of many of the others, but with no less purpose. Davijaan relaxed into movement and found the rhythm again. It was different with somebody he didn’t know as well, but he thought, glancing down at Loren’s feet, not difficult.
As he became more confident of where they were supposed to end up after each new turn, even if still unsure of the precise footwork to get there, she skillfully swapped their positions and let him have a turn leading. He didn’t think he did too badly. They didn’t run over anybody.
Every time he looked up from their feet to her face she was smiling. It made it a lot harder to concentrate, and he kept stumbling. But she kept smiling, so he didn’t think she minded.
When the music died down again, he and Loren came slowly to a halt. They stood and breathed in slivered clouds, neither making a move to let go or step away. Her eyes were flashing in the golden light, so brilliant they were impossible to focus on, and so intent on him it was impossible to focus on anything else. After a moment she squeezed his hands, and the icy shock of them jolted him out of whatever daze he’d fallen into.
“Your hands are freezing,” he grumbled, adjusting his grip to rub them between his own. Freezing and very strong. “Are you warm enough?”
She gaped at him, and then tilted her head back and laughed.
“I’m Pantoran, silly! I have a lower body temperature than humans.”
Davijaan dropped her hands. “Oh.”
“And here I thought you appreciated my cold hands,” she said, planting the aforementioned hands on her hips, lips curving up in a teasing smile.
He rolled his eyes. “I was too busy dying to think about why they were cold. Sorry.”
“You were not dying. And actually—” she snatched his hands back and squeezed them again. “You’re the one whose hands aren’t supposed to be this cold.”
She cupped them between her own as if she intended to rub at them the same way he had hers, and then abruptly dropped them. “That’s not going to help, is it,” she huffed. “Where are your gloves? I don’t know if mine will fit, but—”
“I have them, I have them!” He fumbled around in his pockets and pulled them on. “Took ‘em off by the heaters.”
“Oh, good.” She studied him anxiously as he tugged them on. “Do we need to go inside? The library, the hall, and the temple are open all night.”
He shifted his feet and tried not to shiver visibly. “I’m warmer than I was before we started dancing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You know, all that exercise made me thirsty. I think now would be the perfect time to get something to drink and sit down out of the snow. Don’t you agree?”
He gave her an unimpressed look, but followed her to the table and collected another cup of the hot fruity tea.
“Not the library,” he said, when she started to lead him in that direction. He couldn’t see Cody in the crowd anymore, and had exactly one guess as to where he might be. She nodded and veered towards the village hall.
The lights were on, and just inside the entrance a young man was holding a crying child. Father? Older brother? Davijaan had no idea how anybody was supposed to tell, but it probably didn’t matter to the kid. The man gave them a tight smile, which Loren returned, and then hurried Davijaan down the long hall and towards an open door.
Inside it looked something like a briefing room. A long low table dominated the center, with padded benches arranged around it, but there were hangings on the walls and the overhead lights were bright instead of stark. Loren closed the door and settled them in a corner.
He drank most of his tea in two quick gulps and savored the feeling of warmth spreading through his chest. The building wasn’t heated to a temperature he was comfortable with, but tucked out of the wind with Loren it was very cozy.
“Sorry about that,” she said, swirling the dregs of her tea.
“About what?” Please don’t be sorry about the dancing.
“Fenna. Saying that about Cody’s scar.”
He blinked. “What?”
“You froze up. Just for a second, I don’t think she noticed, but.”
“Oh.” He shrugged, not sure how he felt about her noticing. “It happens. Just. Remembered something.”
The corner of her mouth curled up in rueful bitterness. “I suppose most scars like that don’t have happy memories.”
“None, that I know of.” He snorted. “Dumb memories? Annoying memories? Sure. Happy ones are in short supply. Unless you count a tattoo as a sort of scar.” Those could have any emotion attached to them, though a sort of determined joy was what he’d seen most often.
“Huh.” She reached up and unconsciously ran a finger over the interlocking circles across her cheekbone. “I suppose technically it is a scar. For Pantorans tattoos are something like a family history, or a way to honor your family. Not really happy or sad, just memory for the sake of memory.”
He thought of the two stars on his ankle and the names attached to them, and thought he understood. “It can be like that for clones. I guess mostly tattoos were… something we could control.”
She looked at him, steady, and didn’t ask if he had any tattoos, and he thought because of that he might show her someday.
And then she did ask— “Did it scar badly?”
He’d certainly seen worse, but. “Depends on what you call bad. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard for me to look at.”
“Oh.”
“You can see for yourself, if you want,” he offered, trying to sound casual.
“Oh, you don’t have to…”
“What?” He flashed her a grin. “Don’t want to see the results of your handiwork?”
She huffed. “Well, when you put it like that.”
He’d stopped visibly shivering, but he still grit his teeth as he set his jacket aside and pulled his shirt and undershirt over his head, turning so he had his back to Loren. He wanted her to see, to reassure herself. He knew how important that was. But he didn’t know what memories would spread across her face and didn’t want to.
A sharp inhale, a slow exhale, and a long beat of silence. It had been long enough that the dozen or so jagged vertical cuts had lost the raw redness of new scars and faded to a silver-pink, but they still stood out starkly against the brown of the rest of his back. It was probably hard to look at if you weren’t used to looking at stuff like that. Then again, she’d seen it fresh and bleeding. And all she’d done was cry.
He shifted uncomfortably, waiting for her to say something, and then a featherlight finger traced a raised scar along the length of one shoulder blade. He shivered.
She pulled her hand away. “Sorry, cold hands, I know. I should have asked.”
“No, it’s alright. You can touch. I don’t mind.” He was surprised to find he meant it.
The hand returned, more hesitant, and didn’t linger, simply pressed between his shoulder blades and then retreated.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry it happened.”
“Eh. Things happen.”
Cloth whispered across the floor as she scooted closer, rising up on her knees, and then her arms came up around his ribs and her chin settled on his shoulder, and she pressed close against the length of his back and hugged him.
She was solidly built. Sturdy. Not like a clone— like a carefully crafted weapon designed to hit and hit hard— but like a mountain. Like underneath cloth and skin and fat she was carved from the foundation stone itself.
He let himself lean against her, and her arms tightened the slightest bit, and he felt steady and safe and real. Like a bit of her own groundedness was settling into him. His eyes burned. He thought he could stay like that all night, or maybe forever. He wanted to.
But however comfortable she was, she still wasn’t warm, and the room they were in wasn’t warm either, and after a while he started to shiver in earnest. She pulled away slowly, with a sigh, and he hoped that meant she had wanted to stay like that too.
She scooted away and before he could reach for them picked his shirt and undershirt up off the ground and handed them over. He put them on quickly, and then hauled himself to his feet and shook his limbs out.
“I should probably go sit by the heaters for a bit,” he said as he did up the clasps on his jacket, apologetic. “It’s out of the wind in here, but…”
“Yes, and being half naked didn’t help,” she replied, dry. “But. Thank you for showing me.”
He kept his focus on the clasps. “It helps, to see.”
“I… It does.” She cleared her throat, and he chanced a glance at her face, hoping his flush had receded. She met his eyes with a new sort of understanding, and then offered him an arm. “Shall we?”
***
The rest of the night passed in succession of whirling dances and enthusiastic conversations and lots and lots of food, interspersed with announcements and performances. The small stage hosted most of these; a very stylized dance from a young woman dressed all in yellow and gold, a group of older people singing, and a play performed by who he assumed were children from the local school.
He’d never seen a play. Cody had once, when Kenobi had taken him and some other officers to one on leave. He’d said it was fun, and that was about it. This play was probably not to the standard of the fancy theater Cody had described, but it was certainly fun.
It was in Basic, but it was hard to follow due to the, uh, variety in performance quality. Loren whispered an abbreviated version of the story, of how Tyan and her goat climbed to the top of the sky every day so she could bring light to her people, climbing down only when the cold of the earth became too much, and how on the coldest days she couldn’t stay up there for long. “And so on the longest, coldest night, we keep the sky bright when she cannot.”
It seemed sort of… “It’s not true, is it?”
“Does it matter?”
He supposed it didn’t.
After the play, and probably close to midnight, a series of fireworks were set off from the lower slopes of Amaura. It sounded uncomfortably like grenades going off out of sight, but the effect against the sky was pretty. The play and the fireworks over with the smaller children started to disappear from the crowd. He didn’t think it likely that they left voluntarily, and wondered what kind of escape attempts would be made over the course of the night.
He and Loren danced a few more times, and he danced with Fenna twice, and even Aron tracked him down and asked for a dance with a grin that made him blush despite himself. He had to take periodic breaks to huddle by the heaters and drink hot tea, but for the most part the constant movement kept him warm and awake. And maybe, he realized as he drank his fifth cup, something in the tea.
Cody re-appeared in the early hours of the morning, but seemed content to sit by the heaters and talk to the people who approached him. Davijaan looked over at one point to find Fenna sitting next to him, and desperately hoped she wasn’t trying to flirt with his poor oblivious brother. But then she said something that made Cody smile, so Davijaan restrained himself from marching over there.
As it neared mid-morning, the sky beyond the glow of the lanterns began to lighten.
The music stopped, and the dancers separated. The crowd quieted. Children began to reappear from where they’d been tucked away to nap. Those sitting rose to their feet, and everyone gathered in the center of the square, facing the east. Davijaan found himself and Cody absorbed into a cluster of Yangs, Loren at his side and her brothers behind them. Mr. Yang glanced over his shoulder to smile and then faced the east once more.
One by one the lanterns died. Out of fuel or set to some timer he didn’t know of. An older woman walked the perimeter of the square and put out the few that lingered. The stars became visible just as they were fading into the grey of a late morning dawn.
Davijaan breathed, and waited, and Loren’s gloved hand slipped into his.
The faintest glimmer of gold touched the mountain tops, and the people began to sing.
The song was rich and slow and bright, in a language that was almost Pantoran but wasn’t. The sheer number of voices smoothed out the way Bereth’s voice cracked and the way Mrs. Maraso’s young daughter stumbled over the words.
Loren’s voice was low and clear and perfect, and he focused on her alone, singling her voice out from among the others, and it washed over him with a memory.
The sun rose, and the people sang. When the gold-red light began to touch rooftops and drip steadily into the square, they stopped. Everything was utterly still for a moment, and then a child loudly demanded a snack. The crowd broke out in murmurs and began to break down into smaller groups.
Davijaan turned to Loren, mouth dry. “I think... I think I’ve heard that song before.”
She regarded him evenly. “I'm surprised you recognized it. I sang it for you. Or, hummed the tune.”
“... Oh.”
She ran her thumb over his knuckles and tilted her head back, and some of the sunrise lit her eyes. “It was always night on Umbara, but with the light on in our cell I could pretend it was day.”
He wanted to say thank you, but it didn’t feel like enough, so they stood in silence under the sky until the demands of the new day could no longer be forgotten.