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fanfoolishness · 1 year ago

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from the desert comes a song (Jedi: Survivor)

A spamel heeds the call from a wounded wanderer in the desert, and bears him on a difficult journey. Spoilers for Jedi: Survivor. Spamel POV (yes, really!), ANGST (yes, really!), Jedha, Cal needs all the hugs and the spamel needs them too. ~2000 words.

She and her brethren hid, sheltered in a stony cove held back rom the drifting sands. They had long used this cloistered waypoint as a place to hide from predators, from the beasts that crawled and scuttled in the sands, to the two-legs in white armor with their blank staring eyes and their terrible weapons. Now the smell of smoke drifted across the cold desert winds, and she bowed her head, hoping it would pass soon.

There was… something… nagging at her. Something… calling. She grunted, shaking her head. Fear coiled deep within her, in her long legs, in her beating hearts. The call grew louder, and she raised her head, listening not with her ears but with something deeper.

The voice of the True Desert stirred within her. All spamel knew it, the sense and spirit that lived in the singing winds and the shifting sands, in the beasts that walked and the beasts that flew, in the lichens and the desert scrub. It connected them all, bound them together. She had never sensed it so clearly as she did now, and it called in a desperate voice, a song that begged for aid. The singer was in the greatest of need. This she knew instinctively.

She nuzzled the neck of her mate, a low hum deep in her breast. I must go, she whispered with scent and gentle huff of breath, and her herd understood.

---

The sands flowed beneath her steady hooves. A storm raged, but she wove her way through destruction and fire and flame. The desert was burning in a terrible battle, the white two-legs’ war. She scented fear on the winds, and hatred, but she turned her muzzle from them. She focused on the song stirring in her hearts, the need, woven deep into her spirit with a warmth unfamiliar in her land of cold and stone. She quickened her pace, her legs lengthening into a speeding stride, and she stretched out her neck and she ran.

The song pulsed, carried deep in her veins. She would find the singer. She would help them. It was the will of the True Desert, and she could not deny it, nor would she want to.

She stopped, suddenly uncertain. There was wreckage here. She made her way gingerly around it, one of the flying machines the two-legs used, both the desert-walkers and the white ones. She bent to sniff the machine, and her muzzle twitched at the foul smell of fuel and raw metal, mingled with human scents of pain. She raised her vast head and turned, the song growing clearer.

She passed the fallen in the sands, white ones with their weapons still warm beside them. The scorched rock and glassed sand seared her nostrils, and she squinted, trying to see her way through the lingering smoke.

The soaring mesa loomed beyond her in the hazy air. The song called, and for a moment she was lost; her kind could not ascend those jagged steppes. Then she realized that the song was loudest here, among the mesa’s tumbled rocks and spikes at its mighty base. She stepped precisely, mindful of her bulk; she did not want to harm the singer, even by mistake.

She stopped.

There.

A small figure, facedown in the sand, dark clothing and red hair. She stepped toward him purposefully, scenting blood and burnt flesh. Compassion filled her. He was wounded, then; surely that was the desperate note that she had heard within the song.

He did not stir, though she sensed he could feel her approaching. She was so close now. She reached out one spindled leg and gently, so gently, rolled him over.

He rolled limply with the weight of her hoof. A scorch mark marred his chest, though she was relieved to see that still it rose and fell. He was a human two-legs, perhaps one that had joined with the desert-walkers in their journeys through the wastes.

She bent down, as low as her kind could, and huffed a breath across his face.

He woke. His eyes opened, and he slowly sat up, taking deep, pained breaths. He reached out a hand to her, and a shadow passed over his pale face.

“Cere,” he gasped suddenly. “Cere!”

She wondered at the word. It meant nothing to her, but the song within her jangled, suddenly painful. She nudged him again with her leg, and he staggered to his feet, swaying.

“Help me,” he whispered. She held her leg against him, a brace that he could lean upon. He shivered, then closed his eyes and leapt into the air, an impossible leap for one so small. Yet he lit upon her back, light as a canyon bat, and rested his hands against her hide.

She saw a place with eyes that were not her eyes, a shelter hidden in the crags and jutting stone, where the desert-walkers dwelled in peace and safety. Where they had, until the white two-legs brought fire. She saw confused flashes of a weapon, of a human falling to the ground, of screams and a speeding flier. She did not understand. The singer’s song was garbled within her, spiking with a sharpness that made her flinch. She roared her confusion, and the singer held on tighter, brushing her neck with his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he cried aloud into the wind. “Just take me there, please. I have to save them -- please, please -- GO!”

He did not try to speak in his own language again. It was too hard. She sensed a desperate hope, an aching loss, a need to make things better. To help fix what had been lost. To protect.

She roared again, but this time with renewed purpose. The vision coalesced once more into the hidden sanctuary. That she could understand: a herd hiding with each other, trying to stay safe within the harshness of the desert. Somehow this small human was a protector, one who fought against the predators, who helped his kind as the spamels helped each other. She would not fail him; this she promised the True Desert.

She loped into a gallop, the human on her back jostling with every stride, and she swore she would bear him there in the greatest haste. The voice of the True Desert welled within her, mingling with the human’s song, and for a moment, the music was something beautiful.

She would tell her young of this, someday; she would carry the memory of this journey with pride, all the days of her life.

Her feet flew across the sands, deftly staying to solid ground, avoiding the lairs of skriton and the pits of softsand. She would follow her purpose, carrying the singer to his people, to where he could be safe and whole once more. The wind rushed past them, and she galloped onward.

She galloped past the smoking hulks of machines, twisted and burning in the sand. She galloped past white two-legs being pawed and set upon by scavengers as they lay broken. She galloped even though her lungs burned, even though her legs ached. She galloped with hope.

She opened herself to the True Desert, and upon her back, she could feel the human do the same. The song pulsed with purpose --

And then there was a shrieking, discordant wail, and the song went sour.

She faltered in a quiet canyon, her chest heaving. The song jarred and stuttered within her, lashes of pain shivering from her neck to her withers. She grunted in confusion. What was happening? This was not the pain of a predator attacking, nor the pain of a twisted hock, nor the pain of hunger or thirst. She realized that it was not her pain at all.

The human slumped over onto her neck, burying his face in her hide. He shivered on her back, his hands clawing against her skin, a feeble, broken feeling. She stiffened.

It was… raining?

She had heard of rain, long, long ago, in songs still whuffed and hummed and rumbled by her kin. It was nothing she had ever believed she would feel herself. Could that really be what she felt, those soft droplets landing against her skin?

But something was wrong. This was not rain from the old songs; they held memories of water falling from the sky, clean and fresh and everywhere, droplets on their heads and necks and backs.

She smelled salt instead of fresh. She felt water, but only where the human’s face rested against her hide. And there was a sound no song of her people had described, a sound of keening, a sound of agony.

The human wept against her, shattered with a terrible grief. The song wailed, and she lowered her head and moaned into the wind.

No more was there the desperate hope, woven in amongst the melody. More images came to her, a woman with a weapon of light, a soul of light -- a light snuffed out. She could sense the voice of the True Desert reverberating deep in the heart of the human on her back, a conduit that showed him visions, visions that flowed into her eyes, too. And she understood.

The True Desert had spoken to him. His hope had crumbled.

He already knew what he was going to find.

---

She did not run anymore.

She still carried the human, clinging to her back, careful not to unseat him. While his chest still heaved, the rain he had brought had faded. He did not push her to her greatest speed again, for that need had ended.

They were already too late.

She crested the final hill, coming to the cleft in the canyon walls where the song had told her to go. The dead littered the sand, white ones and desert-walkers both. The fires had burned the detritus to ash. She breathed deep of the smoldering rubble, though it scorched her nostrils and her throat with its foulness.

She carried him, smoothly, past the wreckage to the secret entrance set within the rock. For a moment, they gazed at the door. Through the song she understood that part of him wished to flee. To not face the truth that lay within. They could turn back to the desert, to the temples rising among the rocky spires, to the empty lands beyond. If he asked it of her, she would take him.

But she knew, now, what he would choose. She slowly lowered herself down as far she could, waiting for him to take the leap.

He shuddered. Then he slid down, landing hard in the sand and stumbling. She braced her leg against him, and he clung to it, sagging against her.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice a broken sound she heard more in the song than in her ears. “I -- I know you did everything you could. Thank you.”

And the song vanished, leaving her hollow and bereft.

She bowed her great head, nudging the human’s shoulder. He leaned against her, reaching up to stroke her muzzle with a soft, trembling hand.

Then he limped forward, raised his hands, and opened the door.

---

She did not reach the herd until nightfall.

She was too exhausted to help them understand, to share her journey. Instead she made her way carefully to her mate, nuzzling him. She gazed out at her mother, her grandmother, her sisters, the young ones.

They were safe. The True Desert had protected them, and the storm and battle had passed them by.

They were safe, and the desert-walkers were not.

She twined her neck with her mate’s, seeking comfort, and she brayed with a sorrow she knew was not her own.

#jedi: survivor #jedi survivor fanfiction #jedi: survivor spoilers #jedi survivor spoilers #spamel #cal kestis #jedha #my jedi fic

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