Vision of the future

The tears had stopped now, Mara's shoulders tensing beneath Luke's arm as she leaned tautly forward to watch. The Fire was almost to the Hand of Thrawn now, and Luke could see that beneath the burnishing effect the hull had been torn open in a dozen different places, some with the yellow swirling of raging flames blazing behind them. The towers intensified their attack; but it was too late. The Fire dipped one final time, vanishing from their view—

And with a brilliant yellow-orange fireball that blasted outward toward the far mountains, lighting up the landscape like daylight on Coruscant, it reached its goal.

The sound of the explosion a second later seemed curiously muffled, as if the containing wall of Hijarna stone was as unaffected by the sound as it presumably had been by the explosion itself. A few seconds later another even softer blast washed over them, echoed back from the mountains. The towers, almost reluctantly it seemed, ceased their firing.

And once again, the silence of the night settled in around them.

They sat there in the quiet a long time, clinging to each other as they gazed out at the twisting yellow glow that was the Fire's funeral pyre. Slowly, as the hangar bay fire burned itself out, Luke felt Mara's pain similarly fade away.

But to his surprise, it was not a hopeless bitterness or even simple weariness that rose within her to fill the space left by the pain. She had mourned her loss and spent her grief; and now, as it would always be with her, it was time to put feelings and emotions aside and focus again on the task that needed to be done.

And indeed, a minute later, she stirred in his arms. 'We'd better go,' she said, her voice slightly ragged with the aftereffects of her crying but otherwise calm and clear. 'They're going to be fighting that fire for a while. This is probably our best chance to sneak back in.'

* * *

'From the size of that blast, I figure we ought to have knocked out everything in the hangar,' Mara commented as they made their way back down the cliff toward their ship. 'At least as far as flyability is concerned. There may be something way in the back they'll be able to salvage, but it's going to be a job to even get it out.'

She was babbling, she knew, her words tumbling out every which way in the aftermath of the exhausting emotional hammering she'd just gone through. She'd never much liked babblers herself, and the thought that she'd become one, even on a temporary basis, rather annoyed her. But oddly enough, it didn't actually embarrass her. That part wasn't a mystery, either. If dumping everything on Luke the way she had up there hadn't totally ruined his opinion of her, a little babbling wasn't likely to do it, either.

And it hadn't destroyed that opinion. That was probably the most surprising part of it all. It truly and genuinely hadn't. Picking her way down the cliff, she could still feel the same warmth and acceptance flowing from him that he'd wrapped so tightly around her up there. There was also, to be sure, a bit more concern and overprotectiveness in the mix than she really felt comfortable with. But that was okay. That was just Luke, and it certainly wasn't anything she couldn't handle.

'I still don't know how we're going to do this,' Luke said, stumbling briefly on a patch of loose rock behind her before he caught himself. 'It'll take way too long to go in through the cave again.'

'I know,' Mara agreed. 'Parck mentioned there were gaps in the wall. I guess we'll have to go cross-country and then somehow climb up the side to one of them.'

'That's going to be tricky,' Luke warned. 'They're not going to be nearly as kindly disposed toward us as they were before.'

Mara snorted. 'That's okay,' she said grimly. 'I'm not exactly all that kindly disposed toward them, either.'

Ahead and below now, barely visible in the faint starlight, she could see their borrowed ship, just beyond one last narrow fissure in the rock. Gathering herself, she leaped across the gap to a flat-topped boulder—

And abruptly halted, flailing for balance on the rock as shock froze her muscles. Suddenly, unexpectedly, a strange thought or sound had flashed into her mind.

Jedi Sky Walker? Are you there?

She lost the fight for balance and dropped rather awkwardly off onto the ground, barely able to keep her feet under her as she landed. But she hardly noticed. There at the ship, perched atop the TIE fighter-style panels, were a dozen nervously fluttering shadows. Even as Luke landed on the ground beside her, one of the shadows detached itself from the ship and flew to a landing on the rock they'd just vacated. It is you, indeed, the thought echoed through her mind, the words framed by excitement and relief. I saw the great fire, and feared you and Mara Jade had perished. It was Child Of Winds.

And she could hear him.

She looked at Luke, saw her own surprise reflected in his face and mind. 'You do go in for the dramatic changes, don't you?' she managed, nodding toward the young Qom Qae. 'Nice touch. Really.'

Luke lifted his hands, palms outward. 'Hey, don't look at me,' he protested. 'I had nothing to do with this.'