#bitter ahuska au

[dingoat]

Septangst 17: Torrent

[Sidestepped into @cinlat’s Sith Fynta AU for this one, hahaha. Just dabbling with a possible meeting point for them, certainly nothing that needs to be set in stone. I also didn’t delve nearly as hard into the angst as I’d originally intended, but I’ll let myself off the hook just this once... >.>]

Moments like this were hard to come by, and never without an element of risk. The danger of discovery was constant, and very real, but Ahuska refused to be so singularly fearful of it that she would completely deny herself time to reconnect.

There were wild things here, as drawn to her as she was to them, and even in the fifteen minutes she’d stolen for herself to close her eyes and breathe in synchrony with the earth and the trees, a handful of fluttering, scurrying creatures had found themselves compelled to join her. She was a light that resonated with something in their beating hearts, a comfort and a curiosity, and those little beasts more sensitive to the ebb and flow of life could not resist coming for a closer look.

She did not have to be watching to know which creatures had come to keep her company. She knew them by sound, she knew them by scent; the rangy vulptilla curled at her back allowed her to borrow his senses with ease, and there were none keener than his. But still beyond that, she knew the shape of the wildlife in the Force, and few other things in the galaxy offered her the same sense of peace.

Peace that was abruptly disrupted.

Ahuska picked up on the animals’ alarm long before she clued into the presence of another sapient being, a swift torrent of panic that rippled through the gathered creatures and bade them to flee into the air, into the earth, deep into the tangles of fern and thorn. She wished them swiftness, she willed them calm, knowing a measured retreat to always serve better than a reckless dispersal.

And then she looked up to observe the disturbance for herself, her muzzle wrinkled in a defensive snarl that matched her vulptilla’s bristle for bristle.

The gaze she locked onto was unnaturally vivid, a luminous blue that made her skin crawl. The expression those eyes wore was one of guarded surprise, and Ahuska imagined it could be a fair reflection of her own, as she wondered just exactly how much the blonde woman with a target tattoo had seen.

How much she’d felt.

The Jedi who had become a Mandalorian stared at the Mandalorian who had become a Sith, debating whether this would be one of those times she’d be forced to kill.