Chapter Twenty-Eight The Elderels #2
The walls of the ruins were decorated with faded murals and chiseled reliefs, some barely recognizable. Others were completely desecrated. There were blue streaks of stone on the ground and the walls, growing denser the farther we traveled. I had to step lightly over them so I wouldn’t trip.
“Did they move to a different planet? Did their food run out? Did they destroy themselves?” I wondered aloud, studying the murals of beautiful humanoids with spindly arms and legs, dancing across the stone like they were made of air.
Sian glanced up at one of the faded murals, studying it with his starshine eyes. “Yes. They did. An entire people killed instantly, most of them where they stood.” Then he stopped just before one of the blue streaks of stone, and I came up beside him. He motioned to it.
But now that I looked at it, something was off. A face, and a head—arms and fingers and legs and toes, all curled around a smaller bundle—
I lurched back. “Stars! It’s a grave! You brought me to a grave?”
He gave me a strange look. “You take people to a grave every tour.”
Alderaan. I squared my shoulders and rooted myself to the spot, determined not to desecrate any more. “That’s different, Sian.”
“How?”
“Because we help the station—we pay respect to those we lost. What are we doing here?”
In reply, he sighed and put his hands back in his pockets.
“Paying respects, too. C’mon, a little farther.
” He started into the darkness again, but I lingered behind, debating whether to turn and leave this hollow place.
How was I any different than Val had been all those years ago when he’d snuck away to break into an Imperial walker and see the bones of Imperial soldiers?
Sian called over his shoulder, “The whole galaxy’s a graveyard, Starlight. We’re all made from the dust of things that came before us.”
“I know that…” I mumbled, and gently stepped around the blue stone to reach him, folding my fingers into his again. Though this time I knew when my heart jumped, it wasn’t from the sweet-smelling flowers. “I just don’t want to dishonor them.”
“And we aren’t, trust me on that. You told me I wasn’t alone in the galaxy. So I wanted to return the sentiment.” A soft wind swept through the corridor. Suddenly, he perked up. “Oh, it’s time! Quick, close your eyes. Do you hear that?”
I closed my eyes.
And there, in the quiet of the temple, came the faintest of sounds—of wind whispering through the cracks in the ruins, of the river rushing through the ravine, the world breathing in groans and cracks.
The Elderels’ song persisting.
It grew louder, giving way to popping crackles, like wood burning. I opened my eyes—
And gasped.
The temple flickered with light. The petrified remains began to shift, sprigs of algae blossoming over their limbs, glowing effervescent blue in the dark. Then they broke off their stems, like leaves in the wind, and floated into the air.
“This way,” he whispered, as if anything louder would disturb the sight, and pulled me through a narrow passageway that led to a set of spiraling stairs.
We climbed, and climbed. My lungs burned, but I followed him up.
The darkness slowly grew lighter and lighter, until windows began to light our way, and still we climbed, the ground getting farther and farther below.
We were in one of the spires, I realized. They weren’t just sheaves of rock—they were towers.
As we climbed, the floating tufts of algae caught up with us, pouring out of the windows, and lit our way to the top of the tower, glowing a soft and welcoming blue.
When we finally got there, the algae swarmed up and around us, drifting higher and higher into the evening sky like lanterns.
The foliage and sweet flowers far below had shriveled, closing their buds for the night and leaving the air salty and fresh and cool.
Dusk colored the landscape in hues of orange and cream as the twin suns sank below the horizon.
And pulled us into darkness.
Far below, the lander’s warm light spilled across the landing platform in front of the research facility, Starstall looking like little more than a toy from this distance.
Above us, the stars were impossibly bright.
A bubbling laugh escaped me—I couldn’t help it. “It’s beautiful!” I marveled. “I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.”
“I hadn’t, either,” Sian agreed. “The algae can only grow on the petrified bodies of the Elderels.” He caught a lantern of algae in his hand, and the light leaked out between his fingers.
“They believed that when you die, you don’t simply cease to exist. You are still of and part of the galaxy.
Bits of you stay. They just change a little. ”
He let it go, and the lantern algae drifted up, and up, and up.
“I like that thought. That pieces of us stay when we die. My mentor’s teachings are in me, and the love of your mom is in you, and those things can only grow in us. It’s our job to remember them, and nurture the pieces that stayed.”
Tears burned at the edges of my eyes. I pushed them away quickly. “Oh.”
“Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said, cupping my face in his hands and using his thumbs to brush away the tears that kept spilling. “I just wanted to thank you.”
My bottom lip wobbled. “My dad never talks about her—like he wants to forget she ever existed, and I’m always so afraid that whenever he looks at me, all he sees is her. I’m afraid I’ll never be enough like her. I’m afraid I’m too much like her. I don’t know which is worse.”
“You are Ardent Quay. You said I was made up of all the people and all the places and all the stories I’ve met and been to and heard. Why won’t you believe that about yourself? You’re incredible, Ardent—”
I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his.
He went rigid with surprise, and I thought I’d made a mistake, but then, like a desert plant finding a drop of water, he came alive under my kiss.
He angled his head down for a better approach, his eyelids falling shut, drinking me in like sunlight.
His fingers found their way into my hair as he gently pushed me against the pillar, and I tried to place the way he smelled—there were a billion stars, but I was sure that given enough time, enough taste, I could find where.
Everything was quiet, save for the song that hummed through the tower. I’d been kissed before—only a handful of times, but enough to know that this was different.
This felt rare.
He tasted like dust and licorice—the taste of the flower, perhaps?—and I melted into it gladly. I curled my hands against his shirt, wanting to be close to him, closer still. So close I ached. Dad had once said that when he met Mom, he knew the moment he kissed her, he was found—
Found in a way that was indescribable. Found in a way that you only were when someone saw you, truly saw you, and didn’t want to look away.
And even so far away from the Starfarer, I felt found.
My fingers traced the collar of his shirt to the hooks. I undid the top one, and then another, slipping my warm fingers beneath to his cool chest. He gave a quick gasp against my lips. It tasted sweet.
I opened my eyes and met his heated gaze. “Is this…” I murmured, embarrassed. “Is this okay?”
“Okay?” he asked gruffly, searching my face. “This is perfect. You are perfect.”
I bit my bottom lip, not quite sure I believed that.
He made a noise in his throat and kissed my mouth again. “Whenever you do that, it drives me mad.”
“When I what?” I asked between kisses.
“Bite your lip.” He planted another kiss on my jawline and then the side of my neck. “When you get that little crease between your brows, too. When you stick your tongue into the corner of your mouth when you’re thinking.”
That surprised me. “I do that?”
“All the time.” His mouth navigated its way back up the other side of my neck.
“I can’t look away. You’re made up of all the things I’m not—a constellation I’ve never seen before.
” He kissed the sharp edge of my jaw. “I want to chart it all. Every smile, every grimace, every freckle across your nose…” Then he kissed my mouth again, hungrier this time, deeper.
His tongue played against my lips, asking for entrance, and I gave it so willingly it wasn’t even a question.
My belly burned for him. “I want to know them all,” he whispered, his gaze heated and sharp. “Intimately.”
Dizzy from his kisses, my heart thrumming so loud in my ears it overtook the song on the wind, becoming one in my body instead—loud and bright and wanting—I pressed my forehead against his. And in the loudness of ourselves, we studied each other’s gazes.
“I want to know yours, too,” I admitted.
The lantern algae emptied into the nighttime sky as we slid down the pillar, hidden in the warm blanket of night.
I leaned against him and felt the lightsaber jab at me.
He laughed and took it out of his jacket, when something small and disk-shaped slipped out of his pocket and rolled onto the ground.
A hexagonal pin with an inverse of a black sun in the middle.
I picked it up. I knew that symbol.
The First Order.