Three Dathomiri Tales for Midwinter, Three Kings
Maul: The hiss of his saber dragging after him in the snow. Red and white. Steam and blood. The night is brighter this evening, even absent the moon over the peak, but he ascends the summit to look down on his world below — worn at year’s end, but not broken yet. In the clearing, he finds you waiting. Cold as starshine. Smiling. “Welcome home, my King,” you tell him, spreading your wings as the weary warrior falls into your embrace. A lifetime of defeats etches the furrows around his mouth, but he does not frown for you when you touch his face. Maul smiles, eyes dimming to embers. “Rest now,” you tell him. “Wake in spring.” When he sighs, his breath becomes crystalline in the chill, and then there is only still and silence over the peak. Dathomir dreams.
Savage: In the gravethorns, in the deepest part of night, a nightmare stirs: raising his great crown skyward as if he can sense for himself the way the wheel turns. Starfall overhead: the sky ablaze as if the heavens themselves can feel the change in the land stirring though the world slumbers. A wink in the distance — little more than a glimmer of light between tall trees, the shadows parting as though whatever might be promised with the dawn can raise him too. “My brother is dead,” he tells you, but your kiss is only a brush of feathers against so many wounds. “Your brother lives,” you whisper. “But you must wake him.” Savage stares, and perhaps some part of him remembers what must slumber, will always return. “Rise, my King,” you bid him — a whisper of dripping leaves and melting things. He shakes off vines and leaves, and unshackled, begins a slow march eastward.
Feral: The Twins’ first rise is little more than a shy blush draping over warmed sheets: a white blanket that warms like dew over slumbering green. The third and last to wake freshest opens a honeyed gaze over a world still filled with promise. Dawn over the slopes of Gorgara Peak is a trickle, an inkling of everything that might yet be. In the receding shadows, the watchful gaze of his eldest brother pulls at him, and Feral waves hello. “He misses you,” you tell him, and you watch his throat bob with acknowledgement even though he smiles. “I know, but I’ll see him soon,” he says, turning away before the dark can take Savage away to a place where he might guard those that slumber. “Was Maul successful this year?” he asks you. “Will he rest well for his troubles?” You lace your fingers through Feral’s, helping him stand — coltish and squinting as the suns’ rise returns, bathing his kingdom in new light. “Let’s find out,” you tell him, and Feral’s smile is brighter even than the dawn as he follows you into the year that awaits him.
