MandoMay2021 Day 2: Strill - Mandalorian hunting animal
My take on a feral/undomesticated strill for the occasion, I like to imagine that over time and because of their domestication, strills lost some of their more threatening features- though that doesn't stop them from being impressive sights.
Yea I'm posting this late and I won’t do all the prompts, though some do inspire me in particular.
(Go check out #MandoMay2021 as well as @/ollovae3 and @/paladinpenn on IG!)
AN: Here we are, finally at the end of Mando May 2021 and what fun I have had writing all of these. I am so glad that I got the chance to participate and thank you to everyone who has read any or all of my little prompts! In the coming month, I am going to be busy with my job, but I plan to come up with a schedule so you guys know what I will be working on each day, and I hope to be pushing out more fics or one-shots at least once a week. Anyway, I hope you all like this. Love you all and I hope you have a good week!
Prompts:
Aliit ori'shya tal'din
"Family is more than blood." Mandalorian saying, apt for a culture so well known for adopting often, and accepting anyone of any species.
Laar- Song
Pairing: the Armorer x AFAB!Reader
Words: 2.5k
Summary: When a Mandalorian found you and brought you to their tribe you did not expect to find a family you had never had, nor did you expect to find yourself falling for the strong, wise leader and armorer of the tribe.
Warnings(?): Reader does have a young child, mentions of pregnancy and infidelity, AFAB, but no pronouns, bi/pan reader??, mentions of struggling??, none really mainly just fluff, also this wasn't edited bc I needed to write up my Sinful Sunday as well...
Your life had been far from easy, but you had always told yourself that there were others in the galaxy that had it much worse off than you did. You had been raised on a smaller farming planet not too far from Alderaan. Your parents hadn’t been well off in the slightest, and they didn’t own land for themselves, just working other’s land for little pay and for long hours. You had had to step in and fill the parental role for your two younger siblings, a pair of innocent twin boys. When you were old enough your parents married you off to the first nice suitor that had asked for your hand, not even asking you before doing it. Not that you could complain much, the man took care of you and he had enough money to be comfortable. It hadn’t even been more than a month though when your family came down sick with an illness that had overtaken your small planet. Not one person from your family survived, and you were heartbroken when you had to watch from a distance as someone buried each of them in a small plot of land reserved for the victims of the illness. You mourned their deaths for only days when your husband became cruel and told you to get over them, they were dead and not coming back he would say whenever the tears would make an appearance. But you stuck by his side, having nowhere else to go.
You had watched in horror as your neighboring planet Alderaan was completely destroyed without any second thoughts or repercussions by the Empire. For weeks afterward, you watched people mourn the families that they had that lived on the planet. You had watched as your entire home planet had become solemn and fearful of the Empire, but you had just tried to brush it off, just trying to live your life one day at a time.
But as seemed the pattern in your new life, that mentality didn’t last long in the least. Maybe three weeks after Alderaan had been destroyed, you walked in to find your husband having sex with a woman you recognized from town right on your dining room table. That had been the last straw for you, you knew you couldn’t put up with this anymore, and while the two of them didn’t notice you, you turned and walked into your bedroom and packed all of your meager items into a bag, along with all the money they two of you had hidden in the room and you left that house never planning on looking back. And you never did look back, completely glad when you did, managing to get on a freighter that day and leave the planet behind altogether. It had only been a day later that you had found out that the Empire had come the following day and taken control over the planet.
Nevarro had never been your first choice, but with low funds and the news of your pregnancy, you had no other choice at the time. Nevarro was full of drunks, thieves, and bounty hunters, none of which you wanted to be associated with, but you had to make do because of your need for money. Somehow you managed to snag a job waiting tables at the cantina that the Guild worked out of, and you made decent pay. The only problem was the fact that you still had nowhere to stay and were forced to live on the streets, but as always you made do with what you had as the months slow progressed. You never told anyone you were pregnant and always hid behind baggy clothes, scared of how you would be treated if anyone found out. The one kind face, mask(?), that you had was a mandalorian with a silver helmet and red armor that would come into the cantina to speak with the guild master for bounty jobs. He was always polite to you, and you always gave him a smile, and frown every time Greef Karga ordered a drink for him, knowing it was rude when Mando never drank it.
What you never expected was for that mandalorian to appear from thin air one night as you were curled behind the cantina eating the meager meal that you had purchased before leaving work for the day. He had not been mean or judging when he had looked down on you from where he was standing. He had stayed gentle when he had asked why you were sleeping outside unprotected, and he had been somewhat offended when you had feigned not being pregnant, saying that any mandalorian or person with eyes could notice the signs of your pregnancy. After he had asked and made sure of your situation he had invited you to live with his tribe, hidden under the city, saying, “We will take care of you and your child, and ask nothing of you, but to contribute to the tribe what you can. You will be safe.”
Now presently, five, almost six, years had passed, and you had been all but integrated into the mandalorian tribe and way of life. You did odd jobs for the tribe, mostly cleaning the community spaces and occasionally pitching in to help make meals. The entire tribe had treated you with respect since the first day you had been brought into their home and the Mando who had brought you there had explained it was mainly because you were with child, as children were sacred to their way of life as they continued to dwindle in numbers.
When your beautiful baby girl was born, the entire tribe had celebrated, and with your permission, each of them had asked to hold your child. You had found it endearing at the excitement that tribe had held for one small child, but as you were sitting, and resting as the leader and armorer of the tribe held your child, she had told you that it had been a very long time since the tribe had seen the birth of a child, and it was something to be celebrated.
As the years went on, you watched your daughter learn and grow up with the other foundlings of the tribe. You watched as she would go bounding after mandalorians in the tribe grabbing on to them with giggles and asking all kinds of questions. But nothing prepared you for the way that your daughter latched onto the Armorer. Some days you swore she like the tribe’s leader than you yourself, but you couldn’t blame her because you yourself had found that your heart speeding up whenever you saw the two of them, or when the Armorer made time for you. How could you not develop feelings for the strong and wise woman, when she patiently answered every question your daughter shot at her while she worked in her forage when she had gone out of her way to spend her free time teaching both you and your daughter the language of her people, even when your heavy tongue struggled to pronounce what seemed to be simple words.
You had never known how deeply you had felt for the woman, until one day when you had gone to get your daughter from the small school area the mandalorians had set up, only for you to have to catch the young girl as she came flying towards you talking a mile a minute. Only when she paused to catch her breath did you pick her up and saying, “Slow down, please Bri, I cannot understand you when you speak so quickly.”
“I’m sorry, I am just excited! The Armorer came and watched us today and I was talking with her like always because she’s so cool, and you know what she told me,” your daughter excitably rambled in your arms with a giant smile before turning to you.
“What did she tell you my darling?”
“She told me I could be just like her if I wanted! She told me that she would teach me everything I needed to know and that I could have super awesome armor just like hers, and I told her that I wanted mine to look just like hers because she’s my hero and I love her.”
You could barely keep up with your daughter with how fast she was talking, but you were honestly blown away by what she had told you, you had never thought it was possible for your daughter to wear the armor of the mandalorians, even though she talked about it with you all the time. You had never expected for the Armorer herself to make this promise to your child, and it almost made you want to cry, but you pushed it away.
Later after dinner, you had been cleaning Bri up when a knock on your room door echoed through the small room, and before you could even move Bri was running to the door and opening it.
“Armorer! Armorer! Is it mando’a lesson night? I wanna learn how to say stars or, or moon, no wait I wanna learn how to say beautiful! I wanna be able to tell you how pretty your armor is in mando’a Miss Armorer.”
Hearing the Armorer’s small chuckle at your daughter’s ramblings made your heart do flips in your chest, and you had to turn away from the door to clean up the table as you felt heat raise in your face. When you turned back around after putting everything away, you saw the Armorer sitting with your child at your small table, and when you sat across from her you gave her a smile and said, “Thank you again for taking your time to do this, I know Bri looks forward to these days.”
The Armorer only bowed her head slightly and said, “It is my pleasure to share and teach our language to you both, you do not need to thank me.”
When she raised her head back up, you could feel your eyes lock with her’s underneath her bronzed helmet and again you felt your heart rate speed up. The moment didn’t last long, not with your impatient daughter sitting next to the Armorer. Bri reached over and pulled on her arm to get her attention, and with the sweetest loth cat eyes, she said, “Please, teach me how to say beautiful now, please,” and without missing a beat or moving her head the Armorer replied, “Alright little one, in mando’a we say mesh’la when we want to call something beautiful,” she paused for a second, making sure your eyes were on hers when she said, “Like I would say, both of you are very mesh’la.”
You felt your breath stick in your throat when she said this. For as long as you had known the woman across from you, you had never heard her say anything that she did not mean, and her calling you beautiful, as well as your daughter, had the heat from earlier returning to your face and your stomach doing flips.
The rest of the lesson moved as usual, as the Armorer worked on teaching you both new phrases and words, and tonight you were proud of yourself for how well you were picking up everything she was teaching. At one point while she was working with your daughter, who was obviously slowing down and getting tired, you excused yourself to use the bathroom. You weren’t gone for more than a couple of minutes, but by the time you made your way back to the table, you found the Armorer sitting with your daughter, who was all but asleep, in her lap as she sang softly to her. You weren’t able to catch what she was singing, nor did you recognize the tune, but for what felt like the millionth time that night your heart ached with longing at the sight. As you quietly walked over, with the intention to take your daughter to lay her down, you whispered, “You did not have to do that, but thank you. That was a very mesh’la laar that you were singing. You have a lovely voice.”
When the Armorer replied, you could hear the smile in her voice as she whispered, “You are learning and picking up mando’a better than I had hoped. And thank you, the song is one my father would sing to me almost every night as he put me to bed. I have found that it works on nearly every foundling, no matter how energetic they seem.”
You smiled and gave a quiet laugh at her words, and just watched your daughter sleep for a few minutes before you remember what your daughter had told you earlier. Nervously you spoke up, and tried to remain quiet while doing so, “Armorer, Bri told me earlier, that she talked with you today.”
“She did.”
“Bri also said that you told her that she could be like you. That she would wear mandalorian armor, and that you had told her you would teach her how to be an armorer herself, and while I appreciate you telling her these things, I thought…...well we aren’t mandalorian by blood, is she really allowed to do those things?”
The Armorer is quiet for a second before she stood up and took your daughter to the small bed in the corner of the room, and laying her down softly, making sure to tuck her in and brush a small curl behind her ear before walking back over to you.
“Aliit ori'shya tal'din, we mandalorians do not care about blood, only bonds between family and child. If she wants to become a mandalorian, she will have that choice when she gets older, she is already learning The Way along with the other foundlings, and I will need to train a predecessor eventually if she is still passionate about the craft when she is older, she will be a perfect candidate.”
“I, I don’t know what to say, he looks up to you so much, thank you for giving her hope that her dream can come true,” as you say this, and watch the Armorer’s visor you slowly reach out for her hand, and when she wraps her fingers through yours when you are close enough, you know that whatever feelings you have for the woman, she returns them. The two of you stand in silence for a few minutes, the only sound coming from the soft snores of your sleeping daughter. Then the Armorer surprises you and leans her forehead onto your own saying, “Mesh’la, I also have a proposition for you. When I had told Bri that she could train under me to be the next Armorer, it had been with the hopes that I would be training my own daughter to take my spot,” she said your name softly as she raised her free hand to your cheek before saying, “If you would have me, I would like for you to be my spouse, and I would like to adopt Bri as my own. Mesh’la I would like for you to join my clan and raise a beautiful warrior together.”
Tags: @writeforfandoms @ollovaemisc
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From @ollovae3 ‘s Mando May! Day 13: Sherrshoy, a lust for life!
Realm has been an character of mine long in the process, but I have so many OCs they sometimes get a bit forgotten when it comes to my art. It didn’t help that I struggled to her design right. Her clone trooper armor came easy, but her original Mandalorian armor didn’t quite fit right. Both of these designs are in the very bottom right of last picture, which was my original design sheet for her.
Anyways! I was very excited for this prompt and getting to tell Realm’s story a bit more! Here, she is exploring the galaxy for the first time free from her past duties to the Republic, now known as Galactic Empire. Through her travels, she stumbles upon a Mandalorian clan of which she later joins.
