2, 3, & 8 for the prompt list
Hoooo boy this has taken me a while to get to (I’ve had some asks sitting around much longer though!) but I’ve finally done it; all these questions (from the memory prompt list from way back) fit together really nicely to be used in a single bit of writing! So here we have it; I’ve covered ‘a memory of their father’, ‘a memory of their mother’ and ‘a hazy memory’ all in one, plus covered some ground I’ve been meaning to get out in story format for a while.
Memories; ~2,000 words total, with a couple more pics under the cut!
“Do ye’ remember anything from before you were adopted?”
Ahuska wasn’t quite sure when the conversation had tipped toward childhood reminiscing, but even then the question that silver-furred Ralsko asked caught her a little off guard. She rocked back in Crow’s lap, basking in the glow of the bonfire as she considered her answer.
“Not… really. Even my earliest memories of my buire are pretty hazy, and things before that… stars, I’m not even sure if what I ‘remember’ are actual real things, or just pictures I picked up from somewhere and have held onto. I remember watching these little animals high up in the trees, tiny things with huge bushy tails and tufted ears. I was mad excited to see them, and I think someone was holding my hand. I’ve never seen a creature quite like them, definitely not on Dxun and not that I can recall on Concord or Mandalore, so I’m pretty sure that’s from when I was really small. And then there’s the ‘animal soup’, hah.”
“Animal soup?” Ralsko was the one who said it aloud, but the query was clearly on the tongues of everyone else gathered and listening. Ahuska smirked. “Yeah, Animal Soup. I know I had it some time, I don’t remember anything around it. Where I was, who I was with, no idea. I just remember this big warm bowl, mostly broth, but it was full of… animals. Like, tiny little dumpling things, all shaped like different animals. It was probably just some… quick, cheap food, something easy on a rainy day, but it’s stuck in my head and I know I worked it up to be some incredible dish. I kept asking my buire to make me ‘animal soup’ and they could never understand what I meant. Not nerf bone soup, not nuna noodle soup, nothing that used actual animals as ingredients. Everything they tried was wrong, and I’d get so mad, haha. I think we eventually sorted out what I was talking about but they never did manage to find or make an ‘animal soup’ that lived up to that hazy baby memory of mine.”
“Cute,” came Crow’s murmured, sleepy voice behind her, accompanied by a gentle tug as he started to fiddle with her ears. The glow of the fire was warm and bright, keeping the chill air comfortable for all who sat within its reach. Kip stepped forward to toss an extra log onto the blaze, her powerful Annoo-dat physique making child’s play of what would take the average being considerable effort to haul, and sending up a spiraling plume of sparks into the night sky as a result.
“So what’s the story with your Bothan parents then? If that fellow down in that mansion we shot up were your pa—“ The broad shouldered reptilian began asking, all four arms akimbo as she stretched tall to bask in the bonfire’s heat.
“That shabuir was not a parent,” Ahuska cut her off swiftly, her tone only blunt because of the uncomfortable memory. She felt Crow’s hand squeeze over her shoulder, and with it, a measure of reassurance. “I don’t give an osik about bloodline or who fethed who to make me happen. He didn’t raise me, he didn’t want me…”
A soft cough from off in the shadows gave pause to Ahuska’s tirade, and hers were among the dozen or so sets of eyes that turned toward its source.
Ahuska sighed, and waved a hand disarmingly. “It’s fine, Ulfran, it’s fine. You don’t have to go all… wrapped up in your Jedi guilt nonsense, I don’t blame you for what Hadrex had you do any more.” And it was true. She might not have felt any particular fondness for the man, but her original hostility toward him, for the part he’d played in her kidnapping and delivery to her blood relatives on Bothawui, had gradually worn away. The patient way he worked with Nela, and the obvious comfort Lyrisal took from his presence, made good headway towards amends.
“That’s… not quite it,” the Jedi shook his head, his pale eyes reflecting even more strangely in the firelight than usual. A faint smile tweaked at his beard, though the creases in his brow deepened. “I… I’m afraid there are some details I’ve been privy to that I… I frankly should have shared with you much, much sooner than this.”
Ahuska tensed, blinking toward him. “Uh…”
There was a ripple amongst all the others present, blatant curiosity warring with a vague sensation that they perhaps shouldn’t pay too close attention to the turn in conversation.
“It’s good news, I swear,” Ulfran reassured. “For you see, when Hadrex had ordered a DNA scan from you, he also ordered me to ensure that the results said exactly what he required. The papers were falsified, Ahuska. You’re no more related to the Kor’Var household than you are to… well, me, for want of better comparison.”
It didn’t quite knock the wind out of her, but Ahuska was plainly stunned, and all were silent as they watched for her reaction. She sat very still, eyes half-narrowed but gaze not fixed on anyone or anything. Silently, she processed the fact, before very slowly inclining her head in such a way that even though she was resting on the ground, far lower than Ulfran’s perch, she managed to look down her snout at him. “You faked my blood results. I wasn’t even related to that arsehole.” She spoke very slowly, processing the new information. “He wasn’t my family. None of them… for all that he put me through, Hadrex was never even related to me through blood!?”
“Not in any way,” Ulfran confirmed tentatively as those sky blue eyes turned his way, sharp and critical.
She stared, her expression hard, lips pursed, ears quivering in that way they did whenever she was feeling particularly tense. She felt Crow’s hand come to rest on her hip, but he didn’t speak… nobody spoke, until she finally exhaled and let herself fall back against him again. “Good,” she stated, simply. “Good. Never wanted to know who my blood relatives were before all that osik, and that hasn’t changed now. To hell with House Kor’Var.”
“I’ll drink to that,” came Crow’s voice behind her, with another tweak of her ear.
“To hell with Bothawui,” added Ralsko, her dappled grey fur rippling sharply along her cheeks.
Laks, beside her, and one of the few present who actually held a mug in his hands, lifted it into the air on behalf of all of them. “To hell with Bothawui.”
“To hell with the Empire!”
“To hell with that damned war…”
Everyone began to chime in, with their own personal gripes against the galaxy, increasingly loud and boisterous with their additions such that only the Bothans present, with their particularly good ears, picked up on Ulfran’s quiet murmur. “To hell with the Order.”
“To hell with going to bed when I’m told… HEY! OW!” If Nela thought she was going to get away with throwing that in there, she quickly realised she was sorely mistaken when Crow lobbed a chunk of firewood at her.
“Don’t make me shoot you…!”
“I’m pretty sure I just heard a young member of Clan Crow disrespecting her buir, yes…!”
“I bet you disrespected your buir all the time when you were little!” Nela’s retort earned a scoff of incredulous laughter from at least half the beings present, though the teen’s cheeky smirk suggested that she didn’t actually believe her own words either.
“Pshhh. I was an absolute angel of an ad’ika,” Ahuska huffed. “I mean… hang on, hang on.” She shifted in Crow’s lap, to the sound of his disgruntled protests, something about wriggling around when he’d been perfectly comfortable, and managed to extract her wallet from a back pocket. Not that she actually kept any loose credits in it half the time, mind; its contents were far more precious than that. She leafed through an assortment of carefully folded flimsi, plucking out one that had clearly been carried around for years, the edges all softened and worn, the colour faded, but the printed image still clear enough.
Ahuska stared at it while Crow peered over her shoulder, and her expression became very far-away. When it looked as though she was never going to actually pass it along, Nela scrambled over from her side of the bonfire and tugged it out of the Bothan’s fingers, immediately ducking back out of reach and trusting in the fact that Ahuska would be too reluctant to leave her husband’s lap to make an attempt to grab it back. Nela thought right.
“Ohmystars you’re so cuuuute…!” the half-Twi’lek gushed.
Laks, Ralsko, Kip and Titus, even Ulfran shuffled over from his perch to have a look, and some shifting movement in the shadows might have been Lyrisal, craning her neck to see.
“I’m six, there. When I was pretty much the same height as my buir’ika and, buir’nuvhu could still pick me up with one arm…” ‘Little mum’ and ‘Pink mum’, the terms young Ahuska had used to differentiate between her parents, the latter of course referring to Jinn, her Zeltron mother, while the former was for the diminutive Chadra-fan, Santha. In the image being shared, Jinn had her wife lifted up and perched on her left arm, while a tiny Ahuska mirrored the pose on her right. “That was my first trip to Concord Dawn, I think. We were there for about a week but honestly, I mostly remember that day in the woods. I begged that we head out there as the sun was coming up, and we saw wild reyr, a whole family of real wild reyr! Also found saberwolf tracks, I swear they were even if buir’ika didn’t beli—“
“Excuse me,” Laks’ rich baritone gently interrupted, and when Ahuska fell silent and stared his way, he went on. “But you say you are six years, in this picture? That is… that is very wrong! Here, this little Bothan…” the burly Bothan man poked at Ahuska’s giggling printed face. “…she is at least eight. Maybe nine years, if she is a little slow to hit growth spurt.”
“Tall ones often take a wee bit longer to get there, aye,” Ralsko nodded her agreement, grinning at the picture. “I mean, ye’ got the curve in the ears there, so if ye’ haven’t hit ninth birthday yet it can’t be far off…”
“Noooo… no way,” Ahuska breathed in utter disbelief, still staring toward the pair of Bothan Deserters.
“I’m afraid it’s so,” Laks dared to curve his lips into a smirk, at the same moment Ahuska felt a little jab in the ribs.
“Got a couple of birthdays to catch up on there, do we, old timer?” Crow teased gently.
“Nah, nonono, nayc, I’m…”
“Two, three years older than you thought you were?”
“No, they’re kidding, right? You’re all just ribbing…?” she turned her big blue eyes beseechingly toward Laks.
Unfortunately, the eyes that met her in return were unapologetically earnest, if still very entertained. “Keth had a small boy of his own, shall we fetch him and have him bring the baby holos? You will see for yourself how we Bothans mature…”
“Shab!” Ahuska cursed in resignation, throwing her hands into the air.
“So how old are you now?” Nela piped up again, and didn’t at all quail under the sharp glare Ahuska short her. It was hard to take her Bothan buir seriously when her father’s face was grinning manically from ear to ear right behind her.
“Thirty… two,” Ahuska whispered sullenly.
“So thirty-three, probably, you mean?” Crow cackled.
“THIRTY TWO. And a half. STARS, ULFRAN, GET ME A DAMNED DRINK.”
“YOU HEARD ME. In the space of one conversation you lot have managed to re-orphan me and age me three years, get me a stars-damned drink so I can handle the next fethin’ bomb that’s gonna be dropped on me. What next, Crow’s actually an Alderaanian noble and we’re third in line for the crown? Yeesh. Make it a strong one.”
Usual disclaimer, being that Crow, Nela and Lyrisal all belong to @humanrevolt and I’m constantly honoured he lets me write them! Ahuska’s beautiful parents Santha and Jinn were created for me by my fantastic RL husband, @nutterbutterbox
