sorry i've been dead. going on break so i'll probably be editing this :3

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Her nightmares came back. Part of the red mandalorian suspected they had never completely left.

Even the worst nightmares, the ones born of unspeakable horror that could never be uttered, never make sense.

The red mandalorian can't fully remember the fall of Sundari— not consciously, at least. The feelings are foggy and fleeting, brief images of light, snatches of screaming mandalorians and TIE fighters, and the smell.

Dreams are different. They take those split-seconds of memory and spin them into something nonsensical and surreal and terrifying.And they are never the same.

Sometimes she's in the forests of Mandalore again, surrounded by the tall, sky-reaching veshok trees. Other times she's in a cave— a catacomb, strung with glimmering threads and dancing with millennia-old dust.
And sometimes she's in Sundari, watching the paneled roof of the dome-city shatter and fall in beautiful, deadly rain.

But one thing never changed in her dreams.

In dreams, she is always bathed in fire.

"Little mando."
She turned, glimpsing Cara.
"We have incoming starship. New Republic."

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There's a story on Tatooine, one told in the hushed, whispery tones of the slaves and freewomen.
In the desert, there lies an ocean, an oasis, one that only emerges in the presence of soft and quiet desperation. 
Abandon all hope beneath the two eyes of Tatooine, only then will the sands scrub away all impurity, all pretenses. Trust the depths of the desert oceans— only once you succumb to the current will you be free.
You will emerge unrecognizable, you will emerge as you.

She succumbed to currents as a child, the first freewoman of her line. And she emerged from the desert scalded from the eyes of Tatooine and shrouded in blue.

The red mandalorian studied her hands. The blue tint never fully left her skin, the sand never fully left her skin.

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This time, when the fire came and bathed her in ringlets of molten gold and orange, she let the fire eat her till only her bones and beskar remained. And she laughed.