Thick in the dark and the fog the signs of life were somehow more apparent. High above there were the mighty boughs of the wroshyr trees, hung with moss and leaves the size of a speeder, but those could not be seen on the ground; in the notherworld or Shadowlands as the wookiees called it. Though Chewbacca had great reverence for the lower levels of the vertical ecosystem of Kashyyyk he was leading Han to a place of special significance.

It was dark, too dark. The roots of the trees were like magnificent glowing snakes frozen in the ground and cut through the path they were taking, forcing Han and Chewie to either climb over or crawl underneath and get close to the ground, which was bubbling and belching in places. All around there was glowing plant life that shone in a variety of garish colors that neither looked welcoming or interesting. The insects that flew around generated so much noise with their great overgrown wings that the pair could hear them from several meters off and would thusly duck and cover their heads for fear of being sucked dry by the bloodthirsty, primitive critters. Through slitted eyes one could scarcely make out the path in front of him and only the gaudy shine from the vegetation offered any solace to the darkness. Even the air was alive and thick, seemingly hanging with water like a sheet out to dry.

Han followed, unable to disguise his unease, a steady hand on his blaster as he footed his way gingerly around phosphorescent plant life that seemed to breathe in his scent as he passed. Even Chewie was considerably more vigilant and kept his bowcaster loaded with a hirsute finger on the trigger. Luckily they had encountered no signs of malcontented creatures but with every squishing step he took Han felt a menace creeping closer on all sides, causing him to dart his vision about peripherally.

"Hey furball, I don't want to seem like a wuss or anything but isn't this a bit dangerous?" he asked in a forceful whisper, scrambling to keep up with the towering Wookiee.

Until he spoke their presence had been detected but not regarded but no sooner had Han's mouth closed than a wriggling fuchsia vine snaked out from underneath a particularly squelching footprint and grabbed at Han's boot. It coiled around his ankle like a snake securing its prey and tugged sharply backwards. Down went the smuggler and quickly he was drug across the landscape to the vine's root system, inevitably miles and miles away due to the girth of the vine, which looked like a writhing pink tumor.

"Ah shit!" he grunted as he pulled out his blaster, thankful that his wariness had placed his hand permanently there ever since he and Chewbacca had descended from the fifth level. Aiming as best he could while scraping across wet, fetid, gnarled ground, Han took a single shot and managed to scatter a good hunk of the vine from around his boot and scramble away.

Ahead, Chewie was running with all haste after his fallen comrade, taking aim at the vine a little ways behind where Han was standing and brushing the caked mud and slime from his backside. With a deadly click an arrow shot forth and pinned the vine to the ground. Around the puncture a sizzling yellow liquid poured and ate away the earth where it pooled, sending fumes up which smelled noxious. Covering their noses, Han and Chewie raced away, the wookiee leading them through a safe and well-known path towards something Han was only now dimly curious about. In the safe haven of Rwookrrorro some several kilometers higher in the air Han had agreed to venture to this sacred point at Kashyyyk's Shadowlands but now that he was here and had experienced the danger of the foliage he was positive that he didn't want to meet any other living creatures and hoped that Chewie would hurry on with it.

As if sensing Han's discomfort Chewie looked back and growled a little in his native tongue of Shyriiwook. Han nodded and tried to shake it off. "If we're close then we might as well go on."

Just a few yards ahead, Chewbacca stopped and gazed pointedly at what looked to be a small hill of overgrown dirt covered with deciduous leaves and creeping plants in a perfectly spherical shape. At the ground where the plants started crawling up there was a vast expanse of dry earth as if the swampy ground ended for a little ways around the circle. Han was unimpressed but made his face to appear otherwise. "Gee Chewie, its great. What is it?"

Daring to step closer Chewbacca began pushing the leaves and plants away from the shape, several of which were stuck with powerful suckers that made squelching noises as they were pulled off – leading Han to believe that there was metal underneath the greenery. Padding cautiously closer he stood and watched as the sphere turned out to be an escape pod from what looked to be a long outdated spaceship made, perhaps, before the Galactic Republic was still thriving. The paint was all flaked off or stuck to the suction cups, and the hatch doors were lined with grass, showing that the earth had truly taken over the pod. The windows were cracked and there was a large dent where it landed but otherwise it was intact.

A soft growl escaped Chewie's mouth and he looked at Han, waiting for a response.

"You mean she came here in this? Its lucky you found her, Chewie or else these plants or something worse would have taken her," said Han, leaning his hand on his hip and laughing just a little bit. "So when do I get to meet her? Is she around here?"

Chewbacca shook his furry head and began walking back to where they had first entered the Shadowlands of Kashyyyk. Extending his powerful claws, Chewbacca inserted them into the tree's thick hide without effort and thus began to ascend. Dangling down the trunk was a thick, immobile vine, which Han had used to scale down and would be his passage up. Han followed, his head full of questions that their necessary silent passage would not allow him to voice but as soon as they began climbing the wroshyr tree towards the second level he ventured a whisper.

"Can you at least tell me her name since its so important that I meet her?"

No reply came from above for quite some time and it was after they passed the third and fourth level that Chewie began to speak more freely. His knowledge of his home planet was thorough and he had encountered too many strange and fatal creatures on the lower levels of the ecosystem to venture even the smallest noise while climbing to safety.

He growled shortly and a strange noise came from his lips, one that wasn't Shyriiwook. It was a single name that Han felt compelled to repeat after hearing it.

"Neza."

For another hour or so they passed in silence with only the calls of ancient birds and terrific insects to listen to, thankful for the natural sounds that cloaked their unnatural passage along the difficult climb up to the seventh level where the wookiees resided. One hand in front of the other, one foot following in succession, they climbed onward and finally reached the top where the noise of Rwookrrorro was music to their ears. Though the empire had enslaved much of the race, there were a few remnants who remained in peace and hiding. The last light of the distant sun shone brightly on their eyes after so long in the climbing darkness but it was dusk when they reached the capital city. The houses were open with windows and the breeze up here was fresh and warm, far different from the squalid stench and dense air of the lower levels. It seemed to Han that the journey to the notherworld could have taken them much less time had they used the wooden elevators but Chewbacca insisted on taking the hero's way – the way he had used when he found Neza.

They came into the city and walked along the stretched rope and wood bridges and flats until Chewie led Han to his home. As a rule, the homes were mostly similar, created on flats that were then built up and out like squished spheres to allow more shade in the light of day. Everything was constructed of either wood or a gleaming metal that shone even in the waning sunlight. The treetops of the wroshyr still hung far above but were clearly visible now, draped with mosses and ancient vines thicker than human bodies.

Han was glad to see the comfort of home as Chewbacca entered the door but the sight inside was less welcoming than he'd imagined. Having shirked his imperial duties recently the sight of the ruinated home filled with broken heirlooms and overturned furniture clung tightly to his conscience, though he made no outward expression of such regret. Chewie, unfazed by the state of what was once his home, entered casually and plopped on a chair of special magnificence, one that looked almost as hairy as he was and sunk comfortably when sat upon. Across from it sat a smaller chair, about Han's size, so he took a seat in it and made himself comfortable before immediately starting in with his questions.

"All right Chewie, I get it. She's your sister and you care about her and want to protect her and all that but why all the ceremony before meeting her? We're wasting precious time here,"

At this Chewbacca grew loud and voiced his complaint at Han's reaction to his homeplanet. He leaned forward from his chair and shook his fist a little while Han put his hands up and bounced them up and down in a motion to calm down.

"All right, I didn't mean to say I haven't enjoyed the honor but I don't understand why I haven't met her yet if we're supposed to come here to get her."

Chewie shrugged and gestured broadly towards the east.

"You mean you don't know where she is?" asked Han incredulously. "Well she can't be too hard to find, she's the only one here without hair right?" he said, smirking a little at the thought. The only thing that he knew definitely about Neza was that she was a girl that Chewbacca had found in the escape pod the journeyed to that day and he was content to leave the rest of the details to later conversation but Chewbacca had other intentions and made no motion of either getting up to pursue her or dissuading Han from his impatience.

He growled again and spoke for some time, Han listening intently, seeing that it was his only choice.

"So when you said she was your sister, you meant in your honor family and that's why we have to get her?" he repeated, his grasp on Shyriiwook becoming more secure as the days went on. It was not a month ago that Han saved Chewbacca from the imperial commander, Nyklas and day by day with the wookiee he was quickly learning their language, even if he couldn't repeat it himself. "So is she a wookiee or did that escape pod have something else in it?" he asked trepidatiously, not daring to accuse Neza of being some strange alien but secretly wondering. In the brief comments that Chewbacca had made about his sister he never once questioned whether she was a wookie or not but after seeing how she arrived on Kashyyyk, Han had to second guess his prior assumptions.

Chewie shook his head and told Han something comforting – Neza was human.

"Is she beautiful?" asked Han without thinking, to which the wookiee became somewhat animated but instead of anger he appeared excited. Listening excitedly, Han learned quickly that Neza was, at least to the wookiees, especially beautiful and had learned their ways when they took her in and raised her. "So she can fly a ship? How about shoot a gun?"

The story unraveled easily once Han had guided Chewbacca into talking about Neza. She had been young, all too young, when she crash-landed on Kashyyyk. No more than eight Chewie figured and how long she had been there before she regained consciousness and ventured out into the Shadowlands he never did figure out. When he found the pod, Neza was inside, having dashed to safety when she heard his footsteps. He assumed that she had some provisions with her because though she suffered from dehydration she was well fed and had even made a small spear to ward off predators out of some rocks and vines she'd found on the ground. Chewbacca understood what she was saying to him but she didn't understand that he was unable to communicate with her so against her will he brought her to Rwookrrorro. There, she was received well and a few of the bravest wookiees went to investigate her escape pod and after discovering it found her to be dispatched from a friendly ship and was therefore not in need of caution.

Here, Han interrupted. "You mean you didn't try to find the ship she came from? She had to have had family or parents at the least – they probably dispatched her for her safety and –!"

Shaking his head ruefully, Chewbacca continued, speaking louder and over Han's impatient outburst. They had calculated the coordinates of her descent and retrieved the number of the escape pod to track her back to the ship from whence she came but the ship was either destroyed or laid into enemy hands for no one responded. The elders of their tribe then decided to let Neza live with them and raise her in their tradition, leaving Chewbacca sole responsibility for teaching her their customs as well as their language. She accompanied him everywhere and learned everything he had to teach – hunting, mechanics, ship navigation, fisticuffs, and how to survive in the dangerous land of Kashyyyk if ever he had to leave her.

"So wait, wait, she speaks Shyriiwook?" Han interjected, unable to believe the entire story of this girl whom Chewbacca cultivated in the wildness and made her a woman with a wookiee heart.

Nodding, Chewie put his arms behind his head and made a small grin, clearly proud of his little sister. He then explained how she grew up and became fiercer and smarter than they imagined possible, and how the tribes-people grew to love Neza, considering her one of their own as much as she considered herself a wookiee. Then, when the imperial army came, Neza hid herself on the lower levels, knowing the emperor would capture her if he found a human amongst the wookiees. The storm troopers didn't dare traverse the Shadowlands and that's where she stayed for the better part of their occupation, spying in silence on the warring of the tribes and seething in anger (or so Chewbacca assumed) as she watched helplessly as her people were enslaved.

Chewbacca was silent for some time after his story, closing his eyes and drifting into memory as Han waited impatiently for more story to come. His eagerness was not quenched, however, and he had to vocally tear the wookiee from his mind in order to get the answers for the gaps in his knowledge.

"So she's been here while you were gone? Avoiding the empire and scratching a living off what she can find and we're not out looking for her?!" Han's voice became heated. He knew their time there had to be short if they had any hope of concealing the presence of his newly won Millenium Falcon – it would be a crime indeed if he won her from Lando and then had to forfeit her to imperial scum the likes of which were still likely keeping a deadly eye on Kashyyyk.

Acting nonchalant, Chewie shrugged, clearly confident that Neza would be able to fend for herself and that she would return to their home shortly. Not convinced, Han became slightly grumpy and descended into silence while they waited, the sun disappearing behind the shelter of trees. Han almost wished for the treacherous walk on the lowest level of Kashyyyk, down again to the notherworld where the empire was sure not to find, even if they did suffer a terrible fate. Anything had to be better than sitting like ducks on a pond in hunting season. Night fell around them and still they waited.