Now, we return to Geonosis. Our story again draws us to this lonely planet. How often must we return to desolation? How often do our own stories bring us back to somewhere like this very place, where death and loneliness hang over us like a shadow?

The orange planet was not raging with a global storm as it was the last time we observed it, the cracked and scarred geography now clearly visible. Though there was wind, only small clouds of dust were disturbed by it. The broad protected valley that Videsse's shelter resided in seemed to be completely still as if holding its breath. Fifty hectares of quinto grain were just ready to be harvested, the dead brown stalks tottering, waiting to fall under the blade of a reaper. Two dozen moisture vaporators were sitting amongst the grain like gravestones; gravestones that paradoxically provided living water to the dying grain.

Videsse's ship, the Vigilance, settled onto a level patch of bare ground, beside a small permacrete hut. The engines on its dorsal wing stabilizers roared in the valley as the ship lowered and came to rest, kicking up a cloud of dust that almost hid the ship. Once settled, the engines hummed to a dead silence. Videsse exited the forward cockpit of the black ship, a determined stride carrying her. She walked briskly to the hut, her helmet in one hand, and the canister of street medicine in the other.

PZ-85 met her in the doorway. He was an awkward protocol droid; a protocol droid with no protocol. His angular arms rested inhumanly at his sides, and his head pivoted slightly on his long neck as he located and followed Videsse's arrival.

"How's she doin', Peezee?" Videsse asked in a hushed voice.

"It appears that she is stable, but you know, I am not a medical droid," the droid began. "Her condition is unimproved, but she is not deteriorating."

Videsse nodded. "Thankyou, Peezee." She brushed past him and threw her helmet. The helmet made a hollow and dead thud as it came to a rest on the table against the wall. Videsse swept into a rear room as PZ-85 hobbled a short distance behind her. The room was thick with darkness, palpable and stale. Light hurt the patient's eyes, so the windows were shut. In the corner, on a cot, lay a skeleton barely visible in shadow. Her thin arms wrapped over her chest, and her face sought the heavens beyond the permacrete roof. Except for the heaving of her chest, this undead form would have been mistaken for the deceased already.

Videsse lit a dim flame from a hand-held torch on a small table opposite her, and then knelt beside her mother, her clone prime, Terrah Otlell.

Terrah's thin eyelids and drawn face tried to squint under the oppressive yet feeble light, her hand awkwardly raising to protect her eyes. Her olive colored skin was pale, making her appear more grey than any natural tone, and her normally green eyes were almost blue with anemia. The muscles of her face drew back in an attempted smile when she saw her daughter beside her.

"Dess," she whispered. "You're back."

Videsse mirrored her weak smile but her shoulders were stiff and her movements abrupt. She shifted her knees as she knelt by the cot and removed a purple capsule from the canister and inserted it into a mask diffuser.

"Shh, ma," Videsse bid her. "Just breathe this in. It will give you strength."

She held the mask up to her mother's face and let her breathe in the produced mist. The grey purple mist wisped out the sides of the mask as she exhaled.

Terrah's chest heaved heavy at first, but within a dozen breaths it began to slow, and her color returned to a shade closer to normal, though she was still very pale. She looked less like a corpse and more like a specter.

"Thank you," Terrah exhaled. "That's better."

Videsse began to relax and exhaled herself, seeing her mother find some peace.

"There," Videsse quipped with relief. "With all the credits I got, you'd think they'd have something that would work better than what I can find on the street."

Terrah nodded and reached her hand up to Videsse's face. "All the credits in the world can't prevent everything."

Videsse took her mother's frail hand from her face and held it between her own. Their hands together displayed an oddity. They were the same, but drastically different. Identical in nature, Videsse being a clone of Terrah, but completely apart in experience. Terrah's hands were wasting away, her whole form was clinging loosely to this life as if the slightest breath of the Geonosian wind would blow her over the edge into the final abyss. Videsse's strong youthful hands held on in an attempt to anchor the frail dying hand to the living, holding her back from the fall.

"I hoped to make it into my sixties," Terrah whispered.

Videsse's brows furrowed and she pursed her lips. "Don't talk like that, ma. You'll beat this. You're a survivor. Like me. We'll find a way out of this."

Terrah nodded. "Find a way out. Like a trap." She took a deep breath that rattled slightly on inhalation. "This is not a trap anyone can escape, Dess. The hounds will finally catch me."

Videsse dropped her hand. "Shut up!" She stood up and clenched her hand. "Sod it all, ma. Stop talkin' like that. We beat those hounds, we'll beat this."

Terrah ceased speaking, and tried to sit up. Her weak arms pivoting her body as she swung her legs over the edge of the cot. Her gasping breaths stalled each movement as she did.

"Stop it," Videsse ordered. "What are you doing? You're not strong enough."

"I'm not strong enough to sit up, but I am strong enough to fight this illness? Which is it?" She looked Videsse directly in her eyes. "My own bones are killing me, so the med droids say. I can't make blood anymore. I am going to sit up, it is one thing I can do." She managed to raise herself upright, as if lifted by straining wires. "Boba was lucky, the way he died," she continued with a soft tone. "Alone and quick in his quinto field. At least it was the way he would have wanted it."

"I don't know about that," Videsse argued. "I think he would have wanted to die in some gun slinging blaze."

"No," Terrah replied. "Not at the end. He found what he was looking for. He didn't need anything else. Though, Boba didn't want anyone with him at the end. Like he was when his father died. I don't think he wanted that for you. Though, can you imagine what he would have done if you were waiting on him at the end, telling him he couldn't sit up." She was not berating when she said these things, and even attempted a feeble laugh. "Though, I'm not complaining, Dess. Just, let me do what I can."

Videsse nodded and bit her lip. She hated seeing her mother this way. It seemed to her that she had just gotten her back from death, though it was six years ago. Now she was going to lose her again, this time permanently.

Terrah could read the lines of Videsse's drawn eyebrows and the corners of her mouth. "Forgive me, Dess."

Videsse looked at the floor and shook her head.

"Dess," Terrah implored. "Sit back down and look at me." She leaned forward on the cot.

Videsse lifted her gaze reluctantly, her eyes slightly wet on the sides. She took a seat, reticently by her mother's side.

"I should have been there for you," Terrah said. "I shouldn't have run away."

"Ain't nothin' to forgive," Videsse said with a shaking voice. "I'd have done the same thing."

Terrah nodded. "Maybe you would have. But I don't think so. You aren't exactly like me. A survivor, yes. But more than a survivor."

Videsse thumbed the back of her knees and then the tips of her fingers. "Whatever," she replied in a cracked voice. "I just-" her voice broke. "I just don't . . . want you to leave again."

Terrah's raised lips, squinted eyes, and arched brows showed the pain she felt at her daughter's words. Terrah had nothing of her own to reply. What could she say? What words were there that could hold back the winds, or strengthen her limbs, or support her from falling? Words were just a small breath, and this moment was a gale.

She raised her arm and put it around Videsse, drawing her in close. Videsse responded and leaned in, falling in slow motion as she, without intending to, came to rest her head on her mother's lap. This woman, a bounty hunter, trained by Boba Fett, with the genes of a clone trooper, this nineteen-year old woman who had fought and killed and survived, found a moment of rest accidentally on the knees of a dying woman. Terrah, in silence, gently unbound the braids of Videsse's hair, and smoothed it with her thin fingers.

Let us leave the two of them to their own sorrow. It is not considerate of me to dwell so long in their despair. Let them be. However, if that does not satisfy your curiosity and you find yourself desiring more than what I am willing to narrate, then let the little I have shared draw you into memories of your own loss for I know that if you are living (for it would be absurd to think the non-living would be audience to my story), you have suffered. Let the memory of that hopelessness and fear detail for you what Videsse and Terrah underwent. How it felt like drowning, or falling, or crushing. How, though hope was there, you could not see it in the darkness. How you would squint your feeble eyes in the dim light, and grasped with weak hands for some hope, that was, I assure you again, definitely there, but you could not or would not lay hold of it. How you grappled to find a cure to make your own escape, but were met only with impotent anesthetics. Let those memories guide you to the soul state of our heroine and her mother. Those memories are not completely sufficient to give you the full description of their despair, but it is the only tool I leave you with for understanding. Only remember, though you cannot see it or feel it now, hope is part of this story, and it is part of yours as well.

As for Terrah, did she die that day? It would have made the narrative flow nicely if she had, but I am simply conveying the truths and cannot alter them for dramatic effect. She passed away eight days later at a moment when Videsse was harvesting the quinto grain. Videsse was not with her at the moment of her passing. She was running through the tall dead stalks, as fast as her legs could carry her back to her shelter. She ran as PZ-85, again, waited by the door, having called her home. She disappeared into the hut and the droid disappeared also, as gusts of dust clouds swept past. The wind cried an unusual wail that day, almost as if a child was crying, a very unnatural sound for the wind to make, but that was what was in the air that day. I simply record what could be heard.