Dyrric never saw the Mandalorian actually leave the inn after the kids left his room, but the little child that had arrived with him somehow knew when he was gone. He rarely let go of Dyrric's leg after a certain point, patting around him as he finished cleaning the kitchen after the lunch 'rush' - actually an hour of about ten hungry laborers taking what break they could before getting back to their machines and fuel-slogs, and who basically just helped an average day go by a little faster. Asking Dad if they could bum around the village and play after the last tray got a sonic rinse earned him a bemused, easy nod.
"Just be careful, Dyrric," was the extra warning he got. "You've got one to look out for today."
Sure, no problem. A new arrival who hadn't yet seen the coolest thing on the entire planet.
The old hut and its countless silent mysteries. Witches! Artifacts! And clumps of fur that had no clear answer to the riddle of their source. Dyrric's mind always lit up easily with imaginative scenarios about what had gone on in the abandoned hut at the edge of town. He carried the little green child with him part of the way, making sure they didn't get caught by Mo Deera or any of her friends from the weaver circle. They liked to walk in the afternoon, when the air wasn't as hot and sticky as first morning.
The hut itself had a boundary of thick vines and root structures, protecting it from aerial view or assault, keeping it forever separate from the village proper. It made for a safe place to play and not get caught, although the adults never considered it safe. Fortunately, their paranoia meant they checked in on it occasionally. Dad was the only one to pass by it fairly regularly, sometimes even leaving a wrapped offering. Just in case the witch came back.
Dad didn't know much about the Dathomirians, much less Nightsisters, but he'd instilled the idea of basic respect into Dyrric anyway. Sure, Dyrric snuck off to play there, but he never broke anything or messed with stuff that looked weird. It was just a place too interesting to ignore, a place with stories inside it he would never figure out. A place where he could forget he was living in the middle of nowhere, his life pressed down into an unhappy thinness by shadowy figures he never actually saw.
Ghosts weren't real, Dyrric had long ago figured out. But bad men were very real, and he believed even they would never mess with the old hut that was practically growing out of the trees around it. So it was a sanctuary for a kid like him, whether Dad understood that or not. These were good reasons he broke Dad's rule, even if nobody else would get why.
He put the child back on his feet once he got them past the final line of tripping roots, looking around quickly to see that no one else had been there since his last visit. Dyrric had gotten good at noticing fresh tracks in the dirt. Not that he could follow them, or say if it was a leather or metal boot. Not like the Mandalorian surely could, but at least he knew if someone was already there, or had been recently. "Ever seen a witch?"
The child looked up at Dyrric, silent. His ears went back a little, though, making him look interested.
"Me either. I definitely don't think she was a bad person, whoever she was." Dyrric led the child towards the doorway to the hut itself. A purple flag still hung inside the tent, possibly a banner from the witch's homeworld. "I heard they're supposed to be bad, Dathomir witches, but I don't know. You can't believe everything adults tell you." He scoffed, knowingly.
The child cooed, possibly agreeing with him.
"Anyway, she left all sorts of neat stuff in here. I don't touch it, unless it looks really normal, but like, she was growing herbs, and there's still some glowy stuff in pots, and it's just neat to look at and wonder what it all is." Dyrric went inside, where, as advertised, the hut remained oddly alive with flickering, green light. "Real magic!"
The child hesitated at the doorway, his ears going back in what might have been alarm.
"You okay?" Dyrric, never one to hurt someone on purpose, immediately stopped poking at his favorite bowl - a strange, black pot lined with gold script that glowed blue in the darkness - and went to the child, hunkering down. The wide, seeking eyes weren't looking at him, and clawed feet pawed at the dirt under him. Fresh eagerness hit him, mixing with the worry. "Oh, wow, are you seeing something I can't?"
The child didn't answer him, not even with a blat or a coo. He stared into the hut, his tiny mouth falling open in surprise.
. . .
The child was slowly growing better at understanding what people said around him, although their thoughts and emotions always glowed much more strongly in the Force. He still made mistakes, though, with both. At night he sometimes rolled around, soft, hazy nightmares tickling his mind because he so badly frightened the nice lady who helped the good armored man who took care of him. He thought the nice lady (Carasynthia? Was that a name? Her name? Oh, his mind putting words together, but he felt like it was good to try, that he would need all those words someday and maybe too soon) was hurting the good man! But no, it was just a game and she had been mad-frightened of him for a while afterward.
That had hurt, but when he woke up he remembered that the nice lady had still protected him later. Someday he would understand a way to apologize to her. Someday he would make her mad-scare better.
But right now he was feeling something new and weird and maybe also scary? He could see something alive in the Force all around him, something vital and green and real. And it rooted all the way down into the shadows beneath the Force that lifted him and kept him safe, which he knew could be a bad thing, a place where the goodness and life of the Force could become something much darker and cruel, but the green here wasn't bad?
He cooed to himself, making a noise so he remembered where he was standing, balancing himself in the weave and weft of the Force, and felt the energy drift by, like it was examining him, too. Also like the Force did, touching him and warming him. But not quite. Something primal, but still just as important to the music of life. Different. Possibly dangerous, sometimes. But here its purpose was like the ones he knew - protection, and life, and goodness.
He didn't understand it all, of course, but he took the human boy's larger hand and stepped into the hut a little more, wondering happily at the way the green spiraled around him, licked up the walls of the old structure, keeping it alive in a way that made him want to laugh in delight. This was a loved place, and it didn't mind the children that visited it.
Such roots could be dark, oh yes, but these definitely weren't. There was a kindness buried in the old hut, armored by the rough voice of some distant, elder figure, and it made him think of the good man. Din, said those first new words trying to come together inside of him. Good Din, who takes care of me and likes me no matter what sounds he pretends to make. The concept of 'father,' if not the word itself. Like a hug, always close, feeling warm despite that pretty silvery armor.
The child blatted, a sound without simple meaning as he let his feet guide him towards an array of containers next to the herb jars that glowed so brightly with power and healing, and he patted at them.
He didn't understand what Dyrric said, not exactly. But the gist could be felt. The boy didn't know what was in the small chests, and he had never opened them, because the chests and the trailing green felt it wasn't time.
But the green trickled across the floor of the hut and lapped warmly at his feet, reaching out to the chest. As if something was okay there? Something that needed to be found. Maybe not meant for today, but very soon now. The child patted again at the chest.
Dyrric tried to gently pull him away, saying something else, something that felt worried. The child wouldn't be deterred, however, and with the scrabble of a claw he popped the top of one of the chests open with the help of a lick of that green life-fire.
The human boy gasped and fell onto his butt, startled. But the child stared at the glowing secret inside, awed by how pretty the rocks were, and how alive they felt. Good rocks, each one a special color, and each one humming songs of great power and protection to him through the Force.
He laughed, a squeaky little giggle, and he quickly palmed a tiny blue sliver before Dyrric slapped the chest closed again and picked him up, lunging back out of the hut.
. . .
Dyrric didn't put the child back down until they were almost back to the inn, at which point he stopped to rub the color back into his drained face. He wanted to look like they'd been running mindlessly around the jungle near the village, not scaring the poop out of himself with… he didn't know. A witch's ghost, her magic left behind. He looked down at the child, still ecstatic and waggling his ears at whatever the hell he'd done. Those chests didn't open! They never opened! Dyrric tried once, back on his first trip to the hut, and something had, he didn't know how to describe it, sparked at his finger like a warning.
But they could be opened now. The child had done something to them, or so it seemed, and was the hut glowing more strongly than usual? He thought, with the assistance of a knot deep down in his stomach, that it had.
"Okay, you really can't talk yet, right?" He tried to not sound frantic, bending down to look the little kid in the face. "Really, really?"
The strange child blatted, then smiled silently up into his face.
"Because we cannot tell anyone what we did, or that anything weird happened. You didn't take anything, did you?"
Broad ears went wiggle-wiggle. Oh boy, that better be an 'of course not.'
"Okay." Dyrric exhaled a long, nervous breath. He scrubbed at his face again. "All right."
The child cooed and gently plucked at his leg, giving him an oddly comforting hug. Dyrric was unable to resist, picking him up again. "Yeah, I think so, too. You want a snack? I'm starving."
A happy noise squeaking through the itsy but broad nose. Oh yeah. The little one could definitely go for a bite.
. . .
Din finished scrubbing the oiled parts of his blaster with a freshly laundered gun cloth, looking over at the mat in the corner of their inn room, where the child was happily playing with a soft toy Dyrric had loaned him. Ugly thing. It was shaped like a fat-butted root vegetable, and seemed to be mostly wedged-together fabric scraps of orange, white, and brown. The 'face' was equally haunting, a gawping, mindless mask with painted on eyes that stared back at the child.
He was going to have a nightmare about the weird hare-bird thing. He just knew it. But hell, it kept the kid happy. "Like I said, the front of the place is guarded to the hilt. Not just the couple of Gamorreans I saw, there's more that's automated. Maybe a clan setup?"
The child hugged the stuffed 'porg,' or whatever it was Dyrric had called the thing, and ignored him.
"Be weird to find a whole new kajidic taking root. There's just not enough around here for a clan to latch onto. Sure, probably they've got a hidden port further out, pulling some smuggler runs out of it. Maybe something anchored in orbit. But if it was a major set-up, it would have come up on scan when we arrived. Nothing did."
The toy bounced off the mat. Thankfully, it didn't have a sound-chip installed.
"So it's not a big operation. Not tiny, but not full-scale, either." Din sighed. "I mean, I could be wrong. Imps can hide their numbers, but a Hutt cartel? They're not subtle people." He continued to think over the situation. "I need to know more before I can get any idea what sort of trouble I can pull off, and to do that, I've got to get inside. Get the lay of the place. Bonus if I can get a look at the Hutt themselves, get a real sense of who we're dealing with."
The porg-thing bounced off the mat again, this time careening towards the wall. The child chased after it and plucked it back up, hugging it tightly to himself with a soft meep. The eyes bulged out of the white face, staring at Din. Staring, blank and awful.
Din shook it off. "There's a side entrance around the other end, but it's for non-village arrivals. Loyalists only, the staff, the servants. Saw a couple of dancers go in easily enough, sure, but that's not going to work for me."
The child gave him a look, curious now, the toy clutched under one arm.
"I mean it could." Din's voice turned wry. "Wrap me up in some veils, strap a few gold chains across my breastplate. I could be sexy."
The child stared at him. Somehow, he looked unconvinced.
"A Mandalorian in full armor can be very sexy, kid. Don't blow my self esteem for me." Din leaned back, feeling his shoulders hit the wall of the room. "Blue could go with this suit, couldn't it? Just drape some nice blue scarves over my helmet, waggle my way in with some jingles stuck to my hips. They'd buy it, right?"
The child continued to look at him. The toy porg fell to the mat, another cruel indictment against his plan. No. No they would not.
"You got any ideas, kid?"
The child stared at him, not really here for deep tactical input. After a moment, he wriggled up onto the bed next to Din and plopped next to his hip. His hand was still tightly clutched around something. It glinted.
Din tilted his helmet, giving the kid a gentle hug, mostly holding him in place so he wouldn't slide off the bed. "What do you have there?"
The child offered it up easily enough, unfolding the three little fingers to show the crystal in his palm. It looked pretty but plain, a bright blue quartz with its ends faceted cleanly. Not carved or finished, it was a naturally shaped stone. Something about it caught the light, though, making it seem to glow. "That's nice. You find that playing with Dyrric?"
An eager, answering blat.
"Well, don't eat it." Din tilted his helmet up to regard the ceiling.
The child made a noise, as if insulted by the suggestion. Then another sound, a soft, oddly thoughtful gurgle.
"What, you think I'm overthinking it?" Din made it sound teasing, giving the kid a gentle squeeze despite himself. Then it hit him. "I am overthinking it."
"Meh!" Eager again, encouraging his clan father.
"I can damn well walk right on in, can't I? Forget the head games, if this is a small cartel running set-up, they'd roll out a royal carpet for a Mandalorian looking for a job. Saves them a trick." Din looked down at the child, seeing him smile back. "Like they'd turn down a guy in full beskar. And… yeah…" He trailed off, thinking, grinning like a fool inside his helmet. "Oh yeah, that's an offer a Hutt could never refuse."