Grogu had been dozing for more than an hour, but suddenly perked up from Din's lap, craning his neck to see out the cockpit as if he was looking for the source of a sound.

"You okay, Buddy? Do you... sense something?"

Grogu looked up at him, still groggy, as if he'd forgotten Din was there. He merely pointed out the port side of the N1 and asked, "System?"

Din looked over his sensor array, and saw nothing but empty space. Pretty much all they'd seen since they left Hovak 5. Their time there was almost pleasant, but the indigenous reptilian tribesmen looked at Grogu a bit too much like a source of protein, and not near enough like a sentient child. They were a brutal lot Din didn't want as neighbors. At least he'd managed a friendly transaction with them. They had enough meat to last three years and Din was allowed to refuel and restock his ship from their surplus. Since then, it had been two weeks of uninhabitable systems and space, and not nearly enough fuel.

Din tried to remain as hopeful as Grogu was, but as he peered between data, he saw nothing but more space. He heaved a resigned sigh. "I'm afraid not, Kid, I don't see..." Din trailed off as a blip on his screen indicated a system some three parsecs off in the direction Grogu had pointed. "Well... okay then. Looks like you were right, Buddy."

Grogu hopped up onto the console, looking in the direction of the system. He was suddenly awake and excited. It was nice to see. The poor Kid had been anything but lately. It was enough to bolster Din's sinking spirits, and he was inclined to be particularly indulgent as he locked in a course. Grogu tapped on the transparisteel with his little claw, looking back at Din expectantly. "Ha-to."

"Yeah, Kid. Already on it."

They'd been in the Unknown Region for nearly a year now, charting a sector that seemed promising for habitable planets. Din wasn't sure yet what they were looking for or what they should do when they found it. He had no idea of their future. He only knew there was too much heat in the known galaxy. Too much darkness. All that mattered now was Grogu, and Din would die before he let the darkness have his boy. So he'd gone in search of peace. By consequence, he had become more willing to bend to Grogu's wishes. It worked so far because the Kid had an uncanny knack for finding good layovers.

The system came into view just as they dropped out of hyperspace. R5 did a quick scan and announced there was one planet in the system that was habitable. "More than the last four," Din muttered, and steered the ship toward a small system with three cool suns locked together in the center of it. Only four planets. Two gas giants, a frozen rock, and the planet in question. As it came into view, Din started running more detailed scans through the N1's array, and told R5 to fill in the gaps. Between the two, the data painted the picture of a cool climate, an ideal atmosphere, drinkable water, and a varied landscape. Interested now, he flew the N1 a bit closer until they were just beyond gravity's pull.

While the scans progressed across the surface of the planet, Din considered the data carefully, flicking his eyes out the cockpit every so often to correlate it with what he saw in front of him. Massive ice caps enveloped both poles. The scans showed ancient bedrock underneath, but it would take three much hotter suns and many millions of years to melt the ice. From the northern pole toward the equator, the ice began to thin out, revealing high, craggy mountaintops at first, then tundra fusing with a band of forested taiga, and finally a narrow coastline along a shallow equatorial sea that appeared to wrap all the way around the planet. The southern hemisphere was almost a copy of the northern one, but the sea and the land met farther from the equator, and the scans showed a much smaller land mass under the endless glaciers.

Din's curiosity was deeply piqued. Pursing his lips at the screens in front of him, he wondered how the hell this planet could even exist. He looked back at the three suns, furrowing his brow. The dense brown dwarf was probably responsible for the other two's proximity to it. The orange dwarf and the red dwarf flanked it at varying distances and angles, and against all odds, appeared to have found some balance between the three of them. It was as if they'd all abandoned their birthplaces and wandered close enough together to find a comfortable level of stellar camaraderie. The habitable planet was locked in an orbit not quite twenty light minutes away from the suns. The gas giants and ice ball lay far beyond it. The closest gas giant was near enough to have a tidal effect, but not close enough to knock the rocky planet out of orbit.

Din twisted at the tip of his mustache with his gloved fingertips, then scratched down the scruff on his jaw as he carefully processed all the analyses and looked back at the planet again. It was a fascinating specimen, and Din felt oddly drawn to it. Despite this and his dwindling fuel reserves, he tried to tell himself it wasn't a good place to set down, let alone settle. The voice that haunted him since Mandalore urged him to forget it's there. He was tempted to obey it, but kept his attention on the sensor array, unable to look away until a strange conscious tug from the planet itself drew his eyes back to it. At the very least, he could run some more scans. Why not? When would he ever come across a planet like this again?

"What d'you think, Kid?" he asked Grogu, who was as engrossed in the planet as Din was. Grogu looked back at him, and simply tapped on the transparisteel again. "Well, I guess we can go in closer to get a better idea what's down there."

Grogu answered with a single nod. Din smiled in his slight, sad way as he nodded back. "This is the Way," he murmured, and steered the N1 closer to the planet, happy to indulge his boy when he could. Happy to know this uncanny child was akin to him. It had little to do with the Creed these days, but he still wouldn't show his face to anyone else. Grogu was his family now after all, and it was only right that he should see the man his father really was.

As Din moved the ship into a high orbit, Grogu suddenly started babbling excitedly from the console, his ears spread wide and alert as if he'd spotted something, and strained to see out the cockpit, growing impatient. Like he knew what was there and couldn't wait to see it.

"Really, pal?" Din asked incredulously, watching Grogu point one little claw toward the equatorial ocean. Din ran his eyes over the analysis. The sea was composed mostly of water and salt. More phosphorous than on many planets, but nothing else unusual. When Din looked up again, he saw a sliver of land appear in the middle of the ocean. The spit of land widened gradually in a wedge that pushed the sea into a narrow trough between the two northern shorelines. The southern half of the mass was almost symmetrical to the northern half as the continent rounded into a huge swath covered with trees and vegetation that smeared together into a haunting shade of pale blue-green. Near the center, the land was bare and dark. Hot.

The way heat and cold found harmony here was strangely beautiful. For reasons Din couldn't fathom, something warm and radiant pulsed through his chest at this thought. While he looked down at a small continent shaped like a humanoid eye, he was almost sure he heard it speaking to him in words he couldn't understand. Din glanced back up at Grogu, wondering if he heard it too. It was clear he did, because he continued to point and tap on the transparisteel, beside himself with excitement as he grew increasingly impatient. "Ha-toi!"

"Do you really think there's something down there that won't kill us?" Din again assessed his read-outs, trying to overcome this lovely golden warmth with skepticism while it mercilessly tempted him to land. Topographical and thermal data showed that an enormous magma plume had created a series of geysers at the center of the eye. As evidenced by penetration scans, the geysers were only a small part of a massive spring system that spread out over the continent. From the epicenter of the geysers, the system began as hot springs that spread from the center of the eye for more than a hundred klicks in all directions before vast plains of baked ground and warm surface springs gave way to visible vegetation and trees. From this boundary, the system cooled and widened into a network of natural aquifers that interlocked at varying levels and depths, extending thousands of klicks under the planet's surface and hundreds along the ground all the way out to the sea.

Life readings showed a moderate population of lower life forms. No tech at first, but as they came closer to the northeastern quadrant of the Eye, a weak beacon blinked to life on his screen. All the tech was concentrated in one tiny patch of land about twenty klicks inland from the coast. The area couldn't have been much more than a hectare. Not an organized colony. Maybe a single settler or a small group of them. Energy readings suggested a security perimeter. Maybe a medium-range transmitter. One or two small vehicles at most. No sentient droids. Just workhorses, and not many of those...

Din lost track of his thoughts. He didn't know why he was trying so hard to identify the power signatures and radio signals, but he became so preoccupied with it, he could see the settlement in his mind. There was a garden and a pond. Outbuildings and defenses. So vivid an image should have turned him away from it. He'd heard too many stories about Night Sisters and rogue sorcerers to trust it entirely, but something felt right about all of this. However hard he tried, Din couldn't come up with any viable reason not to land.

Grogu's increasingly emphatic taps against the cockpit finally roused Din from his continued attempts to talk himself out of it. "Ha-too!" His son's big ears lowered a bit, and stuck out stock straight. "There!"

Well, now he was serious. Din wanted to acquiesce. Grogu had led them well so far, but the strange new sensations this planet conjured rumbled through Din's blood in a way that was unsettling. Everything in his experience and the voice that screamed to forget it's there insisted he shouldn't trust any of it. But Grogu was near tears now, terrified his father would refuse him.

A heavy sigh heaved through Din's nostrils, and Grogu momentarily fell silent at this clear sign his father was considering his suggestions. Din looked thoughtfully between his instruments and the planet below, his eyes peering closely at the patch of technology, first on his screen, then on the planet's surface where Grogu pointed. He lifted his eyes back to his son, who had watched him through all of this. One last time, Grogu tapped on the transparisteel, and insisted, "Ha-too." In this one word, Grogu gently asserted that it would be good for both of them to land here.

Another sigh mixed with a deep grunt in Din's throat. The ship did need tuning. And both of them could use a few days on solid ground to stretch the hell out and breathe fresh air.

"Is Way."

Din chuckled with fond frustration at Grogu's successful attempt to push him off the fence, and finally maneuvered the N1 into the right attitude to breach the atmosphere. In looking for a landing site, he found an appropriate clearing about seven klicks east of the technology cluster. It was far enough away to avoid startling the inhabitants, yet close enough to walk there in a couple hours. As soon as he locked onto the clearing and started the landing cycle, another swell of warmth filled Din's chest. Through it, a vague inkling told him they were expected.

Din scrubbed his hand over his eyes, trying to clear the visions and settle the rumble of unfamiliar sensations. Whether these strange manifestations were good, bad, or indifferent, he couldn't tell. To clear them entirely, he put his helmet back on, adjusted in his seat and cleared his throat. "Okay, Kid, you win," he grumbled softly. "But if we run into a nest of gundarks down there, it's on you, Pal."


Fortunately, gundarks weren't likely to nest here. At midday, the three suns shone on the surface of the planet in a soft haze rather than a blaring blaze. Grogu closed his eyes in bliss, just loving the breeze. Din smiled to himself, and let loose a quiet chuckle at the Kid's satisfied little purr. He looked up again and flipped through the settings on his helmet until he could get a better read on the climate. Humid, but a cool humidity. At solar noon, the temperature was perfect. Din recalled the spring system underneath the eye and scanned the horizon toward the center. "Yeah," he mused to himself more than to Grogu. "It gets warmer toward the center of the continent. The hot springs must be enough to affect the weather."

"Ha-to!" Grogu piped, bringing Din's eyes back down to him. He pointed toward the settlement impatiently. "Go," he insisted.

Din sighed, wondering if he was too indulgent. He told R5 to stay with the ship. The astromech was relieved enough to actually thank him, and gladly accepted Din's command to alert him to any incoming vessels. He turned to Grogu and nodded. The boy nodded back, and was immediately off in his pod through the mist like he knew exactly where he was headed. So Din followed.

It was a forest, but not a dense one. There were swampy areas near the springs that broke through the surface to form small tributaries. They snaked north through sandy, rocky ground. Sturdy grasses and thick carpets of moss covered large patches of it. Stunted willow-like trees dominated near fresh water sources, and short, bushy, blue-ish green conifers were most common between the wetlands. Occasionally, a looming, broad conifer would spring up in the distance, hovering over the rest like a silent acolyte clad in deep blue robes. A smattering of small deciduous trees with wide, ragged leaves and thick, dark branches sometimes marked the boundaries between swamp and dry land. Heat signatures suggested a variety of small mammals and a few amphibians and reptiles. Not many. Small, vivid red and purple birds called in low whistles from the trees. As the forest gathered closer around them, he caught a couple glimpses of a large herbivore. Nothing too threatening so far, but a screech or two from enormous raptors high overhead compelled Din to keep his hand on his blaster.

It was a perfectly livable planet for just about any sentient in the galaxy. A source of meat. Drinkable water. He was sure it would get dangerously cold during the winter, but for now, in what looked like the height of summer, the weather was perfect. Maybe they could spend a day or two here if the inhabitants were friendly. The planet had a bittersweet beauty to it that Din enjoyed. Misty and dim as the surface was in places, it didn't feel threatening. The dark shades of blue, green, and purple the plant life displayed were unusual and lovely in the gentle light of the suns. He found his mind drifting again, imagining a hunt. A fresh kill on a spit. Wild greens and native fruits. Scenes from a primitive kind of existence that had always appealed to him. A primal life was an honest one, after all.

"Ha-to!" Grogu's delighted exclamation jerked Din out of reverie after they had advanced through the forest for a little over an hour. "Close," the boy informed him.

Din switched back to infrared and did indeed see a collection of signatures that could only indicate a settlement. No sentient life forms yet, but definitely evidence one was there. "Who do you think is living here?" Din asked, genuinely curious to know what his son was sensing through the trees at this distance.

"A-wee-pa!" Grogu answered joyfully. A word Din had never heard him utter. Definitely not babble, though, as he'd learned the difference fairly early in his association with Grogu. This was a specific word for something. Or someone.

"You think you know somebody here?"

"Know," Grogu said confidently.

Din shook his head, unconvinced. His son's mind was vast and deep, and the kid could easily get lost in it. But Din played along, knowing good and well that, whether the kid's relationship with this person he identified as "A-wee-pa" was imagined or real, what he sensed was definitely real. The boy was excited. Not scared or anxious. Flat out ecstatic to recognize whatever they were headed to. It should have made Din extraordinarily uneasy, but he just didn't feel like anything was amiss. So he chuckled at Grogu's little bounces and squeals as they came closer to the cluster of tech, betraying a hint of excitement himself as he picked up his pace, trying to keep up with his jubilant companion.

He remained on guard simply because it was second nature, and Din became aware that the environment had an unusual influence over him as they came closer to the perimeter. The ground beneath his boots trembled with energy that matched something inside himself that never had a mate before. It was a ludicrous thought, but something felt familiar about this planet. He felt it in how the air breezed across the exposed fabric between the plates of his beskar, and in the gentle heat from the suns. Even in the pull from the gas giant. All of it so soft and quiet – from the air to the sunlight to the colors. Soothing. Subtle. A glaring contrast to the stark, arid worlds he typically found himself in. "Refreshing," Din murmured aloud.

"Ba-tu?" Grogu had stopped bouncing and vibrating long enough to look curiously up at Din's statement, asking him what he meant.

"I guess... it's nice here... sort of..."

"A-wee-pa!" Grogu answered, as if extending Din's sentiment to the mysterious hermit at the end of this path. Din envisioned a hermit because there couldn't be more than one or two sentients here. That became obvious as they came closer. Everything was quiet and still. Not even the faintest bustle of automated droids was to be seen through Din's viewplate.

"Well," he sighed, "I'm glad you're confident we'll be welcome here. But hey," Din stopped to face Grogu, and excited as the boy was, he focused his full attention on his father, recognizing the serious Mandalorian tone that punched through the modulator in his helmet. "We have to be careful, Kid. Okay. I know... you seem to know somebody here... that's good... but... be careful. They may not be who you think they are."

Grogu nodded his understanding, but countered "A-wee-pa."

"Okay," Din sighed. "I trust you."

The conifers began to clear, making way for more broadleaf trees and willows. There was clearly a large spring or pond nearby. Then, a security perimeter, as Din suspected, came into view ahead. From the looks of the equipment, it was constructed from ship parts and mismatched ray shield generators. Cleverly engineered given what the settler's resources must have been. Din looked toward the northeastern boundary of the settlement, marked by a sharp, craggy cliff looming some fifty meters above the stunted trees. Large boulders marked the southwestern corner. Defended by the spring and its tributaries to the south with the flanking cliff and boulders, there were only two possible approaches to the compound.

"Well," Din said. "Whoever they are, they know what they're doing." He stopped at the boundary, recognizing the field generators that marked a gate in the shield, and looked around in search of a viewer or comm unit, but never found one. He was getting no comm signals, and could find no other way in. "They may not want company..."

Suddenly, the gate deactivated, and Grogu shot his pod through the boundary before Din could stop him. "Hey!"

Din ran after the boy for a few dozen meters until they came upon what had been a light freighter. Given the configuration of the cockpit, jutting out in a long tube from the saucer-like body of the craft, Din guessed it had been a YT-2400, but many years had passed since it actually served as a Corellian freighter. The forest mosses covered most of the hull, and vines now snaked up the sides of the saucer and hung from the cockpit in a thick, dark teal curtain. The ground at the entrance ramp was dug out, because much of the bottom of the vessel was sunk into the soil. Large mounds of sandy clay now filled in the space created between the ground and the conical bottom of such a ship, and a series of vines were purposefully planted there. Maybe a native root vegetable. Nearby, outbuildings were constructed from panels and parts that must have come from the interior of the vessel. As he expected, a few workhorse droids sat in stasis there. A mid-duty loader and a cultivator sat parked and powered down in a small shed near a patch of dark soil. The garden yielded dark purple melons in abundance beside dense bushes of leafy greens. Large orange berries hung heavily from caged vines. Another bed nearby was filled with nothing but pale green grass that Din guessed was some kind of grain.

Beyond the agrarian features of the settlement, there was also a larger, ray-shielded shed near the back of the former freighter that sheltered an ancient speeder bike. Behind it, an old T-16 was parked in a clearing. All aged, but remarkably kept up. How the vehicles got here was beyond him, but Din knew this must be vital equipment for such a desolate world. From all he saw, the settler had everything they needed to create some kind of life here. Really, what more could anyone need than this? Din admired this person, whoever they were. Resourceful and clever, living off the land. It was exactly how Din pictured it from orbit.

Though it was unsettling to have imagined it so accurately, Din was oddly encouraged, and wasn't entirely surprised to see his visions come to life. The aesthetics were too pleasing to inspire anxiety, and not pleasing enough to imply disaster. There was a rough sort of comfort to the settlement he appreciated, and he became ever more curious about the sentient who had accomplished so much with so little.

As if the settler heard his thought, the bay door opened as Din and Grogu approached it. Grogu started babbling and calling, "A-wee-pa!" as a figure descended the ramp and stepped up to the even ground in front of them.

Din expected an exhausted old Wookie who'd survived the Empire in hiding. Or perhaps a retired smuggler. Maybe a worn-out bounty hunter like himself. In a thousand parsecs, he never would have expected what he saw. A human woman with locks upon locks of thick, pale auburn hair now stood in front of them. A long, light blue robe stirred in the breeze over a form-fitting two-piece body suit constructed of fabric unlike any Din had ever seen. There was an iridescence to the dark purple material that flashed subtly in the fading sunlight, drawing Din's eyes along the curves and swells of a slight, svelte body. The homespun fabric hugged a high, long waist and small, plump breasts. Such a soft shape, formed of graceful slopes and rises, yet sleek and hearty. Strong.

He realized he was staring, and looked up, mesmerized as eyes the color of glacial ice peered curiously into his...

It pinned him to the ground when he remembered she shouldn't be able to look into eyes. It was true that most people could guess where they were behind the viewplate in his helmet, and he was sure some could feel him looking back at them, but the way this woman looked into his eyes was different. She followed them as if she could see them. Like she knew their color and their shape. Their character and the way he looked out of them. She was looking into his eyes like she knew him. Like she knew everything he had seen through them. It jolted him to the core, and he suddenly had to fight to hold himself still.

The small, pert mouth twitched in what could only be amusement, but Din couldn't react or even move. He tried to speak, but instead became transfixed by the shape of her lips. Plump and soft, as blessed with slopes and rises as the rest of her, and set in a pale, beautiful face. A slim, delicate nose and high, prominent cheekbones. Her eyes were insanely blue. Bluer than the sky on Naboo. Deep and shimmering like gemstones. He just couldn't stop looking at her. Couldn't think of a single word or move an inch. It had to be some kind of sorcery. Or maybe it had just been too long since he'd looked at a human woman, and it only seemed like she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Either way, he couldn't allow this. Not for one second could he allow it. Scrambling to gather his thoughts back into something coherent, he managed to remember some of what he'd planned to say, willing his voice not to falter before he attempted a word. Yet none came. And Grogu finally lost patience with him, beyond excitement and in the next instant leaping into the woman's arms as if she were his own mother. She laughed and snuggled Grogu in her embrace as if it were a reunion. Din's thoughts caught on the idea. She couldn't be his mother. Din knew she wasn't, but everything in their shared excitement and joy suggested a familial tie. The way Grogu babbled and grasped her hair as if he was trying to tell her everything at once. The rapt expression on her lovely, animated face. The love in the insanely blue eyes as the woman held him tight, like she never wanted to let go.

In spite of his inability to comprehend what was happening in front of him, Din's heart suddenly maneuvered itself into configurations he didn't recognize. Golden warmth fired into heat when her eyes flashed back up at his. Then there was softness. Light. Brilliant light that spread through his blood and muscles. Power. The same rumbling sort of power that purred from the core of the planet itself. The same that rose in Din's chest, flooding it with static. He blocked it as well as he could, imagining a steel curtain drawn between himself and this power that emanated from her while he desperately struggled to remember a single word in any language he used to know.


Hard and resilient, but cool and reflective. A weapon. It was her first thought. A weapon was all the Mandalorian appeared to be when she first clamped eyes on him. A stoic, imposing warrior in pure beskar armor, constantly on his guard. Standing stock still and staring, spine straight and muscles ready to flex into action. It had been a long time since she'd seen a Mandalorian, but while she watched him, she became certain this one was unusual. He held himself with more grace and carried himself on nimbler feet than any she'd met. Beyond these superficial anomalies, there was also something about how he felt that defied the beskar.

He began to shift on his feet like a confused little boy while the eyes behind the black visor remained locked on her. She couldn't see them, but she felt them. Then, she began to sense them. Warmth and confusion trapped in a mass of static stared back at her. Through all of this, Grogu's mind told her about all that brought them here and why he thought it was a good time to visit and why his Mandalorian father needed to be here. Mandalore and the Dark Saber. New Republic foot soldiers and Imperial slime. His father was consumed by all of it, and Grogu knew it had awakened his power. It wasn't a good time for him to wake, but the Mandalorian had become more powerful with every day that passed and there was no stopping it now. He needed training. He had to see. Grogu needed training. He had to help. "I see, dear One," she said quietly.

Grogu took a small chrome ball out of his robes to show her. With it, he showed her all he felt for the Mandalorian. The ball had been part of the ship he lost for Grogu's sake, but it was still part of him. He explained that his father's Spirit had imbued it because it represented something to him. Many things. This little trifle was Grogu's most prized possession, and was much more than a trifle to him. He told her it made him feel safe. Even in his darkest nightmares, this piece of Din Djarin protected him. Made him feel less alone. Grogu asked her to look at his father, and see if she didn't sense what he was talking about.

She did as the boy asked, and looked back at the beskar helmet. He'd seen Grogu produce the chrome ball, and now his stance loosened, as if he were giving in because he'd been caught red-handed. She sensed his eyes on his son, and a smile on his lips. It stirred a golden sort of warmth that she began to feel trickling through unseen chinks in his armor. It was the very thing Grogu wanted her to see when she looked at Din Djarin. Under the layers of beskar, dense muscle, and decades of toil and solitude, a deep well of empathy had survived. Cloistered and hard to get to, but unmistakable. A purity and tenderness of heart tied to an intractable need to help and protect. She immediately understood why Grogu loved him so dearly.

Everything inside the Mandalorian's armor was warm, tender, curious. Everything on the surface remained cool, resilient, careful. There was a wisdom in him that kept all of it in balance somehow, despite his lack of training. But she sensed he was hanging by a thread, and only pure force of will and his love for Grogu kept him upright. While she watched him, three lifetimes of trouble and worry stared back at her, and she was amazed he was still standing at all.

The thought was just settling in her mind when she suddenly felt as if she'd been pulled out of hyperspace. A pulse of his golden plasma came screaming out of him and into her. Trust Grogu... want to trust you... want to... Why? Shouldn't, but... how does he know you... why do I want to trust you? That was the sense of what he'd unwittingly willed her to feel, but there were no words in the thoughts that penetrated hers. They were only impulses that she felt and understood, reaching inside as if he were asking in the only way he knew how. But he had no idea he was reaching at all. It was second nature. Intuition.

The connection made, he didn't know how to break what he didn't want to acknowledge, and she sensed everything through the extraordinary power he didn't even know he possessed. He was searching desperately for words, trying to avert his eyes from her. Trying, but looking back at her as soon as he looked away. There was heat in the gaze. Desire. But he was fighting against it, trying not to look at her in that way, but his eyes kept coming back to her. Burning. Drinking her in.

Beautiful. Why'd she have to be... so beautiful...

Just as this thought crossed his mind, he felt her understanding. He became aware that she knew all his thoughts and everywhere his eyes lingered, but he didn't know he was the one who made the connection. Because he was sure it was a trick, he tried to ignore the wellspring that erupted inside him even as he poured it into her mind. No words. Only feelings and amorphous impulses melted together in molten gold. By the grace of this inexplicable connection between them, she understood all of it. He didn't need words.

But he couldn't accept this thing he knew was happening. Drawing back inward while he tried to speak again, the flow of molten sensations disintegrated into jangled, anxious energy. Unbalanced. Untrained. But incredibly powerful. Just as Grogu suspected. She looked down at Grogu in her arms as he looked up at her. In the way they always spoke, he asked her if she understood why he'd brought his father here.

"I believe I do, my old friend. I believe I do." She looked up to the Mandalorian, who had heard this exchange and now searched more urgently for words to frame his questions. Through the static of a dozen languages and jangled energy, one word came through. Wary. He was wary of her rapport with Grogu, but more than that, he was wary of all he felt and sensed from her. As aware of the Force between them as she was, but not accepting of it. He didn't like that he liked it. Didn't trust it. The part of him that was deepest, that he tried and failed to keep from her, wanted to trust her, but he wouldn't let himself believe he should. He was almost terrified of her, but determined to overcome, and willed himself to speak though he couldn't seem to form a single word in his mind.

There were no words.

Her heart instantly warmed when the Mandalorian finally reached out to Grogu, willing the child to offer him some assistance. Touched and compassionate of his struggle, she took pity on him, and supplied words she hoped would put him at ease. "Your thoughts are safe with me, Din Djarin. I will take no power over or from them. You don't have to worry. We'll talk once Grogu is fed. I remember all too well how he gets when he's hungry."