A/N: I'm back, and ready to wrap đź‘Ź this đź‘Ź up! đź‘Ź
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Chapter 14: Wateela Che Du Kayfoundo Bunky Dunko (Water for a Hungry Home)
The sandstorm scoured every inch of Ben's exposed skin, leaving him stinging and raw. The wind tore at his limbs, pushing him and Shmi further from the safety of the outcropping just yards away, catching in his clothing and blowing him off course. Within a minute, Ben could hardly keep his eyes open against the wind and sand, and even if he could make himself look up, he couldn't see anything with the air so full of dust and his eyes so full of tears.
When he reached for the Force to guide his steps, it refused to heed his will. It whipped around him, wild, feral, showing him glimpses of things that could not possibly be there. Japor blossoms blowing past his face. Bloody footprints splattered on the ground. Chains hidden under the sand, revealed briefly by the wind and just as quickly covered again. A flash of munitions fire in the distance. He caught snatches of sound whispering just under the roaring of the wind. Voices speaking in tongues, singing, a high-pitched blaster discharge. The distinctive hum of a lightsaber.
The protection of the outcropping had to be only a couple hundred meters away, but Ben knew that he and Shmi were never going to make it. All it would take was a slight deviation in their direction and they would miss it entirely, and the wind and white-out conditions made it impossible to tell which direction they were moving in.
Ben stopped walking. He felt Shmi press up behind him, hiding her face against his back. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed the hand she still held to let him know that she trusted him. He allowed the welcome pressure of her touch to ground him, give him a point of focus for what he would need to do to save them both.
Ben planted his feet firmly on the ground and reached once more into the Force. The wind was wild and of no help, so Ben instead turned to the earth. He extended his awareness deep into the ground, under the shifting sand to the bedrock beneath. He felt out the edge of the stone, looking for what direction it extended to rise up into the outcropping.
It was hard, so hard to do. The stone was stable, but just as feral as the wind, which continued to buffet Ben in the Force and in the flesh. He could feel something hard and heavy building in his chest the longer he looked and the deeper he delved.
Finally, with sustained effort on his part, the Force showed Ben the way the bedrock punched through above the surface, creating the shelter he was looking for. The rock outcropping was close, but still too far, and Ben knew that he couldn't keep up this connection with the Force long enough to get there. He had to create a path, a way forward that he could see to follow.
Ben reached out with a hand, drawing on the deep stone for strength, even as he felt that power sink its teeth into his chest. A low, rumbling crack resounded in the air and within his breast. He heard Shmi cry out.
When Ben opened his eyes, he saw a narrow fissure in the crust of the earth, starting between his feet and extending straight ahead, toward shelter. He stumbled forward, pulling Shmi along behind him, eyes down and fixed on the thin trail to safety. The wind and the Force battered against him with every step he took.
After what felt like an eternity, the wind lessened, and Ben looked up to find that they had entered the shelter of the outcropping. Thanking the Force for this small mercy, Ben settled Shmi against the rock, underneath a slight overhang that was a little like a shallow cave and provided the most protection from the howling wind. With the rock wall on one side and Ben's body on the other, Shmi would be protected from the storm.
Ben ran his hands over Shmi's limbs and torso, checking her for injuries, making sure she was okay after the Tusken attack and the bantha throwing them. He was forced to use feeling more than sight, as the sandstorm was blocking out most of the daylight. Shmi understood Ben's anxiety too well, and as soon as he was satisfied that she was unhurt, she performed her own examination of him, her hands firm but gentle, as they always were.
There was nothing else to do then but wait. The roaring wind made it difficult to hear each other speak, and there was no way they were going anywhere anytime soon. They curled up together and tried to rest.
Hours later, Ben woke from a fitful sleep. His half-remembered dreams had been dark and confused, stirred as they were by the strange wildness of the Force. The sandstorm still raged. He had no idea how long he'd been out. He reached for Shmi and settled to find her asleep beside him. He was desperately thirsty, and he was sure Shmi was too, but there was nothing he could do about it.
As he scanned their surroundings, he noticed a deep hole in the rock near them. How had he not noticed that before? It was quite large enough for him to crawl into should he wish. He inched closer and found that he could not discern how far back the hole went. Reaching inside yielded a similar result, as he could not find the back wall with his fingers.
Well, this wasn't good. Ben couldn't believe that he'd allowed himself to sleep without properly checking their shelter. This hole could be the den of some animal that would attack them if it found them here. He needed to investigate this. He turned back to Shmi and tried to wake her, having in his mind that he would tell her what he was going to do so that she could be aware and watchful in case something happened.
Only, she didn't wake. She shifted weakly and groaned when he gently shook her, but she remained asleep. This wasn't normal for her to sleep so deeply. Worried, Ben checked her pulse and found it weak and thready. His hand on her forehead did not seem to indicate a fever at least.
Hand still on Shmi's brow, Ben reached out to the Force to see what it could tell him about her condition, but found it still unruly and uncooperative. He could only sense her vitality slowly fading. Ben wrung his hands over his utter uselessness. He had no water or medicine, and his grip on the Force was not firm enough right now to try to heal her. He could only wait, and hope the storm blew itself out soon so someone could come find them. Both he and Shmi had transmitters embedded in their bodies. They could be tracked easily once the storm was over. He hoped that Udez had made it back to Mos Espa and told Gardulla about the Tusken attack that had separated them. If he hadn't, Gardulla might think they had tried to run, which would not be good for them when she found them.
It was too bad that he and Shmi couldn't make a real bid for freedom now, when they were already out of the palace compound and unsupervised. But they had no supplies and no way to rid themselves of the transmitters. And Shmi was clearly unwell. They wouldn't get far.
Waiting and worrying was going to drive him crazy, Ben could tell. But he still had the hole to explore. He didn't want to leave Shmi alone in her state, but the hole posed a danger Ben couldn't ignore. The storm was showing no signs of letting up. It was unlikely that anything, animal or person, would be out in this to stumble upon them here. Shmi would be safe enough.
The hole was dark, and much deeper than Ben had expected. It sloped sharply down after a few feet, going deeper underground. It was pitch black in the tunnel, and though Ben was creeping forward slowly and carefully, he soon ran into trouble. He was thrown off balance when his right hand suddenly and unexpectedly encountered empty air instead of stone or dirt, and he pitched forward and nearly fell into what seemed to be a pit just in front of him. He tried to scramble back to solid ground, but the sandy floor beneath his knees crumbled and gave way under his weight.
There was a moment of vertigo where Ben was falling in total darkness, unable to tell up from down. Then his back slammed into stone, driving all the air from his lungs.
Ben gasped for air, blind and breathless, and hoped to the heavens that there was nothing in here that wanted to eat him. He tasted copper on his tongue. He must have bitten his cheek on accident in the jarring fall, hard enough to bleed.
When Ben finally managed to get his breath back, he realized that he was being stupid. He wasn't going to be much good without something to see by. He carefully untied the necklace he always wore, unraveling the knotted twine around the crystal until most of it was exposed. He channeled a little of his energy into the crystal through his bond with it until it began to glow. The light from the corrupted crystal was a sickly red, but it was better than nothing. Ben hung the crystal around his neck again. It felt cold against the skin of his chest. It stung like salt in a wound to open the bond with it at all, but Ben was used to it now. Lately he had been meditating with it more in an attempt to heal it, though he wasn't sure how much progress he was making. He had recently realized that perhaps the crystal's pain was a reflection of his own. It would make sense, since Xanatos had used his pain, physical and emotional, to bleed it. That meant, however, that to understand and heal the crystal's pain, he would have to delve into his own. He wasn't looking forward to that.
Ben looked around at the solid stone walls of the underground cavern before turning around to see—
—An enormous maw filled with dozens of razor-sharp fangs looming over him. Ben leapt to his feet, scrambling back away from the beast until his back hit rock and he could go no further.
Heart hammering, Ben stared at the huge head, teeth bared in a snarl, dark pits of eyes cast in shadow, awash in the eerie red light of the crystal. It was a greater krayt dragon, and it was dead.
His momentary panic subsiding, Ben noticed the signs he hadn't seen before. The great head was completely still, and the carcass was withered and desiccated, mummified in the dry desert air. Fascinated, Ben crept forward. This cavern must have once been home to this great beast, and the hole he fell through must have been to allow air into the underground lair. There may be other holes for a similar purpose scattered around the chamber, other potential ways out.
Ben gazed up at the greater krayt. He had heard many stories of them from Tatooine natives, and sometimes heard their loud calls late at night, echoing over the Dune Sea for miles. This, though, was the first he had ever seen of these fierce beasts, and it was even larger than he had imagined. Force preserve him, but the other slaves weren't exaggerating their proportions at all in their tales.
Ben walked around the dead dragon's head, in awe and wondering how much more magnificent it would have been when it was alive. It was probably a good thing that he'd found it dead though. It was so huge that it wouldn't even need to chew to swallow Ben whole. Its foreclaw had seen a bit more decomposition than the rest of it, with the flesh sloughed off and the pale bones exposed. It looked surprisingly delicate next to the rest of the huge animal. He recalled that in the stories, the krayt dragon could find prey and water sources by feeling them out with its claws somehow. Krayt dragon bones were highly prized by the Tuskens and desert peoples for their use as dowsing rods, and none more so than the claw bones.
Ben considered this a moment. If the greater krayt had made a lair here, it stood to reason there might be an underground source of water nearby. If he could find it, it might help Shmi.
Ben bent and carefully extracted one of the shorter claw bones, one that was only about as long as his forearm. He then bowed and silently thanked the dragon's spirit and the Force for providing this aid.
His sense of the Force was still off, so he did as he had once seen an elder who had lived her whole life enslaved on Tatooine do—he held the bone between his teeth, the better to feel the minute vibrations that shivered along its length, guiding him in the direction, hopefully, of water.
Choosing a tunnel branching off the main cavern based on the strength of the vibrations he sensed from the bone, Ben set off. He tried to move quickly—the sooner he found water, the sooner he could get back to Shmi—but he found haste harder than he wished. The tunnel wasn't exactly smooth, and Ben had only the dim red light of his crystal to navigate around the many obstacles, twists and turns. He paused to put the bone back in his mouth every couple of minutes to be sure he was on the right path.
As he pressed on, he had the oddest sense that he was being watched. It would have made him shiver had he not trained himself not to show fear so the slavers would see none of his weaknesses. But this was probably paranoia, overcompensating for a Force sense that was compromised by the storm, or just a natural reaction to the dark, cramped tunnels. So far underground, with only the sound of his own breath to fill the silence, it was near impossible to tell how much time had elapsed or how far he had really traveled.
It wasn't so quiet for long though.
Ben began to hear voices—no, a voice, and a familiar one at that—murmuring around him, no louder than a gasp, and no words discernible. The voice soon began to overlap itself, layering whisper over whisper so it sounded like dozens of people murmuring to him, all with the same strangely familiar voice.
Ben knew, somehow, that the whispers were not real. The Force was trying to tell him something—or perhaps confuse him.
Ben stepped into a wider, rockier part of the tunnel, and the voice suddenly ceased. He looked around, wary of the sudden hush. His toe connected with one of the smooth, white rocks, and Ben looked down to find that it wasn't a rock at all, but a helmet. There were hundreds of them in this part of the tunnel, all white with a dark eye shield under the visor.
The helmet Ben had accidentally kicked rolled over, and the light of the crystal shone through the shield and fell upon a face.
Ben paused, the eeriest sense of déjà vu settling over him as he looked at the face in the helmet. His gaze caught on a scar curling around the socket of one closed eye.
As Ben continued on, the kyber's red light shone through the helmets lining his way, revealing other faces that were always, somehow, the same. Some had different hair or scars or tattoos, but every face was the same under each identical white helmet.
The whispers had started up again. Ben did not know what to say to them.
He rounded a bend and the helmets, faces, and whispers were gone. Just the red light from the crystal and Ben's own breath once again.
Another bend, check the dowser, another turn, a climb over a pile of rocks that had caved in, and Ben found himself in another small chamber. The tunnel across from him was small, but a faint blue light emanated from it. Ben heard the echo of a plink, the sound any desert-dweller would know as a drop of precious water.
Just as he stepped forward to cross the chamber, the light was suddenly obscured, as though a door had closed. Only it wasn't a door—it was a cloak.
Ben's heart froze in his chest even as he raised his eyes from the hem of the dark cape, up the lines of a fine suit, over lips twisted in a familiar smirk to meet the cold blue glare that he thought he was free of forever.
"Xanatos," Obi-Wan croaked, dry throat clicking as he tried to swallow.
Xanatos' sneer somehow turned even nastier. "Not happy to see me, little brother? But it's been so long, and they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Don't you miss me?"
"You're…not here. Not really," Obi-Wan whispered. The faces and the voices weren't really there, so Xanatos must not be either. He couldn't possibly be here. "You're dead," he said, trying to bring forth conviction by saying it aloud. He knew Xanatos was dead. His wife would never have sold Obi-Wan if Xanatos still lived. Fallen in combat, she'd told him—killed fighting Qui-Gon Jinn. But could that be true? Could Obi-Wan really believe that Master Jinn would kill his own former Padawan?
"So sure, little brother? And what do you know of the afterlife?" Xanatos mocked him. "Maybe you've already joined me in death, killed by exposure and dehydration. Perhaps that is why we are able to speak to each other again."
Obi-Wan shook his head. "I can't die yet. Gotta save Shmi. She needs water."
"Idiot boy. You're in the middle of a desert. There is no water," Xanatos scoffed.
"I heard it though," Obi-Wan told him.
Xanatos laughed at him. "You heard it? Tell me, little fool, what else have you heard down here?"
Obi-Wan's heart sank. Doubt crept into his mind. Xanatos was right, after all. Obi-Wan had dismissed every other sound he'd heard as not really there, just an illusion, a hallucination.
Xanatos grinned nastily, the same way he always did when he knew he had gotten one over on Obi-Wan. "What makes you think that you can save your friend, you pathetic boy? You couldn't even save yourself. You never escaped me, not even once I was dead. You'll never make it. Especially not now that you've wandered right into my trap."
Obi-Wan's heart was pounding. He tried to step back, away from his tormentor, but found he couldn't move. He looked down to see his legs and arms bound in chains, driven into the rock to hold him fast. He choked back a terrified cry and thrashed, trying to free himself to no avail as Xanatos looked on and laughed.
"Even if you do manage to save yourself and her from this predicament, what is it all for, this struggle?" Xanatos taunted him. "You are still slaves. Your life is not yours. Your pathetic existence is only to crawl on your knees, serving your owner's whims. You are lower than a filthy worm. You are nothing. Why struggle so when nothing you do will ever matter?"
Obi-Wan calmed himself with great difficulty, taking deep breaths and forcing himself to be still, to not flail uselessly against the chains. His heart was still pounding too hard, but he spoke up anyway. He never did fully learn not to talk back to Xanatos. "It matters. It does." His voice wasn't as steady as he would like. He wasn't sure if he was trying to convince Xanatos or himself. One of the chains snaked around his throat, tightening just enough to make breathing and speech uncomfortable.
The eerie red light of the kyber made Xanatos's smirk even more twisted. It cast shadows behind the man that loomed larger than they should, seeming to move and shift even when Xanatos was still. It made Obi-Wan even more uneasy.
Xanatos sighed. "I remember you when you were just a starry-eyed boy of twelve, little Obi-Wan. The Jedi Order's loyal pup. You wanted so badly to be a Knight, to prove yourself worthy. You wanted to do important things in the galaxy. You wanted to matter—especially to Qui-Gon, didn't you? I remember how devastating it was for you when you realized that he didn't care, that he only used you to further his own mission.
"That is how all the Jedi are. It is only the mission with them. They see only ants far below their lofty perch, and care nothing for you or the other individuals they trample underfoot, so long as they still strive for the 'greater good.'"
Obi-Wan shuddered to remember how he was cast aside. But he knew that sometimes the Jedi had to make sacrifices to save as many people as they could. Obi-Wan himself had been sacrificed to that cause at Master Jinn's hands. Perhaps Master Jinn did not want to do it, but perhaps there had been no other way to save the planet. He had to choose the lives of everyone on Bandomeer over Obi-Wan. He had chosen this fate for Obi-Wan, but Obi-Wan had been a Jedi. He would have also given his life if the choice had fallen to him.
He was not so foolish as to believe that his sacrifice had made a difference to Bandomeer in the end, though. If he had never been on the planet in the first place, Master Jinn surely would have been able to save it just the same. Obi-Wan's sacrifice had been a waste, but that was his own fault. He should have listened.
"I tried to teach you, little brother," Xanatos tutted. "If you want to change the universe, you have to make your own decisions, take your own power, not serve an ideology that is so hopelessly blind, always chasing after an ideal 'light' that you can never actually reach. There is no light side. There is no dark side either. There is only power.
"Listen to me now, Obi-Wan. It is not too late for you. You need power to break these chains. Save yourself and your friend. Set yourself free from slavery. Do something that will change the universe, that will leave your mark, that will matter. All you have to do is grab hold of the power you know can be yours, that the Jedi would have you ignore. The power of the Force is there for the taking, little brother. You have only to reach out to make it yours." Xanatos smirked. "Or die here in this cave, alone and forgotten. I care not, and neither will the universe at the passing of a worthless slave."
Obi-Wan gritted his teeth and tasted blood again from the wound on his cheek. The worst part of listening to Xanatos had always been his honesty, even as lies passed his lips. Xanatos thought that he was right, and he had very persuasive rhetoric at his command. Obi-Wan only had an Initiate's education. He didn't understand the Jedi's philosophy about the light side or dark side of the Force in full, and no matter how hard he tried to refine his arguments, to put his own beliefs into words, it always seemed that Xanatos had a rebuttal. Obi-Wan had had to work hard to not let his morals be eroded by Xanatos' brand of persuasion.
But Obi-Wan remembered the first time he had really succeeded in opening himself up to the Force, on the disastrous voyage to Bandomeer in his hour of need. He had glimpsed the immense vastness of the Force and realized how little he understood it and how small and feeble he was next to such profound greatness. He had wondered how he could have thought that he had the answers, that he was owed a place in the universe, with the Jedi. And yet, the Force had not then, nor any time since made him feel insignificant. It made him see that he was a part of something bigger than himself, something that would take more than his one lifetime for him to even begin to understand. But understanding or no, he was still a part of it, and it was part of him.
"No, Xanatos," Obi-Wan said. "Everything we do reverberates in the Force; I have felt it. I know I am just one boy and can only do small things, but they still matter. Trying to make yourself stronger, to increase your own power, that's only taking from the universe and giving nothing back. It's not sustainable. It will only end with you crushing the ones beneath you when you inevitably fall."
Obi-Wan met Xanatos' eyes, narrowed in fury. "You're wrong about the Force, and about me, brother. You always were." Obi-Wan finally fully felt that truth inside him for the first time, hard and bright like kyber.
There was a sudden flash of white light. Xanatos shrieked and covered his face, falling back into the shifting shadows. The chains that had held Obi-Wan fell from his limbs. Free from his bonds, Obi-Wan glanced down to see that the white light came from his crystal, but it was dimming even as he looked. The shadows were gathering, threatening, ready to swallow him as soon as the light faded. They were so close and drawing ever closer around him, muffling his senses, drowning him in cold fog.
Obi-Wan did the only thing he could think of in that moment. He brandished the one tool he had, the krayt dragon bone still clenched in his fist. The remaining light in his kyber shot down his arm and out through the end of the bone, banishing each shadow it touched. Obi-Wan cut a path for himself through the darkness, making rapidly for the other side of the chamber, towards the place where he had seen the blue light, heard the sound of water. The shadows nipped at his heels, wrapped cold tendrils around his legs and tried to draw him back, but Obi-Wan fought them with all his strength. He squeezed through the narrow crack in the wall, and as he did, he lashed out again with the bone, still aglow with the last remnant of fading light from his kyber. A great rumbling tremor rolled through the rock, and he felt the cave ceiling collapse just a step behind him.
Ben fell to his knees, trembling in the near-darkness, coughing on the dust raised by the cave-in. He strained his senses to feel if the shadows were still after him, if he was still in danger, but he felt nothing. He was alone.
Plink.
The sound of water dripping brought him out of his hyperaware state. He turned and saw that the light came from a crack in the ceiling, from which water was steadily dripping into a shallow pool. As Ben approached, he saw that the pool was nearly dried up, with only a damp patch in the center. As he watched, another drop of water fell, soaking almost immediately into the parched ground.
Ben used a strip of cloth from his clothing to wipe his hands and then tie the bone to his belt. He did not want to leave it behind if he could help it. He may have need of it again.
He held his cupped hands under the falling water, waiting patiently for his palms to fill, drip by drip, with the precious, life-giving liquid. He felt relief at having finally found this source, though the journey here had been far more difficult and unsettling than he expected.
After all that, he should have known that things would not suddenly become so easy.
Ben's cupped hands were almost full when the drip of water slowed and then ceased altogether. Ben waited, hands outstretched and lungs frozen, but the water did not come again.
Ben's heart sank. It wasn't enough. Just this little bit of water he had captured was not enough to sustain both him and Shmi. It might not even be enough to revive his friend, but he did not know if he could get more. He looked up at the crack in the ceiling. He might be able to squeeze up there, follow the water back to the source, but it wasn't guaranteed. And he had no idea how long he had been down here, searching. Shmi was fading fast. He should get back to her quickly with what water he had.
But how to return? The cave-in had blocked the way he'd come, and even if he could go back that way, he did not think it was a good idea. It looked like he would have to squeeze through the crack in the ceiling, where the strange blue light was coming from.
That decided, Ben had yet another quandary. He didn't have a vessel, nor could he climb with both his hands cupped around the water. He cast about the chamber, but saw nothing that would lend itself to carrying water.
There was only one way then. He brought his hands up to his lips and slowly tipped the water into his own mouth, careful not to spill a drop. The cut inside his cheek stung briefly as the water touched it.
Holding the precious liquid life gingerly in his mouth, Ben found handholds in the wall that brought him close enough to the crack in the ceiling to allow him to catch the edge and pull himself up to wriggle through into the passage beyond. The tunnel was low and tight, but smooth. It must have once been an underground river. Ben looked up and down the tunnel in hopes of seeing which way the water had come from. But he sensed nothing from the bone hanging against his thigh, and he was wary of falling into whatever that thing with Xanatos had been.
He began crawling along the tunnel in the opposite direction, which went up very gradually. The blue light appeared to be some natural phenomenon in the rock, a product of the fossilized remnants of bioluminescent organisms that lived thousands of years ago. Ben was grateful for it, as it allowed him to see where a hole opened at the top of the tunnel, allowing him to escape the old riverbed just before it slanted back down again.
Ben did his best to keep following the warren of tunnels upward as much as he could, feeling out the incline of passages with his hands as he groped nearly blind in the dark. He prayed that the Force was with him and that his sense of it would guide him back to Shmi. Putting his trust in the Force was all he could think to do as fatigue set into his limbs, making it harder and harder to pull himself forward. The water in his mouth was a temptation, inflaming his throat with thirst when the means to quench it was so near, but he remained steadfast in his determination to save it for Shmi.
Just as he began to think that he had gone the wrong way, that he would not have the strength to find his way out after all, he heard the familiar sound of the wind nearby. He found the end of the tunnel sealed up with sand, and he so he set to digging himself out. It was with immense relief that, after long labor, he found himself again where he had started, under the sheltered outcropping of rock.
It was much darker than it had been when he went underground; Ben thought it must be because the suns had gone down. The sandstorm was still raging as well, blocking out what little light there was from celestial bodies. Ben could just barely make out Shmi's form huddled on the ground.
He went to her, pressing shaking fingers to her wrist, finding her thready pulse that confirmed she still lived. He stroked her hair and face, gently trying to rouse her, but she barely stirred. He opened her mouth and bent over her, letting a little water trickle from his mouth into hers. That seemed to revive her a bit, as he felt her throat under his hand work to swallow his offering.
Little by little, Ben fed Shmi small sips of water, going slowly to be sure she got it all down. When he had given her the last drop, he lay down beside her, too tired to remain upright, and felt for her pulse again. He thought it seemed stronger than before. He hoped he wasn't just imagining it.
It was all he could do, Ben realized. His whole body was trembling with exhaustion, his head pounding with dehydration. He wasn't sure he even had the strength to rise again. He could do nothing more for Shmi besides curl around her to protect her from the gusting wind with the bulwark of his body. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the Force. With long trial and error, he had learned to use the Force to sustain himself through periods without sleep or sustenance, but he had never tried to use it to go without water before. The storm wasn't making it easy, but he eventually found a meditative peace that soothed him, just a bit.
He forced his eyes open again, just for a moment. He was fading fast now and wasn't sure if he would wake again. His gaze found the barest pinprick of light, glimmering out in the darkness. Ben sighed, relieved. If he was able to see a star, the sandstorm must be dying down. He drifted off, his last thought a thin hope that Shmi, at least, would live.