Saga - OT Follow Me Home (Ezra post-Rebels; Autumn Bingo)

Author: Findswoman
Title: Follow Me Home
Era: Saga–OT (roughly; takes place at some indeterminate point after Rebels and after the Battle of Endor)
Characters: an older Ezra Bridger
Genre: Vignette, introspection, slice of life, potential AU
Summary: One of Lothal’s most famous sons, returning to his homeworld after a long time away, follows a black Loth-cat.
Notes: Written for the 2022 Autumn Bingo challenge, using the following row of the bingo board: Graveyard—Gratitude—Black Cat—Pear—Bonfire. Once again, I thank @Raissa Baiard for beta reading.

---

He was here.

He had made it. The journey had been a long and eventful one, but that was a story for another time. All that mattered was that he stood once again amid the steppe-grass and stone outcroppings of his homeworld.

The young man, goateed and cloaked in a long burnous, looked around him. The grasses were golden and sere, crackling slightly underfoot, and a tangy chill hung in the air: he could tell it was the harvest season. It was also getting on toward evening, for the sky was as golden as the grass, and although the sun was sinking the moons had yet to rise.

Pulling his cloak closer about him he walked on through the grasses. Rustle, rustle, swish, rustle: somehow, even without a comm or compass, he knew he was going the right direction. Swish, rustle, rustle, swish…

“Mrow.”

The man stopped. Something soft, small, and alive was nudging his ankle. He looked down to see a small feline creature, glossy black from its tall conical ears to its puffy tail. A Loth-cat, of course, common to this terrain, though seldom seen in this color. It was rather pretty.

“Mrow?” it said again. It sounded like a question. From what the young man remembered about these beasts and their manner of communication (and he was grateful he had not forgotten it after such a long absence), he was fairly certain what the question was: Come with me?

“Yeah, for sure,” he said aloud. For one thing he knew he remembered was this: when one of these creatures said come, you came.

The cat gave a satisfied purr and led on through the steppe-grass. The young man followed: rustle, swish, swish, rustle once again. Meanwhile, the sky’s gold grew deeper and oranger, and the sun sank lower, casting its glow on the grasses. Swish, rustle, swish, almost endlessly.

But the man was glad to follow, for he knew where he was.

Presently they came to the edge of a city: the city, Capital City. The man knew it well, as he had grown up there, though it has been transformed: lofty spires of alabaster white replaced the dark spew of the Imperial smokestacks, and the Imperial Complex no longer cast its baleful shadow over the skyline.

With another mrow, the cat led the man down one of the main streets. He looked around, taking in the sights. Evening streetlights were beginning to come on, and lights shone from windows; the streets were still moderately populated with both foot traffic and light speeders as people made their way home from work or ran evening errands. He blended in easily with the townspeople, many of whom were wearing the same style of burnous as he was; several of the women, he noticed, still wore the traditional wimpled hat. The cat wound its way deftly through the crowd, and the man followed it as best he could.

They reached an intersection, where the cat stopped and drew itself up with a proud mrrr. The man looked up to read the street sign, written in both Aurebesh and the old Lothali alphabet: Chapel Street, rehuv Mishkana. This was where he had lived with his parents when he was small and still had his parents. He had run and played on it as a child, run from it completely when the Empire came for his parents, and then come back to continue their fight against that same Empire. Many a jogan he had bought (and pilfered) from its shops and stalls. He looked about; even now, close to dusk, several of these were still open, though others were just beginning to put up their shutters.

He turned into one of the produce shops, and the cat followed him, giving a mew of indifference. He surveyed the wares. The shop was out of jogans, and while the meilooruns were quite fine, they were, of course, a bit too large for his pockets and pouches (he somehow knew he would be doing more walking). But the moonglow pears looked nice, and he seemed to member they were in season at this time of year anyway. So he bought himself one with the credit stick in his pocket. If the shopkeeper (an older Human woman, in one of the wimpled hats) recognized him, she said nothing of it.

The cat, who had been querulously mewing the whole time in the shop, returned to purring and nudging his ankles as he turned back out onto the street. He walked leisurely along, looking at the houses and buildings. There was old Professor Yuhallam’s house, there was Tseebo’s (poor fellow, he never found out what had happened to him). There was where the Sumars used to have their farmstand (it was a stylish bistro now). There was the butcher shop where his mother used to buy nuna or shaak roast for Taungsday nights. There, through the alleyway between two buildings, was the lot where they had found that TIE Fighter that time (though now home to a perfectly ordinary Incom T-16 Skyhopper and a few assorted landspeeders). The man looked up to the roofs; yes, those were the very ones he had sprinted and parkoured across trying to catch up with the stolen fighter’s madcap career.

And there, near another alleyway, was the wall that had once held all the “wanted” posters. It had been repainted white and there was no longer any trace of them, but the man remembered the spot and the pictures as clear as day (he had been so young then).

The cat’s “Mrrrrow!” broke in on his thoughts as it nudged him onward. It led him around a corner onto another major thoroughfare: Liberty Street, rehuv Dror. There, people were lined up alongside the street and looking expectantly from windows and balconies; many held lightsticks or even candles, as dusk was well advanced now. Proceeding slowly down the street toward them was a crowd of other people, also holding lightsticks or candles. Now and then someone from the side of the road would join the procession as it passed by. Many people walked in silence, but a few hummed or chanted under their breath.

The man knew what this was: the annual memorial procession, held on the middle day of the harvest season, leading from the central square to the cemetery on the western edge of town. All those walking down the street with their lights were those remembering lost loved ones or friends.

An old man was selling and lighting candles outside one of the buildings. The young man went to him, bought one, lit it, and joined the group. For some reason it felt right.

The cat, giving an approving prrrhh, strutted beside him.

The group marched on through the streets. Dusk was well advanced now; as the outskirts of town drew nearer, the city’s lights began to dwindle, and a big, dark void seemed to lie ahead. The young man, who had been walking in silence, now found himself reciting an old mantra he had learned long ago: “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me…”

Suddenly a blaze of flame illumined his field of view: the light of a young bonfire. It had been kindled, as was traditional, in a circular stone pit at the center of the cemetery, and those of the marchers carrying candles would throw their candles into it, letting the tiny flames of their memories add to the larger light.

In the flickering glow the young man could see the rows of vine-covered memorial stones. As a child, he had always marveled at how many of them there were. But now he knew their number differently: for each being now sleeping beneath one of them, there were several hundred more who had died graveless at the Empire’s hands.

Slowly the crowd of marchers approached the bonfire to toss their candles in, one by one or few by few. Most of them also withdrew to the side to bask in its light for a few moments, or longer. This the young man did as well after tossing his candle in, and as he did, the cat wove about his feet in figure-eights, purring with fervor.

He picked the cat up in his arms and held it close, stroking its glossy black fur. Together they stood there a long while, basking in the warmth, the light, and the memory. They stayed there until all the people had trudged home, all the lights had receded back into the city, and all the flames had died down. And then—

The man became aware of another light, some distance away, twinkling overhead. A small golden rectangle, high up but not yet in the sky—a window. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see from where it was coming: one of the old communications towers that stood at intervals in the steppelands…

“Mrrrah!” The cat perked up in his arms, then jumped from them and ran through the grasses toward the tower. This time it was an imperative: Come!

The man was glad to follow, for he knew where he was.

He was home.

fin

Spoiler: Notes

I am deliberately avoiding coming up with an exact figure for how long after canon events this story takes place, because I’m not sure I agree with what’s implied in the current canon. Thus this can be considered a bit of an AU—and again I say, it’s only “alternate” if you want it to be!

Moonglow pears: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Moonglow (turns out to be the name of a real-life pear variety, too)

Tseebo: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tseebo

The Old Lothali street names are fanon and based on the following Hebrew words: reḥov ‘street’, mishkan ‘tabernacle’ (the word used for the Israelites’ portable sanctuary while wandering in the wilderness), dror ‘liberty, release’ (the word used in the original Hebrew of the Liberty Bell’s verse, Leviticus 25:10).

Professor Yuhallam is an OC who previously appeared in “I saw the wolf…”

Who is in that tower? If you know the end of Rebels, you might know!

 

Ah, what a lovely and moving piece you wrote for the Autumn Bingo challenge, and I am so thrilled that I finally got around to reading it! I will blame the general chaos of the holiday season for my delay!

You always have such wonderfully evocative landscape details, and here I especially loved the description "tangy chill." It was such a creative and excellent phrasing.

I got a chuckle out of this. You really captured that sort of adorably demanding feline nature so well here. Bravo!

Again, you give us some really rich and vivid setting details that allow the reader to create a true mental image of the surroundings. I also appreciate how deftly you could conjure those feelings associated with homecoming. The sense of being in a place that is at once familiar and changed or different. It's a very complicated emotion, which I think you capture so well here.

I always love how you focus on cultural details like clothing and how you manage to describe the traditions of peoples and places in your stories. It is a great gift.

This section and the following two paragraphs again did a magnificent job of capturing that feeling of homecoming. There is that feeling of sort of bittersweet nostalgia beneath all his childhood memories as well.

And this sounds like a powerful and profound ceremony that really connects well with the themes of homecoming and memory in this story!

All in all, another triumph! Well done