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The white fur lining Ahsoka’s winter coat danced and waved in the corner of her vision. She lifted an arm to shield her vision, trying to tell if it was really snowing or if the wind was whipping up what already lay on the ground. Still squinting, Ahsoka turned to the figure beside her. Barriss. Heavy purple cloak wrapped tight around her body and hood drawn down to nearly cover her eyes, Barriss moved with grace and purpose. Her boots left small footprints in the snow, side by side with Ahsoka’s.
Ahsoka reached out with a gentle prod of the Force and sent a rush of warmth Barriss’s way. It was something she was only able to do with her closest companions: with Anakin, with Rex, and with Barriss. The closer a bond she shared with someone, the more profound a sensation she could share with them. In fact, on one or two occasions, Ahsoka had been able to share a clipped word or phrase. To Anakin: Trap! Run! And to Barriss, now: You okay?
Barriss turned to look at Ahsoka, the two of them continuing through the snowy landscape in verbal silence. I’m fine, darling. The words filled Ahsoka’s mind with a gentle presence, and it was impossible for her to tell if the warmth that rushed through her body was a gift from Barriss sent through the Force, or if the words alone had that kind of effect on Ahsoka. A blush rose to her cheeks, and she suspected it was the latter.
Ahsoka refocused her attention straight ahead and stumbled through the powder beneath her boots. The Temple of Ilum rose straight ahead, built into the mountainside and towering majestically over the two young womens’ figures. Ahsoka had been here a handful of times before: once for her first kyber crystal, once for her second, and once to help Master Yoda and a group of younglings find their crystals. Barriss, Ahsoka knew, had been here at least once before: to claim her first kyber crystal with Master Luminara.
Despite both womens’ familiarity with the temple, a sense of awe permeated both their beings as they approached. There was something so inherently spiritual about this place. Ahsoka could hear the crystals within, singing and creating a lovely chorus that echoed across the ice and out across the frigid air. Ahsoka knew that Barriss sensed kyber crystals not as music, but as emotion. She turned to look at her friend, carefully scanning her pale emerald face for a hint of the emotion she might be feeling. Barriss’ dark brown eyes met Ahsoka’s blue, and Ahsoka was thrilled to see them sparkle with joy and delight. It was so rare for her to see Barriss genuinely happy. Ahsoka wished she could slow down time and savor this moment forever.
In a few short moments, the two reached the intricately carved temple doors and Ahsoka was relieved to find herself shielded from the wind, at last. That incessant whistling no longer overwhelmed her senses, and Ahsoka found herself soothed by Barriss’s calm presence beside her. Unprompted, they each took a deep breath in sync and raised their hands to the temple doors. It was not strictly necessary to open the temple, but it was Jedi tradition to press hands against the cool ice and know that thousands had come before you, and thousands would come after. Matching movement for movement, the two young women slid their hands down the block of ice, kneeling until they could touch the ground with their free hands, their cloaks and coats sweeping lightly across the frozen ground. Ahsoka dug her ungloved fingers as deep into the snow as she could, picturing her reach extending far into the core of this planet, feeling absolutely tied to this land and the spirit that filled it. Barriss’s tattooed hand nestled into the snow mere inches from Ahsoka’s, and she couldn’t help but reach out to touch it. Cold, slim fingers wrapped around her own, and the two rose, hand in hand, using the Force to send surges of warmth each others’ way until they were perfectly at ease. Opposite hands raised to wave open the temple doors, the young women walked inside, a stream of light from within casting their shadows to the world from which they had just come.
***
Ahsoka sat cross-legged in the room that was the grand entrance of the temple. Barriss sat across from her, her lips in a relaxed smile that Ahsoka could gaze at for eternity. She relished seeing the whole plane of her friend’s face, now that both their hoods lay pooled around their shoulders. The hard ice was cold beneath Ahsoka’s body, but a combination of breathing techniques and shared body heat kept her from shivering. Both her hands clasped Barriss’s, and the two sat for a moment in silence.
“I’ve never been here without a Jedi Master,” Ahsoka finally looked up and spoke.
“Me neither,” Barriss echoed. “I’m grateful our masters let us travel here alone.”
Ahsoka smirked. Anakin hadn’t exactly had a choice about letting her go off with Barriss after she threatened to tell Master Obi-Wan who he was planning to spend his shore leave with. Master Luminara was truly the only one to be thanked.
Ahsoka gave a quick squeeze to her friend’s hands and reached into the satchel at her hip. She pulled out a fragile spherical gift, wrapped neatly in fabric she bought from a local vendor on Mirial. “Happy Life Day, Barriss,” Ahsoka blushed as she handed over her gift. It wasn’t much, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
“Oh, Ahsoka!” Barriss smiled already, before she even unwrapped the sphere. Her fingertips ran over the silky, hand-woven material, tracing the swirls with entrancing gentility. “Did you get this on Mirial?” The girl beamed with recollection of her home planet.
“I did,” Ahsoka admitted. “Master Luminara took me there while you were on that last mission to Utapau. She told me it’s Mirial tradition to wrap Life Day gifts in fabric for new headscarves.” Ahsoka rubbed the nail of her thumb with the pad of her other, not quite knowing what to do with her hands now that she didn’t have anything to hold.
“It is!” Barriss seemed touched at the attention Ahsoka gave to her culture, even as she deftly unwrapped the headscarf and draped it over her veiled head. “How do I look?” Barriss pouted her lips and closed her eyes, tilting her head toward the domed ceiling of the temple.
Ahsoka laughed out loud. “Beautiful!” her words echoed across the ice. “Like a goddess!”
Barriss smiled contentedly and glanced down at the object in her lap, as if remembering just now where it lay. Her face turned serious. “Is this..?” she trailed off, raising the glass sphere to the wintry light and turning it in her palm.
“A nightbloomer?” Ahsoka finished. “Yes. It is.” She couldn’t help but smile, pleased with herself.
“Oh, Ahsoka,” Barriss said again, this time with a deep pool of emotion behind her earthy eyes. She moved to pull Ahsoka into a hug, and the warmth of Barriss’s free hand on her back and her sweet breath on Ahsoka’s exposed neck sent butterflies straight to Ahsoka’s core. Thank you , Barriss whispered to Ahsoka, not so much out loud as through the Force. Ahsoka sent back a rush of feeling: namely gratitude, peace, and love.
Barriss pulled back from the hug and cupped the glass orb in the palms of her hands. Inside was a small desert flower blooming maroon, velvety petals. Barriss had told Ahsoka about it once, on Geonosis. It was the time they were stuck beneath the rubble of the weapons factory, waiting with waning hope for their masters to rescue them. As the girls’ drifting consciousness turned to thoughts of home and childhood, Barriss described this flower that used to grow on her homeworld.
“Its petals were so soft and thick it felt almost like petting a tooka.” Ahsoka remembered Barriss saying. “And it used to grow all over the place, back home. I don’t remember much about my life before the Order, but I remember the nightbloomers…” Barriss’ voice had trailed off into a whisper as she recalled the sensation of rubbing the petals between her tiny fingers.
Ahsoka’s legs had tangled with Barriss’s, and she found great comfort in the contact. “Master Luminara took me back last year…” Barriss spoke again, her voice taking on a somber tone. “There were none. Left.” She stated. “I had been gone, what, 14 years? And all the nightbloomers of my childhood. Gone.”
Ahsoka had sighed and pressed a palm to Barriss’s knee, sharing briefly in her sorrow. “What happened to them?” She has asked, tentatively.
Barriss shrugged. “Chemicals. Pollution. Overpopulation. People. ” She hissed the word with distaste, and a shiver ran up Ahsoka’s back. “I just wish…” Barriss trailed off again. “I just wish I could touch one again.”
Her hot breath making clouds in the cold Ilum air, Barriss hastily separated the top half of the orb from the bottom, exposing the flower to frigid air and running the back of her index finger along its smooth, velvety texture. “Where did you find this?” Barriss met Ahsoka’s eyes, looking up from wetted lashes.
“A desert planet called Jakku,” Ahsoka told her. “Anakin and I went planetside about a month ago and one of the locals we stayed with had a few of these potted in her house. She said they’re not actually native to the planet. Some Mirialan settler must have brought it decades ago, and now they’re everywhere.” Ahsoka reached to grasp one of Barriss’s hands in her own. “They’re thriving, Barriss,” she said, and reveled in the peace that saturated Barriss’s presence.
Wiping away a single tear from each eye, Barriss put the glass orb back together, the special seal shielding the nightblossom from Ilum’s freezing temperatures while still allowing oxygen to seep in through osmosis.
“And I have something for you,” Barriss’s voice was soft as she reached into her bag, set gently beside her.
She pulled out a small jewelry box and handed it gingerly to Ahsoka, shifting her legs to hold her nightbloomer safely in her lap once the gift was handed over.
Ahsoka ran her fingers along the edge of the box, twirling the silk ribbon around and around, teasing Barriss by taking her time. She knew her friend was chronically impatient. As Ahsoka lifted the box to her cheek and shook it, craning to hear what was inside, she earned a soft shove of the Force from Barriss.
“Just open it, ‘Soka,” the other girl cooed playfully.
Ahsoka gave in, never quite able to resist a request from her best friend. She loosened the pale blue ribbon that graced the outside of the box and asked Barriss to help her tie it around her wrist in a bow. Barriss agreed, nimbly tying the material close to Ahsoka’s exposed pulse, careful not to make it too tight.
Ahsoka gave Barriss a smile and nod in thanks and turned her attention to the present before her. Carefully sliding off the lid of the box and tucking it behind the bottom, Ahsoka stared dumbly at the object within. It was a delicate, well-crafted metallic necklace with a small pendant hanging from the chain. The pendant was a clear glass vial, filled with…was that dirt?
Ahsoka looked up at Barriss, and the confusion must have shown on her face, because Barriss jumped in. “It’s soil,” she explained. “From Shili.” Ahsoka’s eyes widened in delighted surprise at the mention of her home planet.
“When we were trapped beneath the ruins of that weapons factory on Geonosis,” Barriss rubbed her thumbs back and forth over the sphere still in her lap, an anxious movement. “You told me you feared to die without ever touching Shili’s soil again. And I know you wanted to feel it between your feet. But I thought it might be nice to carry a bit of Shili with you. That way when you’re on the battlefield, you don’t have to worry about…” Barriss trailed off, her mind going to a dark place. A place she and Ahsoka had visited together once or twice before, but tried to avoid as often as they could. To imagine a world without each other was to imagine no world at all.
Ahsoka used the Force to shoot a spark of light through the darkness and brighten both their auras.
“I love it.” Ahsoka leaned forward to wrap Barriss in a hug, every cell in her body saying to Barriss, not so much in words as in feeling: I love you . Ahsoka felt the emotion returned in kind.
“Help me put it on?” Ahsoka leaned back onto her heels, her hands grasping Barriss’s shoulders. A smile in response, and Ahsoka rose to her feet, sticking out a hand for Barriss to join her. Barriss put her flower and headscarf in her bag, and Ahsoka did the same with the jewelry box, keeping the necklace entwined between her fingers. She let Barriss pick it carefully from her grasp and turned around, facing the entrance where younglings would enter the depths of the temple to find their kyber crystals.
Barriss’s breath warmed the back of Ahsoka’s lekku, and a slight shiver sparked up her spine. Barriss slipped her arms over Ahsoka’s head, her sleeves tickling her friend’s shoulders. She moved her hands to the back of Ahsoka’s neck, brushing her lekku out of the way. Barriss was careful to touch them respectfully, as she knew how sensitive they were. Ahsoka inhaled a quick breath. “Done,” Barriss said, fastening the clasp and letting it go. “Turn around, love.”
Ahsoka blushed and turned to look up into Barriss’s dark eyes. She echoed Barriss’s words from before: “How do I look?”
“Like heaven on Ilum,” Barriss smiled sweetly. A rush of anxiety filled her chest. “Can–can I kiss you?” she asked, though not for the first time.
“Of course, Barriss,” Ahsoka responded, one hand clutched at her chest, holding the pendant like a lifeline. The two were already standing so close their breath mingled together. Barriss dropped one hand to Ahsoka’s waist, pulling her tight and pressing a gentle kiss to her lips. Her right hand rose to caress one of Ahsoka’s lekku, trailing the back of her tattooed hand across the soft skin. Lips still kissing and tongues dancing, Ahsoka let out something like a purr, then immediately pulled back, embarrassed.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, her hands now clasped together in front of her.
Barriss threw back her head in a laugh. “Don’t apologize. I thought it was cute!”
Ahsoka smiled and stepped back into Barriss’s embrace. “Happy Life Day, Barriss,” she spoke into Barriss’s cloaks.
“Happy Life Day, Ahsoka.”