003. DIVINE REVELATION

( ⁠—Communication of knowledge to man by a divine or supernatural agency )

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What was a mere krayt dragon compared to what she was feeling now? The monster ate when it starved but this sinking thought in her, it had been starving for many parsecs. Even if it consumed her, it would never be enough. 

The world drummed and rattled like drudging music but, Myra was steady on her feet and mind. The Sight had promised her everything that she was enduring, an experience that she had tremendously faced before. Her immortality had simmered down to an unnoticeable speck, her frozen heart simulating a human pulsation. I know you.

Just like the way the masked hunter had been out of sight but never out of her mind, Myra heard him first before she laid eyes on his flurried stance that hurried outside the cantina. 

The wild, wild beating of his perfect heart. Like a metronome, keeping pace yet, rising in clicks. A wicked reminder of his mortality; his frailty that was unexpected for a man who held a reputation for being a battle-hardened assassin. His only weakness surged in his heart. 

When the hunter swung around to see her, it was with the hesitance that came with perplexity. The town and the hot winds around her fell to dust.

His massive armour was adverse to Myra's namely shade. The refulgent silver had served as his aegis, dents and scrapes shading mere strokes as if avoiding death several times. If it weren't for the T-shaped visor, Myra would have read his mind flawlessly. The Mandalorian, his deeper thoughts seemed to manifest into her.

"Myra," he rasped out through static, his tone of something she couldn't place. A painful need, maybe. An untamed relief. A broken confession. It seemed like a hundred years ago since she had met a human male to gauge him. I know you. 

It was like a faulty frequency, a missing signal in her head—his thoughts were clear but, not quite. It was as if his surprise was her own, the manifesting of his own predilections in her. The muscles in the pit of her stomach tightened and the Ichor hammering up her veins to mimic adrenaline. This was different from what she was usually accustomed to. 

Something about the hunter made her daren't move, daren't breathe, daren't blink. The hunter knew her. Her name was like a prayer in his head, every thought seemed to fuel a new sentiment in him. Each one coexisting of another—it was too much for Myra to ply with. So much pounded into her at once, it was no match for her might.

She let the Ichor assemble back at her hands rather than her head, keeping her distance from his strange mind. She was much too confused to comprehend. 

Myra did not know how to respond. Everything about this man had managed to wither her inside out. The Mandalorian moved to her like it was a compulsion, and paused before the Marshal. He had seen the shock collar. 

"She's not yours to hold captive," the hunter commanded a severe reproof. Something coiled in Myra's gut, a fire that had caught up to her throat until she termed it as rage. It was his rage. 

"The enchantress? I think she is," The Marshal smirked at him, playing a farce. 

"Where did you find her?" He asked, the Mandalorian's gaze finding hers again.

"You two know each other?"

He didn't take his eyes off her. "Something like that."

"I found her on the suburbs of the town, freaking out a few Tuskens. Imagine my surprise when I find something more dangerous than a thousand dragons combined." The Marshal claimed to break the deafening stillness, beckoning Myra forward with a finger. The remote in his palm gleamed, singing fear into her ears. She followed instead, flanking his side and her bare feet sinking into the hot sand. 

"Do you really know this person, witch?" The Marshal flicked his wrist toward the silver-crested Mandalorian in a single gesture. 

How was she to explain what she was feeling in a single answer? It was absolute that she knew him but, something in her refused to retain the memories of him. He remembered her, she was an instinct in his mind—an inked brand that refused to fade. 

"Yes," she said quietly. She had known him. 

The Mandalorian's temper was grating; confused. His thoughts seemed to speak to her as if he knew she could read minds. How strange that he knew a witch's Ways. What happened to you? Then heeds seemed to morph to a craving. A newfangled tenseness that beguiled his craving. Come here. I need you.

"Look, that creature's been terrorizing these parts since long before Mos Pelgo was established," the Marshal interrupted her lucid reasoning, and his voice something of apprehension as he addressed the Mandalorian. "Thanks to this armour, I've been able to protect this town from bandits and Sand People. They look to me to protect 'em." 

"But a krayt dragon is too much for me to take on alone. Help me kill it, I'll give you the armour," he offered.

"I want the witch, too."

"Not for sale."

"She's mine," the Mandalorian struck out. It was no longer his compulsion to have her, it was the deficit of not having her. His words were set in stone.

"Fine, you can have her," the Marshal snapped. He rolled his eyes, and Myra heard him think about the trouble he'd be saving the town from. "Waste of my time anyway."

Myra didn't need to read the hunter's mind to know his answer. His tone was stern and demanding. "And the collar has to go."

"She's too jumpy," the Marshal said, edging on a grumble. He scratched the piercing wounds on his throat. "She could kill me."

"She won't," he asserted. She thought she heard a laugh in his voice, her thoughts proved her right. He was amused by her unchanged tenacity. Something in the past had reminded him of a similar event—she couldn't discern it clearly. His stupid helmet, she cursed.

The Marshal looked to might dunes thoughtfully. With a strangle sigh, he clicked a button on the remote which loosened the grip of the collar and Myra felt her breaths slide back into her. She fisted the collar, letting her anger speak as she kicked it into the sand. 

"If she leaves or tries to kill me, the deal's off," the Marshal countered. 

The Mandalorian was an expert tactician. He had seen the dragon move, wreak havoc on the town. His mind was nothing short of a primitive human's, dislodged and input from various abditories. 

"I'll ride back to the ship, blow it out of the sand from the sky, use the bantha as bait," the Mandalorian strategized to the best of his abilities. 

The Marshal was not so convinced. "Not so simple. The ship passes above, it senses the vibrations, stays underground. But I know where it lives."

"How far?"

"Not too far."

"We'll leave in ten," the Mandalorian announced and merged his gaze with Myra's. "She'll be travelling with me."

There it was; her restraint on a subdued part of herself steepling away into an abyss. She roped it back by looking away. 

"I'll get my speeder bike," the Marshal nodded and eyed Myra dubiously. "Don't move."

She had a sneer for him, curling her lips over her teeth as he walked off. In her momentary fit of fury, she had forgotten the hunter closing in on her. 

Myra had counted the inches as he did, the liquid heat pooling in her gut. He was swaying at her influence that came with being a witch—it was easy to steer around. He had radiated higher temperatures and his heart raced to no extent. 

She tensed when he reached out to touch her, fisting it midair. He was reminding himself something—an abditory in mind was tugged on, now a fickle memory. Still, the greater part of Myra's senses couldn't care, focused on wondering why his helmet was not coming off. 

"Almost forgot," the Mandalorian breathed, his modular crackling with the bad interface. He was laughing; it was the best sound she had ever heard. He was rejoicing. "Can I touch you?"

She widened her eyes at him; disconcerted at his courtesy. Before she could showcase her astonishment for longer, she let her face harden back to a grim line. Taking her chances and letting her intuition overpower her decisions, she nodded slowly. 

"Yes."

His forearm cuirasses skidded against her palms, soft leather gloves making her imagine what it would feel like to touch his real skin. A memory that laid dormant in her head awakened, bringing her back to the first time she had thought the same. 

It was hard to tell if he was looking at her. His helmet seemed to stay put on their hands, a small breath leaving him. 

"It's really you," he muttered, a willful pining. Any lower, she would have missed it. "Hi, you."

She stayed silent, watching his hands furl and unfurl with hers. He was thinking of gears, crafted for each other and function only when pieced together. 

He was reminding himself over and over, replaying a vivid memory of a night that ended with breathless want and rippling sheets. It was foggy—Myra couldn't perceive it as clearly. Even with the Ichor driving for her with her hard pleas, she received nothing. The waters had folded against her chest, resting there for oblivion.

"Say something for me," he whispered, upset. "Say my name. Anything. Myra, please."

Myra struggled with her vocabulary, unable to find the right words for him. She needed better oaths to explain her dilemma. What if he left her upon hearing her unmindful episode? That she could barely remember anything about him?

But she knew one thing. Whoever he was, Myra had trusted him. Enough to let him touch her, or study her Ways. Maybe it was because she had caught little glances of lingering gold dust between the dents of his cuirass, the tiniest mottles of ochroid standing out against the flashing sterling.

"I know you," Myra said, sounding like a ringing instead of words. 

∞

There was no brief fragment of time when Din had not been preoccupied with associating every ridiculous facet of an everyday situation with the aureate enchantress in front of him. 

How many times had he marvelled over Myra's beauty in the little leisure they had accomplished together? He loved her in the vast expanse of second, thriving off that single instant that was meant to last. 

Now, that she was here, in front of him, it was hard to weather the storm of doubt that grew within. Myra's blazing eyes were never the window to what lied inside — it was her body itself. The way she held back two steps to linger by Din, or the way her eyes trailed over his pauldron which held the flashing symbol of the three-fold spiral. It was clear. He didn't need to invoke a witch's Ways to realize that the Ichor had consigned Din to oblivion. 

Au contraire, Myra's heart did not forget him. Even if her mind was plagued and leagued with the sick waters of her faith, the magnetizing body the galaxy loved to scandalize was once his. Every facet, every perfection, every lune was a secret language he'd learned to articulate.

Without taking his eyes off the blurring shifts of sands and the approaching depths of the rocky quarry, Din imagined Myra's surprise in his head. The forced proximity given to them in the form of the little speeder was the only way Din's able to understand, remember, and infuriatingly mull over her progress. 

That was the inevitability of loss and change—it was a brick wall of unabashed relenting. 

Din was burning. Had he lost his Myra the day she succumbed to the fire? What was this stillness between them? Ad most of all, what was she thinking?

He prayed to every deity out there, in hopes that she'd look into his mind and unearth his certainties. There was a whole extension of his mind that belongs to the enchantress, and he prayed, begged, beseeched to whoever watched over him that she saw how much he ached. How her silence was turning him to embers.

And like serving the purpose of a mentor, his prayers were answered. 

Myra's soft, symphonic voice broke through the hum and hiss of the speeder that glid over the vast spaces of sand. He watched a whole galaxy fissure out gold dust.

"I hear you," was her gentle whisper. It trembled the strings in his trenched heart. "You know that, don't you?"

His handle over the throttle faltered for a quick moment. The passion she instilled in him—it couldn't all be average. He felt like a hook had caught the back of his throat when her lips trailed over the ruffled cotton that sheathed his neck. Heat, enfeebled like a child's touch, settled over it. 

"I don't mind it anymore," Din replied, hoping his grunt became captive to the engine noise. 

Din had once been a convict to judgement. He'd claimed Myra as a fraud, a renegade, a silly seductress, all because of her innate ability to read minds. It was after a deeper conclusion, a heavy, painful realization, that he'd understood her demand to connect. 

How alone she was. How artless she was in this wide, cunning galaxy. Myra thrived off a connection, may it be good or evil, and so far, Din was the most formidable. 

"Any more," she mouthed to herself. Her featherlight breath found a way to seep through the cotton, and feed into his wishes. Din clutched the accelerator tighter. 

He meaningfully thought about the time he'd lashed out at Myra on the planet Arvala-7 for her undiscovered, stealthy intrusions. He let Myra see the memory, instilling it for her to remember. 

"Keep thinking about me, please," she allowed, her order full of hope. He'd forgotten how formal and polite Myra could get. 

"Give me your word first, Myra," he fought out through clenched teeth. the winds whipped against the metal in his armour, braving him against what was needed to be said. 

"Anything," she assured readily. 

"Have you forgotten everything?" He masked his pain with a coarse rumble.

Her stillness left him in shreds. The speeder slowed to a broken crawl, and Din had to shake himself out of the dredging up memories. 

"No," Myra eventually replied, her voice in flat harmony. "The more you remember, the more I know."

"Make it easier for me," he pleaded. 

"When the night falls, Mandalorian. Wait at the wings of the campsite," she vowed with a firm reminder of a witch's affidavit. The ingenious, violet ink that he astutely remembered inked on her shoulder flashed in his mind. 

Campsite? What campsite? Another reminder sparked alive in his thoughts. Myra was the harbinger of the inevitable. Her clairvoyance was absolute, but when it came to Din and her, they seem to render invalid.  

Myra laughed at his suggesting thoughts, a chorus of thousand bells. A stroke of gold lashed across his mind, awakening a smile on his face through the burning token of his love for her. 

"I will take it to heart," Myra confirmed her vow. 

X X X

{ YES, THEY MET, YES THEY HAD A MOMENT, YES, I'M GIVING YOU WHAT YOU WANT. just don't get used to it. The way these two are going about it, I want to squeeze out their very soul in each other's hands. I want them to hurt and then, LOVE  — no i'm not a sadist, i'm an author  }