Chapter Text
The water-rich planet of Jacath served mostly as a exporter of salt, their oceans so rife with the mineral that most creatures lived near the seafloor, the cold and deep sufficiently below the great salt rafts above. Dageth hauled in his nets, the salt glimmering like diamonds along the rope striations. He kept his pace steady and quick; merchants paid extra for large unbroken sheets.
He carefully loaded his catch on the flatbed of his cart, offering a piece of broken salt to his hauler Bep, an ornery dulsue who moved with a plodding pace that he would never replace with one of those newfangled machines some of the other salters used. Maybe Bep would bite him and not move much faster than Dageth himself, but she was more sure-footed than anyone he knew, each of her six hooves firmly planted in the earth and unmoveable by creature or by quake. He patted the top of her head where her scales faded into stringy hair and turned to go back to his haul.
A being dressed in all black stood beside his dock, staring out into the ocean.
"Can I help you?" Dageth asked, trying to keep most of the Jacathian drawl out of his Galactic Standard.
The being turned slightly, just enough that he could see pale ochre skin, gills, and wide dark eyes. Otherwise, the black clothes merely made them a blemish on the clear blue sky.
"I'm looking for someone." The voice, low and emotionless, made Dageth shift his hand to his side, where he kept a vibrodagger.
"Not sure there's much to find here."
Some of the other salters noticed his visitor, and although they, as a people, were known for minding their own business, couldn't ignore the sinister air rising around them. He'd become part of the community, as catty and competitive as it may be. Several of them moved closer.
"Luvo Decropt. Is that name familiar?"
Dageth hadn't used the name Luvo Decropt since he abandoned life in the black and his sweet ship nearly twenty years ago. He took a deep breath to keep any reaction out of his movements or his voice. The figure turned a bit more toward him, the eyes a void.
"Don't reckon it's familiar."
"Perhaps not anymore. But you knew him, didn't you?"
Dageth put his hands on his hips, giving the figure a shrug. "Long time ago. What's this about?"
Slowly, the figure approached, upper body strangely still as she moved. Her flat eyes betrayed nothing, and though she stood at least a foot shorter than him, Dageth felt an undercurrent of danger. His hand worked into his pocket, where he could access the sheath of his blade.
"Leia Organa. You worked with her before. I need to know where she is."
He chuckled and shook his head. He hadn't much wanted to deal with the Rebellion, or the New Republic, or whatever they called themselves. He solely met with Organa, moved product for her, found her special hideouts and secret thoroughfares that weren't watched by the Imperials. He'd done so much munition shipping for her, he suspected he may have supplied nearly ninety percent of the fighting. He hadn't heard from her in ages, since he told her he was done and left for a new life. She'd given him some money and a nondescript ship, more than he ever could've hoped for.
"Here you are, askin' so many questions about things long past. 'Fraid I can't help you."
The figure's expression didn't change from the blank stare, the neutral mouth. "You can. Give me the names of the bases you delivered to, or where you picked up cargo."
He didn't have any loyalty to Organa or her organization, but the principle of the thing - someone coming down to his small farm and thinking they could intimidate him - made Dageth close right up. "You know, memory's not what it used to be. Can't recall nothing. Sorry you wasted your time."
"It's not a waste yet," she said. One of her arms extended out, and he saw the weapon slip down into her grasp, a curved blade on the end of a short handle. He opened his mouth, but the crackle of energy interrupted him, blazing along the edge with red light.
Maybe it was a bit bigger deal than he realized.
One of his neighbors - Arden Kaloft, an asshole who once accused Dageth of being a single meter over in his property - stepped forward, holding one of the large hookpoles they used to snag runaway nets.
"Dageth said it's time to go. He's two bits short of a full credit, that man. I'm sure he don't know anything about what you need." Kaloft held the staff up, just on the side of menacing.
"I see. You need persuading." The figure dropped the weapon she was holding. Dageth saw now it was attached to some sort of chain. She flicked her wrist once and the chain made only the slightest rattle. Dageth resigned himself and pulled out his vibrodagger, gearing up for a fight.
Someone gasped, cut off abruptly, and Dageth's gaze shifted back to Kaloft. The staff clattered to the ground, Kaloft's hands still attached. As Dageth watched, the rest of his arms hit the ground with meaty thunks, blood bursting in a wide arc when the blade cut his chest in half.
"Wait - hold on -" Dageth held up his hands.
The figure produced another kama and her hands moved just two more times. The gathered cluster of farmers fell to pieces, their blood coating the dock, dripping down into the sea, turning the teal water crimson. Dageth backed away, the dagger slipping from his grasp, and he stumbled.
The figure moved toward him, the kama hanging loosely at her sides, and inclined her head slightly. "Names of bases. If you're feeling more motivated."
"Uh - ah - it's um - they're - Kataver - and, uh - Fiqiet - and - and - Plurt. That's all I - that's all I remember - I haven't - it's been years -"
She nodded. A line of bright red blood appeared across her face, over her mouth and cheek. "That will be sufficient. However, you should know - you were never going to leave this conversation alive."
Dageth felt a lightness, a sudden release, and when he looked down, he saw blood spilling out of his throat. He tried to move, to reach out his hand toward her, and nothing responded.
"Thank you for the information."
He thought -
Poe couldn't concentrate. At the best of times, the council meetings were tiresome power displays with arguments more circuitous than a plane in a nosedive. Now, with Leia's absence pressing on them all so heavily, he couldn't summon a single iota of caring.
But he had to. With Leia gone, everyone looked to him to lead. He hadn't thought he wanted it for the longest time. It was just recently he could even really accept that mantle, that Leia had wanted him to succeed her. He still only saw himself as that hotshot pilot, full of brash confidence and swagger and how could someone like that step into a role of such importance? Maybe he'd been playing it a little too good around Leia and she didn't understand that he was just a grunt.
Whatever the case, without Leia around, he'd been unceremoniously crowned Leader of the Resistance and now people talked to him like they expected him to fix all their problems. Which may have been why the meeting was so tedious in the first place. He struggled to bring himself back into the conversation, watching Tashhk Yenellovin - a grating and insistent Jantil with an extra pair for arms - gesticulate grandly as he talked.
"The expansion of power into the Eithelwurn system is intolerable and such displays invalidate the agreement set up between the Republic and the First Order." Tashhk's dual tonality made all of his complaints echo slightly and serve to encourage the nascent headache in Poe's skull. "Captain -"
"It's - it's General, okay? You gotta say General," Poe said wearily.
"'General?' Are you confirming, then, that General Organa has left -"
"Don't start that shit, Carium. I'm not confirming anything. Leia is on a classified mission -"
"- clearly state that they aren't allowed to -"
"- can't keep circling the subject, people have the right to know -"
"- Yenellovin is decidedly over his allotted time -"
"- journalistic integrity that the Resistance relies upon -"
"- encroachment on an ever-shrinking profit margin -"
"No one cares, Tashhk!" Poe shouted, the rush of voices ceasing like a cut comm line. "We're all grateful for what you bring to the Resistance, but we're just barely keeping people clothed and fed, much less pursuing our actual goal of removing the First Order. Your profit margins are so far down the list of priorities, I'd need a planet-core excavation drill to find 'em. Please - please - let's focus on why we're here. And no, Carium, General Organa's classified mission is not it. Dextra has bought us a decent chunk of time to regroup."
Everyone went quiet at Poe's outburst and he wished he could find it in him to regret it. But he hasn't realized how much corralling Leia did, both during meetings and outside of them. He ticked his mouth up into a pleasant smile and turned toward Letlet, a Drappnonian who'd been kindly waiting their turn.
"Letlet, you had something about using the ambient radiation from the supercluster to power our settlement? I'd love for you to elaborate." Poe settled back into his chair, keeping Tashhk in his periphery.
"Yes, thank you, General," Letlet said in their sweet squeaky voice. They hopped onto the podium to be seen amid the throng of people and started to lay out the plans of their infrastructure.
Fortunately, everyone seemed able to rein in their protests and interjections and the meeting proceeded without any more egregious interruptions. Tashhk kept catching Poe's eye and then turning away in a huff, so that was something he'd have to deal with later. They got through the agenda without too much fuss and Poe did his round of goodbyes and well-wishes, even as he evaded promises for meetups and dinner invitations. These people never stopped wanting his time, and navigating that particular mire still didn't come easy.
He sighed as he began to pick up the detritus of their meeting.
"Well, you managed," a voice said and Poe startled.
Kaisha Vel spoke to him from the seat she'd taken on the periphery - removed enough to evade focus, but close enough to hear everything. He'd always noted her as someone exceptionally shrewd from the way Leia didn't speak much of her, but still put the woman on powerful committees. She was a name that always ended up on important reports or documents, but never as lead. While Poe knew she wasn't human, her species had evolved concurrently enough that he couldn't detect any real differences. Other than, of course, that he knew her to be several hundred years old. She held her small frame regal, her dark unlined face passive in nearly all situations, the gleam of her violet eyes shrewd even as she spoke menial smalltalk with her fellows. Her words made her more of a mystery than the silence.
He gave her a nod, even as he crumpled empty cups in his hands. "Don't know why I thought running board meetings was gonna be easier than dogfighting."
"Pilot arrogance, probably."
Poe choked on a laugh. Stars save him from older women wielding the truth. "Clearly. You don't have any advice, do you?"
Kaisha sat primly, her hands folded in her lap and monitored his cleaning. "I recommend having lots of money. It's better if you marry rich and they die early on."
He let himself laugh aloud for that one. "Too late for that, I think."
"Why? You've gone and gotten yourself married?"
"No, I -" but he stopped. Technically, he had no ties but the ones he'd placed upon himself. He thought that he and Finn… well. That they'd… It'd been crisis after crisis and downtime was nonexistent. "I take it you're widowed?"
She waggled a finger at him. "And I don't intend to do it again."
"Makes sense." He put up the last of the chairs and wiped his hands on his trousers. "Leia really trusted you."
"Mm." Kaisha stood and put away her chair, hands disappearing in her long flowy sleeves. "I've known Leia since her first session as senator. Bail had finally given up his seat for her - he'd lost no interest or capability, you see, but he knew how fiercely she burned. The young Organa brought an intensity to those early meetings that not a one of the others could be prepared for. I enjoyed how much she unsettled them."
"I bet you did," Poe muttered. He offered his arm to Kaisha and she regarded it for a moment before allowing him to take it. She felt more insubstantial than she seemed, like a mirage. "How long did it take them to figure her out?"
"Some of them never did." She patted Poe's hand as they swept through the hallways, bypassing the hubbub of a newly settled base. No one interrupted them to ask Poe for his opinion or to sign something, but he knew it wouldn't last long. "Others seemed to grasp the shape of her, but never the core. I knew she'd change the senate and that agreed with my own aspirations. I suppose time and familiarity make allies of people, don't they?"
He nodded, thinking of his own allies, the people that had fought with him since early days at the Academy, of those who'd been on his Black Squadron, of Jess still out there training recruits and putting up with his bullshit. Early on, Poe gained a lot of respect from his parents' names and their deeds in the Rebellion, but it had been on him to maintain that connection, to ensure that he was worth their time. He'd managed, it seemed, but sometimes he wasn't sure how tenuous those relationships were. Could he call on any of them to support him and expect it, without fail?
Maybe. Jess, Snap, of course. Rey and Finn and Rose - yes. But beyond that, Poe couldn't grasp a solid idea of who would aid his efforts, regardless of what they were.
"Ms Vel -"
"She asked me, you know, early on. If I believed you could grow past your faults and become the leader the Resistance needed." She cast a glance at him from the side, one of her thick eyebrows raised. He closed his mouth from its instinctive response. "I told her no, that I didn't think so. You are so very young. Naive, inexperienced, rash - things I don't consider beneficial for a leader of anything, much less the nascent Resistance we'd cultivated."
Poe scoffed. "Gods, it's a wonder I'm still standing here, with a verdict like that."
Kaisha shrugged, her expression still smooth. "Leia's always had a weakness for cocky fools with a deep streak of martyrdom. It serves us well in the beginning, when things are rampant with quarrels and a need for heroics. Those traits don't always work in the next phase."
"Well," Poe said, smiling despite himself. "It's not like I haven't been a disappointment before."
She gripped his hand tight where he held her arm, and gave it a little shake. "Don't believe things I haven't said, boy. Just a month or so after that conversation, you started to show that you did have those qualities we needed. I'm old and wise, but not always correct."
The tension flooded from his body, making his knees go weak, and Poe nodded at her, almost reassuring himself. "You should still hold out - I don't know what I'm doing."
They'd walked to the portside shipyards, where Kaisha stayed in her personal vessel rather than one of the easy-ups they'd managed to get situated around the base. Poe knew she would eventually move out when they had something more substantial than the flimsy duraplast shelters, but she seemed more regal this way, separated from everyone, but still amongst the people. He stopped outside her door and gave her a little bow, and it garnered him a small amused smile.
"You wanted to ask me if Leia confided to me something about you. About your capabilities or her plans for you or your future as leader of the Resistance. You were working up to it, boy, I could see that. Here's what I'll tell you. Words are important. Intent and motivation and desire are all fundamental to how the world functions and moves forward. I have seen, however, that the best plans are futile without action. Whatever else I may think of you, you are not idle."
"But what if -" Poe turned his head briefly. "What if I can't manifest a plan? What if I keep going and I'm not going anywhere?"
She slapped her hand against his shoulder and palmed open her ship with the other. "Leaders don't lead by themselves. Get some advisors, people who will tell you when you're wrong and argue with you. Didn't you read any of those books you're always carrying around?"
"Yeah, right. Thank you, Ms Vel."
She waved him off and the door slid shut. Poe scrubbed at his face. He knew, on some level, that obviously he would need other people around him to help him. It was such a fundamental concept that he hadn't even started to do because, really, he had been so consumed by other minutiae that he didn't make time for it.
So. He would have to make a council, full of people he trusted and trusted would argue with him. Poe never seemed to have a shortage of people who wanted to argue with him, for whatever reason. Rose had to be on it, as his head engineer, and Rey, whenever she got back. He wanted Finn, but Finn had never formally taken a position and it would be difficult to justify him. Xaviel from requisitions, Connix from comms, someone from the admin team they got set-up, and a scientist, though he couldn't fathom anyone who he'd want on there, with their tendency for technical jargon that he had no hope of understanding.
Poe shook out his shoulders and headed back toward his office, one of the few in working order. Although some infrastructure existed from previous occupants of Dexta, it had been made for a species that ran much taller on average, and everything had to be pared down to a height more suited to its current occupants. They'd be online quicker than Tesovin, but permanence didn't seem viable with the way the black hole occupied a full quarter of the sky, an ominous unblinking eye.
When an aide approached Poe with a datapad in hand and a form to sign, he laughed. The aide went pink with embarrassment, but he reassured them and read the form: permission for digging along the southside embankment for sewer lines. His work was never done.
The woman - Ahsoka, she called herself - had a bright energy about her that made it hard to fall back into the darkness. Rey found herself inordinately grateful, after wandering by herself for what seemed like such a long time. Ahsoka regarded Rey for a long moment.
"You said you were looking for something, right?"
"Yes," Rey said. She'd been desperate to build a lightsaber, to find someone who could help her. "I don't have a lot of… mentorship."
"It's not always the greatest thing," Ahsoka muttered. She nodded toward one of the directions that looked just like the others. "The Force brought you here to learn and it hasn't sent you back, so maybe it wants you to learn something else."
Rey frowned. She didn't know what else she could possibly learn except everything. If the Force, or whatever was keeping her here, wanted her to fill in all the missing gaps in her knowledge of being a Jedi or the Jedi teachings and all that, then she'd be trapped in this place for a long time. "I don't know much of anything, really."
Ahsoka took a few circuitous steps, meandering. "The Force can be a great teacher, but it's not very explicit, most of the time. You're without a Master, I would guess. Could I show you something?"
Trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice, Rey gave a careful shrug. "Yes, that would be alright. Could you - could you also show me how you're doing that? How you're… directing this place?"
"Oh, yeah!" Ahsoka decisively stepped toward the left of them, lifting one hand and placing it against the nothingness. "The Force doesn't act like much I've encountered before. It doesn't have a single consciousness driving it, telling it what to do or giving it motivations. But it's not exactly devoid of those things, right? Like, the Force clearly directs us places, shows us things, favors certain people. Is it active or passive? Is it the amalgamation of every living thing in an amorphous desire to live?"
"I… thought it was the energy of life. That anyone can harness it, that it comes from everything," Rey said, recalling her time on Ahch-To, the energy thrumming through her with Luke's soft narration.
"That's true, yeah. But it sure does seem like it has a will sometimes, doesn't it? You needed help, and it brought you here, a dangerous confusing place that most people can't navigate without a guide or lots of training." Ahsoka pushed against the air, as if she were interacting with something physical, and Rey watched the gray beyond shimmer, watched it writhe behind her palm and settle into something. A path appeared, formed out of the nothingness, and Ahsoka smiled.
"So you're… asking the Force to do something for you?"
"Hmm." Ahsoka turned her back to the path and started walking, not minding where she was going. The path conformed to her steps. "I guess I'm 'influencing' it, if you want to be specific. The Force contains every living thing, right? And I would say that the overwhelming desire of all living things is to survive. Sometimes that means hostile evolution, but usually it means community, right? So the Force prioritizes things that build community because it's better for survival. I think that's why we view good the way we do - community-based methods lead to survival and survival is good, so it becomes our moralistic good."
"If that's true, then how does the dark side use the Force?"
Ahsoka tucked her thumbs into her belt and tilted her head. "If you take what I've said as true - and it doesn't have to be, really - then why would the dark side be able to use the Force?"
Rey carefully picked her way over the path; her left eye still couldn't see well. "If community is generally the best way to survive, then it isn't always or only the way to survive. Sometimes the need to be selfish or cruel is necessary. And the Force enables such a thing."
"Yep." Ahsoka skipped forward to take Rey's hand and curled up her own beside it, overlaying their palms. "So, deeper philosophical implications aside, the Force generally is pretty malleable, it lets people use it how they need to until something motivates it to intervene. Just like it did when it helped you. To use it, you manifest your intent - you know, you think real hard about what you want. And you feel it in your palm and then you can move it. At the beginning, it feels like you won't be able to do anything with it, that it's beyond you, but if you're here, I promise that's not the case."
Rey held out her hand, moving through the air like she would through water, trying to let the Force flow around her fingers, let it become something solid and useable. She could almost sense it, almost see it there, waiting for her to pick it up. With a slow inhale, Rey pushed her hand along the same path that Ahsoka had created before them, trying to solidify it more, turn the path into a dark brown rather than the misty gray.
The gray darkened just a bit.
"Come on," Ahsoka said, moving along the path she'd opened up. The darkness surrounding them changed, shifted to something more solid - the matte white interior of a spacecraft. Rey didn't recognize the model. The vision wasn't as actualized as the temple or the jungle had been, but Rey thought that might be because they weren't traveling somewhere; this seemed like a memory.
As they watched, a young woman with short purple hair stomped into their vision. She threw something on the floor in anger, and the sound of metal hitting metal reverberated throughout the landscape. She whirled to face another figure, her face screwed up in a furious scowl.
"You don't get to decide when I'm ready for this," the woman growled, teeth clenched, dark eyes shiny.
"No, but I won't enable you either." The voice sounded familiar, and another blurry shape appeared, moved, turned sharply into a tall and solemn Togruta. She looked very similar to Ahsoka, but older.
Rey glanced at Ahsoka, and the woman's face was pulled into chagrin. Rey looked at the other Togruta again. "Is that you?"
"Yeah."
"But you're -"
"Older, yeah." Ahsoka crouched, putting her hand under her chin. "Time is always happening, you know? It's only because we live a linear existence that we experience things in a way that seems one after the other. For the Force? It's all the same thing, including all permutations. While I'm in the Between, I remember the first time I used my abilities and I remember my death - the one that's mine and the others that don't happen to me. You only open up to that kind of stuff after you really give yourself over to the Force, and I don't think you do."
Rey didn't respond. She didn't, of course, open herself fully to the Force. She couldn't imagine how anyone would be willing to do that, even to something as basic and benign as the energy of existence. Sometimes, she didn't even know who she was - how could she expect to let anyone else know what she didn't?
A wall of shining black stood in her mind and cracked.
The woman with purple hair grabbed whatever she'd thrown on the floor - a scanning device of some sort - and fiddled with the wires coming out of it, banging it against the side of her hand when it didn't do what she wanted. "Why can't I go to the Soslan Spire? Can you give me a - no, not even a good reason, just any reason at all, why I can't go there?"
The older Ahsoka folded her arms. "You won't be able to navigate the nebula there with your level of Force expertise."
The woman threw up her hands, nearly sending her scanner flying. "That's why I asked you to come with me! This could help us, Master. More than I think you realize."
"It's not a good idea," Ahsoka said softly.
Shaking her head hard enough to ruffle her short hair, the woman scoffed. "Well, maybe all of this was a bad idea."
"Sabine -"
"Including you training me. I'm never going to be what you want me to be. I'm just this." The woman took a deep shuddering breath and stepped back. "Maybe there was no way to train me better, maybe I was just always destined to be not quite enough."
She moved through Rey and Ahsoka, ending the scene. In the quiet, Rey glanced over at Ahsoka for a reaction. She wasn't sure why Ahsoka would share something so personal with her, but she could feel the truth of it thrum through her bones, the idea of not being enough, of consistently failing - yes; she could understand that.
"So you see," Ahsoka said, tucking her thumbs into her belt and staring at the darkness where the memory used to linger. "Sometimes having a master doesn't help either. The Force can be… esoteric at its worst, but an incompetent Master can do more harm than good. I worked it out with Sabine, eventually, but it took time that maybe wouldn't have with someone more competent."
"Masters are fallible, but the Force isn't?" Rey said, warily.
Ahsoka laughed and tilted her head back and forth. "Yeah, that first part is true. And I guess the second part is too. But people - people are always fallible and it's their interpretation you have to use for what the Force wills."
"How do you -" Rey paused, thinking about Luke and how he'd buried himself on that island, locked himself away from a galaxy that needed him. She thought about Leia, abandoning the Force to pursue more worldly goals, the atrophy of her abilities making them swell in uncontrollable surges in times of peril. She thought of Ben, lost Ben who sank back into violence and outrage whenever his emotions overwhelmed him. She exhaled. "How do you separate the good from the bad? The, um, interpretations that you should follow and the ones you should ignore?"
Following the path they'd opened in the Between, Ahsoka shrugged. "I don't know. Time and experience, usually. Surrounding yourself with people who you know are usually good at that sort of thing. And that isn't always who you think it would be. I was - I was lucky, in a way. My master died before we finished my training. I saw his flaws before I became his flaws. Sometimes, the people you trust aren't the best people for you."
Although Ahsoka spoke of her master with a placid tone, Rey couldn't imagine what it was like to have one and lose them. If her experience with Luke was anything close to a real apprenticeship, then she'd expect devastation, a true and expansive hurt. Maybe something had broken between Ahsoka and her master before he died; maybe his mortal death was only the last in a series of disappointments.
"I'm sorry about your master," Rey said quietly. Ahsoka paused and folded her arms, regarding Rey with a look both carefully blank and appraising.
"There are many spirits here, in the World Between Worlds. Most of them are benign, merely echoes of their lives. Some are helpful and take it upon themselves to lead those who get lost here. Others… they can lead you astray, or at the very least in a way to fulfill their own ambitions. Be careful, and wary of their intent." Ahsoka smiled ruefully.
"You think your master one of those?"
"Maybe," Ahsoka said. She walked backward to keep that smile trained on Rey. "I'd like to think he moved beyond that, when he died. But I can't be sure. The strength of a person's spirit can be from their worst moments - or their best. I know what I hope is true, but you should always temper that with a bit of common sense."
That didn't feel like a real solution. Rey didn't have common sense - not in the way people usually meant. To most people, it meant that the most reasonable answer was usually the right one. It flew in the face of things like paranoia and fear and reassured people that the worst case scenario was usually extreme. In Rey's life, she had to operate the opposite way. She needed to make sure she was taken care of, regardless of how silly it could seem to other people. If she prepared for disaster, she was relieved when it was only troublesome. Her life had been devoted to figuring out how to survive, and that didn't allow trusting strangers to behave with decency, and it surely didn't leave any room for hope. No, she'd had to learn hope later on, and it still chafed on her shoulders like an ill-fitting harness.
"Thank you. I think I've got how to maneuver around this place, but I don't understand why I'm still here." Rey folded her arms around herself, searching the gray nothingness for a direction.
Ahsoka huffed a laugh. "You've got something to learn. I think if you -"
Her voice cut out so abruptly that Rey spun around, looking for danger. Instead, she saw only the swirl of fog and the space Ahsoka used to stand. She tried to quash the sudden rush of melancholy.
It didn't matter. Rey knew how to be alone, especially when she felt lost, and a friendly stranger barely tipped the scales on the things she no longer had. Rey tilted her chin up and stretched out her hand. Time to move forward, wherever that meant.
"Show me the way," she said, and the ground began to coalesce before her.