#Steelpecker

[burnwater13]

Grogu standing on the ground within the krill farming collective on Sorgan while the children around him throw him krill to chase and eat. Image from The Mandalorian, Season 1, Episode 4, Sanctuary. Calendar from DataWorks.

Grogu was surprised when he looked at the calendar and realized that it had been almost a year since he and his dad had been on Sorgan. He wondered if he could talk the bounty hunter into going back for a visit. You know. For old time’s sake? Maybe? 

If that didn’t work he’d ask if they could make a food run. He’d been really craving those blue krill. Every time he turned around someone was drinking spotchka and he actually knew where it was made and who made it. They should go back and see how Sorgan was thriving after helping them get rid of those Klatooinian Raiders. Right?

He had enjoyed the small amount of time they had spent there. The kids were a lot of fun. The adults didn’t care how many frogs or krill he ate. There were lots of ponds to hang out near, because that’s where the frogs and the krill were. He even remembered the lady at the tavern who was so kind to them. It was nice to have new memories that were so filled with fondness and humor. Even watching his Dad and Marshal Dune ‘meet’ each other for the first time was a funny memory that Grogu enjoyed revisiting.

He decided to spend the day sketching scenes that he recalled from the time they were there. Sketching Winta with her mom was easy. The tavern keeper scolding the mean Loth cat had been sweet revenge (the Loth cat was slinking away with its tail between its legs). The overview of the krill farming collective was complicated and really challenged him, but he was satisfied that he got the round houses and the layout of the trapezoidal ponds correct, which was important to him. He found the sketch of him eating the frog the most challenging. 

He tried just doing it without looking in a mirror or in his case, the shiny surface of the thigh protector his had removed from his second layer to clean and polish. Grogu had thought his dad was imagining the dirt on the beskar until he got too frustrated with drawing himself without looking at himself. Then he took the thigh protector from his dad’s work bench and propped it up against a the window in the front room because he was sitting at the table they did everything at to sketch. 

That was a disappointment for a whole variety of reasons. First and foremost was the utter lack of good light for sketching, because now he was blocking it with the armor. Then, when he propped the thigh protector against the back of his dad’s chair and the edge of the table, he had better light, except that now he was creating a shadow over his sketch pad. Uff. Then he moved the things until he had the right light and no shadows on his paper and the thigh protector was secure.

(Uff, you could only drop it so many times before a Mandalorian got suspicious and walked out of the fresher in just a towel and a helmet to find out what was making that sort of racket! Grogu had fixed things quickly and told his dad it must have been a steelpecker dropping stuff at the landfill. Grogu was glad that his dad bought that explanation and went back to finish his shower. Suds had started dripping down from under the Mandalorian’s helmet and the only person who was going to get in trouble for that was Grogu.)

Once he had everything the way he wanted it, Grogu was faced with another stumbling block. He didn’t really look like that, did he? Huge ears. Giant bulging eyes. A practically non-existent chin. And he was so… so… round! When he looked down at himself he saw a lean, not a bit of fat on him, Jedi, with the serious look that all Mandalorians wore under their helmets. But not this guy! This guy had a grin that stretched forever. How the heck could he look like that! People said that when you did a self portrait you had to be prepared for both the good and the bad. They didn’t say, ‘Hey, kid! It’s all bad. Don’t do it! It will break your heart!’. 

Grogu was about to put everything away, he was so annoyed at the image he saw, when he dad came over to see what he was up to.

“That’s where that thigh protector got to. Buddy, you can’t use this as a mirror. It’s curved and dirty. It’s going to distort everything. I have a small mirror you can use. I’ll get it for you and you won’t need to drop my armor on the floor again.”

Dank Farrik! Mandalorians knew everything! Or was that just a dad thing? Grogu didn’t know, but he appreciated his dad bringing him the mirror and he promised to help him with cleaning the armor since dropping it on the floor hadn’t made it any cleaner. 

“That’s okay, pal. Use this instead and we’ll call it even.” His dad was chuckling when he handed Grogu the mirror. Grogu looked at his hands as he adjusted it and realized that his dad just didn’t want all the charcoal dust to get on any more of his armor. Very funny. 

Grogu took a deep breath and looked into the mirror. He let his eyes really see the image presented. The skin tone. The shape of his nose. The tiny white hairs that populated his head and his ears (to some extent) and the round, slightly greenish-pink, pinkish-green cheeks that the librarian at the the Jedi Temple had pinched so often. He let his breath out slowly and began to sketch. 

He went slow, took breaks, and continued to use deep breaths and long, long soft sighs to help keep him calm and centered. It was important to find the joy in the thing you were doing when you were doing it according to Master Beq. Grogu knew his teacher was correct when he finally finished the sketch. It was a thing of beauty. The proportions and scale and contours were perfect. The composition was exactly as it should be. The details! Oh, the details had been so hard to get just right, but he’d used the Force to help him search for those memories and study them carefully so he would do that memory justice. 

When he was done he put done his tools and sat back and just admired what he’d accomplished. It was a masterpiece and he wasn’t too humble to admit that it was his best work to date. It made him very happy. 

“That’s what you were sketching? The time on Sorgan when you had the frog in your mouth and the kids were all screaming about it?”

“Yup.” Grogu was very proud of that moment as any Jedi would have been. A Mandalorian would never understand how to eat frogs properly.

#calendar prompt a day #the mandalorian #din djarin #grogu #Sorgan

[venatohru]

Rules: post the first sentence of your last ten fics. If you haven't written ten fics, share as many first-sentences as you have.

Thank you to @illusivesoul for the tag! If @chupacabrasmustdie, @swindlefingrs, @scribbleymark or anyone else would like to do this I would like to see 👀

1. through her eyes (Star Wars, Finn - 100 words)

"Finn closed his eyes as he saw through the steelpecker's, felt her anticipation as she stretched her rust-tipped wings."

2. it's not the waking, it's the rising (Dragon Age II, Orsino/Meredith - 1150 words)

"His first attempt to extract the lyrium sword from Meredith's iron grip was met with resistance."

3. the thing that was her sister (Dragon Age II, Amelia & Meredith Stannard - 500 words)

"Meredith lit the last of the candles that she and the other initiates had made with tallow and dried rushes for wicks."

4. blue light, crimson shadow (Dragon Age II, Anders & Original Apprentice Character - 1212 words)

"The first time Suni watched Anders open up a dead man's chest, they threw up - discreetly - behind a wooden crate."

5. a new world is breaking (Dragon Age II, Orsino/Meredith - 2200 words)

"Meredith ground her teeth as the Knight-Captain finished reading the summons from Orlais, frowning at the parchment as she ran her fingers through her cropped red hair."

6. silver rings, golden ringlets (Fairytale Retelling, Prince/m!Sleeping Beauty, CW: rape - 645 words)

"The Thirteenth courtier's instructions on how to break the curse were clear and to the point, but that lack of ambiguity didn't make what Stefano needed to do any easier."

7. roots (Dragon Age II, Meredith Stannard - 100 words)

"Meredith recalled that Seneschal Bran was from Ansburg, the very same backwater city that Orsino had called home before the Templars brought him to the Gallows."

8. sweet poison (Ace Attorney, Iris & Dahlia Hawthorne - 100 words)

"Iris gasped as Dahlia's essence tore through her like wildfire."

9. the viscount's desk (Dragon Age II, Bran Cavin/f!Hawke - 1462 words)

"Aveline tells me you're from Ansburg."

10. knight time (Locked Tomb, Ianthe/Harrow - 400 words)

"Magic, Ianthe proclaimed, was like science in that both disciples hold the laws of nature to be absolute."

#tag meme #tohru writes #i find it funny that two of these reference bran cavin being from ansburg

[bakiegaming]

🚨 "All Desert VFX mods" UPDATED for Pond VFX section. For a link to the video and the download link in it's video descriptions, as well as a full list of changes, take a look at my public Patreon post HERE

#BakieGaming #ts4cc #s4cc #Animated #Lizard #Snake #Desert #Steelpecker #Cowplant #Cow #Skull #Eagle #updated mods #VFX #Pond #MaxisMatch #MaxisMatchCC #bts4cc #Birds #Bird #Sims 4 Custom Content #Sims 4 cc #Custom Content #Bakie #YouTube

[zareleonis]

im glad all you guys are having fun with the mandalorian but it looks so fucking boring to me and i can't forgive it for killing off two of my favorite background characters and treating them like cheap mando cannon fodder so im refusing to watch it.

#anyways back to writing detailed wookieepedia articles on the metal steelpeckers eat on jakku #because that's SO enthralling

[triggerhappyflyboyy]

Ok has anyone read what happened to BB-8 on jakku after Poe told him to run away with the map and before Rey found him? Cause I’m reading his wiki page and it’s the most adorable story:

The night Poe told him to take the map, he rested in a wreckage and thought about how Poe had told him how good things happened to those who did good things for others.

He came across a Teedo who asked for his help. BB-8 remembered what Poe had told him and went to help, but it was a trap.

Imprisoned by Teedo, he meets another droid in the same cell called F3-ZK. Together, F3 and BB tricked Teedo and managed to escape. They head for the ship that F3 came on.

As these two droid are zooming away from Teedo they stumbled into a flock of steelpeckers (those birds that scavenge discarded ships and machinery)

Because F3 knew of BB’s important mission, he leads the birds away to let BB continue on.

Along the way BB meets a scavenger family who are starving. Remembering abandoned ration packets in the wreckage he had rested in the previous night, he led the family there. Remember, this is in the opposite direction he’d been travelling in this whole time.

Leaving the family at the wreckage he continued on his way again. This time, he encounters an injured happabore (remember that creature who’s water tub Finn drank out of?)

BB remembered another wreck he had passed that had medical kits. He zoomed back, retrieved a kit and bandaged the creature’s leg, receiving an affectionate lick.

Despite all these delays, BB manages to make it to F3’s ship just in time. F3 had managed to escape the steelpeckers!

But Teedo reached at the same time. Remembering what F3 did for him, BB tells F3 to leave without him and leads Teedo away from the ship.

Teedo eventually catches up and traps the droid in a net. Dragged away by Teedo, BB wonders why things had gone so wrong, despite him following Poe’s advice.

The rest is history. Reading this little adventure just made my heart melt, he’s such a babey.

#we dont deserve this baby #bb-8 #poe dameron #rey #star wars

[reyjustrey]

Hiding a groan behind a tight exhalation, Rey put down the heavy jugs of water Luke had instructed her to ferry up to the maids’ village from the ocean and stretched a painful kink out from the small of her back. It had been a long day. It began at dawn with the wise old Jedi nudging her awake to present a proposition. She’d been bugging him since she arrived with question after question about all aspects of his life as a Jedi. He would answer one per day, he told her, provided she helped out around the island he called home.

She’d  agreed without a second  thought; not a moment  spent dwelling on what she was getting herself into. Perhaps, she thought, as Luke gave her a knowing, wry look, this was a lesson. 

Never forget about consequences.

‘Those were the last’ she said, gesturing to the jugs before approaching him in much the same way a baby Steelpecker might an adult; as if she expected any moment to be warded off. When she wasn’t, she brooked - 

‘Have I earned my question, Master?’

__

A starter for @universeofmuses​

#universeofmuses #verse ;; Discovery #;; master and apprentice #I hope this is ok lovely friend :)

[yxlenas]

Hell Is A Desert

Titled by @hagenshall

prologue 

Even as a child, a part of Rey knew she would die on Jakku. With every cycle around the sun, every mark scratched into stone or, later, the wall of her ruined AT-AT, that part of Rey grew larger and larger and threatened to swallow up the lingering hope of her parents returning to collect her.

Ben Solo just wants to escape the war for a little while, but he can't. Poe Dameron goes missing on Jakku with a very important piece of information, and Ben is sent after him. He doesn't find Poe, but he does find an ex stormtrooper, Poe's droid, and a girl. She's strong with the Force, and she definitely doesn't know it.

Ben knows that, no matter what, he has to keep her away from Kylo Ren.

Even as a child, a part of Rey knew she would die on Jakku. With every cycle around the sun, every mark scratched into stone or, later, the wall of her ruined AT-AT, that part of Rey grew larger and larger and threatened to swallow up the lingering hope of her parents returning to collect her.

That part of her is finally winning.

She’s too weak to move, has been for hours. She’d collapsed in the line for Unkar’s junk stall a day ago, having not eaten in two weeks and been on quarter portions for two weeks before that. Using the last of her strength, Rey had managed to crawl her way to a secluded and mostly shaded corner of Niima Outpost. Unable to lift her head, she passed out in the sun. It seemed that Rey’s luck in the Destroyers and the junk fields had worn thin. Like everyone who had fallen out of Lady Luck’s favor, she was doomed to die in a pile of filthy rags and useless parts. Rey knows what happens when people die here. They’re thrown in the desert, far from the settlement, and the gnawjaws and steelpeckers tear the corpses to pieces until only bones remain. Rey isn’t scared to die, not anymore. In fact, as she lays here and deteriorates, Rey would even dare to say that she’s ready for it.

Her skin aches and itches, and she’s shivering violently despite the temperature. Sunstroke is setting in. She’d vomited not long ago, precious fluid wasted and seeping into the sand. At least she’s not sweating anymore. She knows that’s bad, but she can’t help being thankful for the lack of fluid loss. Rey’s back cramps, and she whimpers, twisting in her pile of rags in an effort to avoid the pain.

She feels the seizure begin before she loses consciousness with the sweeping tide of tremors.

As her body shakes, her bladder voids, and her teeth sink into her tongue, the blackness behind her eyelids is precious relief.

~

“Hey, kid. Kid. Wake up.”

There’s a hand on her face, turning her cheek to the light, opening her eyes. The sun burns her retinas and Rey snarls, ignoring the fact that it sounds more like a whimper, and snaps at the hand near her face. She catches a finger between her teeth and bites down hard. Her heart is fluttering, weak, in her chest, faster than her speeder and scared. Rey feels cold, and then hot, and then cold.

“What the fuck- stop it, you little monster. I’m trying to help you. Stop biting my finger.”

Something cool and wet settles on the back of her overheated neck, stinging her sunburn. Another something, the same cool something, drapes across her forehead and eyes, shielding her from the sun and the heat. He’s being sincere. She should stop biting him, then. Rey reluctantly lets go of the finger clamped between her teeth, running her dry tongue over her dry lips. She tastes blood, feels a stinging ache. Her eyes focus on the man above her and she snorts. He’s pale, soft, angular of features, and definitely not from Jakku. She should have expected as much. Nobody local cares if some little junk rat dies from exposure. Rey herself has watched people die out here and not done a single thing to help them. What goes around comes around. R’iia, but he’s pretty to look at. He cups the back of her head, lifting her an inch out of the sand. Her hair drapes over his wrist.

“Come here, come on, that’s it. Here.”

He presses a canteen in her hand and she tries to grip it, she really does, but the muscles in her arm seize and she wails at the pain of it, the searing ache crackling like fire across her nerves, dropping the metal bottle into her heap of fabric, sweat, and bile. The lip presses against her mouth, and water, sweet, precious water, floods her tongue. Rey gulps, choking herself on the fluid, desperate for more, greedy. She’s so thirsty, so so fucking thirsty.

“Slow, kid, come on.”

The canteen is gone and Rey whines, tries to bite again, too sick to do anything else in retaliation. Her stomach sloshes. She’s still so thirsty.

“How long have you been here?”

“Forever.”

“I mean in the sun.”

She shrugs, or tries to. Her back seizes up. A hand grips at the tense muscles and it’s only then that Rey realizes she’s keening and mewling in pain.

“Can I help you? Let me help you. You need a doctor.”

“N-No doctor.”

“Why not?”

Her vision is starting to fade out, her eyes clouding, the world going grey and fuzzy. The tingle behind her ear that she’s gotten before every seizure starts up. Her mouth begins to taste of salt. She tries to warn the man currently trying to take her off world, to help her, but she doesn’t get a chance before she’s biting through her lip and fading. It’s quick this time. When she wakes up, still trembling, nauseous, limp, bloody, aching, the man is still there, staring down at her, still cupping her head. His fingers are long, and they brush through her hair in a slow, calming rhythm. Her hair has come loose from her buns and is crusted with sand and blood and sweat, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He offers her more water but her tongue feels heavy. His hand swipes across her chin. It comes away bloody. Her face hurts.

“Kid, please let me get you to a doctor.”

“First, tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Name.”

She doesn’t feel well. Her body is being lifted, careful hands cradling her against a broad chest. She’s so tired.

“Ben. Ben Solo.”

“Help.”

“I’m going to. I swear. Stay awake, kid.”

“Rey.”

“That your name?”

“Rey,” she says again, unable to do anything else, “Rey.”

Her voice is less than a whisper. There’s a roaring in her ears and she wonders if she’s hallucinating, because they’re sprinting and falling. Sand kicks up around them, scratching at her burnt skin. Rey can hear blaster bolts singing, plasticine armor cracking, and people screaming. Her head gives a violent throb as the man, Ben, Ben, it sits sweet in the back of her throat, pounds up something metal into a cool, dark place. She’s strapped into a seat and she slumps against her restraints, exhausted. She can hear an engine, feel the purr beneath her limp feet.

“Hold on, Rey.

She tries.

#Rey #Ben Solo #Kylo Ren #Reylo #Reylo Fic #Cecilia Writes

[hellionkat-star-wars-edition]

Bright Lights Cast Tall Shadows (Rey/Kylo Ren)

  So…here’s a little something that’s been sitting in my WIP binder for waaaay too long and needs to be shared…Thanks so much to betaingbyme for helping me edit this incomplete fic of mine. She was a real pleasure to work with and if ever you need help beta-ing your star wars fic you should def’n go to her.

Summary:

There’s been a distrubance in the Force.

It’s Kylo Ren.

He’s dying.

Two-hundred and thirty-four breaths.

The young Jedi gobbled down another. At such high altitudes, Ach-To’s rolling mists tickled down her respiratory organs like a strong shot of Knockback Nectar. 

Rey exhaled quickly blowing sticky hair tendrils off her face.

Two hundred and thirty-five breaths down and thousands more to go. If she succeeded, her body would numb and her consciousness blur with the will of the Force. She might even levitate a little. Rey thrilled at such a prospect. Luke meditated in this way, believing that contact with the ground could prove distracting. She doubted she’d miss the cold sting of volcanic rock beneath her rump.

R'iia take her–the chill dancing down her spine was exasperating. It almost made her miss the dry heat of Niima.

Almost.

Rey would not allow Ach-To’s foreign mists to sabotage her focus this time. She was no stranger to the overtly meticulous. She’d shimmied down Imperial wrecks and scrubbed minute specks off scrap for less payoff.

Luke had called her a fighter. A survivor. Claimed her desert-dwelling resilience would put even the most disciplined Jedi Knight to shame. But Rey knew her master’s kind words were a hollow reward for all her sleepless nights spent yearning for a family.

Cruel Jakku might have been Rey’s teacher in resilience, but to be self-reliant a Jedi must have no desires. And in Rey’s short lifespan, ache and want and unfulfillment were all she’d ever known.  

Luke said when they first met her inner turmoil was so loud it was audible. It resonated like the shrill cry of a lost child trapped within an infinite feedback loop.

Force meditation was the only remedy.

Luke worried if she did not heal her internal scars soon her new Force powers could spiral out of her control, and leave her open to attack. If that happened, then she’d become lost to the chaos within herself forever. Just like another of Luke’s students, and Rey wanted nothing in common with him.

He was the whole reason her Master made her sit hours on end in solitude when they could be practicing battle forms instead. She knew Luke didn’t want to lose her as he had lost his nephew. Why the legendary Jedi kept her at a distance with forlorn smiles and seldom eye contact. Surely, he hadn’t meant to make her feel like an unwanted burden. But the possibility that she might succumb to the Darkside like his former apprentice always lingered in the air between them. It stung like being punished for a crime she had yet to commit.

Rey stiffened.

Just when she thought she was making some leeway with her Master, Kylo Ren had managed yet again to take another important person away from her.

Venomous monster. Remorseless creature. Father killer.

An unfamiliar wave of fury crept into Rey, a heat.  Unbidden, it bubbled and surged like a Steelpecker egg trapped in a Neutrino radiator. Panicked by its suddenness, her breathing wavered as did her connection to the Force.

Open palms clenched into fists.

This had been her twelfth attempt today to maintain a steady connection, and it’d taken her countless attempts throughout the week just to get to where she was now.

Rey wanted to scream.

She had failed. And she only had herself to blame for allowing Kylo Ren to once again creep into her mind and occupy her meditation.

Why did her thoughts always stray back to him like the curious pull of Ach-To’s tides?

She hated it.

Hated how her kind Master’s voice trembled whenever he uttered that monster’s given name. Hated how much his sorrowful tone parroted Han’s. Kylo Ren didn’t deserve their remorse, their pity, their forgiveness. She didn’t want to hear another cautionary tale of a boy who had everything only to lose it all, who hadn’t always been a monster. As if innocence in a past life could ever make up for his current crimes. Could ever make up for how tiny and helpless he’d made her feel on Starkiller. The humiliation. The rage.

Rey loathed the way his fears and his aches and his longings had clawed into her like a greedy beast. How closely they reflected her trepidations in twisted mirror image.

Don’t be afraid I feel it, too.

Brow marred in sweat, the young padawan tried with all her might to recapture her hold over the Force.

But it was like grasping at frayed wires.

It was gone.

Rey hung her head in defeat. Luke was wrong about her. Jakku hadn’t geared her towards the Jedi way. She was too fueled by fury, too starry-eyed and too ignorant of the galaxy and all its perils – too much like him.

A hot tear trickled down her face.

At this rate, she’d never become a Jedi.

Burning adrenaline ripped through Rey’s esophagus as tremors ransacked her muscles and robbed her of breath.

She bristled. It was the same hateful sensations she’d been struggling with all week. Ashamed, Rey had kept them hidden fearing Luke’s disdain. But this time, this time they were far worse.

Rey doubled over in confusion.

What the kriff is happening to me? So much anger and despair. I feel so empty, so helpless and alone.

Let go, Rey commanded as she whispered the Jedi code through gritted teeth, but her attempts at peace were fruitless. It was difficult to concentrate when it felt like your whole world was being flipped upside down.

Let go of anger. Let go of hate. Let go of it.

But she couldn’t.  

Not this time.

Anxiety pummeled through Rey’s chest in perverse locomotion, and her eyes widened as it dawned on her that she hadn’t lost her connection to the Force. This was the Force. She was still somehow connected. Whatever these disturbing feelings were, they were coming from an outside source. Her Master had once told her a Force user could be so in tune to the Force they could sense horrible tragedies many trajectories away.

Had some disaster been fueling her pain and muddling her concentration the past few weeks?

Rey’s breath hitched.

Had another planetary system been obliterated by the First Order? An attack on the Resistance, perhaps?

Rey let out a swift prayer for Finn’s safety as her heart rate accelerated and her stomach recoiled from the pinprick-like shocks. Every particle in her body was on fire and vibrating with a tension so thick it could rival Ach-to’s fog. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her hair stood on end from all the generated static.

She tried to hold onto the ground for balance but… there was no ground.

This should not be happening!  

She hadn’t nearly reached her master’s tipping point for when consciousness melded into Force.

This was all too new. Not that long ago, the Force had merely been an abstract idea to Rey. A word the Teedos used in vain like their goddess R’iia.

She closed her eyes in a desperate attempt to remember her Master’s teachings on Force meditation, anything to get her through this. What if she was having another Force vision? Rey baulked. She wasn’t prepared for that. She wasn’t prepared for any of this.

Not yet.

“We are all empty vessels awaiting the Force’s guidance, Rey,” Luke had told her one starless night, illuminated by the glow of a dying campfire.

“When you least expect it, the Force will reveal itself to you as it did on Takodana. It manifests itself to all Force users in time, albeit differently.”

“What’s it like for you, Master?”

“Where to even begin?” Luke laughed. “That’s like trying to have me explain a new colour.”

Luke stroked his beard as if seeming to search his mind for the right words of description.

“For me, when I’m out there–it’s like returning home. I can taste the whipping tails of dust whistle by and feel the dry crunch of desert crust sift through my fingertips. All is endless dunes, limitless it runs on forever like slithering sand snakes into a red cloudless horizon as bright as a Tatooine sunset.”

Rey scrunched her nose attempting to picture the two orbiting suns her Master often spoke of, and Luke laughed.

“The force means different things to different people, Rey.”

“Leia once told me she first saw the Force as muted colours like pastel ribbons on an Alderaanian tapestry.

Luke’s temperament softened as he spoke of Leia.

“When I last saw my sister, she had the ability to make out the impression of our mother’s face, even though they’ve never met.”

Luke stared long and hard into his hands. Finally he rose to tend the flame. An unnecessary act, considering the fire had long died out.  

“Ben never could stand Force meditation,” he whispered.

“There was always this shadow hovering about Ben, a chaos. A temperamental whirlwind just like his mother and father, and the Force only magnified it tenfold and Snoke-” Luke rested for a moment, breathing deeply. “-I do not wish the same for you, Rey.”

Luke took both her hands in his and shook them, “One day you will know peace, you will know belonging, and you will reconcile your past. Trust in the Force, Rey. It might seem scary at first, but I beg you to listen to what it tells you. Its song led you to me. Its melody protected your friend Finn from my nephew, and if you allow its will to be done, the Force will set you free from anger, loneliness, hate-” Luke smiled stiffly, “-just as it did for my father before me.”

But has it done the same for you, Luke? Rey had wished to ask her Master on that somber night. Are you free from all the hollow pain of your past?  

Instead, she had bit her blasphemous tongue and stared up at the starless sky, her mind wandering back once again to the taboo subject of Kylo Ren.

How did he experience the Force?

Listen to the Force, Rey. Luke’s voice reverberated, breaking her reverie. Listen to its song.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

But how could she possibly listen when she was being torn apart?

Disintegrated. Her mind was literally being disintegrated. Her thoughts and ideas and memories scattered and wrinkled. From nowhere, invisible hands tugged and pulled and collided into Rey as if she were in a crowded Niima marketplace. Beings that wanted to shove and push her down a million different paths at once. And they wouldn’t stop talking. The noise was unbearable. They were just incessantly talking to her in a symphony of terrible crescendos. Voices of beings she didn’t even recognize in languages she had never heard before.

And then silence.  

Rey’s eyes shot open.

The Light. It was blinding, ethereal, detached.

She’d been sucked into the Force, and all she could see for miles on end was nothing. Nothing made nowhere, only stretched wider and made more infinite.

Rey had to admit she had hoped for more than this, perhaps not Luke’s sand snakes, but something.

And then she felt it.

Beacons of green and blue effervescent light poured out of Rey like a holoprojector. At first, the signals flittered like fuzzy bits of static until finally pictures swam into view.

Rey blinked back her surprise.

She was onboard the Millennium Falcon. Or at least, it appeared that way. Entangled in wires, the Falcon blinked in and out of reality like rotating galaxies mimicking the ship’s circuitry. On closer inspection, Rey found the stars to actually be holes with long luminescent cords pulled through them. And there were piles of said wires scattered everywhere. Some of them even lead to… to her. Like umbilical cords they clung to her center.

Puzzled by this new discovery, Rey itched to wrap her fingers around the pulsing conglomeration and find their source. Two cords in particular grabbed her attention. The first a sad, pallid cord that no longer looked functional, while the second behaved as an exposed copper wire, ready to spark and burst into flames.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Rey told the hanging cords, “I happen to know a thing or two about mending broken things.”

Without a second thought, Rey tugged on the first connection and watched as it hummed in broken transmission.

Leave…Come home…Still light…

Like an echo lost in time the faraway voice resonated in static pleas, like it belonged to-

Rey’s eyes widened.

“Han?”

…There’s still light in…

“Han?” Rey cried again but there was no reply.

Spooked, she dropped the broken wire.

It couldn’t be; Han was dead. Her mind was playing tricks on her in this Force created nowhere land. She should head back to her body, back to the real Rey who sat cross-legged and out of breath somewhere on Ach-to’s rolling hills.

Rey twitched as a familiar sensation pulsated directly into her core.

Anger. Despair. Alone… so alone.

The all-consuming heat had returned in full force and it had come from the volatile second wire. Sparking out of control, it cut her deeper than any vibroblade ever could. Whatever was connected to her on the other side was tugging back, hurtling her towards its trajectory at light speed

Rey’s surroundings blurred and fizzled out of view.

No longer in the vortex of space and time she found herself staring down empty corridors with walls that zigzagged between obsidian and metallic supports. The ambiance of it made her head reel.

Where am I?

As if in answer, two figures strolled head on towards her. One Rey recognized as a state of the art 2-1B surgical droid and the other a red-headed man in a First Order overcoat.

Oblivious to Rey’s presence, the man paced around the medical droid with a perpetual frown.

“Status report,” he insisted.

“All attempts at recovery have been a failure, sir.”

Arms crossed the red-headed man wavered between rage and worry and gratifying smugness.

“Should I inform the Supreme Leader then?”

The droid whipped its head around, “No need, General. He’s already been made aware.”

“Pity,” sniffed the General, “Looks like I’ll have to forgo the pleasure of informing him myself.”

Rey strained to hear more, but it grew difficult to listen when she was seeing double when she was seeing red. The copper wire connected to her core pounded out an erratic rhythm of hard and fast, hard and fast, drawing her closer to synthetic strands and flashing filaments that clung and pumped into-

Rey gasped.

No.No. No. It couldn’t be.

There—in the corner of the cold, chrome facility lied the very naked form of Kylo Ren hooked to a bacta tank breathing apparatus. His body was bent and brooding over the same bundle of glistening cords that blinked in and out of reality to intertwine with her.

Rey wanted to weep.

How could the Force be so cruel?

Like gears set in motion, it all clicked together now for the young Jedi.

There’d been a disturbance in the Force.

It was Kylo Ren.

She’d felt him.

Though the man made no motion towards her, Rey instantly recoiled. Gooseflesh running up and down her arms as if the angry red crackle of a phantom saber dangled at the nape of her neck.

But the underdressed Darksider was no threat to her: he floated about listlessly, almost lifeless. Kylo Ren was a half shadow– every muscle on his torso flowing from the light into the dark, his body a topographic map of craterlike gashes. Rey sucked in a sharp breath at the one she gifted him on Starkiller. The angry scar wrapped his prominent jaw and curved dramatically across the length of his shoulder until it shrank into the twining cords of muscles leading lower still to bold thighs and calves-

Rey flushed at what came next, restricting herself to only looking above his torso, feeling very much the voyeur. She should not be gawking at her naked mortal enemy; instead, she should be asking the Force why it brought her to him.

Why would it bind her to such a monster?

Listen. Listen. Listen.

“I’m trying.”

But all she could hear was Kylo Ren’s erratic heart-rate monitor bleat out a sad melody no service droid bothered to remedy. In fact, it didn’t seem like anyone was concerned with his wellbeing. This was a med bay after all, a place of healing, but many of his wounds looked fresh and newly infected, the glass of his tank cracked and smeared with bloody fingerprints.  

Something was not right with this picture.

Cautious, Rey drew closer to her slumbering counterpart to circle his desolate enclosure. Behind Ren’s container lay a shady gaggle of gadgetry. Discarded torture devices she recognized from her scavenging days, some that hadn’t been used since the Empire. The one connected behind Kylo Ren’s tank was the most barbaric, the T-26G – an electric shock device set to a timer–known to inflict madness in its victim with unconditional jolts and spasms.

Kylo Ren was slowly being driven insane.

How cruel, Rey thought with a shudder, but why would the First Order torture one of their own?

Why should you care? The padawan clenched her fists.

It wasn’t as if he deserved her pity. In fact, he didn’t deserve her anything. He was a killer and in turn karma had finally come for him. Kylo Ren was an unsolved puzzle best left unsolved.

And yet.

Looking at him now—defeated and vulnerable; something faltered within Rey. Her pride wouldn’t allow her to call it pity, but it was a familiar ache nonetheless, a stirring, a sense of misplaced kinship, perhaps. After all, she’d unknowingly been privy to his thoughts and feelings for weeks. Trapped within his private world of pain and suffering; a world they now had in common.

Rey shook her head.

Perhaps, she was weak for feeling thus.

A chime went off inside the T-26G startling her.

Small electric shockwaves bubbled and foamed inside the murky bacta tank. Like a marionette Kylo Ren’s bulking body twitched to life under clouds of pressure.

Red flooded Rey’s vision. She had to clutch the tank just to steady herself; it was as if the floor underneath her would crumble – crushing her with feelings of overwhelming failure and abandonment that were not her own, but very well could have been.

A faint cry filled her ears.

Among the wires the broken grey cord wailed under the assault.

…there’s still light…

Han.

No, Rey corrected, not Han.

Han Solo had gone to join the living Force.

This was the severed link that once connected them, begging her with empty whispers and remnants of the past.

…we can still save him… I know it…

No, never. Monster, her mind screamed back.

“You ask too much of me.”

She was done with listening to the Force she was heading back.

Delirious, Rey tried with all her might to break apart the glimmering gradients of cables and cords jutting out from her belly. But determination soon dwindled to despair; the chains were just too strong. For each pull away, Rey was pulled closer to Kylo Ren as if they were binary stars set to collide. Her cries intermingled with his; their tears running together as one.  

Now the crimson wire radiated with a red hot fury, and shadows oozed like tentacles. They spoke in rhythmic clicks and howls and strangled mists thick enough to choke. Visions swarmed her, drowning her in memories not her own. Her entire consciousness was being torn out of place and put back together. It felt like dying. She was dying. She was inside him.  

Was this how Kylo Ren experienced the Force?

And then there was nothing. All was crippling darkness.

Rey’s eyes adjusted to her bleak surroundings until an inky hand gripped her face and purred.

“Kill her. You said it yourself she has too much light.”

Two glowing orbs and a saccharine grin gripped Rey in petrified thrall. It made her think of a sand cat toying with its food. Red filled her vision until she heard herself respond.

“No!”

It was the pleading voice of Kylo Ren.

“Her light may be strong but bright light casts tall shadows, Master. I’ve witnessed it myself in her mind and in battle. For all her bright, childish hope, there is a deep and lovely void- a rot not unlike my own- that if left to fester could-”  

The spectral figure snorted and dizziness consumed both Rey and Ren.

“I am confident I can turn her, master.”

“I know you are my apprentice,” The creature soothed, “-and it disappoints me.”

Anger. Despair. Alone… so alone.

Grief gripped Rey’s chest like it had back on Ach-to, but now it was as though an invisible hand had coiled itself directly into her gut and was digging for whatever it could find.

“Master, please! I do not understand. Why?”

“Your pathetic hope of turning her to our cause will be your folly.”

Hope?

“No, never…I-”

“Liar!” The creature cursed and clawed deeper still into Kylo Ren’s fractured psyche.

“You, you see an island. You long to be there with her. The scavenger!” The shrill voice gleefully accused.

“No, no I have not veered from your teachings, Supreme Leader. I am stronger now more tha-”

“You are weak. You cannot hide it from me, boy. I can smell her on you. She permeates in the air around you. At night you dream of possessing her, yearn for her companionship like a teenaged fool, a vapid obsession.”

The more this Supreme Leader continued his assault, the more Rey felt like she was the closest she’d ever been to dying.  

“Worst of all-” The monster seethed, “you see a future with her.”

“No, she’s no one.” Ren weakly coughed through choked sobs.  

“Not to you.”

The phantasm gave a knowing smile and Rey’s heart stopped.

***************************

Welp, that’s as far as I got with this. I think after watching TLJ I might be able to go back and retcon some things if I do decide to keep going and post it on A03. 

Be a dear and tell me what you think! :) 

#reylo #reylo fanfic #Kylo/Rey #betaingbyme #reylofanfictionanthology #reylofam #unfinished #star wars #Reylo fanfiction #tfa #tlj

[bakiegaming]

Bakie's The Sims 4 Custom Content:  Animated - Placeable Birds - Steelpecker

In this Series I will show you all the Custom Content I made for The Sims 4. I will show you where to find it in game, how it looks, but also some tips and tricks on using this item in game.

- -Animated - Placeable Birds - Steelpecker- - Always wanted to have a Steelpecker (Bird from Star Wars) on your lot? This is your change!

For more info, some nice example scenes and the download link, take a look at the video + description!

>>>>> CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO + DOWNLOAD <<<<

For more videos from this Bakie’s The Sims 4 Custom Content Series, click the Bakie’s CC link in the Side bar or take a look at my Bakie's The Sims 4 Custom Content Series on YouTube.

>>> If you want to support my work, take a look at my Patreon page <<<

#BakieGaming #s4cc #ts4cc #Animated #Steelpecker #Placeable #Bird #Birds #Animal #Animals #Star Wars #Effect #Effects #vfx #Sims4 #MaxisMatch #MaxisMatchCC #bts4cc #Sims 4 Custom Content #Sims 4 cc #custom content #Bakie #YouTube

[graylit]

remind me to write some things about the time Rey literally saw a man being torn apart by steelpeckers, and all the half decaying bodies and skeletons she’s stumbled across since she was a little girl.

#ii. GRUBBY DESERT SAND GOBLIN | out #when ur crying a lot b/c canon hurts u more than any of ur own headcanons could #i still have that whole list of meta to work on too but i might save it until after i see tlj this weekend if we end up going #tbd

[reyjustrey]

Headcanon - Scars

Rey’s hands and forearms are covered in scars, the most prominent of which she got from a Steelpecker that took offence to her trying to scavenge off the metal carcass it was eating. It wrapped its maw around her arm and wouldn’t let go until she’d bludgeoned it half unconscious. She also has a pronounced scar high up on her right bicep - earned when she battled the former Supreme Leader’s Elite Praetorian Guards.

#that's about me #verse ;; Awakening #verse ;; Discovery #verse ;; Rise

[edenfalling]

[Fic] “Foundlings” - Star Wars

musesfool said: I think something with Finn, Rey, & BB8 for your "cute" cotton candy square would be awesome. *g*

Note: I cribbed some information about Jakku and Rey's past from Wookiepedia, but most of the worldbuilding in this ficlet is blithely made up -- because I wanted to and because I can. :D

This is pretty dark for a fluff ficlet, since it contains discussion of animal death and general references to Finn and Rey's traumatic pasts, but the main theme is about hope and togetherness and stuff. (1,175 words)

--------------------------------------------- Foundlings ---------------------------------------------

"I never thought droids could be cute," Finn says idly to Rey, as they sit on a workbench at the back of an empty flight deck, waiting for Poe's squadron to make their overdue return from a reconnaissance flight around the Kathecora system. Safely out of earshot, BB-8 rolls restlessly back and forth at the open door of the new Resistance base, silhouetted by the bloody glow of Kathecora's red giant sun. "The First Order doesn't use a lot of them -- probably because they didn't want stormtroopers to start comparing ourselves to them and get ideas -- but there are a few in interrogation, medical, and construction, and they're all terrifying. And the droid-related combat courses were mostly about how to rig them up as improvised bombs and EMP generators."

"That's a terrible thing to do to sentient beings," Rey says, but there's a hollowness under her words, like she's trying to convince herself as much as Finn. They both grew up knowing bone-deep how chillingly indifferent the galaxy is to suffering. Terrible things happen to people every second of every day, without any need for active malice. It can be hard to sustain moral outrage over something that you were raised to think is just the way of the world.

That doesn't mean either of them will stop trying.

"It is terrible," Finn agrees. "But see, because that's the only context I had for droids, I didn't realize that they build personalities over time, just like biological people. And I definitely didn't realize they could miss people, or act like they need a hug."

He gestures toward BB-8, who has rolled away from the ledge and settled next to Poe's neatly coiled fueling hose, where it's now warbling to itself in melancholy binary.

"Like a jinnua missing its pack," Rey says. "They're social scavengers and small game hunters, a bit like cats with scales and venomous fangs, and about as clever as a three- or four-year-old child," she adds in response to Finn's blank look.

Then she turns away, fixing her gaze on BB-8, like whatever she's going to say is too big for her to speak while watching his reactions. "I left Niima Outpost when I was sixteen, to work in a shipbreaker yard in the scrublands south of the Starship Graveyard. Some of the mining co-ops figured it was cheaper to bust up ships on the surface than dig for ore underground, and I figured I needed a steadier job than scavenging, after my swindler partners stole the freighter we'd restored and left me with nothing. The jinnuai don't like dunes, but you can find them all over the canyons and plateaus where the ground stays fixed, and if you're polite and patient they'll take you as... I don't have the words. It's a little more than friends, but a little less than family. What it feels like between you and me and Poe and BB-8."

"Like a squad's supposed to be, the good kind where you all have each other's backs," Finn says. The kind of squad he always wanted and never found, until he stretched his hand out into the terrifying unknown beyond the First Order's indoctrination and found Poe reaching his own hand back so they could haul each other to freedom.

"Yes! Like that," Rey agrees, still turned away. "I fed them scraps since I wasn't used to eating full portions, and dug holes under the scrapyard fences so they could get in to hunt gnawers, sting-scuttlers, and even a flock of steelpeckers that tried to build a nest in the containers we were preparing for export. On my days off, they'd let me follow them to their dens and play with their cubs. They were round and cuddly, with big dark eyes, and colored in all the shades of sand from cream to rust--"

"Definitely like BB-8," Finn says.

Rey's laugh strikes the air like a cracked bell. "Just as cute as BB-8. And their baby scales were so soft that petting them felt like skimming my fingers through clean water. I loved them."

Finn has a sinking feeling that this story doesn't end well. He met Rey at Niima Outpost, after all, not in a scrubland shipyard. And he knows what happens to trainee stormtroopers who try to adopt local wildlife or shipfaring vermin.

"I must have taught them to be too trusting, though, or maybe they assumed the other yardworkers were my pack and would follow my lead," Rey continues. "The jinnuai stopped hiding in the shadows and started getting underfoot. Eventually the yard boss decided they were vermin and needed to be poisoned and shot. She didn't care that we'd stopped losing work-hours to poison sting reactions, or losing supplies and product to the gnawers and steelpeckers. She just didn't like visible disorder."

Finn starts to put his hand over Rey's on the bench. Then he thinks that might be presumptuous, or seem like he's saying she's too weak to face her own past without breaking.

Rey reaches up to clasp his hand while he's still hesitating, and squeezes his fingers in a wordless gesture of reassurance.

"The one survivor came to me and I hid it in my bunk for two nights while it cried," she says, eyes still fixed on BB-8, who has extended a tool-arm and started pushing Poe's spare helmet back and forth on its shelf. "That was when I realized the scrublands weren't any kinder than Niima Outpost. They only put a pretty paint job over the rust. So I quit that job and went back to where my family would know to look for me. I looked for more jinnuai on the way, and dropped the survivor off near where I surprised a pair out hunting. I didn't have enough portions to wait and see if they let it join their pack, but I hope they did. No one should be alone in the world."

"I bet they did take it in," Finn says. "Just like the Resistance took in you and me, and we're building a squad with Poe and BB-8. The one thing the First Order gets right is that it doesn't matter who your makers -- your blood family -- were. What matters is who you choose to trust and protect. I bet that's true for jinnuai too."

Because the universe is indifferently cruel, but that doesn't mean the people who live in it have to follow that example. The point of life is that you can choose how to act. He chose to defect. Poe chose to trust him. Rey chose to help him and BB-8 escape Jakku. They all chose to fight for a better world than the one they grew up in -- one where nobody, biological or droid or any combination in between, ever gets abandoned or treated as a thing instead of a person -- and they keep choosing that every day.

"Let's go keep BB-8 company until Poe gets back," Finn says now, and waits for Rey to join him when he stands.

---------------------------------------------

End of Fic

---------------------------------------------

Ha, victory!

#liz writes stuff #mini ficlet prompt meme #star wars #star wars: the force awakens #finn (star wars) #rey (star wars) #cotton candy bingo #in conversation with the internet #generalized content warning #dead animal #cacchieressa

[nowdrawthis]

22nd September 2017 

Now draw this Steelpecker from Star Wars: The Force Awakens