(Star Wars) Laika & Arlaud Book 1 - Lady Sahshin's Sepulchre
Copyright© 2026 by Clee Hill
Chapter 5
With a gentle sigh, Laika opened her eyes and saw that Arlaud was still asleep, still in her arms, and, as she tentatively explored with the Force, at peace, her demons sobbed out of her last night as she remembered a kindly man, frustrated in his attempts to free her from her former life, and instead freed from his own unquenchable grief for a dead sister he could never have saved. Closing her eyes again, Laika took a moment to enjoy the peace, the soft sounds of the young woman’s breathing, her growing radiance as she too began to wake.
“Good morning,” Laika said, eyes open again to watch Arlaud’s eyes open, see where she was, and that momentary anxiety fade away as she realised she was safe, something Laika kept promising herself would last as long as Arlaud remained in her company, something Laika hoped would be for a very long time. She was enchanting. “Sleep well?”
“Mmm. Yeah... Breakfast!” she panicked.
“—Can wait,” Laika said, holding her so she couldn’t dash out and get their meal started; another version of Dancer’s Porridge, she suspected.
“You’re sure?”
Laika nodded. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Late,” she said, a smile playing on her lips, as it almost always was, Arlaud somehow determining the humour in every situation. Perhaps that was how she survived, too.
“And...?”
“Dehydrated,” she answered, her smile more confident now.
“Better for it?” Laika asked, knowing she was but curious to see how well Arlaud knew it.
“Yeah ... I’m, I’m saying goodbye to my old life, aren’t I?”
“Not as easy as just hitching a ride, is it?”
“Tell me?” Arlaud asked, seeing through to the subtext Laika had not intended to include.
Laika smiled. “Later, I think. Before that—”
“—Breakfast?”
“With caf? Good. With caf. After that, I think we need to talk about the Force.”
“Hiding time?” Arlaud asked, mischief colouring her smile.
“I hope so,” Laika said, gently kissing the younger woman’s cheek before deliberately lingering a moment longer in bed as she watched her get up, fascinated and envious of her ease of movement. It was definitely something she wanted to learn from her.
“Ooh, cushions,” Arlaud smirked as they stepped through the doorway into the cargo bay they had used yesterday for their exercises. Though the training swords were still there, carefully replaced atop one of the storage crates, there were now two richly upholstered cushions in there, each placed on a matching padded mat. One was in rich red, with black detailing in a design like intertwined vines though without leaves, and the other was the same idea, though the vines were a different ‘kind’ and it was in deep blue with pale blue detailing. “And exercise gear?” she asked, Laika having suggested such meaning Arlaud was in a fresh dun and orange piping matching set of bra and shorts, with Laika in a matching powder grey set with open checkering to most of the bra and the side panels of her shorts; both of them were wearing sock-less dancer’s flat shoes.
“I thought it might be more comfortable like this.”
“Well this is,” she said, tugging slightly at her top. “And these? One of your ‘I’ll be right back’ errands?”
“Precisely,” Laika smiled. “Please, pick one.”
“Which one is yours?”
“Neither.”
“I don’t understand. You don’t meditate?”
“Not ... here,” Laika said, hoping she wasn’t flushing too much, or that if she were that the cargo bay’s lighting was somehow obscuring it.
“Oh. So normally in your quarters?”
Laika shook her head. “I have a special room for meditation. I’ll show you afterwards.”
“Okay. Can I take the blue?”
“Of course. Any reason?”
“Blue eyes,” Arlaud winked as she looked at the cushion for a moment. “Do I have to use this?”
“You don’t use them?”
“I, haha, save time and do some exercises at the same time,” she said as she moved the cushion to one side and sat down, cross-legged, except that her feet were on the tops of her thighs.
“You make that look comfortable.”
“It is,” Arlaud answered, her tone so manner-of-fact that it surprised Laika a little. She could sit like that if she tried, but didn’t do so often enough that she had ever found it ‘comfortable’, at least not for more than a very few minutes. All the more reason to have Arlaud teach her stretching and movement.
“I’ll use the cushion,” Laika said, settling down.
“Like in your room?”
Laika couldn’t suppress her chuckle. “Later,” she smiled. “I was thinking, perhaps you could tell me about how you see the rengan?”
“Sure. You want the long version or the so short it’s going to be no help version?”
“The short version is that bad?”
“We all just can,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“That’s it? So it’s natural to you?”
“Kind of. Like I said, once there used to be a lot of predators, and even now there still are enough that it matters. The ones who could hide? They were the ones who were told could have more children. When there wasn’t a lot of food, that was a thing. Still can be...” she said, looking a little wistful for a moment, that being the reason why she was there. “We can meditate, learn how to be still, and that way we can ‘see’ it easier, but I couldn’t tell you what it is I ‘see’, just that the more I do it and the more I think about doing it, the easier it is. That was what I was doing when they had us meditate back ‘there’. The rest, I don’t know what they focused on, me, it was being less obvious. There’s customers you don’t want noticing you ... So what is it for you?”
“A little more complicated, I think. I haven’t told you about Sardasi, have I?” Laika asked, Arlaud shaking her head. “My world is quite typical in most respects, M-class in the galactic charts, meaning most humanoid life forms can live there easily enough. What makes it more special is that there are regions where it is easier to feel the presence of the Force, places where it concentrates enough to tip the scales a little, making it easier to grow crops, things like that. So that is where our major cities grew up, not at once, slowly, over the centuries, until now there are no vergences, that’s what they are called, but there are no vergences that do not have a city nearby. Some of them even have the cities built all around them, vast circular cities with a sacred space in the centre where people go, where it is easier to meditate, easier to feel the Force.”
“Sounds amazing.”
“It is. Perhaps we should go visit? I’m sure you would enchant my father.”
“What about your mother?” Arlaud asked, Laika noting the tentativeness of her question.
“Oh I’m sure she will love you too, especially when she learns what you can do,” Laika said, letting her words linger a moment as she made a decision. “We could visit them both.”
“They’re divorced?” Arlaud asked, again, cautious and without a shade of judgement.
“They never married.”
“Oh.”
Laika smiled. “They couldn’t, not really. You see my father comes not only from one of the cities, but the capital city of our region. He is what I suppose you would call a prince. His family has been the ruling family for centuries, though he is not in line to succeed.”
“I knew you were a queen!” Arlaud laughed, not worrying about the detail of inheritance.
Laika smiled. “If you say so. My mother, on the other hand, was the high priestess at one of the temples of the city. My father could not marry my mother because he was already married to another woman, a princess from another, smaller city.”
“That could have been what happened to me!” Arlaud grinned.
“I thought you said your family were farmers?”
“There are. Oh. I mean they were but that was eight years ago. I don’t know what happened to them since I left.”
“Do you want to know?”
Arlaud shook her head. “No. I, hah, left that life. Even if I could, I won’t go back. But I nearly got married off, just I was too young and it would take too long. That’s why they chose me to sell. My oldest brother, Harkan, and my other older brother, Peklosh, they were both old enough to work on the farm, so they couldn’t be sold off even if they might have got more money, except the slaver was looking for girls for the theatres and ... you know. I don’t think they could dance if you shouted at them, haha. I had two older sisters, too, Malisse and Jaelish, She was too young for it the year I was sold, but next year Malisse would have been old enough to be married off for a dowry to keep the farm going, and Jaelish the year after that. Which left me. If I had been born between Peklosh and Malisse, they might have ransomed me, haha, I mean married me off, got a dowry, and got through another year. But...” she shrugged. “Anyway, what happened with your mum and dad?”
“My father saw my mother one day when she was visiting the private gardens. She was just a young priestess then, but as soon as he saw her he fell in love. So they began to spend time together. They both knew from the outset that nothing could come of it, not formally, but that didn’t stop them. In time my father was married, but even before then he and my mother had begun to be more than mere friends. And so I was born. My step-mother never really cared for me, but that was okay, I spent most of my life with my mother, growing up in the temple, learning everything I could about the Force and how to use it. And the rest of the time I would visit with my father, treated as his daughter in all but legal name, given education and training. In many ways, I didn’t grow up between two worlds, but welcomed and easily able to move between them both.”
“And the rengan?”
“For me the Force is just another form of energy. You can’t contain it or use it like other forms of energy, just as it isn’t directly visible, but it is everywhere. My mother used to teach me that once, before time, there was nothing, only the Force, infinite and incomprehensible. Over time, even though time didn’t exist then, pockets of the Force began to coalesce, growing more and more concentrated until the universe was born. The Force continued from there, forming more and more complicated structures until there were stars and planets, animals and people, and everything else. We are, she said, the universe concentrating so that it can better understand itself.”
“Wow. That’s awesome. For my people the rengan is ... It’s like a mist, it’s everywhere but you can’t see it, and as it breathes, we live. If you can breathe with it, you can hide inside it. That’s what I do but I don’t know I can explain how, I just can. Like I know how to breathe but I can’t explain how my body does it. It just does. So how do you use the Force?”
“If you are trained properly, you become aware of it, and with further training, you become about to reach into it, borrow it, use it, and when you are done, it returns to whatever it was doing before.”
“What do you do with it? I hide and I know you can ‘see’ me and sometimes I can feel you like you’re whispering inside my head, but that’s it?”
Laika laughed. “Not at all. Watch,” she said, keeping her eyes open, focusing for a moment before, deliberately slowly, she began to lift up from her cushion, not stopping until she was floating at Arlaud’s head’s height.
“Teach me?!” Arlaud asked, awed and amazed.
“I can try, if you wish,” Laika said, maintaining eye contact as she slowly came back down onto her cushion again.
“Cool! And we can play hide-and-seek, too.”
“Oh? Is that how you learn how to hide in the rengan?”
“Sort of. It’s a game we’re all made to practice when we’re young. We’re most at risk of being snatched, then, and our parents can’t be there all the time, so all the children are taught to play and given time every day just to do that. I ... I was good.”
“How good?” Laika asked, already confident of the answer.
“I kind of had to stop being too good, haha. If I didn’t want them to find me, they never did. I don’t know why, it was just ... easy? Natural? I don’t know, don’t know what I could, I just could.”
“Natural?”
Arlaud shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe it’s all just movement. I can move with and in the rengan just like I can dance. It’s all the same, just different,” she smiled, recognising the contradiction in her statement. “That doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean ... Yes! It’s like your voice. Sometimes you talk, sometimes you whisper, and sometimes you scream or shout or sing, but it’s all still your voice, just some things you can do naturally and some you have to practice. I’m just good at some things more easily than it is for other people. What about you? You a natural too?”
“Ah. I’m a little bit more than that.”
“Ooh! Tell me?”
“My father was already very capable in using the Force, and my mother was a priestess, not because of what she knew or how she conducted the ceremonies, but because she had her own aptitude, too. People like me happen from time to time, when two people who can use the Force have a child, there is a good chance that child will be more powerful than most...”
“Like you?” Arlaud asked, eyes wide in admiration.
“Like me. Both my mother and my father trained me for as long as I can remember, my father’s training being a little more ... ornate, and also a little more focused on how to fight, whilst my mother was more focused on the philosophical. I think it was a good balance.”
“So that’s why you’ve got your lightsabre? Your father?”
“His gift to me when I first left home. Something to protect myself with and something to remember my home, and him, with.”
“Cool. Did your mother give you anything too?”
“Later,” Laika said, unable to stop herself from smiling, hoping she had been able to stop herself from blushing, the truth, she was discovering, a somewhat intimate thing she wished to share with this young woman. “For now, tell me some more about how I can try to hide, and how I could try and find you. I promise not to use S1 and S2 to cheat,” she chuckled...
It was just over an hour later and Laika was sitting in the mess, Arlaud busy insisting on making their drinks. It has been a humbling experience for Laika. Without trying, Arlaud had been able to evade her best efforts at finding her. She had only been somewhat successful at hiding from her, too, the young woman finding her quickly, Laika sure the only real reason for the longer hiding times being her unfamiliarity with how to quickly navigate her way around the ship. Granted, Laika rarely came into contact with other Force users, and when she did it tended to be in a more confrontational situation, but there were ways in which Arlaud was able to weave her way through the Force that left her feeling like the student, and not the teacher. She had presupposed she would be able to master her skills swiftly, and it was clear that was not the case.
“Sorry,” Arlaud said, her voice soft, almost a whisper as she handed Laika her caf, hot, steaming, and, as prepared by Arlaud, with some spices added into the plungére making the caf seem far more exotic.
“Don’t be,” Laika smiled, watching as the young woman sat down. “It was good for me.”
“Is that why we didn’t keep score?” she asked, looking up, her eyes glittering with tentative mischief.
“We can do that when I have a better chance of scoring,” Laika smiled. “But no, it was good for me. When you are as ... capable as I thought I was, it is a useful lesson to be reminded that there is always someone who can do something you can’t, or better, or both.”
“So no sleeping in my own bed tonight?” Arlaud asked, half serious, still half worried she had overstepped somehow.
“Not unless you want to.”
“No.”
“No? Why?”
“It’s nice not to be alone...” she said, thoughtful for a moment, her expression changing as she added. “Plus there’s the whole you’re hawt thing too, haha.”
“I see. Thank you. You’re rather adorable yourself.”
“Yeah?”
Laika held her eyes. “Yes, young woman, you are, as I’m sure you have been told before, and probably often, too.”
“Not by someone who wasn’t paying.”
“Ah,” Laika said, instantly regretting her words, cursing herself to think more about Arlaud’s life before saying things, even compliments.
Arlaud shrugged. “It’s okay, but...”
“But?”
Arlaud shook her head. “I can’t. You know. It’s too ... soon.”
Laika smiled softly as she reached for the young woman’s hand, gently stroking the back of it. “Tell me in your time, not mine.”
Arlaud nodded. “It’s just ... So much is happening and so fast and none of it seems quite real yet. I’m ... I’m still finding my feet.”
“They’re cute too.”
“Huh?”
“Your feet.”
“You like ... feet?” Arlaud asked, clearly surprised that anyone might.
Now it was Laika’s turn to shrug. “Not until you, no.”
“And now...?”
“When you are ready, I think I would very much like to paint them. And your fingernails.”
“Guess that will have to wait, too,” Arlaud said, her tone a little distant.
“Why?”
“I don’t have anything you could paint them with. I don’t have any makeup.”
“I would be happy to share mine, if you would like.”
“You’ll teach me how to do your eyes like that?”
“The eyeshadow?”
“Yes! You’re really good at it. Very subtle but ... but kind of wow, too,” Arlaud said, blushing a little, Laika promising herself to say nothing about that.
“It’s mostly picking colours that complement, and then blending them. Doing my brows and lipstick to complement helps too.”
“Can you teach me all of that too? I’ve used makeup before, but it had to be a bit, much, you know, so it showed through the lights.”
“Perhaps later?”
“Cool. Then I can look as sexy as you do,” she grinned, winking theatrically.
“Thank you. Now, before we go to my meditation room, I think I need to explain a little to you about how I meditate, normally.”
“There are different ways? I thought it was either focus or, haha, focus on nothing?”
Laika smiled. “It can be, but the object of focus, that can be quite ... interesting.”
“Oh? How?”
“For the Sardasi, there are different ways in which we focus. For my father, it was trying to focus on sensing the power of the force, and in his meditation chamber he used rich and complex incenses as his way to do this, the emphasise the sense of richness, even opulence. You light the incense, let your senses still, and focus all your attention on just your sense of smell, trying to discern the different herbs and spices and gums and unguents which might have been used to make that incense, exploring how they compliment or contrast, and seeing what that can evoke. As you begin to unravel and understand the perfumes, so you are able to move from that to discerning the Force, not as it usually is, not as something in the background, like a distant song, birdsong in your mind, but as something up close, unimaginably powerful, and there for you to reach for, to hold, and to use.”
“To fly!” Arlaud giggled.
“To fly,” Laika smiled. “Others find their focus in other ways, and I was always more drawn to the method of my mother...”
“Ooh. What was it?”
“My mother is ... much more sensual than my father.”
“Okay...”
“You understand there are different sensualities? Anything, really, can be sensual, if you want it to be.”
“Like my feet?” Arlaud giggled.
Laika laughed. “Well, how about I let you know about that after I have oiled them and painted your nails?”
“Deal, I love being oiled by someone else.”
“So I saw,” Laika said, Arlaud having sighed and ahed her way through their time with the masseurs.
Arlaud shrugged. “I’m so busy always knowing and listening to and feeling my own body, it’s interesting when someone else gets to explore it. They find little aches I haven’t noticed, or just touch me in ways I don’t. It’s fun, seeing which masseuse touches you how.”
“I, I had not thought of that.”
“You don’t go to a spa often?”
“Not as much as I think we will from now on.”
“There a spa at the Ice Planet?” Arlaud giggled.
“No, no there is not. As far as I have been able to find out, and that is not very much, but it is said to be a desolate world of wind and ice and snow and rock. I don’t even know if there are any flora or fauna there; the whole might be a dead planet, the weather self-sustaining through chemical reactions.”
“You’re sure you want to go?” Arlaud asked, comically concerned.
“Very. But ... Have you finished you caf?”
Arlaud looked at her cup, making a show of gulping down what was no more than a spoonful. A small spoon, too. “Yep. All gone.”
“Good. I think you might be interested in this,” Laika said, ignoring Arlaud’s puzzled expression, waiting for her to tidy their things away, noting how she felt Arlaud would not be happy if she offered to do it. As soon as they were done, she led them around the upper corridor until they came to an unmarked door.
“This one?” Arlaud asked, her tone suggesting she was puzzled what made this door different.
“This one, and try not to scream,” Laika said, enjoying the younger woman’s surprised expression as she stepped forward and the door swooshed open, the room inside only dimly lit for the moment, Laika waving Arlaud in and waiting for the door to close. “S1? Slowly, lights up, please. No acknowledgement required.”
“Wow...” Arlaud gasped.
Inside the room, there was not a square inch of plasteel or bulkhead to be seen. The floor was covered in a single rug, quite a squared oval in shape, in a rich red with a design in white of flowing lines that could be floral or could be rivers, it was hard to be sure. The walls were hidden behind what looked like a single hanging, fabric, flocked, showing trees and mountains but, again, all in reds and oranges. The ceiling, fabric again, had a gauzy appearance to it, neatly tucked or stitched to the upper edges of the wall fabric, seemingly making a canopy in soft grey with something ivory behind, as if there were two layers, not one. Behind them, as the door closed, a fabric fell down to cover it, showing highly stylised humanoids embracing.
“This is incredible...” Arlaud whispered, awed. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the centre of the room where some kind of statue, it seemed, waited for them beneath a silken cloth of cream edged in gold but without any other design or pattern on it.
“My throne,” Laika said, knowing what Arlaud’s reaction would be.
“I knew it! You are a pirate queen,” she laughed.
“Not quite. Remember. I can’t inherit, and my father is a prince, not a king, and not a pirate.”
“Hey, I can dream, can’t I? This is all a dream to me already.”
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