Not Even Death

Dume in the Gloom

"Dume."

"Who's there?" My lightsaber ignites with a wicked hum of raw energy.

Hera sits up, panicked. "What the?" she shrieks. "Kanan put that down!"

Cold sweat drips down my spine as I switch the blade off. My ears are still alert for the deep voice that called to me from the darkness.

"You sleep with that thing? Isn't that dangerous?"

Wouldn't facing an attacker unarmed be dangerous? "It hangs on my belt. All-day."

"Point taken," Hera's voice mimics a wince. "So, who was it?" She doesn't question my sanity or my instincts. 

"It was Dume."

There's a moment of silence before I feel a soft hand on my bare chest as Hera's lips quickly press against my cheek. All I want right now is for her to say that it was nothing, and I should go back to sleep.

But Hera's warm body pulls away. "Go," she says.

"I'll be back soon," I speak softly returning her kiss on the forehead, "and I can't forget you too, little one." For the last kiss, I drop my head to Hera's stomach and gently press my nose into it breathing in the sweet scent of Hera's homemade soap.

Just as I finish pulling on my last piece of clothing, I can hear the shift in Hera's breath as she drifts back into sleep. I smile at the sound before turning to go.

The ship should be silent at this hour, save for Zeb's snoring, but I can make out the faint sounds of footsteps that would be silent to the average ear. Then, I hear the hiss and clanging of the old bay doors opening. Someone is leaving.

Sabine.

I follow the fading sound of her footsteps into the warm night. A breeze plays on my cheeks, but it brings more than the scent of dry grass. It carries Sabine's hopeless whisper, "Where are you, Ezra?"

I hang onto the silence in the air as if his laughter would fill the night and just answer, "Right here, of course."

But... the night remains silent. The gentle summer breeze even seems to mock me as it howls loud and cold.

"Dume."

Something flickers in the back of my mind almost as if my visual cortex were firing up for the first time in a long time. It's just like the day I saw Ezra and Maul huddled around the holocrons or the brief flicker of fire reflecting in Hera's eyes the night of the explosion.

I see him, Dume.

"He wants us to follow."

"Kanan?" Sabine sounds surprised.

A hand awkwardly rakes my patchy excuse for a haircut. She must have wanted to be alone.

"Yeah, wolfy woke me up."

"Me, too," she says quietly. "He told me to come in a dream, but I didn't think anything about it."

Whoa. "You had a vision?" I marvel. "But that's... That should be impossible."

The force swells gently from Sabine as she realizes what I said. "No, I don't think it was me. It was Dume."

"He is strong with the force."

There's another oddly cold wind, and I know the wolf is beckoning us.

"I guess we have no choice, huh?" Sabine shouts over the wind. "This could be our only shot at finding Ezra."

"Let's do this," I can hear the eagerness in my own words.

Sabine leads the way across the plains of waist-high grass and prowling Loth cats. We walk for hours through the itchy foliage before I sense it. The slow, decisive waves of the force that flow from the white wolf.

"He's here."

"How do you know?" Sabine asks.

The corner of my lip turns up. "I'm strong with the force, too."

"There's a cave," Sabine fills me in, "and you're right. He's waiting for us."

"It's best not to keep creepy force wolves waiting," I say with a chuckle.

We draw closer to what I assume is the mouth of the cave, and I can make out the echoes of every living creature bouncing on its endless walls. I feel a familiar pricking sensation in my head as the form of a wolf begins to take shape in my mind.

I go blind, and the one thing I can see multiple times is a furry blob. Cool. It's totally fine. I didn't want to see my kids or the love of my life or literally anything else. It's fine. I'm fine.

I briefly contemplate telling Sabine, but now is not the time

"You know where Ezra is. Right?" Sabine's voice is full of the confidence and determination of a thousand Mandalorians. I'm proud; though, I probably don't have much to do with it.

The white blob remains silent as he turns away from us and disappears into the cave. We follow. Dume could be leading us anywhere, to our deaths, to another continent, a swimming hole... But we just follow.

The blobby wolf stops, and a new, darker blob pierces through my vision. It's another wolf resting on the floor of the cool cave.

"Dume," the wolf growls speaking up for the first time. "Come."

Cautiously, I step towards the two wolves, and my image of them clears.

"Look."

I strain all of my attention on the pair, but still, they look blurry.

"Look," Dume growls harsher.

"But Kanan can't see!" Sabine shouts. "He's blind!"

Dume ignores her, and growls with the full brutality of a wolf, "Look!"

And then, "I see it. Sabine, I can see it."

"What? What is it?!"

I take a moment to process. The darker wolf must be Dume's mate. She nurses four cubs of various patterned fur, but a fifth creature catches my eyes. The she-wolf has the small animal in her grasp as she gently bathes it with a wide pink tongue. The four nursing cubs are all shades of white and black, but the fifth cub is white, black, and startlingly orange. As my vision clears, I can see that it also has scrawny legs and wings.

"It's a..." I start, but I'm so baffled I can't finish.

"It's a what? What is it, Kanan?!" Sabine is alit with excitement and passion.

"It's a... porg?"

The moment the word leaves my lips, my sight vanishes.