Tidepool Adventure

They are rare – the moments when her watcher isn’t watching.

Left alone to hide in their secret place while Leo makes an unusual outing during daylight, Gabi did spend *some* time doing as she’s told, at least until the Jedi passed beyond sight from her cliff-side perch.

And then?

The ambassador’s daughter makes a break for the water – cautiously, of course. She crouches amidst the patchy, purple grasses and peers down the length of her intended descent. It’s with great concentration that she plots her course, a slight twinge of trepidation whispering doubt into her soul. But, like her father gone before her, she doesn’t let it prevent her from play.

With nimble hands and feet, she scuttles over the edge and follows the rocky slope downward. Every few meters or so, she pauses to survey her surroundings and listen for would-be invaders. It’s slow going, but eventually the little brunette is standing upright at the bottom, squinting up.

Gabi shields her eyes against the sun and studies the horizon lines for any other beachgoers. She can find none. Turning her focus to the tide pools then, the girl marks her destination. She gingerly picks her barefoot way across the ancient reef, trying to keep to the periodic swaths of crushed, shell sand.

Her balance gets tested more than once by the treacheries of low tide – i.e. slimy flaps of alga and snared detritus, exposed for rot in the sun. To fall, she knows, would mean having to fib a terribly convoluted string of lies to the Jedi to explain just how – and where – she acquired the scrapes and bruises. And while not a feat yet tested, she suspects that the man would see through it, and all chances of future freedoms would be at an end.

“Mahkesk,” she softly chides herself, and utters a quiet apology to the deity, Meditersar, when a tube-dwelling worm performs an ill timed peek from its burrow and meets an early end beneath her heel.

Her ankles wobble, threatening capitulation, so she squats low, using her hands for extra grip. After what *seems* like half a day’s time, but is likely less than twenty minutes, she’s navigated the ridges between pools and settled atop one that seems most promising.

The overhead glare casts a mirror-like sheen across the barely-stirred surface. Slowly, a mop of tangled curls crowns into the reflection of clouds, followed by a pair of wide, curious eyes. Gabi stares at herself, thus, and lifts a finger to wipe a smudge of ash from her cheek.

“Mom would be so mad,” she purses her lips, takes another cautious look around, then rolls up her sleeves, the extra length of her shirt, and pants. Kneeling as comfortably as she can on the grating stone, she braces her hands widely around the rim of the pool and puckers her lips into the surface tension.

The sting of seawater gets sucked deliberately in, swished around, and then spat out across the rocks. The girl repeats the hygienic ceremony twice more, gargling on the third round. Nature’s mouthwash…at least it is in her line of thought.

Next, she cups her hands timidly into the water, unsure of what’s been alerted to her looming presence, and splashes it copiously over her face and exposed bits of body. She takes up a fist full of grit from beneath her knees and rubs it over her shins and arms before rinsing them in the pool.

Biting her lip against the discomfort, she does the same to her face, then submerges her head all together and opens her eyes against the burn.

It is deeper than she thought, thankfully, so the variety of creatures that call it home aren’t thrust up her nostrils as they go about their business, creeping from nook to cranny.

Spying a few edible things, the girl makes a note to make a return trip with her bag so she may harvest more of them. For the time being, however, most of the little mollusks are safe. Her pockets do have limited space. She lets a few bubbles escape from her puffed cheeks, continuing to search for another organism she hopes will be there.

In the shadows, something glints brightly through a pitted overhang.

Gabi rears her head, casting a wild spray of seawater while sucking in a second breath of air. She plunges her head in again, along with an arm, reaching, straining, to touch the thing.

One finger blindly probes through the hole and grazes over its target. The hypodermal sharpness pierces through her skin, causing her to jerk back and come sputtering up for air. Squeezing her finger, Gabi blinks through the salty rivulets dribbling from her forehead and watches as a tiny drop of purple-tinged blood oozes out. It throbbed, more than a little knick should.

It is precisely what she’s searching for.

“This’ll do,” the girl announces to no one, and wavers back onto her haunches before slowly attempting to stand on her precarious perch.

Flicking a glance about the seashore for inspiration, Gabi toes as quickly as she can away from the frustrated surf, towards the cliff base. Mounds of organic debris are strewn along the rocky shore, composed mostly of stinking weed and rotting wood.

Like a scavenger, she joins long-legged avians and needle-footed crabs in combing through the flotsam. Instead of gobbling up fish or plucking miniscule crustaceans, the castaway hones in on the bits of driftwood washed ashore. Still damp and unsuitable for firing, it can instead serve her a purpose here and now.

After several minutes of searching, she pulls a stick from the mess and shakes free the clinging seaweed strands before holding it up for inspection. It’s about half the length of her arm – more than enough length for her intended use.

Once back at her chosen pool, Gabi takes a quick peek to ensure her little urchin is still visible. It is, just barely, spines still wagging to and fro to ward off its unseen molester.

The stick threads into the niche, poking and prying as the girl tries to dislodge it from the rock. Seconds tick by into minutes. The clouds overhead shift shapes, drifting at the whim of the wind…

“HAH!” A victorious shout from the girl’s lips. The urchin capitulates, tumbling from its entrenchment and rolling to a halt along the shell-strewn bottom.

Overhead, a lone cason hawk encircles the tidal zone, sweeping his majestic shadow over the oblivious child as she goes rear-end up.

Gabi hangs by her waist, precariously balanced. One wrong leg waggle and she may slip forward too far, forever stuck and drowned. It’s worth the risk though, in her eyes. Her sore little fingers aren’t keen to agree though, as they struggle to waft the urchin passively enough into a palm to avoid the invertebrate’s wrath.

It takes a few tries, few gulps of air, but eventually she comes up with quite the pretty bounty.

The sun glints sharply off the flailing spines as the creature tries to right itself in her palm. Ignoring the stings, Gabi back-steps cautiously onto a wider, coralline ledge on which to do her dirty work.

Envenomated urchin spines – the perfect tip for her rudimentary weapon-crafting skills. But how to do it? Poking it onto its ‘back’ again with the stick, she surveys the underbelly, noting the sizeable hole and softness that may be a firm mounting point for the staff of the spear, but…that would mean death for the urchin.

A twinge of guilt knots in her belly and she accepts that impaling the innocent life is not the best option. She only needed a handful of spines. Surely, Mr. urchin would not be opposed to sharing in his wealth of the sorts, if in exchange, he kept his life?

This logic governs her to delicately ‘thread’ her stick between a few spines, flip the urchin right-side-up, then twist the stick sharply to snap off a few spines on either side. Purple fluid oozes out from the broken glands.

Shaking the urchin aside, Gabi separates ‘him’ from the amputated spines and plucks them one by one from the rockwork. Seven whole, and a few broken. It would do, for one spear.

After thanking the urchin for his sacrifice, she rolls it back into the watery sanctuary and tucks the spines cautiously into the soggy pocket of her yellow tunic. There was much work to be done yet, but her remaining crafting could be completed in the shelter of the cave.

After extracting herself from the intricate web of tidal pools and scrounging a second time in the garbage washed ashore, the resourceful girl takes to the slope. She favors the grassier, gradual climb over the more direct, cliff-hanger route, as it’s awfully hard to climb rocks when one’s hands are laden with driftwood and water weeds. As smelly as they may be, all her found treasures have a purpose, this night.

By the time Leo is visible on the return climb, Gabi has finished her masterpiece. The urchin spines were woven together using strips of the gummy weed, then drawn tautly around the stick’s tip - like a pointed cap. More weed bound it there, wrapping ‘round and ‘round down a quarter of the shaft.

Glancing to it, lain between her bag of belongings and the glowing coals, the girl wishes it’d dry faster, so she could hide it. But maybe, just maybe Leo would let her keep it. If not?

“I’ll just make another one,” she resolves softly, fishing around in her bag for one of two most prized possessions – the mini desktop projector.

When Leo enters the cave, it will be to an eerie tune. A siren’s song haunts from the depths of the hideaway, the words jumbled together by the endless echoes produced, melding into a mournful croon. It’s one he likely heard before – when Gabi first activated the message left for her, recorded in the holo family album.

It’s a lullaby, one that she currently has pressed into her chest. Mother never sang her lullabies anymore, but the tangle-headed preteen can’t help but feel intensely grateful for the recording. It had been a soothing end to a harrowing message:

“They may say terrible things, Gabi. About me, about the beliefs we fight for. But you’re a smart girl. You can sort the lies from truth.  Don’t be afraid of them, my sweet.  They cannot hurt you now…

''I will always be watching, always there. One way or another I’ll come back to you. Until then…you must obey the Jedi.”''

Curled against the wall for a nap, listening to her mother’s voice traverse space and time again…and again…and again, Gabi drifts gradually into mindlessness.