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The blurrg made quiet little whuffing noises as she trotted along the lava flats. Today was meant to be a brief stop in the market, picking up only a few things, so Din had left the younger blurrg at home as she would not be needed for carrying their supplies back. Grogu laughed at the wind in his ears and the bouncy motion of the blurrg, sitting securely between Din’s legs.
Din knew they could always get a speeder instead, but why waste the credits when they already had blurrgs? Besides, he’d grown fond of their galumphing gait, slower than a speeder but fast enough for their needs. The ride into town always gave him time to remember old friends.
The morning sun spilled over the lava flats, gilding ridges and crevices and creating deep blue shadows. There had been no new lava flows recently, no flickers of molten rock amongst the crags, but the rocky formations held a forbidding kind of beauty that Din had started to associate with home.
Grogu burbled a question up at him, a long stream of syllables Din thought he had the idea of. “No, it’s just a short trip today. We have a lot of chores to take care of back at the house.”
Grogu’s ears dipped down in disappointment, but the kid knew better than to argue.
Hm. Din reconsidered, noting Grogu’s newfound maturity in not whining or fussing. Maybe a few of their maintenance chores could be pushed off until tomorrow… Grogu did always love the market, whether it was trying to sneak off with the best fruits, touching every shiny thing he could reach, or babbling at the stall keepers.
They crested the hill and looked down into the city.
”What the —“
Even from a distance they could tell things were different. Far more ships and speeders than usual were lined up outside the city gate. Music, faint and piping, carried across the flats. Bright flags festooned the main gate, their colors flashing through the main streets. And the crowds of people — everyone from the city and the homesteads must be here to make such a throng.
Grogu squealed with excitement. Even the blurrg rumbled with curiosity. And they still needed supplies.
”We’ll go check it out,” said Din. “But we can’t stay long.”
Of course, within five minutes of tying up their blurrg at the city entrance and hitting the market, High Magistrate Greef Karga had spotted them and was imploring them to stay longer. If possible his robes were even finer and more ridiculous and resplendent than ever. His entourage dipped and bowed and scurried around him.
"You made it!” Greef bellowed.
"Made it to what?” Din asked as a horde of small children in colorful hoods barreled past them, waving flags and streamers. “What is all this?”
“It’s the first annual Nevarro Day Celebration! I sent you a formal invitation, didn’t you receive it?” Greef asked as a passing mother handed him her baby to bless. He kissed the little Rhodian on its head, to her delight, and she went on her way beaming.
”It… might not have been received,” Din said delicately. There had been a blinking message on his receiver the night the bounty hunter had broken in, but the whole thing had been blasted in the scuffle, and it hadn’t exactly been his top priority when they got back from Nal Hutta and needed a whole new roof.
“Well, I’m glad you and Grogu are here anyway. Wouldn’t be a celebration without you two,” Greef said, clapping Din on the shoulder. “This festival is for all Nevarrans to celebrate our world and its liberation. That includes you two, you know, and all the Mandos who’ve stayed.” He patted Grogu on the head and Grogu leapt into his arms, giggling.
Din considered. “I guess you could call us Nevarrans, couldn’t you.” What else did one call it when one lived somewhere for the past few years and called it home?
Grogu nodded, looking pleased with himself.
“See? Kid’s a proud Nevarran Mandalorian,” said Greef. “Now go on. Enjoy the faire! I’ve got various duties to attend to, of course, but I’m sure I’ll see you both throughout the day. After all, you’re hard to miss.”
“So are you,” Din pointed out, gesturing to his voluminous glittering robes, and Greef’s guffaw rang out even through the voices of the crowd.
Din and Grogu had seen many intense things in their years together. The most vicious underworlds. The fiercest criminal rings. The worst the Empire could throw at them. Most recently, the cruelty of the Hutts.
But they’d never seen this maelstrom of kids and families and crowds teeming in the streets, everyone wearing their most colorful outfits, the kids screaming for more sweets, the parents seesawing between proud delight and exhausted annoyance, the market swollen to three times its normal size with creature exhibits and craft stalls and fried food stands and… and rides?
Grogu chattered with excitement at a dizzying structure with little swings dangling from it, spinning kids around in circles in the middle of the city square. To Din’s surprise he couldn’t see a bit of hover tech on it. It all seemed to run on gravity. “You want to go on that?” Din asked doubtfully. “But we have the Rising Phoenix. And you can jump with your powers.”
Grogu scolded him roundly, getting into his face and waving one little hand. It was clear that somehow it was different than flying or leaping, at least in Grogu’s mind. Din sighed. It was a small battle to concede. “Fine. But don’t forget, you’re short. You’ll have to sit with me.” Grogu nodded impatiently at him for stating the obvious.
They climbed the steps to the swing entrance after a brief wait in line. Din recognized a couple of the kids from town getting off the ride, a few human children and one helmeted Mandalorian foundling whose mother was standing back at the exit waiting for him. She tilted her helmet towards Din and shrugged, her hands wide as if to say “I don’t get it either.” He nodded. Kids.
The ride operator looked them up and down. “You’ll have to hold the baby,” the scrawny teenaged Mythrol said.
“That’s fine,” Din said as Grogu let out an indignant squawk. He followed the teenager to their swing and buckled them in. “I know you’re not a baby, kid,” he told Grogu consolingly. “But they don’t know that.”
Grogu made his annoyed face, complete with downturned ears, but didn’t have time to get more annoyed about being called a baby before the ride started. With a jerk the ride sprang to life, hauling them into the air. Grogu swung his feet with glee, grabbing Din’s hand and raising it above his head as they began to arc a wide loop over the market square. The buildings swung and swooped around them as cheery music blasted.
Din tried to look down at Grogu — it was nice to see him so excited, so carefree — but a dizzy wave passed over him as their swing kept spinning. The hell?
He practiced rotational drills with the Rising Phoenix when he could, of course, but this — not having any control over the spin — this was different. He turned his gaze back to the horizon, trying to keep it fixed on a single point, but it just spun them round and round. When the ride finally ended and lowered them back to the ground, Din let out a long breath. It took him a beat to get back up, still carefully holding Grogu. The kid turned in his arms to look up at him.
"Ba? Ba!” Grogu crowed, clearly wanting to go again.
"No, once is enough,” Din said, patting the kid’s back. “And we still need our supplies. That’s enough fun.”
It was not nearly enough fun for Grogu.
To Din’s credit, they did get the supplies they needed. A week’s worth of fresh herbs and veggies to throw into their dehydrated pog soup stores, since their own vegetable garden was at a low ebb right now. Fresh-baked bread, three still-warm loaves. Dried sausage. Refills of powdered soap for the refresher and for their laundry. A six-pack of tubes of meringues because Grogu had a sweet tooth like nothing else. Wood oil for the stock of his new amban rifle.
That should’ve been the end of it. But Grogu found a way to convince him of just a few more minutes, just one more market stall, just one more snack…
So many snacks.
First he got the kid a skewer of fried lava bugs, each with a different seasoning. They found a quiet corner and Din took a bite of each flavor, raising his helmet just enough for a good mouthful. They were pretty delicious, actually - one spicy, one cool ranch, one smoky sweet, one of bright herbs and citrus. The fried coating was addictively crunchy, especially on the legs.
Next was a bowl of goat ribs, deep-smoked and smothered with three different sticky sauces, spangled with stone pepper slices and shreds of cave onion. Under the ribs was a pile of mashed twice-fried yucca, loaded with cheese. Din tried to get Grogu to stick to using the flimsy disposable fork that had come with the dish, but the kid dove in headfirst and practically drenched himself in sauce. Din helped him with a few bites. The sauce clung to his gloves despite his own best efforts.
That was really going to be the end of it. Until Greef reappeared, bright-eyed and laughing up a storm, bearing a bowlful of goatsmilk ice cream drenched in chocolate and caramel and sprinkles and a vast plume of whipped cream. “Just who I was hoping to find!” Greef proclaimed, pressing the massive bowl into Din’s hand. He leaned in and whispered, “You gotta get rid of this for me. The sweetest little old shopkeeper wouldn’t take no for an answer and it would be dreadful for my reputation if I didn’t humor them. But I’ve already eaten four ice creams today and I think I might die if I try for another. I’m not as young as I used to be.”
”This is your festival,” Din muttered under his breath. “You’re the High Magistrate. Your word is law!”
"It doesn’t work that way, Mando! Politics are a delicate game —“
Slurrrp. Grogu was halfway though the bowl and somehow, he had gotten ice cream in his ears.
“Kid —“
"I knew you wouldn’t let me down!” Greef said, and bustled on to his next engagement. Din just sighed, then found a free table to set Grogu on. He stuck a spoon in the ice cream and took a few bites. All right. It was delicious as hell. They worked on it together, Din lifting his helmet for each bite.
“Okay, kid,” Din said as he tossed the empty ice cream bowl into the trash. Grogu clambered up on his shoulder, wiping ice cream off his face and licking it off of his palms. “We gotta start heading back.” He glanced to the kid, catching just a hint of his face through the far edge of his visor. ”You understand?”
Grogu gave him the biggest, wettest, saddest eyes in the galaxy, and his little face crumpled.
Din held firm. Don’t give in. You’re stronger than this.
Grogu looked as if everything he had ever loved had just been incinerated.
You’re in charge here. It’s good for the kid to not get everything he wants.
Grogu sighed, the tiniest breath of air, just barely audible through the hubbub of the crowd. He tilted his head, then glanced out at all the things they still hadn’t looked at - crafts, creatures, more rides. He held out one small clawed hand, and his lower lip trembled.
"Da?”
Dank farrik!
They made their way through the bustling crowds. Grogu clapped and waved at a baby rancor in a pen feasting on unidentified meats. Din raised a hidden eyebrow at a pool holding a three-meter-long creature that reminded him unpleasantly of Nal Hutta’s dragon-snake. Grogu hid his face in Din’s shoulder when they passed an arachnid the size of a blurrg, even though it was restrained behind transparisteel.
They left the menagerie and wandered through stalls of goods. Din stopped and picked up a finely woven child’s hood with a wide oval shape, big enough to accommodate Grogu’s ears should they find themselves in fierce sun or rain or snow. He’d been bothered by their last snowy mission realizing he had nothing to keep the kid’s ears warm. Grogu perched on the seller’s table, touching each bolt of fabric and purring when he found ones that were extra soft. The shopkeeper was entranced and gave Grogu a blue-green toffee, which the kid promptly devoured.
A clanging sound led them onto the next stall, where a shifty-looking Pantoran was presiding over toy blasters and targets for a shooting contest. He spotted them coming up and shook his head, waving his arms. “Oh, no, no no,” he said, tapping a sign beside him. NO MANDALORIANS.
”Excuse me?” Din asked, his voice measured.
The Pantoran stammered, “Well, it ain’t fair, is it? You all are the best marksmen in the galaxy! We want the regular folk to have a chance here.”
”Uh-huh,” Din deadpanned. “And my son?”
The Pantoran pointed to Grogu’s mudhorn sigil, proudly displayed on his rondel. ”Well, he’s a Mandalorian too, ain’t he?”
He had them there. Din loomed silently for a moment over the Pantoran, then kept walking, grinning slightly to himself. Grogu giggled at his shoulder. He couldn’t blame the guy, not really. It wouldn’t have been a fair match at all.
They stopped in at a temporary toy stall run by a young Toydarian. Din was startled to recognize the logo on the wall. “You folks are a long way from Batuu,” he said.
“Oh, you’ve visited us in the Outpost? Well, my grandmother’s looking to expand the shop to other worlds,” the young shopkeeper said, flitting between the rows of toys, her wings shimmering. “And she and the High Magistrate go way back.” She winked.
Din chuckled. “Is that so?” He supposed nothing surprised him anymore.
The Toydarian giggled. “You didn’t hear it from me.” She glanced at Grogu, who had climbed into a basket of plushies. “Need a new toy for your son?”
Din hesitated. Grogu did have plenty of toys. But —
Grogu held out a simple wooden figure that was, unmistakably, a Mandalorian. A helmet with a carved and painted T-visor, pauldrons, cuirass, greaves. A little fabric cape. It wasn’t Din — that would be ludicrous — but with a child’s imagination, it could well be.
Grogu gazed up at Din with the figure in his hands, his eyes shining. Din swallowed.
“Yeah,” he said, voice cracking, “we’ll take that one.”
”Okay,” he said as Grogu polished off the last of a cloud of airy, filamentous candy. Din smacked his lips, still tasting berry and vanilla. “We gotta get our blurrg home.” The sun was already low in the afternoon sky. How had he let the day get away from them so? If they stayed out much later, they’d have the reptavians to deal with, and that was more than he wanted after a long day like today.
Grogu tapped Din’s pauldron and pointed. Din followed his kid’s direction, landing on a ride of little round hover vehicles all twirling madly. “What, you wanna go on that?”
Grogu nodded, his eyes blazing with determination. Din huffed. Well, he knew the kid was a daredevil.
They waited longer than Din was prepared to, but by the time he thought about bailing on the line, they were already halfway through it and Grogu looked just as determined as ever. His kid was practically vibrating with excitement, waving his new Mandalorian toy and jittering. Though maybe that was all the sugar he’d eaten.
They reached the front of the queue and were ushered into a little round car with a simple waist seatbelt. Grogu scooted next to Din and Din draped an arm over his shoulder just in case the kid didn’t like it. The Twi’lek kid running it lifted her hand and waved, and started the ride going while madcap jizz music blared.
Oh.
Oh he did not like this at all.
If the swings had been bad, the hover whirls were a hundred times worse. Their surroundings spun and whorled and blurred around them. This wasn’t the rotational drills with the Rising Phoenix. It wasn’t a barrel roll in the Razor Crest or the N-1, where he knew exactly what to expect and was in control the entire time. It was pure unadulterated madness, and Din was suddenly acutely aware of every fried bug, ice cream soup, goat chunk, yucca blob and cotton cloud candy in his stomach, bouncing and swirling around—
Don’t. Puke.
He couldn’t. He was wearing his helmet. He was in public. Grogu was pressed into his thigh by centrifugal force, squealing with delight with his arms waving, his little Mando toy’s cape fluttering. Din had to keep it together.
He melted into the back of the hover whirl, pressing his arms against it as hard as he could, breathing rapidly through his nose, trying to find a reference point on the horizon to focus on. He gagged once, mouth filling with saliva, and choked his gorge back down through sheer force of will. He tried briefly to close his eyes but that made it much worse, and he kept them open the rest of the ride until they watered.
The hover whirl came to a blessed and merciful end. Din’s head kept spinning regardless, the contents of his stomach sloshing around. He stared at the horizon, willing it to stop spinning.
”Ba?” Grogu asked curiously. Din managed to glance down at him, swallowing hard.
“Urp —“
He kept it all down.
Barely.
The sun was setting as Din slowly made his way to the city gate, Grogu snoring against his shoulder, cradled in his arms while still holding fast to his Mando toy. His stomach had finally settled, though he had decided to swear off candy and ice cream for the foreseeable future. And no more hover whirls.
Lights in the city streets twinkled on, spanning the thoroughfare with warm gold. The mood was changing from the clang and clamor of daytime to a hushed and quiet anticipation as tired families lined the streets, looking up as if waiting for something. Din could appreciate the change in mood, but they had things to do. He’d already tarried far too long.
Greef appeared again, still surrounded by his entourage. He looked a little tired too, but his smile stretched warmly to the wrinkles at the edges of his eyes. He nodded to them.
”Looks like you and your son enjoyed the faire.”
Din smiled, patting the slumbering Grogu on the back. “Yeah, I think we did. Kid had a good time.”
”That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, Mando?” Greef mused. “Remember this place years ago? Not exactly a town to raise a family in.”
”No,” Din agreed. “Things have changed.” He nodded towards Greef’s finery. “We’ve changed.”
”Yes, we have,” Greef agreed. He reached out, brushing Grogu’s ears slightly. Grogu sighed and turned over in his sleep, smiling slightly. “I’m glad you both have found a home here. All of this would never have happened without the two of you.”
Din thought of protesting. But then he thought of coming back to Nevarro with Kuiil and IG-11 and Cara for Grogu’s sake, of coming back with Mandalorians to fight and defend the planet, and he had to admit that maybe Greef had a little bit of a point.
He clasped Greef’s arm in a firm handshake. “Maybe so,” he said. “But it wouldn’t have happened without you either, High Magistrate.”
Greef smiled warmly at him. “Maybe so,” he echoed. “Good to see you both. I hope you can come by town more often.”
”We’ll do what we can,” Din said. “We’ve been busy with work for the New Republic. But I’m pulling back for now. Things… got a little close out there. Maybe it’s time to focus on home for a while.”
”I like the sound of that,” said Greef. One of his attendants hurried up to him, whispering into his ear. Greef nodded. “Well, I’m needed for the grand finale. I’d ask you to stay, but I can tell when you need to get going. Just keep an eye out as you go, all right? It should be quite the sight.”
Din tilted his helmet forward in a nod. “We will, Greef. Until next time.”
”Until next time, Din Djarin.”
And then the High Magistrate was gone, whisked away for his duties, and Din made his way back to their blurrg.
They had barely crested the first hill when the fireworks began.
Din turned their blurrg back to face the town. Showers of blue and green and red and gold and white filled the air, explosions of color and sound echoing over the darkening lava flats. Grogu woke with a start and began to ask a question, until his voice faded away while watching the bursts of light flare against the deep blue night. Din set Grogu up on his knee and the kid leaned back against him, one hand pointing out each array of light as it bloomed, the other hand still clutching his toy tightly against his chest.
“Pretty neat, huh, kid?” Din asked.
Grogu couldn’t answer. He was transfixed, fireworks playing across his wide dark eyes, his mouth half-open with wonder. Din pulled him closer.
“Guess what?” Din asked.
”Buh?” Grogu asked, unable to tear his eyes away.
”We can come back next year.” He let out a long breath. “Every year. You and me.” For as long as I’ve got. “You know why?”
Grogu turned around, looking up into his visor, and threw his arms around his chest.
Din bent over his son, holding him close. He closed his eyes as the fireworks boomed and blasted overhead, echoing off the canyons and the flats, a celebration he could feel in chest and bone and beskar. “Because,” he said. “It’s home.”