Lekku. LOG-004. To Stand, You Crawl.

LOG-004. To Stand, You Crawl.

Pain doesn’t surprise me anymore.

It just pisses me off.

I hit the ground for the third time in eight minutes. Sand in my teeth. Bruised elbow. Dagger knocked clean from my hand, again. The Zabrak foundling (Rok, I think) grins at me with one chipped fang like this is his idea of fun.

It probably is.

I push up. Slow. Careful not to let my lekku drag too much in the dirt. They're sore, again. Still not used to the idea that they're part of a fight, not something to tuck away or hide like a weakness.

“You gonna stay down, dar’jetii?” He sneers.

I don’t know what that word means yet. Not exactly. But I know tone. And tone tells me it’s meant to sting.

I spit blood at his boots. Miss by a little. Worth it.

“Suck fumes.” I rasp.

He lunges. I dodge. Low. Fast. Lekku whip for balance, left foot pivots, weight shift, he expects me to retreat.

I don’t.

Instead I use his momentum. Drop my weight. Shoulder check his ribs. He stumbles. I dive for my blade, scramble, twist, backhand grip.

He grabs my wrist.

I kick his knee.

Hard.

He goes down.

Doesn’t stay down, but it feels like a win.

The instructor calls it. I lost on points. Doesn’t matter.

I got a bruise on his face this time.

—

Weapon training comes next.

They don’t let me near a blaster yet. Not really. I get a broken one to practice draw time, safety reflexes, field strip. It’s fine. I’m faster than most of the others. Smaller hands. Quicker reset.

Knives are better, though. Honest. Personal. Every mistake costs you skin.

Vibroknives buzz like livewire in your hand if you grip them wrong. First time I held one, I sliced open the edge of my palm. Didn’t cry. Didn’t flinch. Just memorized the weight.

Varin was watching.

He said nothing.

Meanwhile, grenades are terrifying.

We train with dummies. Rubber weight, no charge. But I know what they’re meant to do. I’ve seen what they do.

So I watch them closely. Learn how to arc them. Time the fuse. Roll, not throw. Always check the floor for bounce. Foundlings mess that up once.

Sometimes only once.

—

That night, I steal back the small dagger Rok knocked from my grip. Hide it in my boot.

It’s ugly. Scratched. Hilt wrapped in frayed synth thread. But it’s mine.

And I’m good with it now.

I don’t fight fair. Not anymore.

Fair gets you killed.

Fast, as I’ve come to learn.

…I feel kind of cool.

—

Mando’a’s a weird language.

It sounds like someone jammed knives into a comm system and hit record, to be honest.

Lots of hard consonants. Short words. Everything clipped like it’s afraid of being misunderstood. And honestly? I get that. Nobody here wants to say more than they have to. It’s a language built for warriors, not poets.

The nerd in me kinda likes it.

Still learning, though. Slowly. My tongue trips over the gutturals. My lekku twitch in frustration when I can’t get the syntax right. Some of the other foundlings are fluent already, born into it, raised on it.

I wasn’t born with anything but a collar.

So I’m catching up.

Most of the time, I listen. Pick up words from sparring matches. From mess hall grumbling. From instructors shouting orders. I repeat phrases under my breath until they stop feeling like foreign invaders.

And then, one day, I get it.

Not all of it. But enough.

We’re doing drills. Live blade drills, no safety gear. The kind that leave someone leaking by the end of the hour.

Jarre (yes, that Jarre) is paired with me again. He’s bigger, still cocky, still stupid. Says something under his breath as he passes me. I don’t catch all of it, but the tone makes it obvious enough. Something about my lekku. Again.

And before I can even stop myself, it comes out.

“K'uur shabuir.”

It hits the air like a slap.

Silence.

He turns, blinking. Our instructor raises a brow. A few of the other kids let out low chuckles.

I brace for a hit. It doesn’t come. He just glares and walks on.

I don’t smile.

But my hands stop shaking.

—

Later that night, I test a few more phrases.

Nothing complicated. Just pieces. Words like armour. Fire. Knife. Aliit. Clan. I try them out in the dark when no one’s listening, like I’m casting spells and waiting to see if the air responds.

I corner Varin the next morning. Mid ration. He’s alone. Cleaning his rifle. Helmet off, which means he’s tolerating people today.

“Vor entye.” I say. Quiet. Careful.

He doesn’t look up. Just grunts. “Don’t thank people unless you mean it.”

I blink. Frown. “...But you taught me-”

“You said the ‘r’ wrong. You’re still flattening the back of your throat. Fix it.”

Then he goes back to his rifle.

That’s the most feedback I’ve ever gotten from him.

I walk away before I say something stupid.

—

That night I sit in the hallway outside the dorms, staring at the wall like it might suddenly grow eyes and give me advice.

I try to remember my mother’s face.

…I can’t.

Not fully. Not clearly. Just pieces. The way her fingers always adjusted the sash at her hip. The sound she made when she caught me stealing extra ration cubes. The shape of her smile when she lied to the guards and said I was sick just to get me a break from work.

The rest is blur. Static. Smoke.

I whisper the words into the dark.

“Verd ori’shya beskar’gam.”

A warrior is more than armour.

Maybe.

—

The forge smells like heat and metal and ghosts.

I don’t really know what I expected. Maybe more ceremony. More firelight and chanting. Something sacred. What I get is a room filled with noise and smoke, walls stained black with years of use, and a woman built like a tank hammering a plate of durasteel like it insulted her mother.

The armourer doesn’t say much. Just nods once when I enter, then points to the corner where a slab of scrap sits on a welding table.

That’s mine.

I walk toward it. The heat prickles across my face like it’s testing me. Seeing if I’ll blink. I don’t.

The scrap is ugly. Bent. Old freighter hull by the looks of it, carbon scored and pitted with microfractures. The kind of thing most would toss back into the pile. But to me? It’s perfect.

Because it’s mine.

“This is yours.” The armourer unknowingly repeats. Her voice is muffled under the helmet, but still low and even, like the hum of a reactor. “Not because you earned it. But because you’re expected to.”

I nod. Say nothing. Still listening.

“Durasteel now.” She continues, hands already guiding tools like they’re part of her body. “One day, beskar. If you survive that long.”

No pressure.

She shows me how to hold the plates, how to brace the clamps, how to score the edges for alignment. It’s rough work. Heavy. The kind that eats into your hands and makes your arms shake after five minutes. But I don’t stop. Don’t ask for help.

And when it’s time, she gestures toward the flame.

Not a word.

Just a tilt of the helmet.

I step forward.

It’s not a big flame. Not dramatic. Just a small forge fire, channeled by vents and focused heat coils. But it feels alive. Like it knows what it’s for.

I reach out.

Fingers first. Slow. Controlled.

I touch the edge of the flame.

It hurts.

Of course it hurts.

But I don’t pull away.

I stare into it. Feel it race up my skin. Like memory. Like everything I lost (what little of it I truly had) burning itself into something new.

And then I step back.

She doesn’t comment. Doesn’t nod. Just reaches out and presses the finished vambrace into my hands.

It’s rough. Scarred. Not symmetrical. But solid.

She inclines her head. “Your gear is not who you are.”

I nod again. Quiet.

“But it will become part of you.”