I can’t believe I finally finished it! I started to draw the first page over a year ago and now it’s done, I’m so happy! I learned so much while drawing these, it’s completely out of my comfort zone but I felt very inspired and it was a blast to draw!
Don’t hesitate to read the fic, there is more than what I have drawn. I hope I did it justice.
Characters: Jessa, Sev, Scorch, Walon Vau… Every character imaginable and few that you probably didn’t expect to see
Warnings: None!
Summary: Harvest Day is very busy day. The boys head home. Jessa faces some hard questions. Walon has to decide what is right for his growing clan.
A/N: 15K holy hell. Thanks your patience with this one. it was an undertaking! As always thank you to my wonderful @crimson-dxwn for letting me bounces ideas off of her and for her beta'ing. Thank @fractiouskat for being an A+ cheerleader and thank you to @royalhandmaidens for the greatest banner ever!
Kyr’vhetine Tuur comes on a most un-autumn like day with temperatures before the sun had fully risen already beginning to look to those of a cool summer morning. The winds had disappeared almost entirely overnight, leaving only a gentle breeze that barely kissed the nunas’ feathers
It was going to be an excellent day to celebrate the end of the growing season and the bounty of the harvest, Kal had proclaimed before the groups had split off.
Walon wasn’t one to argue the good fortune of a perfect day. He was old enough to know they didn’t come often and still young enough to appreciate it for all it was.
He pulls a deep filtered breath in while his HUD scans the surrounding tree line.
Per tradition, hunting parties had broken off at the crack of dawn in search of game. This would be one of the last good days for a hunt before the snows came and the animals disappeared into the white wonderland of northern Mandalore. It wouldn’t be prudent to attempt again until the heat of summer fell and the mothers had dropped babies and could be more easily avoided.
Rav Bralor and her boys from Yayax squad - as well as the former commander Levet - had come in the night before, much to Walon’s chagrin. Sleeping arrangements were far tighter these days with the various marriages and additional children. He’d had to put his foot down when Kal had offered his rooms up to the entirety of the Bralor clan. In compromise, Walon had allowed Rav and Levet to take up Jessa’s room and she had movedinto Scorch and Sev’s while the rest of the clan piled in with the other bachelors.
Walon pretended that he didn’t know his Ad’ika had spent most nights asleep in Scorch’s bed already and simply explained that he didn’t think either commando would appreciate others sleeping in their space. She’d eagerly complied.
She was still asleep when he, Mird, Rav and Levet had gone to meet the other early risers for their hunt.
The verdant summer greens had faded first into jewel toned fallen leaves and finally crisp brown litter that spilled across the forest floor. It added a layer of difficulty that the Mando’ade found a pleasant challenge. Shatual were a finicky creature, as likely to run away from a hunter as they were to attack it. The crunch of leaves under boots was enough to solicit either response and many an unlucky Mando had found themselves enjoying the scent of bacta rather than the taste of shatual haunch after a hunt gone bad.
Each clan of the former training sergeants was represented this morning. Kal and Ordo had set off in one direction while Mereel and Corr had gone another. Rav and Levet had joined in as well. Walon, no human adiike of any ability in sight, had Mird as his hunting companion.
The strill stalks ahead through the tops of the veshuk trees, silent as death itself. The sun had yet to penetrate the forest around him and the stillness, the sheer quiet of the morning calmed him like little else could. Two days and still Fenn Shysa’s intel bothered him on a level he wasn’t familiar with.
Of course the Empire would look to make money where it could. Of course clone lives meant less now than they had to the GAR and the Republic at large.
Maybe it was the fact that they all had adiike still on the ranks - if they’d managed to survive this long - or perhaps it was the fact that they weren’t even being sold as slaves.
Walon, Kal, Rav and the rest of Cuy’val dar had raised competent soldiers, the best of the best. He himself had spouted that they were to be tools of the Grand Army, that their one purpose was fighting for the Army that in the end would give little thought to the clone -the men- they sent into battle. Now, to hear of them being sold as surplus like a decommissioned line of blasters or transports left Vau feeling sick and angry in a way that wasn’t familiar with. Righteous indignation was a state of being for Kal Skirata, but for Walon Vau it was new and uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to do with the rage simmering in his chest.
I can’t believe I finally finished it! I started to draw the first page over a year ago and now it’s done, I’m so happy! I learned so much while drawing these, it’s completely out of my comfort zone but I felt very inspired and it was a blast to draw!
Don’t hesitate to read the fic, there is more than what I have drawn. I hope I did it justice.
