Star Wars - Kenobi

dark-haired Tyla Bezzard cradling the old man on the stoop took his breath away. It was grisly, what the raiders had done—it had to be Plug-eye. But what chilled him more was how the young woman seemed not to care about the state of her father’s body.
    Without looking up, she sensed Orrin’s approach. “Someone’s come, Daddy.”
    Orrin took off his hat and instinctively knelt beside her. He’d known the woman when she was a child. Her father, Lotho Pelhane, had been a hand on Orrin’s family ranch for twenty years. Before Lotho struck out on his own, Tyla and Orrin’s kids used to play together. Orrin placed his cloak over Tyla’s shoulders. As he did, she buried her head in his shoulder and bawled.
    “I know, Tyla, I know,” he said, embracing her. “It’s a blasted thing, all right.” He looked down at the corpse, still awkwardly slumped against her lap. Lotho Pelhane still had a weeks-old bandage around his head, a surreal sight given the mess that was made of the rest of him. Orrin looked away.
    Tyla whimpered. “I—I tried to remember, Master Gault—”
    “Orrin.”
    “I tried to remember. You sold us the alarm and the activator,” she said, showing him the remote control device in her hand. She was clutching it almost hard enough to crush it. “I was so scared,” she gasped. “I couldn’t remember how to turn on the local alarm at first—”
    “It’s all right,” he said. “The Settlers’ Call worked just fine. We got your signal. And we came right here.” Gently, Orrin pulled her away from the stoop, allowing Lotho’s body to almost imperceptibly slip away from her. “You did just fine. Your husband and your boy are safe. We got the Tuskens.”
    “I don’t care!” She looked down at her dead father. “I don’t want to stay here! Not anymore!”
    Orrin pulled back from Tyla and brought her upright, squeezing her shoulders in his firm hands. “Now, listen. I knew your father. You know Lotho wouldn’t want to hear this. He wasn’t any more scared of Tuskens than he was of his own shadows.”
    She looked down at the bandage on her father’s head and sniffled. “They nearly got him last month, you know—knocked him down one night at his place. It’s why he came to stay with us. But he was getting better. He said he’d gotten away once, so he thought he was safe—”
    “That’s right. And you made this place safe with the Call. You did the right thing—”
    She wept again. Orrin just waited. He’d been here too many times before—though less often, lately. “This was bad, no accounting for it. But we got a bunch of them, and we’ll get the rest of them. And it’ll get better. You understand?”
    She pulled away, suddenly angry. “What do they want ? They’re monsters—”
    “Tatooine’s got sand and it’s got monsters,” Orrin said. He looked over to see Mullen standing with the burial detail. “Now, I’m going to check on that husband and son of yours. These folks will take care of your dad, until we get you back to the oasis. Annileen Calwell will put you up there tonight.”
    Tyla nodded weakly and began walking, still oblivious to the bloody mess her tunic had become.
    Orrin looked skeptically at his son as she went out of earshot. “Can I trust you to take care of this woman for five minutes without sending her into another conniption?”
    Mullen spoke in a low voice. “Sure, sure. But weren’t you gonna ask her about Plug-eye? You said you—”
    “Where’s my hat?” Orrin looked around on the ground. “I need something to hit you with. Now go!”
    Orrin found Tellico Bezzard, the young owner of the homestead, at the machine shed, surrounded by a buzz of activity. The rest of the posse had returned. The grown-ups in the group—a distinction defined more by good sense than age—had tackled without delay the list of things that always had to be addressed in these cases. Though the posse was officially leaderless, Orrin had always been the one to take charge in the past; he was glad now to see that so much of his advice had stuck. Some folks were in the house cleaning up. Others were fixing the vaporators. Still others were gathering the goods the Bezzards would want for their stay at the Pika Oasis. They were working, even knowing they were missing out on important hours in their own fields.
    And then there was his daughter, Veeka, and her junior satellite Jabe Calwell, sitting on crates with a flask out, drinking under the morning suns.