"I am no Jedi" Ashoka seasons 1-2/Episodes 10-12/a bonus movie

2: Day 3

"Clo. You're clearly not from around here." The woman said.

"What makes you say that?" Clo answered, fully aware of what makes her say that. The woman's suspicion immediately diluted her feeling of safety and now she was stalling to see if she could either escape or pull the trick she had on the merchant from the other day.

"There aren't many people that live in this town, which is why I know that you aren't one of them."

The woman looked down at the fabrics bundled in Clo's arms, with a very motherly judgement, with disappointment but no anger. Clo was still frozen on the ground with a growing curiosity.

"How old are you?" The woman sounded concerned.

"That's none of your business," Clo never answered that question regardless of the asker, "How old are you?" She said with a tinge of mockery.

The woman looked Clo up and down.

"10?"

...

"No..." Clo is not always a good liar.

"Where did you get those?" The woman asked, already knowing the answer. Clo squinted as if to think hard about where in the world the clothes could have come from. She even put her hand to her chin and looked around, deep in thought.

"You know... it's crazy... I don't, um, remember."

"Is there any chance they came from the cloth merchant right behind you?" The woman asked with the same judgement and her hands now drifted to her hips.

Clo looked behind her and back with an overly dramatic surprised face and said, "Oh my Gosh! You know, that might be it, yeah..."

And then Clo jumped up and started running into the forest. Immediately she was stopped, frozen in her tracks. She couldn't move. She looked at the woman, who was clearly in someway responsible for this paralysis, who held a stern look on her face.

Let me go.

She was still frozen, eyes locked with her invisible captor and seeping hatred.

Let me go!

Still nothing answered.

LET ME GO!

Finally she broke free and scrambled to run away. She darted quickly back to her makeshift house and jumped behind the tree trunk that supported it, in case she was followed.

She was not.

She didn't even consider venturing into the village for the rest of the day, but slowly she felt more relaxed being in the woods.

She always had a love -hate relationship with having to stay outside. Generally, on any planet she found herself on, she considered it a lucky thing to find urban areas and plenty of city space to hide out in, but everything has its pros and cons.

Cities are dangerous, if you steal from the wrong person, sneak in the wrong door, sleep under the wrong roof, you could easily become another cautionary tale that parents tell their children. But in exchange she can last longer. By not stealing from the same people and rarely running into familiar faces, she could sometimes stay for months in one city.

When, by chance, she ended up on a more rural planet, she would usually have to sleep outside. This is quite volatile, depending on the planet. Sometimes it rains all night, or hails painfully sharp ice, or even tiny, painful crystals. But when it is calm, she prefers it to anything else, even the cornucopia of the city.

She feels at peace in the wild. When she is alone in the forest, the leaves and grass rattling with the wind sound awfully similar to her thoughts, and in the dessert the way the sand slithers and shifts reminds her of every day of her life.