New Fic: Nimrod

[jackwabbit]

Nimrod

Fandom: Star Wars
Rated: G
Category: Vignette. Ewok Culture. Original Ewok Character. The Collecting Bug Is Real. So Is The Completionist Bug. Even On The Forest Moon Of Endor.
Word Count: 476.
Time Frame: A while after Return of the Jedi.
Spoilers: General Star Wars/ Return of the Jedi knowledge only.
Summary: Nimrod means skilled hunter. It also means a silly person. And perhaps the two definitions are not as mutually exclusive as they seem.

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She’d barely seen the edge of it peeking out from the dirt.

Had she not glanced back that one more time, she would have missed it entirely.

But she hadn’t missed it, so she’d sent the rest of the party home while she investigated.

And now, here she was, knees sore and fingertips ragged from digging in the dirt for the past hour.

She looked like a farmer at harvest time.

But Kitka was no farmer.

She was a hunter – a good one.

And everyone knew she hunted more than food.

So while most of the group not-so-secretly thought she was silly and childish, they also knew they wouldn’t change her mind, and someone had to take the meat home, so they’d left her to it.

And now, finally, she had gotten enough of the muck off of her find to see that her search was about to pay off. As it became obvious what she had found, she couldn’t believe her luck.

Because there it was.

The only piece she needed.

The one that so many were missing. The one that had been lost from nearly every collector because it was small and fiddly and because it made for a nice bracelet for a wokling.

She was ashamed to say even she (of all Ewoks) had destroyed some of them when she was young.

But they’d been plentiful then. Despite the time that had passed, full sets had still been common enough.

But not anymore.

Now, it was hard to find several pieces – the little ones especially – but most would eventually turn up.

Except these. They were the rarest of all. Most collectors had given up on them.

But not Kitka. She had kept looking. On every hunt, she kept a sharp eye out just in case.

And finally, she had one.

It was even still attached to the larger piece that had caught her eye.

Kitka carefully removed the entire ensemble from the forest floor that had nearly buried it. Then she enlarged the hole she’d dug to be sure nothing else of value was hiding there. She didn’t encounter anything, so she put her treasure in her bag and headed back to the village.

That night, she cleaned her find and placed it in the honored place she’d been saving for it.

And in the morning, she showed off her newly completed full set of demon armor.

She didn’t know that the demons of old were called “stormtroopers”, or that the coveted piece was a “thigh armor pack.”

Nor did she care.

Because only three things mattered to Kitka just then.

One, that no one who mattered would call her silly now.

Two, that she definitely wouldn’t trade this bit to any of the other collectors in the village.

And three, that there was no way any woklings were getting anywhere near it.

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A/N: This one is for taj_mahal07, who gifted me with a certain stuffed Ewok. A certain stuffed Ewok who informed me her name is Kitka. And for those who don’t hang out with people who dress as stormtroopers*, yes, the thigh armor pack – that little encircling bit on bottom of the right thigh with little boxes on it – does fall off and get lost sometimes. And since they’re round and have several boxes that could be painted different colors, etc, yeah. Woklings would have a field day with them. Anyway. Hope you enjoyed. Kitka will likely return, because she’s awesome. Thanks for reading.

*And there were far more stormtroopers on Endor than I thought when I looked into this! They outnumber biker scouts by about a 3:1 ratio. Who knew?