It was, she realized too late, the exact wrong thing to say. Suddenly, without warning, Che’ri’s eyes welled up with tears, and she buried her face in her hands. “She’s going to die,” she gasped between sobs that shook her whole body. “She’s going to die.”

“No, no,” Ar’alani protested, hurrying forward and dropping to one knee beside the frightened girl. “No, she’s going to be fine. Thrawn’s there, too, and he won’t let anything bad happen to her.”

“It’s my fault,” Che’ri moaned. “It’s my fault. I yelled at her. I yelled at her, and now she’s going to die!”

“Easy, easy,” Ar’alani soothed. “It’s okay. When did you yell at her?”

But even as she asked the question, the obvious answer popped into her mind. The long farewell and explanations that had taken place in the privacy of the sky-walker suite. Thalias’s manner and posture as she and Thrawn had headed to the shuttle, a manner which Ar’alani noted at the time seemed unusually subdued even given the gravity of the upcoming mission. Che’ri’s refusal to come out of her sleeping room when Ar’alani first came to the suite to check on her after the shuttle left.

Ar’alani had put it down to nerves on both sky-walker’s and caregiver’s parts. Apparently, however, their farewells had been a lot more fiery than she’d realized.

And now the girl had worked through her anger and tumbled off the other direction into fear and depression and guilt. “It’s okay,” Ar’alani said again. “People yell at each other all the time. It doesn’t mean they don’t care for each other.”

“But I told her I hated her,” Che’ri sobbed.

“She’s not going to die,” Ar’alani said firmly, gingerly resting her hand on Che’ri’s shoulder. “Saying something doesn’t make it happen.”

“I didn’t mean to yell.” Che’ri sniffed, the crying fading a little as she lowered her hands. “I just wanted some graph markers. So I could draw. But she said she didn’t have any, and couldn’t get any before she left, and I said Ab’begh has them and that she was a terrible momish—” She covered her face again, and the sobbing resumed.

Ar’alani patted her shoulder gently, feeling like a fresh recruit on her first training mission. She would take a battle against multiple enemies any day over trying to soothe a terrified child. “Listen to me,” she said, wincing at the command tone of her voice. “Listen to me,” she tried again, this time trying for gentleness. “This isn’t like books or vids. This is real life. Just because someone goes off on a mission right after they’ve had a fight doesn’t mean they’re going to die.”