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Aayla cocked her head, frowning as she got more images and information from what Harry was just saying and implying than she ever had before about where Harry had come from. "You really are from another dimension aren't you?"
Harry nodded, cocking his head as he looked at the Twi'lek girl. "Yes, does that bother you?"
"Nope," Aayla said with a grin. "It just means a lot of things you can do make more sense." Harry smiled in relief and Aayla began to show Harry around.
While the exterior of Aayla's mental domain was that of the rock fortress, inside was a different story entirely. The outer edge of her mind was guarded by fake rock walls, interspersed with steel here and there, but as you entered her real mind behind these defenses those gave way to small caverns of different kinds of jungles and foliage. One was a simple rock pool another a jungle with treelike objects growing from the floor up to the ceiling. Still more were lined with books and other things, all of it somewhat haphazardly organized.
But given her age, Aayla mind showed an amazing amount of progress at a very difficult aspect of magic. Something neither she nor Harry understood really, because Lily had gone out of her way to not mention the fact that organizing one's mind like this was something very rarely done back home due to its difficulty.
Some of those rooms were where Aayla had begun to store her memories, though of course those were all around them for the most part zipping this way and that as Ayla thought of them as little birds until they were thoroughly categorized.
Coming around the corridor after Aayla Harry accidentally touched one of the flying bird-memories, and was transported from Aayla's mental domain into the memory. Aayla blinked as her friends astral form seemed to disappear into the bird he'd just picked up, then gasped and quickly reached out to touch it herself, disappearing after him.
"What have I told you, you foolish girl!" said a loud voice in Ryl, its tone harsh and grating. From the angle the memory showed them Harry couldn't make out the face of the speaker, only this vast green, fat bulk rising like a small hill in front of him. It was with horror that Harry realized he was in Aayla's body, which was currently spasming in pain from something.
The pain filled the memory, yet for some reason he didn't feel it. "You are not allowed outside, and if I see you pick up a data slate again, the pain of your punishment then will make this one look as nothing!"
Then the owner of that voice reached down with some kind of rod, touching it to Aayla's shoulder and she screamed in pain as it sent electrical current or something through her body. Harry growled, angry at what he was seeing sad for Aayla, grimly thankful that he had taken her away from that life. The beatings might not have been physical, but the pain Aayla went through was certainly a match for anything the Dursleys had ever done to him.
"Come on Harry," the present day Aayla said appearing next to him, taking his wrist gently. "Let's go. There's no point in dwelling on old memories like this, old memories can't hurt us anymore."
Harry turned to look at her and then found they were back in her mental domain, the girl having somehow pulled both of them out of that memory.
"I know that I suppose," Harry said, nodding his head. "But can't I feel sad for my friend that she went through that?"
"Of course," Aayla said with a smile, pulling him into a hug again before looking back at him seriously. "But you saved me from that life though, so you don't have to feel angry about it any longer okay?"
Harry nodded before impulsively taking her hand in his. "Do you want to see my mind?"
Aayla nodded, smiling as she squeezed his hand back, and suddenly they were on the outside of her mind, standing in the empty darkness that Aayla somehow instinctively knew was the Force of the universe, all around and within them. A second later however, they entered Harry's mind, with no transition between the two.
Harry didn't actually have a physical outer shell like Aayla did, or he did, but his was a small shield, literally a shield around the entire mental landscape. It looked like a planteray shield in size given the nature of his landscape.
Aayla however didn't notice the shield above them, simply staring around her in shock. She'd seen pictures of this place, but it was so inimical to human life that no one had ever really explored it. Taken pictures by remote-controlled camera, or come down for a few hours in specially designed suits yes, but actually explored it on foot? No. "Harry, is this where I think it is?"
"It's based off the night side of Ryloth." Harry replied, nodding. "I know it sounds strange, but when I woke up here, that first night and found that my mum was still with me, that was, it was just the second happiest moment in my life."
The first was when he realized his mother had loved him, and was staring down at him with that love in her eyes. There was no word in the human language or galactic standard to really describe that moment.
"I can understand that," Aayla said with a nod. "It was almost like when I first moved a pebble, I knew then that I would never be anyone's slave ever again. That I had a power inside me that I could rely on, and friends too!"
She smiled, squeezing Harry's hand, which she hadn't yet let go of.
Harry nodded in agreement, and then moved around his mindscape. He pointed at the crystals, each one containing memories, some of them made of darker crystal because of the memories they contained, others lighter. The lighter ones were small but numerous in comparison to the darker ones, and there were a few that were bright and shining so much they seemed to match the stars above. All in all it was a beautiful sight, though Aayla didn't spend much time looking at the crystals, at least at first.
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