The morning was still new when Leia took her finished sketch and stepped outside.
The chill of early sun bit at her arms. Dust swirled in the wind. Her boots crunched over gravel and broken nails as she made her way toward an abandoned laundry shed behind the old textile market — a place she'd quietly claimed as her testing space.
Inside, she unrolled her fabric carefully — old curtain, burnt sailcloth, scraps of armor-lining.
Everything looked wrong together.
But she saw the design in her mind — a cloak that could fold around someone like a shell, flexible yet resistant, light yet durable. It wouldn't just hang. It would defend.
She picked up her shears.
They were dull.
The blades creaked.
But Leia had never needed perfection to begin something.
With a slow breath, she made her first cut.
---
Halfway through the first layer, her thread snapped.
The fabric bunched.
The tension pulled wrong.
Leia groaned, yanking the mess out. The wire refused to curve through the edge binding. Every time she made progress, the next stitch bent the needle.
I'm doing something wrong, she thought. The thread isn't meant to obey like this.
She stood and paced the shed, brushing a hand over her wrist — where the faint shimmer of her needle-and-thread symbol had pulsed just a night ago.
"Why are you even here?" she whispered to it.
No glow. No answer.
She sat back down and tried again. This time slower. Pulling thread not by force, but by feel. Letting her fingers guide, not push.
The thread slid in smoother.
She didn't realize she was holding her breath until the pattern reached the third layer without snapping.
Selene's words echoed in her head.
> "You weave strength into every layer."
Leia added a fourth layer. Then a fifth.
Each time, her fingers trembled a little less.
Each line curved closer to how she'd imagined.
By the time the light outside shifted from gold to gray, a quarter of the cloak's outer panel was complete.
---
Her stomach growled, but she ignored it.
A few kids from the market passed the shed, laughing. She heard one say, "Is the thread girl still in there?" Another replied, "Probably sewing clouds again."
Leia didn't flinch.
Their voices didn't matter today.
Only the rhythm of stitch, pull, press. Stitch, pull, press.
She worked until her vision blurred.
Until she stabbed her finger.
Until blood welled up.
"Great," she muttered, wiping it on her scarf. The thread had caught her again.
But something odd happened.
The blood, smeared along the thread, didn't soak in.
It glowed.
Just faintly.
Just for a moment.
Leia stared at it.
"…That's new."
---
She reached for another needle — one with a smoother tip — and continued sewing, this time letting her thoughts focus. What do I want this cloak to do?
Protect.
Absorb.
Hold together when everything else breaks.
She pressed the idea into the fabric with every motion.
The air in the shed felt warmer.
She barely noticed the ache in her hands anymore.
Just thread.
Just purpose.
Just layers.
---
By nightfall, Leia leaned back and looked at what she'd made.
Still raw. Still incomplete.
But the curve of the shoulder held true. The layers didn't sag. And the inner lining hummed with a faint heat she couldn't explain.
The symbol on her wrist pulsed once.
Then stilled.
Leia allowed herself a small smile.
"It's not perfect," she whispered.
"But it's beginning to believe in me."