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They were silent for a moment, then Kaminne looked startled. “The sun.”

Ben nodded. “Right. Older than nature itself on Dathomir. But new each day. So it sort of combines the symbolism of your two names.”

There were murmurs, mostly approving, from the gathering. Firen, a thoughtful look on her face, raised her hand. Ben passed her the staff and sat down again.

Luke leaned over to whisper in his ear. “Not bad.”

“Gave ’em something to think about, anyway.”

“And you invoked one of their own customs to do it. Politically savvy of you.” Luke leaned back.

Ben smiled, cheered by the praise, then returned his attention to the assembly.

Within a quarter of an hour, Tasander and Kaminne, after huddling together, proposed Bright Sun Clan as a name for the united group. There were objections, but fewer than for the other names—and none suggesting that Bright Sun favored one clan over the other.

Halliava pointed skyward as that discussion continued. “That’s a good sign.”

Ben and the others looked up. There, flitting around in broad circles, was a glowing object, a tiny one; it gave off a little yellow light that intensified and faded at irregular intervals like a malfunctioning glow rod.

“Sparkfly.” That was Drola of the Broken Columns. “You don’t usually see them when it’s this cool out.”

“Look, another.” Kaminne pointed to a different quarter of the sky, where a second sparkfly flew its erratic course.

The gathered Dathomiri seemed cheered by the symbolism of the pretty insects, and within a minute many more sparkflies had joined in the aerial display. Then the sky seemed alive with them, sparkflies by the hundreds, and Ben could see men and women of both clans all over the campsite craning their necks to stare up at the glowing patterns the insects made.

A sparkfly descended to alight on a man of the Broken Columns not five meters from Ben. The man froze, nervous, as the long-winged, translucent insect walked from his elbow to his wrist, the luminous glow produced within its body ebbing and rising in the same rhythm as those of the sparkflies overhead.

Then the insect’s tail end dipped and brushed against the man’s wrist. A large spark erupted from the tail and a patch of his skin, a centimeter in diameter, blackened. Smoke rose from it and the man yelled, swatting the insect away.

That seemed to be a signal for the other insects. Streams of light poured down from the sky, the sparkflies remaining in coherent patterns until they reached an altitude of one or two meters from the ground. Then they spread out randomly, seeking the Dathomiri, stinging with their high-temperature sparks.

Shouts and screams erupted from all over the encampment. Ben saw two sparkflies buzzing in toward him. He flicked a finger at each, thumping the insects away. They circled and went off in search of easier prey.

Suddenly his father was by Ben’s side. “Nightsisters again. Can you feel it?” He swatted a small cloud of sparkflies away from his face. The insects hurtled into the ground. Some immediately flopped over back onto their feet and took to the air again.

Ben put his hand on the hilt of his lightsaber but restrained himself. Swinging a live lightsaber around in this environment, with pained and panicky Dathomiri now beginning to run in all directions, veering randomly in their efforts to elude the stinging insects, could prove fatal. “I can’t.”

“Focus, son. Or keep them off me while I focus.”

Ben opted for the latter. Luke closed his eyes and relaxed into a meditative posture—a choice that looked strange, surrounded as he was by the chaos of flying, stinging insects and fleeing, shouting tribe-members. Ben kept near him, circling his father, swatting sparkflies away from Luke and from himself.

A gout of flame rose from someone nearby, spreading out into the sky, and waved about, incinerating an entire cloud of the sparkflies. Smoke rising from the flames spread through the air, and Ben saw sparkflies enter the smoke cloud and immediately grow disoriented.

He glanced at the source