Legacy II

Chapter 1

Dreams show many things: that which is, that which has been, that which may yet be. The Force lends a peculiar cogency to these glimpses into its latent fathoms: a bright supernal edging to the gilt figures of memory or premonition, like the illuminated margins of some ancient manuscript, a painstaking adornment which, though enchanting, does not always thereby unlock the elusive inner meaning of its ephemeral symbols. Dreams are troublesome that way.

And even a Jedi may dream.

Seed pods, twirling in the warm breeze, their tiny arms outstretched as they whirl and dodge among the rising dust motes, as they dance a giddy path along the shafting sunbeams' translucent girders. For that is what the pale columns of late-day radiance are: the sky's fretted rafters, buttresses of high heaven, an architecture of complex and beautiful design. He is lost in it, wandering freely among the pure straight edges of this invisible sanctuary, rising with the joyful seed-pods, spinning with them as they exult in the clear blue dome overhead, the roof of the world, lifted on the swelling currents. The wind blows through him; when he shuts his eyes, he is giddy from looking upward, but he also feels the pulse of that limitless power, the coursing wind – the one that is everywhere, unceasing. He thinks when he holds his breath he can dam it, hold it for ever so short a space of time, but it always bursts the dams of his reserve, teasingly overflowing and rejoining its great and burbling original. So he lets it carry his breath, too, in and out, up and up, until he is a seed pod and the world around is nothing but golden wind, the same wind that sways the green walls of his fortress, the bending stalks of grass like subtle walls, the tall proud blades chiming – hear them, shh shh shh, quiet reed bells like the ones hung in the garden – and the breeze lifts his hair too, like the grass, like his soaring spirit, far far over this sweet aromatic nest, out into limitless blue. Up there, there is nothing but the sun, pale and beneficent and good.

He has few words, few fine-crafted diadems of particularity with which to crown his reality. But this deserves one, a title to match its inherent splendor, the ever-moving, uplifting, downpouring, all-encompassing. He searches the shallow reservoirs of new-forged memory, and finds the right word lying like a jewel amid its setting. Light. This is Light, and he thinks he will lie here forever with his face turned upward to it like the tiny tiny white flowers that follow the path of the sun, the ones that grow amid the long green stems.

When he discovers, quite by accident, that he can keep his face turned to the Light even with his eyes closed, he veils the world behind a fretwork of golden lashes, and peers out through the delicate ramparts thus constructed, watching the green sway and the blue reel and the seed-pods carouse and the wind sing. He might fall asleep, too, cradled in the same new-christened totality that circumscribes the boundaries of this innocent paradise.

In the present moment, in another truth, a starship shuddered subliminally, the hull reverberating as the incalculable impetus of a superdimensional hyperspace jump was compacted again into mere extension, and the vessel reverted. The familiar jolting was not sufficient to wake the weary sleeper, enmeshed as he was in deepest recollection, but it did disturb the surface of the dream, sending a ripple over the limpid surface of its reflecting pool, gently rearranging the image into another.

There is a little bug, rolled into a tight ball like a plaything. The plates of its armor are a lovely smoke-blue, and when one finger is prodded gently – oh so gently – against its stomach, the creature unfurls and wriggles its superfluity of legs. There are far, far too many legs. It makes him giggle immensely, especially when it crawls over his outstretched finger and onto the soft skin of his palm. There are feelers attached to its head, two gossamer fine hairs that wave this way and that, testing out the soil-smudged and very uneven terrain. When his hand quivers – for it tickles badly – the bug rolls up tight again and then tumbles over the edge back to the soft earth. But his concerned frown smooths into content, for it recovers quickly enough and scuttles away between the blades of tall grass, disappearing into the dark cool shelter of their endless forest. He squints into this lush shadow, seeking after the departing bug – but there is something else in there now, something wonderful.

The marvel is furry and soft and has beady black eyes and an odd naked tail peeping out behind its comically rounded rump. White whiskers twitch and shiver, and the rapid beat of its blood and breath are almost too fast to feel. It is warm, too, like him. And it is afraid.

The world is leached of its radiance, and a jagged rent is carved into the flawless masonry of the skies – overhead, felt as a contraction of shadow, a winged thing circles. It is not like the seed pods, though it spins and glides. Somehow, between this furred thing that pants and trembles beneath the sheltering grass, and that majestic fringed form above, there is a dark umbilicum, a thread of tension that twists uncomfortably in his own gut. And when the creature on high shrieks, he clasps his hands over his ears and buries his face in the sweet-scented ground. But it is of no use; he feels the furry thing dash away - foolish foolish don't do it don't go – and he feels the talons swoop, clutch, crush, and impale, and he feels the sudden hole in the world, the quickly shrinking aperture where there was something but there is not something now…

And he whimpers. Because for a moment the light was sundered and a sickening empty space was revealed behind it, below it, encroaching. And he liked the furry thing, too, and he is sad that it is gone. He adds death to his litany of names, and it has a sound like that hunting cry: harsh and shrill-pitched, echoing off the distant roof of heaven, a clarion call of some other power, one he has not yet met but which lies in wait, jaws open. And that is when he starts struggling, for paradise has been lost, and nightmare waits in the wings, on the swiftly darkening horizon where purples and indigos draw heavy mantles over the sinking sun. Even the tiny white heliotropes have closed their petals and bowed their heads, patient recluses awaiting the return of day. There is no longer safety and peace here in the green field.

The sleeper stirred restlessly, surfacing far enough from the dream to break the spell of its terror, and to make a swift instinctual scan for danger – a cautionary reaching into the plenum, a habit of many years' long and rigorous making. His semi-conscious exploration – nothing more than a featherlight brush of mind through the Force, a seeking of compass points, of familiar landmarks – discovered no immediate threat or warning of turbulence ahead. Instead it encountered a familiar and reassuring presence, a bulwark like some immovable stone in a river's bend, and so quieted, subsiding into a dwindling curiosity insufficient to entirely banish the claims of sleep. He drifted off once again.

He hunkers down, here, in his secret fortress amid the grasses. Nobody can see him here, when he lies down on his belly. The flower stems bend over him, and the breeze washes them this way and that, an endless sea of verdant leaf and pure white flowers, always keeping their faces to the sun. He can hear voices calling him now, his name floating out over the vastness of the field again and again, first cajoling and then annoyed and now perhaps laced with something more, an edge of worry, of fear, of that same terrible sundering… will the feathered beast dive down and snatch him away too, and make of him a hole in the world where once there was something? The strident tones of the voices now proclaim that all is not well, that something is already missing from the world, that he is already a hole.

This is terrifying. He flounders, drowning in the turbulent currents, all Light and dark and fear and need tumbling together and he is a river rock slammed pell mell against the shores of others' voices, smashed and spun and dunked beneath a current he can feel but cannot control. He tries to cry out for help, but there is so much – so very much – flooding in and around him that his breath is knocked away, spun out into the sky with the breeze and the Light and he cannot breathe and he cannot move and then, mercifully, the voices grow near and one is calling that he has been found – that all is well – and arms pick him up, a swoop of cold air as he is lifted from his hiding place trembling and sobbing. He is wrapped in something warm, and the softest voice, the most beloved one, is murmuring his name over and over, a sing-song recitation that harnesses the raging currents back into tranquility and smothers the tempest in a warm embrace. He is limp, falling asleep to the lullaby of that repeated name.

Ironically, that self-same name, repeated with rather more emphatic and purposeful intonation, brought him starting to full wakefulness.

"Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan."

Registering a painful crick in his neck, the fact that his left leg had gone numb from crimped circulation, that his cloak was musty and twisted awkwardly around his shoulders, and that the Force-forsaken public transport seemed to have at long, long last docked and depressurized - and that he was therefore free to quit its stale and stultifying environs posthaste - Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi released a long and expressive groan under his breath and made an unenthusiastic assessment of the passenger compartment before offering his traveling companion a distinctly watery smile.

"For stars' sake," he griped, with no particular object of imprecation in mind.

"Agreed," Qui-Gon Jinn murmured, standing with a pronounced pop of either his spine or his knees.

A steward droid was shuffling along the aisle toward them, chivvying passengers away down the narrow passage toward the disembarkation ramps, and electronically checking luggage. "We have arrived at Coruscant Intergalactic, sirs. May I scan your luggage?"

Obi-Wan cocked a brow. "We travel light." He brushed one hand over his 'saber hilt before whisking the cloak's folds into place again, effectively concealing the gleaming weapon.

"Very good, sirs." The cybernetic porter was not to be put off. "If you are unfamiliar with the many scenic and cultural features of the Jewel of the Republic, I would be happy to upload a helpful brochure to your 'pad, or perhaps advise you on transport and accommodation options in the near vicinity?"

Qui-Gon grunted noncommittally, rubbing a weary hand over his craggy face.

"We've been here before," his younger counterpart informed the droid, deftly bowing his insincere thanks and shepherding his manifestly disgruntled mentor out the cabin door and down the connecting passage. "One short air taxi ride – and the obligatory traffic jam – and we'll be back at the Temple, Master. Try not to collapse until we're actually in quarters."

The tall Jedi seemed to draw a modicum of renewed energy from the bantering tone of this admonition. "Says the man who slept the last four hours of our journey."

They waited patiently at the end of a long queue of exiting passengers, cloaked and cowled, arms folded into opposite sleeves. "Yes. Well."

"Not to fret," Qui-Gon assured his comrade. "I knew you would be but poor company the moment we jumped to hyperspace after the last refueling stop. After all, your personal record for consecutive hours without sleep is eighty-three standard, and we were coming up on seventy-five or so."

The young Knight snorted. "So I'm losing my touch, is what you are saying."

The line moved slowly forward, bringing them to the threshold of the ramp. "No,no." Qui-Gon smiled softly, his expression hidden by the deep folds of his cloak hood. "But perhaps you are at long last losing the immoderate vitality of adolescence."

"Ah… but where does that leave you, then?"

They flashed their passes at the waiting clerk, and were waved forward. "Believe me, Obi-Wan, I would have been snoring right alongside you had I been able… alas, the ravages of age prevent me from enjoying much needed rest in such cramped surroundings."

His former student did not quirk an outward smile nor bat a lash, but his amusement was felt keenly in the Force between them nonetheless. "That's not to be credited to excessive age, Master – merely excessive height. As Master Seva says, he who towers highest falls furthest, and – "

"And he who taunts his elders with words had better be prepared to back up his impertinence in the dojo."

"I do not recall any such aphorism," Obi-Wan objected, as they tramped down the worn ramp and reached the solidity of pock-marked duracrete decking.

Qui-Gon's long stride carried him forward, into the lead. "I would be honored to knock its wisdom into your head later, then – after a long night's sleep. Or two or three."

Sharing a chuckle, they strode across the bustling tarmac side by side – and the rest of their exchange was swallowed up by the spaceport's ubiquitous pandemonium.