Mirrors of the Force. part 2

an illustration to the second part of the "Mirrors of the Force" StarWars" fanfiction story written by my dear friend Sebastian Buchner (please in order to favourite and comment on the story - go to Sebastian's submission of the text itself: [link] ]

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Sebastian Buchner

Mirrors of the Force
Part II

The man next to me offers me a globule filled with clear violet liquid. He speaks a few words of his tribe and there is pride and the edge of a sword in his voice. He says that he has left the endless wars his people wage to search for different things, now that his life draws to a close. He speaks of the battles that he has fought – his voice firm and proud – but also that he can no longer see any pride and any glory in the slaying of another man. Having said that, he pauses, looks around quietly and his face shows its age. Scars and wrinkles intersect, he wears a grizzled beard and his eyes are almost hidden in folds of skin. I suspect that his body might not withhold the rigours of daily training that the Mandalorians, to my inexpert knowledge, keep up well into old age and that he feels a sort of shame that he can no longer be assured of victory. But the moment passes and soon his face is animated again and he speaks, almost as if pleasantly drunk by it, of the beauty and fierceness of that planet that we left behind. He seeks to chronicle such places, places that like himself have been proud and glorious once and then turned into “deserts of a music of the tongue and mind”, as he describes it with strange and unexpected poetry.
“Try the globule,” he urges me as our conversation slacks off again. It gives one peace of mind and strength of memory. I put it in my mouth, not to disappoint the old man, but instead of savouring its effects, I analyze them and try to separate the tastes, original and synthetic, that mingle in my mouth, while the old Mandalorian speaks on about the weakness that is old age. He does so proudly and elegantly, never betraying that it might be his own fear but rather some universal poetry shared by all thinking and acting beings and I drift off into my own thoughts, maybe strengthened by the essence contained within the globule.
I tend to push my assignment out of my head, overlay it with memories of Li and Tach and my time at the academies that I was sent to as a younger man. At times it almost becomes difficult to remember what exactly it is that I was sent to do. I proved to be apt as a philosopher more than as a fighter – make no mistake, I can fight as well and disciplined as any well-taught Jedi – but it was this aptitude that made my master choose me for the task that I am on. I have been travelling in fulfilment of that task for nearly twenty years now. People tell me that I look younger than I am and I have learned to use it to my advantage, but I think, sometimes, that it comes from moving constantly, in body and in mind.
I was sent to create a map of the force in the outer parts of the galaxy. I was taught to empty my mind and to let the threads and ebbs of places strong and holy or dark and forgotten fill me until the very inside of me was a mirror of such places.
My life has been peaceful, apart from inner turmoil, which threatens to blur or upset the careful maps that I have made. I have had to learn to find places for those…disturbances. I have no family, so there was never anything like homesickness to detract me. Romantic entanglements that created a beast of feeling and emotion inside of me there were a few – I cannot say that they were more or less than I had hoped for, for I think there is none who wants to spend his entire life alone, but gradually they all have been made part of those maps. Officially a Jedi is forbidden all sort of romance, but put a man into a state of constant isolation and even iron will is made to rust. Not that my will in such affairs was ever iron.
A feeling of guilty curiosity stings me whenever I meet another Jedi. A restless question in my head whether he has done it or not. Whether there are men in her wake, women in his, men in his, women in hers. It is the comforting perversion of those who are required to be monks, I suppose. I have been many things, in my time – monk, surgeon, psychiatrist, judge, but rarely have I been a warrior.
Someone touches my shoulder. The old man has fallen asleep, but there is a child that has come up to me, bending over his massive legs to reach me. He is one of the Azad, a race of preternatural sensitivity, whose main cause of death are violent emotional traumata. I spent half a year studying their mental disciplines and geographies of the spirit which are deeper than all others that I have ever known. He does not smile, which they consider crude, but looks at me to invite me to read his mind through his eyes. My reading is incomplete and weak, but there is something he wishes to show me. Their internal disciplines far exceed those of the Jedi, but they have never developed anything close to our external mastery of the force. His people have been known to guide willing Jedi to places of the force far beyond their own imagining, so of course I am curious what they boy means to show me.
I grab the seat in front of me and carefully step over the old Mandalorian’s legs. Standing, I have a look around. Most of the passengers are asleep, only a few are engaged in reading or conversation. The lights are dim and I can feel the hum of the ship in my entire body. To imagine that we are currently moving at the speed of light…so strange – they have devised generators and shield buffers to make the shift in speeds almost imperceptible for the passengers. Allegedly there were some races that, upon their first travel at such speeds, literally lost their souls and arrived at their destination without an aim, without a purpose in their lives, forever wandering about, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.
I follow the boy along the aisle. Sometimes the Azad lose all abilities to act, lost in a reverie of sensations. At such moments they need people like me, people who understand their awareness and who can make them act again. Maybe his mother or father have been shocked by the speed, the unusual perceptions that space travel causes in those who cannot close their minds. A simple thought shield should be enough to take care of that.
He does not lead me to his parents. We pass seat after seat, we pass the cabins for those who breathe different substances than oxygen, some shaped like sarcophagi, others like spacious bathrooms, but always hermetically sealed. We pass a crewman, who, to pass the time, has lost himself in some drug-fuelled haze. He does not notice us as we step over him and descend a ladder into the bowels of the ship. The humming changes. Surrounded by wiring and broad, semi-translucent tubes, I feel like I have been swallowed by some primordial electronic beast and I indulge in the feeling for a while.
We walk on, ducking through one door and passing another without discernible direction. There are little scars on the neck of the boy. His head is shaved, his eyes are dark. He wears good clothing, so he is not poor and certainly not a stowaway on the ship planning to ask me for some inconceivable help. I grow a little suspicious and the Azad boy, of course, notices the shift in feeling. However, he does nothing to assure me, perhaps to show me that he is certain of the importance of what he has noticed. Since the tiniest sign of emotion can become an unbearable burden for an Azad, he must be very certain of it. I try to control my emotions to show that I do not distrust him.
At last we seem to have reached our goal. The Azad stops and points at a door. There are signs on the door and I feel shame that I cannot read them. He presses a few buttons on a display and the door opens. Behind it there is a narrow elevator. I recognize the sort. Some ships had those installed to transport goods or technical supplies while docked at a station. They are vacuum sealed and almost impenetrable. But I have never heard of them leading somewhere inside a ship. What does the boy know that remains hidden to me? Since I have decided to trust him, I try my best to keep all fear and suspicions suppressed and enter the elevator. The doors close, everything spins, all sounds seem sucked from my ears – I am thrown against metal, against another body and against metal again – a flash of pain in my head, then darkness.

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part I [link]
part III [link]
part IV [link]
part V [link]
part VI [link]
part VII [link]
PartVIII [link]
Part IX [link]
Part X [link]