I'm so Free I Must Be Flying (7/?)
Clear, cool, green (pine) smells and the brown soil and blue sky spread all around Rana’s mind, orbiting her. Eddies of Force, poured around her, as if she had been placed in a cup and a trapped air bubble at the bottom of a tank, like the trick Master Ishale showed her when she had become Master Lee’s padawan. Master Ishale was a knight, he hadn’t received his first padawan yet because of the War, he had her call him by his first name Ishale, instead of what the others did, the grown-ups, Master Terobah. He showed her tricks and made her laugh. He was like an uncle she supposed (wished), a fun uncle. Master Lee had called him Ishale, so it was okay for her to as well, even though she would never call her Master Zan-Drix. She filtered through her memories, running her fingers over them like she would river stones, the way she often did in meditation, only now it was like she was looking at them through a smudged glass. Her senses getting all the attention.
She let herself simmer in the sensory flashes before rising (floating, flying) above the shed (solid) and the woods (dappled) and the house (anxious) where she could sense her Master’s presence (golden bright) and she brushed the toe of her foot against the light. It surrounded her for a brief moment, (fussing over her) like a fire that didn’t burn before refocusing and pulling back (keeping an eye on her). She had never felt the Force this strongly, not even in the Temple; she could get lost in it. The taste and tactile rub against her mind, the pine scent so rich it was a color soaking in her skin through osmosis. It could kind of swallow her up, fold her in, and her mind would never get back to her body, have no reason to…
Except Master Lee who cared (loved) for her far too much to let her do something so irresponsible (reckless) as every Master (father) should. She shuttered her mind and concentrated on being separate and singular. A square of cloth in an upside down cup, miraculously dry.
Padawan Rana (Lee), Jedi Order
Rana.
Jedi Order.
That was better.
She looked over the forest.
She reached out like she used to do when she was young and played hide and seek in the Temple with the other padawans. A sort of soft brushing ‘are you there?’ She floated over a few shapes that were blind and weak as whelps and paid them no mind, they weren’t Jedi, she had better focus at the age of six. There was someone who had potential up north where the cold is (and birds), and the prospect excited her as drifting as her mind was she thought they might be a padawan separated from their Master, or a Jedi trying to hide their presence. But when she reached out to them they had sent her back a jumble of pain, confusion and panic (a scream) that had her pulling back as fast as she could, recoiling almost all the way back down to her body (that was funny she could actually see herself, she didn’t know she could do that) where things aren’t right. There’s darkness there (Sith) and it clanged and clattered against the forest.
Rana floating like a feather on the wind was pinned by the dark things stare, it was dark and indistinct, a pillar like her Master in form only. It was looking at her. “May the peace of the Force sustain me,” she barked out instinctively, something one of her instructors had said when Rana was a youngling and the Force did surge forward to sustain her. Instead of eddying around her it began to pour through her , dropping her like a stone into her own body with a jerk slamming the back of her head against the back of the shed so that she sees stars.
Throwing her arm out she Force pushed all the energy she had out through her fingertips her mind a jangle of ‘too much’ and ‘Sith!’ Both threats to herself and her Master were taken care of, or at least she thought so, the world was still a spattering of pink and yellow lights. Master Lee’s hands were on her face, ‘where did he come from?’ she thought absently as she scratched at the sore place at the back of her skull.
“Rana!” Long fingers slapped hers away and ran over the back of her head.
“I’m okay, stop, ow, Master I’m fine. I just banged my head coming out of meditation. Stop.”
“Be still Rana,” he said wryly and she went still obediently. “What alarmed you?”
“I felt… I thought I felt a Sith.”
Master Lee tensed immediately, standing in a long smooth motion, hand going to his belt for his light saber. “My light saber,” he said, his face sharpening into self-deprecation in a flurry of light spots. Once Rana shook her head a second time the dots of color disappeared, the pain was almost gone now.
There were men standing nearby pointing weapons at them, Rana looked up quickly to Master Lee for clarification of what she should do, he motioned for her to keep sitting with one hand. “What’s going on?” a man said, in High Galactic making Rana sit up, but Master Lee shook his head again.
“My padawan felt a Sith. I needest my light saber.”
“Your sword?” the man asked. He was neatly dressed in worn clothes, his dark eyes focused on her master. “Did she do that?” He pointed to the woods where she had felt the Sith, where now there was a tunnel of blasted down trees their transport could have flown through. Master Lee tilted his head curiously to the side for a moment and looked at her with his face composed as always. ‘It was not me Master,’ Rana told him blushing. ‘Not on purpose. It was the Force, I think it was this world, I could not have done that on my own.’
“It wast mistake, Rana is not careless, she wast acting to remove a threat to herself and to thy people as well. But I needst my saber for when it comest back.”
“Comes back?” he barked and started waving at the other’s speaking in their different language; she could vaguely understand a few words. Return, surround, places, salt. “We don’t know where your sword is, we haven’t seen it.”
“It wast on my belt,” Master Lee said in his, ‘we’re going to learn a new technique voice,’ “It’s where ever thou putest my belt.”
Rana stood slowly and Master Lee spared her a moment of quick fussing with her robe for a moment, which she stood steadfast through, before speaking with the man who knew High Galactic. “How did she do that exactly?”
“Thou truly doest not know what the Jedi are then?” Master Lee said slowly.
The man just shook his head.
“We are peaceful, we live amongst the stars. My padawan, which is to say my student, wast going through her morning meditation when the Force alerted her to the presence of a Sith. Someone who hast turned to the Dark Side. Since the Sith are enemy to Jedi, and because she was unused to this world, her mind wast elsewhere when she reacted, something that she will learn to fix later.”
Rana bowed her head.
“However,” Master Lee said gently, tilting his head toward her, slipping into familiar Basic, “She acted quickly and with bravery to ensure our safety.”
Rana and Master Lee suddenly tensed as one, she could feel the tightness in through his hand on her shoulder, he narrowed his eyes toward the forest and stepped between her and the darkness.
“It hast returned. I wouldst like my sword now.”