fic: The Rumor of Rain (Star Wars; Shmi, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luke, Rey; gen)
The Rumor of Rain
Star Wars; Shmi, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luke, Rey; g; 2,285 words
If he reaches out, he can feel each drop of rain as it falls, and the movements of the plants and animals in response, the greedy slurp of tree roots, the unthinking satiation of tiny frogs, and a million other points of life flickering beyond his normal senses.
Thanks so much to
snacky and
silveronthetree for looking it over! Title from "Tanglewood Tree" by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.
Or read it at AO3.
~*~
The Rumor of Rain
1. Shmi
One of Shmi's earliest memories is of drops of water hitting her face and sliding down her cheeks--not tears, she thinks then--so she doesn't discount the possibility of rain, the way the other slaves do. (It's not until years later that she realizes they were not her tears.) Spacers are full of wild tales, more hyperbole than truth, but the galaxy is vast and Tatooine is one small dusty corner of it. The elders' stories say the desert used to be lush and green before war brought desolation with it, and there's still water out there for those who know how to look, for those the desert takes into its care. Shmi has always found comfort in those stories, in knowing that a thing doesn't need to be seen to be true.
Shmi believes in many things she's never seen--love, gravity, the Force. She sends her son with the Jedi because he's meant for more than she can give him. He'll see more of the galaxy than she can imagine. Great things are waiting for him out there. She believes it, even if she won't get to see it.
*
2. Anakin
Anakin is shocked the first time he sees the rain on Coruscant. Water, falling from the sky, free to anyone who can collect it. Mom had told him stories about it, but he'd always been skeptical. Belief has never come as easily to him as he'd have liked, though he trusted Mom enough to want to believe it, because she did. He's overjoyed to learn that even in this, she hadn't lied to him.
He tilts his face up, opens his mouth to taste it, to drink from the sky, but Obi-Wan shakes his head. "It's not safe for drinking, Anakin." Anakin snaps his mouth shut with a click and Obi-Wan gives him a small smile. "Let's get inside, and we'll find you a drink, if you're thirsty."
Anakin doesn't bother to correct his assumption. He doesn't think Obi-Wan would get it.
It's not until his fourth month at the Temple that he figures out that the rain falls on a schedule; a little research confirms that the planetary weather authority arranges for it to fall during convenient times in order to wash pollution out of the air. Obi-Wan was right to keep him from drinking it--Anakin knows he meant well--but he'll never understand why Anakin wanted to.
It rains twice a week every week for the first ten years Anakin lives on Coruscant, but he never quite gets over that feeling of wonder every time he sees it.
*
3. Obi-Wan
Over the years, Obi-Wan develops a surprising fondness for the desert to which he's exiled himself. It's a harsh and unforgiving landscape, but there's a beauty in it, too. It explains much to him about Anakin that he'd never quite understood, or maybe hadn't wanted to understand, at first, and by the time he'd dug himself out of his grief and shock, it had been too late.
Obi-Wan spent most of his life on Coruscant, with its beautiful sunsets and its artificial weather, but he'd thought he'd understood what the desert meant, how it shaped the lives and deaths of its inhabitants, until he was actually among them and realized how little he really knew. The desert gave rise to stories and sayings he only heard once he lived there. Stories he'd never heard from Anakin, who might have shared them if Obi-Wan had shown an interest. Obi-Wan had never thought to ask, had thought he'd known enough, known better than to dwell on the past.
The entire galaxy is paying for his disinterest now.
Wisdom can be found anywhere, if one looks hard enough, and these days, Obi-Wan spends most of his time looking. He seeks solace in the Force, and in the knowledge that Anakin's son is being raised by people who love him, safe from the hate and fear that ruined his father.
Obi-Wan is startled out of his morning meditation by the distant roll of thunder, a sound he hasn't heard in years. He climbs to the top of a nearby ridge to watch a bank of black clouds roil over the Dune Sea, as odd and out of place here as a nerfherder at a Senate ball. The storm is close enough, and the air surrounding it clear enough, that he can see the rain evaporate before it hits the ground, a false promise of succor he tries not to take as an omen. His own hopes are growing slowly; he has years to cultivate them, to see them nourished and brought to fruition, though this time he's taking an even more hands-off approach. He has to believe they won't dissolve into mist without ever touching the ground.
*
4. Luke
After Yoda raises his X-Wing out of the swamp, Luke spends the rest of the day scrubbing grime out of the cockpit and muttering angrily under his breath. Once he's satisfied that the life support system isn't going to kill him, he turns his attention to Artoo, who beeps mournfully at him under a coating of slime and mildew. The droid commiserates with him--at least, Luke thinks he does; he still doesn't understand binary--and is a safe target for his venting about Yoda and his teaching methods. Luke is well aware of everything he lacks, that he's just some dumb farm kid from the Outer Rim who got lucky, and a short stint in a swamp isn't going to turn him into a Jedi. He doesn't need Yoda to constantly remind him.
There's so much he wants to learn, so many things he needs to know, to help the Alliance, to live up to his father's legacy, to make his friends proud. To make Ben's sacrifice meaningful. And lifting pebbles with the Force isn't going to teach him those things, no matter what Yoda says.
It starts raining again--the air here is so permeated with moisture that Luke's not sure it ever really stops raining, but it's intensified from an aggressive mist into an actual downpour-and he suddenly feels embarrassed at how badly he's behaving.
He recalls his sense of awe at the jungle on Yavin, his pleasure in standing out in the daily afternoon deluge and letting it soak him to the skin. It was warm enough to feel comfortable, even if he'd never completely dried out his entire time on the planet.
There'd been green everywhere on Yavin, in shades he hadn't even known enough to imagine. And even when it wasn't raining--which was rare--the air was bursting with moisture.
He remembers Han catching him standing with his mouth open like the naïve Outer Rim rube he'd been then, the first time the skies had opened and the rain had poured down.
"You okay, kid?"
"Yeah," he replied, smiling. He gestured at the rain. "Can you believe this?"
"I believe there's gonna be mold in the Falcon's ventilation systems if we stay here much longer. You know how hard it is to get mold out of the vents?"
Luke had laughed. "I'll disinfect the ducts for you if that actually happens."
"Don't think I won't make you," Han threatened, but he'd laughed too, and clapped Luke on the shoulder. "You're gonna catch your death out here, kid."
"Can't have the pilot who shot down the Death Star drowning 'cause he was too dumb to come in out of the rain," Luke joked.
"That too," Han said, forehead creasing in puzzlement and then smoothing out. He shrugged and slung a companionable arm over Luke's shoulders. "Maybe the Princess will share some of her special tea with you. Us."
Luke flushed and let Han steer him back inside. "Yeah."
He's not sure when he lost that, when he'd let himself become jaded, when something as amazing as Yoda's display of the Force inspired in him nothing but irritation and despair at his own inadequacies.
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to center himself in the moment, the way Ben and Yoda have taught him. If he reaches out, he can feel each drop of rain as it falls, and the movements of the plants and animals in response, the greedy slurp of tree roots, the unthinking satiation of tiny frogs, and a million other points of life flickering beyond his normal senses.
Artoo beeps inquisitively, and Luke jerks back into himself with an apologetic laugh, but he feels better--clearer, more focused--than he has since he arrived.
"A Jedi of you we yet will make," Yoda says when Luke joins him for dinner.
"Yes, Master," Luke replies, shoulders squared and chin up. "I'm ready."
*
5. Rey
Once when Rey was younger, soon after Unkar Plutt began sending her out to scavenge on her own, she went too far into the badlands and almost didn't make it back alive. She'd been riding an old swoop bike she'd repaired for Plutt and had water enough to know she didn't have enough water to make it back to Niima Station before dark, or to make it through the night alone.
She followed some tracks, small and smudged but recent enough not to have been erased yet by the swirling sand and wind, and came upon an oasis, a hidden freshwater pond where the small desert hares and the shy sand herons drank in secluded peace, shielded from predators and shaded by scrawny, scrubby trees that only bore their wide, flat leaves for a few weeks each winter.
She'd spent the night there and come back with a full canteen and some alluvial dampers that earned her two portions and a scolding for keeping the swoop out overnight.
She'd hardly believed her luck; everyone she'd ever met had said oases were an illusion, a mirage created by heat and dehydration, but no hallucination had kept her alive that night. She'd never told anyone--she didn't have anyone she trusted enough to tell, and even if she had, no one would have believed her. If they had, the place would have been overrun with traders trying to make money, and the peaceful seclusion would have been lost. All in all, her solitude was for the best. It often was, even if she longed for company.
Years later, she'd tried to find that oasis again, but she never did. It faded into memory, like a dream she couldn't quite believe had been real.
Until Takodana, that small, secluded pool had been the most water she'd ever seen in one place.
And then she'd gone to Ahch-To.
She thinks she must have seen the ocean once, to dream of it so often and so vividly before she'd ever set eyes on it. In waking life, her imagination isn't so creative and detailed, and she'd never expected something from a dream to be so unrelentingly real. But the ocean on Ahch-To is the realest thing she's ever seen; even when she can't see it, she can smell it and hear it and feel it in the air and in the Force. Her breathing when she meditates syncs to the steady rhythm of the tides, and her heart beats to its time.
She accepts the ocean is real--she can hardly do otherwise when it surrounds her and shapes the tempo of her days the way the desert once did--though sometimes she can barely believe that so much water exists in one place, right out in the open where anyone can see it, even if none of it is potable without the proper equipment.
Even the ocean couldn't prepare her for the rain. She knows what it is in theory--she even experienced snow on Starkiller base, though she didn't know that's what it was at the time--but somehow she still thinks of it as something that happens to other people, in other places, far away from her.
It startles her out of her meditation late one afternoon, cold and wet against her skin, and she blinks it out of her eyes and licks it off her lips--here, even the rain tastes of salt and the sea.
She catches Luke's gaze and he gives her a small, knowing smile. "For me, it was Yavin," he says. "It's a tropical rainforest."
"Poe is from there," Rey says. She and Poe met briefly on D'Qar and have kept in touch intermittently, so she knows how Finn's recovery is going, and he knows she's found Luke Skywalker and is training to be a Jedi. Even with Artoo boosting the signal, it's hard to communicate over such distances, and dangerous, with the First Order hunting for all of them.
"I knew his parents," Luke says. "Good people. Devoted to the Rebellion and to each other." His gaze goes distant for a moment. "He used to like to climb the trees and then jump out of them like he was flying."
"He's the best pilot in the Resistance," Rey says.
Luke grins. It makes him look younger and more carefree than she's seen him yet. "At least while we're not around."
"I thought pride was unbecoming a Jedi."
Luke's grin widens. "It's not pride to know your own worth." He takes her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "We'll let him keep the title a little longer, but we should begin getting ready to return." His smile fades. "Leia needs us."
The General needs him, and Rey is beginning to believe Poe and Finn need her, too. Maybe the whole Resistance does.
"Yes," she says, feeling it out, the sense of rightness that confidence brings, and with it, the security of knowing she belongs. "They do."
end
~*~
Note: rain that evaporates before it hits the ground is called virga.
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/871174.html.
people have commented there.
Star Wars; Shmi, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Luke, Rey; g; 2,285 words
If he reaches out, he can feel each drop of rain as it falls, and the movements of the plants and animals in response, the greedy slurp of tree roots, the unthinking satiation of tiny frogs, and a million other points of life flickering beyond his normal senses.
Thanks so much to
snacky and
silveronthetree for looking it over! Title from "Tanglewood Tree" by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer.
Or read it at AO3.
~*~
The Rumor of Rain
1. Shmi
One of Shmi's earliest memories is of drops of water hitting her face and sliding down her cheeks--not tears, she thinks then--so she doesn't discount the possibility of rain, the way the other slaves do. (It's not until years later that she realizes they were not her tears.) Spacers are full of wild tales, more hyperbole than truth, but the galaxy is vast and Tatooine is one small dusty corner of it. The elders' stories say the desert used to be lush and green before war brought desolation with it, and there's still water out there for those who know how to look, for those the desert takes into its care. Shmi has always found comfort in those stories, in knowing that a thing doesn't need to be seen to be true.
Shmi believes in many things she's never seen--love, gravity, the Force. She sends her son with the Jedi because he's meant for more than she can give him. He'll see more of the galaxy than she can imagine. Great things are waiting for him out there. She believes it, even if she won't get to see it.
*
2. Anakin
Anakin is shocked the first time he sees the rain on Coruscant. Water, falling from the sky, free to anyone who can collect it. Mom had told him stories about it, but he'd always been skeptical. Belief has never come as easily to him as he'd have liked, though he trusted Mom enough to want to believe it, because she did. He's overjoyed to learn that even in this, she hadn't lied to him.
He tilts his face up, opens his mouth to taste it, to drink from the sky, but Obi-Wan shakes his head. "It's not safe for drinking, Anakin." Anakin snaps his mouth shut with a click and Obi-Wan gives him a small smile. "Let's get inside, and we'll find you a drink, if you're thirsty."
Anakin doesn't bother to correct his assumption. He doesn't think Obi-Wan would get it.
It's not until his fourth month at the Temple that he figures out that the rain falls on a schedule; a little research confirms that the planetary weather authority arranges for it to fall during convenient times in order to wash pollution out of the air. Obi-Wan was right to keep him from drinking it--Anakin knows he meant well--but he'll never understand why Anakin wanted to.
It rains twice a week every week for the first ten years Anakin lives on Coruscant, but he never quite gets over that feeling of wonder every time he sees it.
*
3. Obi-Wan
Over the years, Obi-Wan develops a surprising fondness for the desert to which he's exiled himself. It's a harsh and unforgiving landscape, but there's a beauty in it, too. It explains much to him about Anakin that he'd never quite understood, or maybe hadn't wanted to understand, at first, and by the time he'd dug himself out of his grief and shock, it had been too late.
Obi-Wan spent most of his life on Coruscant, with its beautiful sunsets and its artificial weather, but he'd thought he'd understood what the desert meant, how it shaped the lives and deaths of its inhabitants, until he was actually among them and realized how little he really knew. The desert gave rise to stories and sayings he only heard once he lived there. Stories he'd never heard from Anakin, who might have shared them if Obi-Wan had shown an interest. Obi-Wan had never thought to ask, had thought he'd known enough, known better than to dwell on the past.
The entire galaxy is paying for his disinterest now.
Wisdom can be found anywhere, if one looks hard enough, and these days, Obi-Wan spends most of his time looking. He seeks solace in the Force, and in the knowledge that Anakin's son is being raised by people who love him, safe from the hate and fear that ruined his father.
Obi-Wan is startled out of his morning meditation by the distant roll of thunder, a sound he hasn't heard in years. He climbs to the top of a nearby ridge to watch a bank of black clouds roil over the Dune Sea, as odd and out of place here as a nerfherder at a Senate ball. The storm is close enough, and the air surrounding it clear enough, that he can see the rain evaporate before it hits the ground, a false promise of succor he tries not to take as an omen. His own hopes are growing slowly; he has years to cultivate them, to see them nourished and brought to fruition, though this time he's taking an even more hands-off approach. He has to believe they won't dissolve into mist without ever touching the ground.
*
4. Luke
After Yoda raises his X-Wing out of the swamp, Luke spends the rest of the day scrubbing grime out of the cockpit and muttering angrily under his breath. Once he's satisfied that the life support system isn't going to kill him, he turns his attention to Artoo, who beeps mournfully at him under a coating of slime and mildew. The droid commiserates with him--at least, Luke thinks he does; he still doesn't understand binary--and is a safe target for his venting about Yoda and his teaching methods. Luke is well aware of everything he lacks, that he's just some dumb farm kid from the Outer Rim who got lucky, and a short stint in a swamp isn't going to turn him into a Jedi. He doesn't need Yoda to constantly remind him.
There's so much he wants to learn, so many things he needs to know, to help the Alliance, to live up to his father's legacy, to make his friends proud. To make Ben's sacrifice meaningful. And lifting pebbles with the Force isn't going to teach him those things, no matter what Yoda says.
It starts raining again--the air here is so permeated with moisture that Luke's not sure it ever really stops raining, but it's intensified from an aggressive mist into an actual downpour-and he suddenly feels embarrassed at how badly he's behaving.
He recalls his sense of awe at the jungle on Yavin, his pleasure in standing out in the daily afternoon deluge and letting it soak him to the skin. It was warm enough to feel comfortable, even if he'd never completely dried out his entire time on the planet.
There'd been green everywhere on Yavin, in shades he hadn't even known enough to imagine. And even when it wasn't raining--which was rare--the air was bursting with moisture.
He remembers Han catching him standing with his mouth open like the naïve Outer Rim rube he'd been then, the first time the skies had opened and the rain had poured down.
"You okay, kid?"
"Yeah," he replied, smiling. He gestured at the rain. "Can you believe this?"
"I believe there's gonna be mold in the Falcon's ventilation systems if we stay here much longer. You know how hard it is to get mold out of the vents?"
Luke had laughed. "I'll disinfect the ducts for you if that actually happens."
"Don't think I won't make you," Han threatened, but he'd laughed too, and clapped Luke on the shoulder. "You're gonna catch your death out here, kid."
"Can't have the pilot who shot down the Death Star drowning 'cause he was too dumb to come in out of the rain," Luke joked.
"That too," Han said, forehead creasing in puzzlement and then smoothing out. He shrugged and slung a companionable arm over Luke's shoulders. "Maybe the Princess will share some of her special tea with you. Us."
Luke flushed and let Han steer him back inside. "Yeah."
He's not sure when he lost that, when he'd let himself become jaded, when something as amazing as Yoda's display of the Force inspired in him nothing but irritation and despair at his own inadequacies.
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries to center himself in the moment, the way Ben and Yoda have taught him. If he reaches out, he can feel each drop of rain as it falls, and the movements of the plants and animals in response, the greedy slurp of tree roots, the unthinking satiation of tiny frogs, and a million other points of life flickering beyond his normal senses.
Artoo beeps inquisitively, and Luke jerks back into himself with an apologetic laugh, but he feels better--clearer, more focused--than he has since he arrived.
"A Jedi of you we yet will make," Yoda says when Luke joins him for dinner.
"Yes, Master," Luke replies, shoulders squared and chin up. "I'm ready."
*
5. Rey
Once when Rey was younger, soon after Unkar Plutt began sending her out to scavenge on her own, she went too far into the badlands and almost didn't make it back alive. She'd been riding an old swoop bike she'd repaired for Plutt and had water enough to know she didn't have enough water to make it back to Niima Station before dark, or to make it through the night alone.
She followed some tracks, small and smudged but recent enough not to have been erased yet by the swirling sand and wind, and came upon an oasis, a hidden freshwater pond where the small desert hares and the shy sand herons drank in secluded peace, shielded from predators and shaded by scrawny, scrubby trees that only bore their wide, flat leaves for a few weeks each winter.
She'd spent the night there and come back with a full canteen and some alluvial dampers that earned her two portions and a scolding for keeping the swoop out overnight.
She'd hardly believed her luck; everyone she'd ever met had said oases were an illusion, a mirage created by heat and dehydration, but no hallucination had kept her alive that night. She'd never told anyone--she didn't have anyone she trusted enough to tell, and even if she had, no one would have believed her. If they had, the place would have been overrun with traders trying to make money, and the peaceful seclusion would have been lost. All in all, her solitude was for the best. It often was, even if she longed for company.
Years later, she'd tried to find that oasis again, but she never did. It faded into memory, like a dream she couldn't quite believe had been real.
Until Takodana, that small, secluded pool had been the most water she'd ever seen in one place.
And then she'd gone to Ahch-To.
She thinks she must have seen the ocean once, to dream of it so often and so vividly before she'd ever set eyes on it. In waking life, her imagination isn't so creative and detailed, and she'd never expected something from a dream to be so unrelentingly real. But the ocean on Ahch-To is the realest thing she's ever seen; even when she can't see it, she can smell it and hear it and feel it in the air and in the Force. Her breathing when she meditates syncs to the steady rhythm of the tides, and her heart beats to its time.
She accepts the ocean is real--she can hardly do otherwise when it surrounds her and shapes the tempo of her days the way the desert once did--though sometimes she can barely believe that so much water exists in one place, right out in the open where anyone can see it, even if none of it is potable without the proper equipment.
Even the ocean couldn't prepare her for the rain. She knows what it is in theory--she even experienced snow on Starkiller base, though she didn't know that's what it was at the time--but somehow she still thinks of it as something that happens to other people, in other places, far away from her.
It startles her out of her meditation late one afternoon, cold and wet against her skin, and she blinks it out of her eyes and licks it off her lips--here, even the rain tastes of salt and the sea.
She catches Luke's gaze and he gives her a small, knowing smile. "For me, it was Yavin," he says. "It's a tropical rainforest."
"Poe is from there," Rey says. She and Poe met briefly on D'Qar and have kept in touch intermittently, so she knows how Finn's recovery is going, and he knows she's found Luke Skywalker and is training to be a Jedi. Even with Artoo boosting the signal, it's hard to communicate over such distances, and dangerous, with the First Order hunting for all of them.
"I knew his parents," Luke says. "Good people. Devoted to the Rebellion and to each other." His gaze goes distant for a moment. "He used to like to climb the trees and then jump out of them like he was flying."
"He's the best pilot in the Resistance," Rey says.
Luke grins. It makes him look younger and more carefree than she's seen him yet. "At least while we're not around."
"I thought pride was unbecoming a Jedi."
Luke's grin widens. "It's not pride to know your own worth." He takes her hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. "We'll let him keep the title a little longer, but we should begin getting ready to return." His smile fades. "Leia needs us."
The General needs him, and Rey is beginning to believe Poe and Finn need her, too. Maybe the whole Resistance does.
"Yes," she says, feeling it out, the sense of rightness that confidence brings, and with it, the security of knowing she belongs. "They do."
end
~*~
Note: rain that evaporates before it hits the ground is called virga.
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/871174.html.
people have commented there.