spice & the seaside

[ladyofthesands]

Arha had woken suddenly in the sort of way one does when they have overslept and forgotten something terribly important.  A date, a person, something massive, something life-changing--something that was no longer there.  She had fallen asleep, not in her own bed, but at a terminal in the media library researching...something.

Energy, it looked like

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[restoresbalance]

Just as she'd come to find him when he was disturbed, so Luke was drawn to Arha when she was upset. It was just as so many had said to him, and as he'd told so many others, during the many wars the Jedi had been drawn into. The Jedi were family, and when you were a Jedi, you were never, ever alone.

So when that ripple of unease, of loss, tinged with Arha's particular signature in the Force had reached him, Luke had responded to its tacit call. One of his friends--no, one of his family--needed him.

"Arha?" he asked quietly, poking his head into the tent. "You here?"

[ladyofthesands]

"Luke," Arha murmured, her voice rough and hazy as she stared at the tea a moment longer, then set it down. It was a dizzy sort of turn that blurred the tent and the flash of blue and white pillows felt wrong as she drew a breath. She knew Luke. She knew him.

She knew him the way she knew her own hands were hers.

If she could drop everything, every shred of pretense, every mask she wore, every bit of the walls she had created to remain pulled together when she felt this wrong such would be a thing to do with her family. Her Jed-Eye.

"My Jed--," she whispered and her voice cracked to the point that the other part of the word was swallowed whole. The confusion as she tried to reach into the blurred places, the hiss of her Mothers-Within (their own confusion, too, she realized, amplified her own), pressed in on her. Arha could remain a pillar for so long, a rock to others, Mother Superior, Jed-Eye, but she was also just a woman when all this was stripped away. It mattered not how many lives she had lived through her Mothers-

[restoresbalance]

He could feel that rippling in the Force, growing stronger until it became like a wave breaking on the shore, rushing up in a chaotic mass of rivulets and foam and shifting sand, and it made Luke reel for a moment too. He was close to Arha, and the confusion was compounded by the fact that she had those other presences in with her own, and he reeled a moment before gently pushing back against the confusion, against the fright.

Luke pushed it back, and replaced it as he went with his friendship, his affection and support. It was what he had to give, and he gave of it freely.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, reaching out to her and sitting beside her, putting an arm around Arha's shoulders comfortingly. "Talk to me."

[ladyofthesands]

"I do not know," Arha said, trying to clear her throat even as it constricted. Her fingers latched onto him as if testing his solidity. "This is the problem."

She blinked and tried to stop the blurring as she searched, keeping her hands on him, leaning into him as she tried to anchor herself.

"I have always been clear in my memory," she hissed softly. "Always. I am not myself. I reach and know, but I am missing. I am missing. Bene Gesserit do not misplace their lives, their memories. And I am lost."

[jedimacguyver]

Obi-Wan blinked, and for the third time in as many minutes, found himself trying to remember something he'd forgotten. Something important- not centrally, vitally so, but like...

...like being eight and having Master Yoda wave his hand at you only to realize hours later that you'd come to see him for a reason. Like being touched by a mind-trick that didn't fade with time. He frowned, and forgot why he was frowning, then wondered what it was he was forgetting.

"I must be out of my mind," he wondered aloud and stood from his meditative curl. He knew in his heart that something on the ship was subtly off, wrong in a way that was at once more and less pervasive than the feel of the Nightmare King, but the most telling sign was Arha's beacon of cheer, and how dim it had been of late. He couldn't help but wonder why, but when he wondered too firmly the forgetfulness came again to plague him

[ladyofthesands]

Arha couldn't pin the precise moment she latched onto Obi-Wan's mental presence, but she clung to him as she tried to steady herself. But her hands shook and despite all of her training, she could not make her body bend to her will. She stared down at the off-white cup and watched the color shift to a deep Ibad blue.

Arha dropped it immediately and watched it bounce off the lip of the serving table, shattering on contact. The tea splashed over a hand as she stumbled back and out of the tent.

I do not know what is wrong. It was not so much words, this thing. It was a jumbled mess of emotion, tangled like the delicate weave of a sand spider's trap in a high wind.

[jedimacguyver]

He replied with the impression of his own foggy forgetting, a wordless I know, that echoed and reverberated between them. It was enough that Ben could find where she was and the intensity of her emotion spurred him faster.

"Arha?" he called, touching the entryway was he came into the sensorium. Some time ago the pulsing flesh under his fingers would have bothered Obi-Wan, but now it seemed...almost normal. He saw her and moved forward, not bothering with those polite pauses he always found so necessary, and simply scooped her up against him in a way that set those voluminous Jedi sleeves flying. comfortingly, he murmured her name and tried to project comfort, but his own puzzlement gnawed at him like a vivid dream, poorly remembered.

[ladyofthesands]

Arha wordlessly buried herself against him, ignoring the sting of her hand, ignoring the churning in her mind--and the gaps that were never supposed to be there, the blurriness that didn't belong, and buried her fingers in his hair as if she were anchoring herself to him lest she be swept away.

It was wrong.

She felt as if she needed to choke it off, the wave of frightening confusion, the way the abnormalities ate away whole tracts of things she knew the shape of but not the face of, of context she ought to have, but did not. It was as if she was looking at a picture from the wrong angle and was unable to right it.

But the mess and confusion stayed the harder she dug through her Other Memory. And she let him hold her, she let him serve as her anchor back as she moved through another life of blur. Because that is what it was. Moments of clarity tempered by complete blurred gaps.

She was still against him for a long while before her voice finally sounded.

"Missing," she murmured.

[bonnypiperlad]

Jamie stumbled into the Sensoriums. It wasn't intentional - he had been walking past when a wave of dizziness hit. He had put a hand out to brace himself, but found only air.

Once he regained his footing, he stopped and shook his head to clear it. He had been thinking of the last time he was here, where he was talking to...someone. He couldn't remember who.

Troubled, he started to walk the strangely-colored beach. The blue of the tent caught his eye, and he cautiously approached it, lifting the flap. He blinked as he recognized the person inside.

"Arha?"

[ladyofthesands]

"I think it is time for tea," Arha said absently as she sat back on her heels. Wasn't it? She cupped the tea and stared at it for a long moment as if it were something utterly alien. "Would you like some?"

[bonnypiperlad]

Tea. Tea will fix just about anything. "Aye," Jamie replies gratefully, sinking down into the nest of pillows and blankets without so much as a by-your-leave. "Please," he adds, politely.

He gives Arha a long, considering look after he's settled in. "Are ye all right? Ye seem...well, ye seem a bit like you've been woolgathering, if ye don't mind my saying so."

[ladyofthesands]

"I am unsure if I am...all right," Arha said, blinking as she poured him a cup of tea and fix it. She set the cup into his hands, frowning gently. "I am uncertain. I seem to have lost something important and I cannot remember what that thing is. It is unbalancing."

[goodofthegalaxy]

Jacen had been wandering around the Sensoriums and had narrowed his eyes at the sight of a beach and a blue tent. He hadn't seen a beach in... in... he couldn't remember how long. The presence inside the tent was a familiar one though -- a bright one.

He attempted to knock on the fabric of the tent, which he knew wouldn't work the way he wanted it to, but he attempted it anyways. It made a hard swishing sound with each rap of his knuckles and he frowned momentarily, wondering if the person inside had heard.

"Arha? You in there?"

[ladyofthesands]

It was a comforting thing to place a voice properly. This was Jacen Solo, though she had subconsciously felt him coming and knew before he had spoken. Arha frowned down at her tea and set it down on the low table.

"I am here, Jacen. Come. I have tea, if you wish it," she said, though her voice was off as she she distractedly dug around her in mind to figure out why she was so fuzzy. It did not help, and she simply closed her eyes.

[goodofthegalaxy]

Pulling the fabric of the tent aside, Jacen ducked his head under the entrance and slowly made his way through to where Arha was sitting. He could tell from what he was feeling from her through The Force that something was wrong and while tempted to probe deeper, he didn't want to be rude.

He eyed the tea with a small smile on his face. It smelled good and for some reason reminded him of when he was younger. Lowering himself to her level, his gaze moved from the tea in her hand to her face, where she had shut her eyes.

"Are you alright?"

[ladyofthesands]

"I am..." She took a long moment to think about exactly how she was feeling. "No. I do not think I can be called such. There is something wrong, only I cannot place it. It is disconcerting and--" Arha half shrugged and reached for her tea once more, though she did not drink it, but let it warm her hands.

"Wrong."