![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athousanderrorsvia http://ift.tt/2pGiDOk:
one of those things padme will never be able to fully explain to anakin—sinking down under the water of the bay (like the sea from which all life came and to which all life would return) the chanting voices distended, strange, filtered through the water as she tried to hold her breath. Whenever anakin or obi-wan talk about the force, that’s what she conjures: suspended there in the warmth, light and salt in her eyes.
on tatooine they did it differently, she heard—from anakin, dust baths and ash and dryness, skin stretched too-tight over his bones and no water at all. (it was too precious, not even the force would ask that of them. not when they needed it so desperately.)
it was strange, the handful of conversations she’d had with senators from other planets, other sectors; bail organa had been anointed in snow, breathing quick because he was not accustomed to mountain elevation. alien species choosing anointings with hrucium, osmium dust, because what did carbon and fatty oil chains mean to them?
(The only eternal truth is the Force, the Force universal and unending. It doesn’t matter, what particularities of it are rendered unto you.)
leia, alderaanian raised if not quite born, has a theological education heavily rooted in her father’s understanding of the Force, which preaches that silence is complicity and true devotion is the lightsaber.
(obi-wan and bail used to have good-natured arguments about it, whether the Force sought peace and balance, or whether they were too far from balance to ever be content with peace.
mostly, breha had found it amusing that she’d married a man who would have been just as happy renouncing his worldly possessions and preaching at the temple on jedha as he was being viceroy of alderaan.)
leia doesn’t—think about it much before the destruction of alderaan, except to resent. but then alderaan is gone, alderaan is dead, and all those stupid traditions she’d ignored and resented and rebelled against, the cultured grace and artistry she’d chafed under isn’t an obligation. it’s a relic. (it’s not even a relic, a relic implies there is rubble or pottery shards left, something leia could turn over in her hands; proof that it existed once. the absence of alderaan is its own obligation, heavy and visible only to her.)
if she shuts her eyes, she can see her mother lighting the tanough candles, the light in her eyes as she smiled at leia.
leia has emergency candles in her pack (practically antiques, but they get the job done, the quartermaster had sighed) and sometimes she takes them out, holds them in her hands under her palms smell of wax, and there are tears prickling at her eyes.
she wishes she remembered all the words to the prayers. she wishes she remembered the stories her mother told, her father told, the folk tales and the songs. She wishes—It’s not about anything, but someone ought to remember. (it shouldn’t be her, but she doesn’t know of anyone else.)
owen and beru were not terribly religious, several generations removed from the fervent, secretive worship found in the slave quarters of mos espa, and even further away from the core’s way of doing things. (if there’s a bright center to the universe—)
but there are things that endure, simply out of habit—luke will never waste salt, never spill it, and somewhere among what little he saved from the fire is a holed stone, which he keeps in his pocket of his flightsuit.
this isn’t what luke thinks of, when ben explains what the force is. luke thinks of heat, the sun high above the sand—the thrill of knowing he should have been asleep in his bunk, like the rest of Tatooine at noontide, but instead standing there, on the very edge of the homestead. like the last thing alive in the whole galaxy.
he remembers watching the wavering line of the horizon. a line of grey-brown-dust smudges moving slowly, heavily, coming closer until he could make them out—slaves, dressed in robes and cowls, carrying something over their shoulders. there were a few men and women following them, and they were singing—something, luke couldn’t make out words, except that it was high, and sad.
it took too long for luke to realize the thing swathed in white was a body, they were going to bury their dead, and he felt himself go hot. immediately, he whipped off his hat and bowed his head, until they were gone off towards the western gorge, and he couldn’t hear the singing anymore.
by the time he made his way back to the farm, his neck, ears, scalp, had all blistered from sunsburn. beru had to use a whole tube of bacta, and made him shuck a year’s worth of slatin for sneaking out.)
han, corellian-born, has no particular faith—if he wanted to be a jedi, that world was gone by the time he was nine; and if he wanted to be sith, he should have started out as more than just a low-level smuggler and scammer. (they’re burning the world down by the time he understands his options, he never really had a chance.) he figures life is short and brutish and sometimes free, and then you die. end of story.
so he’s genuinely shocked and not shocked at all when luke calls himself jedi—might as well, really, aren’t they all weirdos and mystics these days—
(it’s a political label more than anything else, right? jedi are for the core and the republic and the rebellion, the force is just their way of dressing up a war.)
what are you doing? leia asks sleepily, lifting her head up from where she fell asleep on the dejarik table. han startles, pulling his hand away from the inside of the hull like it suddenly burns.nothing, han says. just—saying goodnight.
to the falcon? leia asks with a yawn. why?
(han doesn’t have an answer, except that he has always done this, and the falcon has always been safe, flown true. these things aren’t connected, but they are.) I don’t know, he says. the force, probably. go back to sleep, your worship.
and she does.
one of those things padme will never be able to fully explain to anakin—sinking down under the water of the bay (like the sea from which all life came and to which all life would return) the chanting voices distended, strange, filtered through the water as she tried to hold her breath. Whenever anakin or obi-wan talk about the force, that’s what she conjures: suspended there in the warmth, light and salt in her eyes.
on tatooine they did it differently, she heard—from anakin, dust baths and ash and dryness, skin stretched too-tight over his bones and no water at all. (it was too precious, not even the force would ask that of them. not when they needed it so desperately.)
it was strange, the handful of conversations she’d had with senators from other planets, other sectors; bail organa had been anointed in snow, breathing quick because he was not accustomed to mountain elevation. alien species choosing anointings with hrucium, osmium dust, because what did carbon and fatty oil chains mean to them?
(The only eternal truth is the Force, the Force universal and unending. It doesn’t matter, what particularities of it are rendered unto you.)
leia, alderaanian raised if not quite born, has a theological education heavily rooted in her father’s understanding of the Force, which preaches that silence is complicity and true devotion is the lightsaber.
(obi-wan and bail used to have good-natured arguments about it, whether the Force sought peace and balance, or whether they were too far from balance to ever be content with peace.
mostly, breha had found it amusing that she’d married a man who would have been just as happy renouncing his worldly possessions and preaching at the temple on jedha as he was being viceroy of alderaan.)
leia doesn’t—think about it much before the destruction of alderaan, except to resent. but then alderaan is gone, alderaan is dead, and all those stupid traditions she’d ignored and resented and rebelled against, the cultured grace and artistry she’d chafed under isn’t an obligation. it’s a relic. (it’s not even a relic, a relic implies there is rubble or pottery shards left, something leia could turn over in her hands; proof that it existed once. the absence of alderaan is its own obligation, heavy and visible only to her.)
if she shuts her eyes, she can see her mother lighting the tanough candles, the light in her eyes as she smiled at leia.
leia has emergency candles in her pack (practically antiques, but they get the job done, the quartermaster had sighed) and sometimes she takes them out, holds them in her hands under her palms smell of wax, and there are tears prickling at her eyes.
she wishes she remembered all the words to the prayers. she wishes she remembered the stories her mother told, her father told, the folk tales and the songs. She wishes—It’s not about anything, but someone ought to remember. (it shouldn’t be her, but she doesn’t know of anyone else.)
owen and beru were not terribly religious, several generations removed from the fervent, secretive worship found in the slave quarters of mos espa, and even further away from the core’s way of doing things. (if there’s a bright center to the universe—)
but there are things that endure, simply out of habit—luke will never waste salt, never spill it, and somewhere among what little he saved from the fire is a holed stone, which he keeps in his pocket of his flightsuit.
this isn’t what luke thinks of, when ben explains what the force is. luke thinks of heat, the sun high above the sand—the thrill of knowing he should have been asleep in his bunk, like the rest of Tatooine at noontide, but instead standing there, on the very edge of the homestead. like the last thing alive in the whole galaxy.
he remembers watching the wavering line of the horizon. a line of grey-brown-dust smudges moving slowly, heavily, coming closer until he could make them out—slaves, dressed in robes and cowls, carrying something over their shoulders. there were a few men and women following them, and they were singing—something, luke couldn’t make out words, except that it was high, and sad.
it took too long for luke to realize the thing swathed in white was a body, they were going to bury their dead, and he felt himself go hot. immediately, he whipped off his hat and bowed his head, until they were gone off towards the western gorge, and he couldn’t hear the singing anymore.
by the time he made his way back to the farm, his neck, ears, scalp, had all blistered from sunsburn. beru had to use a whole tube of bacta, and made him shuck a year’s worth of slatin for sneaking out.)
han, corellian-born, has no particular faith—if he wanted to be a jedi, that world was gone by the time he was nine; and if he wanted to be sith, he should have started out as more than just a low-level smuggler and scammer. (they’re burning the world down by the time he understands his options, he never really had a chance.) he figures life is short and brutish and sometimes free, and then you die. end of story.
so he’s genuinely shocked and not shocked at all when luke calls himself jedi—might as well, really, aren’t they all weirdos and mystics these days—
(it’s a political label more than anything else, right? jedi are for the core and the republic and the rebellion, the force is just their way of dressing up a war.)
what are you doing? leia asks sleepily, lifting her head up from where she fell asleep on the dejarik table. han startles, pulling his hand away from the inside of the hull like it suddenly burns.nothing, han says. just—saying goodnight.
to the falcon? leia asks with a yawn. why?
(han doesn’t have an answer, except that he has always done this, and the falcon has always been safe, flown true. these things aren’t connected, but they are.) I don’t know, he says. the force, probably. go back to sleep, your worship.
and she does.
