“Excuse me, young lady. This is the stop for the speeder bus, yes?”
“Uhhh… Yeah? It is.”
“Good, good. Thank you.”
“Mhm.”
“Ah, the night sky out here is just beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
…
“I’ve seen better.”
“Oh? And where’s that?”
“...Tython has some pretty good nights. Two moons and all.”
“Tython? That’s quite far from the Outer Rim. You a traveler?”
“Something like that.”
“Tython, Tython. Ah, you’re one of the Jedi, aren’t you? I can tell.”
“...I was.”
“Was?”
“That’s not why I was there, though. I lived on Tython before all that.”
“Mm. Well, I suppose it is quite beautiful there, regardless.”
“You’ve been? Are you a Jedi?’
“I was.”
“What changed?”
“The times changed. And so did I. Hah, not to mention I got old!”
…
“Ahem, what about you, then? You don’t exactly look old.”
“Uhhh… It just didn’t work out. For me.”
“Didn’t work out? Young padawan, everyone makes mistakes-”
“-I know! I know. But, this was… bad.”
“Ah, and I find judging people by their biggest mistakes to be exhausting, and unproductive. If we all did that, then no one would be able to forgive. To move forward.”
“Kinda feels like it’s all anyone does lately.”
“Yes… it does, doesn’t it? It’s a story that has repeated itself throughout history.”
…
“That’s the real root of the problem, hm? I can tell.”
“What?”
“No matter what you do, the story is seen through to the end, only to start all over again. All those moments of weakness. The struggles. The triumphs, even. It doesn’t seem to mean anything. So why bother?”
“...Yeah. I guess so.”
“I understand. Being a Jedi… well, it doesn’t always live up to the stories.”
“...I chased those rainbows my whole life. Every challenge I faced I thought, if I could just charge hard enough into it headfirst, I could get through it. Now just... the invitation of challenge, and I crumble.”
“Failure is a part of life. You just have to pick up the pieces from those failures, and build something better. There are other ways to make a difference, you know.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“I think you’re trying to find a meaning. A way to make sense out of it all.”
…
“That is wisdom I am unable to offer. Only you can answer that for yourself.”
…
“So where will you go, then?”
“Wherever this bus takes me, I guess.”
“And then?”
“...I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
“Leaving everything behind isn’t easy. Into the unknown, with no direction?”
“So?”
“You said challenge makes you crumble. I’m not seeing that here.”
“Uh, yeah, cause I’m running away from my problems.”
“Maybe. But if this is a path you are intent on setting, then you can’t look at it as running away so much as… starting anew. And the first step of that is a challenge in and of itself.”
“I…”
…
“There’s the bus. You coming?”
“Ah, no no. I’ll stay a while longer.”
“Why did you stick around here, then?”
“...There was someone here I needed to talk to. I could tell.”
“Seems like you can tell a lot of things.”
“Comes with age, I suppose.”
“Right. Well… I appreciate the company, anyway.”
“Farewell, Miss…?”
“Amani.”
“Amani. One way or another, in time you will find your fate.”
…
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Been having a pretty hard time finding reasons to keep writing these days, Amani especially. So I guess this is my way of putting the character in a sort of stasis. Something that allows her to just kind of... exist. Without the burden of things moving forward around her. I'm not very good at prematurely getting rid of characters in general, cause the 'what if' question always tends to hang that one day I'll find that purpose again. Muse is fickle and you never really know. Figured I might as well leave the door open.
Thanks to Risen for proofreading and criticizing my big dumb writing.
Thanks to Risen for proofreading and criticizing my big dumb writing.
