Dreams of Whistful Afternoons

Nostalgia was in the air.

It had been years since Jalen last stepped foot on Lothal. His childhood home turned into the gravesite of his youth, the very place where his innocence would be dead and burried. Now here was, without his sight and changed by the path of the Jedi. He stood in the darkness, the wind swirling around him with the scent of grass and the lingering aura of a long since passed Loth-Cat pack, ready to face the most difficult trial of his life...

Himself.

A trial that he would never tell another soul, one between him and the arbiters of fate. The Force would guide him to the place, reaching out on the breath of the planet to pull at his hand like a mother guiding a lost child. Jalen had intrusted his instincts to the force long ago, letting it be his eyes in a galaxy he could no longer see. Auras in sepia danced around as he drew closer to the location he needed, like performers around a fire growing to a climactic finale. And then there was silence. The air grew still, the noises retreating into the underbrush. The padawan knew that he had arrived. He sat down, drew his hallikset, and began to play...

In an instrant, color rushed into the world around him. Jalen stood in an expansive field, surrounded by megalithic stones that resembled beehives which towered into the heavens. The sudden shift was overwhelming, forcing the young man to stop and take in his surroundings. There was a figure off in the distance, the vissage of a child it seemed. Jalen would slowly make his way over, finding a bright-eyed young boy. Messy blonde hair, a pair of dirty overalls, and a set of grey eyes that were the sort that would stay with a person forever. In the baggy collar of his shirt, Jalen could just barely make out the edges of an Aurebesh 2 on his chest. A soft smile came to the young Jedi's face.

"Hey there... kid," he sighed.

"Oh, hello mister," the boy greeted. "Do... I know you?"

"Perhaps," Jalen shrugged. "Maybe at a different time. Where are we?"

The boy took a moment to look around, adjusting the straw hat on his head.

"A dream, I think," he suggested. "I dream about a lot of things. Maybe I found my way into yours?"

Jalen shook his head.

"No, I think this is your dream too," the padawan decided. "I... think I came here to say goodbye to you."

"Goodbye?"

Jalen paused, turning out to look over the landscape of his home. It looked just like it did on the last day he could see. How he longed to see it once again, to have the sensation of a sunset cross his iris in the evening. He knew that this was only a foolish longing, however. Those days were long gone, and it was finally time that he made peace with it all. He was ready now.

"Yeah," Jalen nodded. "You died a long time ago now. I think it's time I stop holding onto ghosts."

"Alright..." the boy frowned, tilting his head. "Will... I still dream?"

"I hope so," the young man told him. "See you later, Jalen."

He took one last look at the child before turning away, looking up to the sky. Stormclouds swirled above, beginning to pepper the land below with rain. Jalen merely stood there, letting the water roll down his face. Some saw storms as turmoil, a veil of darkness cast upon the land, but how untrue it was. Storms brought life to the soil, richening the land and bringing growth. The fear it caused was only a falsehood, a trial to overcome to see the other side.

Jalen would run from his storms no longer.

It was at that moment that something strange would occur, something unforseen even in regards to being in this place. A shadow formed in the clouds above, the silhouette of a man not quite describable by the tongue. It's nimbus eyes spilled teardrops onto the world below, filling Jalen's mind with curiosities.

"Hello!?" he called out. "Who are you!?"

"That who sees and will continue to see," the being proclaimed. It's tone was extragalactic and cosmically strange, yet meek all the same. "Of great Whill, yet none. Only observes, but sets the hand of fate into motion."

Jalen could only look on as the darkness of his mind began to creep in once again, the colorful world he had found himself within now being ripped away.

"W-wait!" Jalen stammered. "What did you come here for!?"

"To set the hand of fate into motion, Son of Kai'el," it answered. "It awaits you, beyond your world. Where the stars of your cosmic understanding are unable to shine. There a great curiosity lies in slumber... Wake it."

The world was black again, auras dancing around the young Jedi once more. Jalen was soaked. A rainstorm had blown in whist in his trance, one which still hung in the sky above. A soft exhale escaped from his diaphragm. It was as though a great weight had lifted from him. Never before had Jalen's soul felt so light, not since he was a boy. The young man retrieved an item from his back, a lone straw hat. Old, but cared for dearly, a remnant of a life that had since passed on. Jalen would lift it up, run his thumb along the woven straw one last time, and let it go. The hat would be swept up into the loving embrace of the wind and carried away.

It belonged to the Force now.

Then Jalen would get to his feet, return his hallikset to his back, and set off into the rainy afternoon.