Sunshine
It wasn't a sound, nor a voice or a face Ivy recognized across the room, but a feeling. Faint at first, buried beneath the familiar currents of the Force that surrounded the Jedi Temple on Wroona—the restless curiosity of younglings, the quiet concentration of Knights at meditation, the distant flicker of someone practicing with a lightsaber in one of the training halls.
Something familiar brushed against her awareness. For a moment, Ivy forgot how to breathe.
She had a feeling this day would come.
Revyanna Pryce
. Her little sister.Ivy stood still, and found herself staring through the years rather than at the young woman standing before her.
... ... ...
Ava Pryce had spent weeks planning her disappearance.
Where she might go. What she would take. How far away she could get before anyone realized she was gone.
Their father,
Ephram Pryce
, had always been somewhere else, consumed by political work and responsibilities that seemed to take him farther and farther away from his family. So Ava had stepped in to fill the empty spaces he left behind, as a father and husband that her sister and mother needed. Their protector, their rock of support. The strong, fearless, devoted eldest who tried to live up to some grand ideal of the Pryce family name.But now, after everything that had happened that left her heart shattered and soul fractured, Ava felt like she was a but a hollow shell of herself, with no one to turn to.
She had considered calling Revyanna, one last time. Ava's finger had hovered over her sister's name for several seconds, before closing the holocommunicator. She had confided little in Revy about the months of self-loathing and misery that had brought her to this point. Ava feared that if she tried to speak, the words would come out rambling and disjointed. She had cried too much the night before to have the strength left to care anymore.
A handwritten note felt more personal somehow. Cleaner. More concise. Permanent. Folded neatly and left somewhere her sister would find it. Something Revy might keep to remember her by.
Ava picked up the pen. And wrote.
Revy,
I need to be on my own right now. Please don't try to find me. I'll reach out when I'm ready.
– Ava
No flowery language. No false reassurances. No "I love you" or "I'll miss you" to soften the blow. Ava refused to make promises she couldn't keep or say apologies she didn't mean.
She folded the letter, set it down, and walked away.
Ava Pryce thought she disappeared. A trail of digital breadcrumbs, pieced together by someone with enough technical skill and determination to find her.
A call to Ava's workplace at a laboratory several cities away would reveal that she had resigned with proper notice. Her apartment room cleaned out and abandoned.
Holonet records contained roughly a month's worth of increasingly obsessive searches. Force users. Force religions. Jedi. Holoforum posts and chat logs, scattered conversations with strangers about a Jedi enclave on Kattada, of which Ava had been particularly determined to get there.
Then there was the airport history from the city Ava had worked at. A one-way ticket to Unlos Tagge, the capital of Tepasi. Government registries showed that an Ava Pryce had legally changed her name to Ivy Maro. From there, another one-way ticket to the planet Hok. After that, the name Ivy Maro seemed to fade into the wider galaxy, lost among the myrid of moons, starliners and space stations between Hok and Kattada.
The Jedi taught emotional detachment. Ivy had found the philosophy remarkably convenient.
Let go. Move on. Become someone else.
And in time, she did.
For nearly two years, Ivy had been grateful that the galaxy was so very large enough for her to hide in. Large enough that two sisters could become strangers.
Until now.
... ... ...
Ivy looked at Revyanna again. Her expression softened beneath her Jedi composure.
"Hey, Revy." Her voice was quieter than she expected.
Perhaps Revy would see it differently, that Ivy couldn't have even been bothered to say goodbye to her face. That what wasn't said had hurt Revy far more than Ivy intended to.
Ivy took a small breath. "I know I have a lot to explain."
Last edited: