Phantom Pains
Jedha | Sunset | The Fallen Statues
______________________________________________________________
Cale looked out into the stars that hung above Jedha, and took in a deep breath of the night air. The wind was cool, the deserts empty but for the scampering of a few creatures, and the force was all around him. The red cloth that draped down over his missing arm fluttered in the breeze, his hair blew over his brow, and he smiled to himself as he watched the sun set.______________________________________________________________
They’d done well out here, and out there in the stars above. They’d slipped through a dozen blockades, broken a few themselves, just the three of them. Cale had smuggled food where he’d once snuck spice and felt hope where he’d once felt nothing but fear. The feeling that it might all be undone in a moment stuck with him, the notion that it could all be swept away by the changing of the galactic tides. But it didn’t stop him anymore, not how it used to.
On the lip of the fallen statue’s hood, Cale Gunderson closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath before lowering himself to his knees and letting his mind be free. He’d missed meditation more than he’d known, when he was a boy it had been all he could do to tolerate it. Cale had come up with every excuse in the book to avoid it, but now it gave him all he could have ever needed.
The faded colossus that had once stood as a tribute to his kind still held meaning, and so did he. With each breath, he found the life in the desert, in the statue, all around him. Somewhere close, a lizard skittered into a crevice, a bug between its jaws, elsewhere, perhaps deep below, water flowed, all was in order, all was as it should have been. He exhaled slowly, letting out what he had held in so tightly for so long, and breathed in peace.
It took him nearly an hour before his eyes fluttered open to the sands and rocks, settling far out in the distance where the lights of a city winked in the growing darkness. Cale sighed, and forced a hand deep into one of his pockets, drawing a stimstick and pressing it between his lips, then letting it light. The Jedi took a long draw and breathed out a cloud of haze.
He was a master, by definition now, but it had never felt like it. Aleks had grown into a capable knight, but as ever Cale was fraught with worry, weighed down by fear. Had he done enough to prepare him? Would he be alright on his own? What if he had missed something?
The thoughts left no sooner than they had come, as he brushed them aside, and rose back up to his feet. They’d spent a week now running water purifier parts out into the badlands, using credits from their last jobs they’d not needed to finance the charity work, the likes of which was far removed from where they’d begun so long ago.
The Galaxy had been kind enough to let him see Marek again, but neither a whisper or a word had been heard from her. She hung in his mind sometimes, even now, and he hoped quietly that she was well, wherever she was. All had been well lately, all they’d done, all they’d been through, had brought them to this point. This was where they were meant to be, until it was not, and when that time came they would go gladly.
Something would change soon, he knew it, but now Cale felt almost ready, though he couldn’t have said why. It would come to him, he was sure, all in due time.
