Private Fragments in the Currents

[Dareth Solryn]

Morning settled quietly over Commenor.
No storm, no rain only mist that clung to the tall facades and blurred the city's edges. Even here, at the heart of trade, the park felt like an oasis where the rush of the world reached only as a muted echo. Fountains murmured, as if trying to drown out the voices of distant markets.


He sat on a stone bench near a fountain. Above him rose the statue of a long-forgotten diplomat, weathered by wind yet still standing as a symbol of old strength. Footsteps rang across paved paths, figures passed by merchants, officials, children on their way to the academy. Everything seemed slowed, as if the mist itself had chosen to hold back time.


Hours earlier, he had seen someone.
Someone from a time long sealed away. A glance, no more than a breath and yet heavier than many battles.
What did it mean when the past refused to rest, finding its way back into the present?
Was it memory … or a test?


The Force was not loud here. No urging, no call. Only a current like water seeping through the city's veins. He let it flow through him. No grasp. No resistance. Just breathing.


And in that silence, the questions returned those that had never truly left him:


"Can one ever truly begin anew or do we only carry other names for the same scars?"
"Is peace a distant refuge … or a seed one must plant into the soil oneself?"
"And if others are searching as he does could they together be more than fragments?"


The Exiles were part of these thoughts.
Not an Order. Not a doctrine. Just voices that had found each other, knowing the fractures within and yet believing that from those cracks, light could still emerge.

He knew that hope could not live in silence alone.
If the Exiles were to be more than scattered shadows, they had to weave themselves into the currents of a galaxy trembling between order and collapse.
Not as rulers. Not as saviors.
Perhaps only as a reminder that even fractured voices could carry a new song.

 

[Zesiro]

The Imperials had taken over Commenor, and it was changing. There had been a time in her life when Zesiro would have been happy being part of them. She had been a part of an old Empire. One that had been dead and in the dust for at least the last ten years. So she had moved on with her life and taken on a new role as head of security for the Commenor president. What had happened to him with the Empire here now was unknown to the blond. Unfortunately, she didn't want to stick around to find out. She had failed in her job and just needed to get away, run away from her problems once again.

As she walked through the park not far from the former palace she'd worked at, she stopped. A shadow in the trees and on the path, she bowed and kept her gaze low as the dignitary strutted past. She had no reason to remain on Commenor and continued walking after the stranger moved beyond her. With her back to him, she could now focus on what was in front of her.

A statue with a fountain and another stranger sitting on a bench. It wasn't uncommon, but in these stressful days, she noticed it happened far less often. Additional movement caught her eye, and she felt she was being followed. As a former employee of the government, this empire had overthrown, there was a chance she would be hunted. That was probably not something she wanted to happen.

Trying to think on the run, she approached the man sitting at the fountain. Her blue eyes held a hint of concern and probably more fear than she would have liked.

"Pretend you know me, sir. We need to leave."

To keep the act going, she greeted him as if they had known one another for years and tried to hug him. Motioning with her head in the direction to walk, she hoped he would take the hint and go with her plan.

Dareth Solryn

 

[Dareth Solryn]

The fountain’s stillness had been his only company.
Until the footsteps came hurried, uneven, carrying a weight no mist could soften.

And then she was there. Suddenly.
A woman whose eyes told more than her words. Fear. Flight. Loss. Yet it was not only her gaze he saw.
The Force carried it to him shards of memory like cold fragments piercing through her. Wounds she hid, resonating in him as distant echoes.

“Pretend you know me, sir. We need to leave.”

He did not pull away.
He let the Force speak through her, and it revealed not only fear, but the courage to keep moving despite it.
“You seek refuge in a stranger…” His voice was quiet, barely more than breath. “Perhaps you are less alone than you believe.”

Slowly he rose, no haste in the motion. He turned toward the path she had pointed, as if her way had now also become his.

From beneath his cloak, the familiar hilt rested in his hand, and then both blades of his lightsaber came alive. The twin glow cut through the mist not as a threat, but as a silent promise. That the shadows chasing her would now find him as well.

He lingered at her side, close enough for her to hear the low hum.
“If they seek you, they now find me too,” he murmured, eyes fixed on the haze. “And perhaps that is what they should truly fear.”

Zesiro