Private Of Pine, Fungus, and Light

[Efret Farr]

When asked about transportation to their site, Efret emphatically swore off speeders of any variety. She also expressed reservations about luggabeast, musing about the ethics of their creation and livelihood, but also acknowledged that they couldn't carry their supplies out into the middle of nowhere and back without one.

She did refuse to personally ride it though, instead leading it through the desert with a lot of slack. Holding one side of its reins forced her to sign with one hand. She hadn't switched off the small translating unit pinned to the neckline of her tunic since leaving the junker market where they had rented the beast of burden. Regardless of if Elias knew sign or not, she was facing away from him.

The lapel pin projected a constant grid of fine, green lines at her hand to track its movements, then interpreted the signs' meaning in a voice that was warmly but mechanically feminine.

"Billions of years ago, Jakku was heavily forested. The biodiversity was very profound, as evidenced by the amount of fossils already found. There's a large collection of them at the local temple. Have you seen them? One must do a lot of travel to different museums and geological archives if they want to study Jakkuvian paleoecology, since there has been only one, or two if you are of a particular school of thought, species that has been repeated in the currently known record. That's to say, every fossil that has been found so far has been different. Isn't that fascinating?"

Efret paused, looking over at Elias to let him speak or sign should he want to. If he chose to speak, she would read his lips to understand.

Outfit + equipment; lapel translation clip (currently switched on); lightsaber (green blade color)

Elias Edo

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

The sands of Jakku parted around the toes of Elias’ boots as he walked a short distance behind Master Farr. He wasn’t opposed to riding the luggabeasts, but with their companionship in its infancy he didn’t want to risk offending her. The last few months had been hell on his body, making him feel a good ten years older than he really was, but he didn’t mind the trek. It was good to stay active. Walking kept his mind focused, alert.

Jakku wasn’t an overly dangerous world. At least that much was going for them. All the life they’d come to see was long dead, fossilized and buried beneath the dunes. It was the heat and risk of dehydration that threatened them, but they had plenty of water and Elias had donned the poncho that Romi Jade gifted him.

“It certainly attests to Jakku’s history,” Elias remarked, signing with semi-fluency as he spoke. He’d learned a good bit of the language from Tarus Undara when they were Knights, but it turns out that signing wasn’t like riding a bike; there was a great deal he’d forgotten since his friend had passed.

He was just as eager to pick up Lorrdian again as he was to explore Jakku’s biosphere.

“One specimen each, with none repeated?- it’s certainly odd. Lots of implications from such a pattern. What do you make of it?”

​

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret smiled to herself. Seeing someone sign never failed to make her happy. It wasn't something that happened all too often in her chosen life unfortunately, so she never took it for granted when it did. What’s more, Elias was using Lorrdian sign language. That was even more of a treat; she hadn't used it herself in some time, but it was still entirely comfortable to her—using one's native language was like coming home, even when far, far away from the place.

“I’m not a paleobotanist, so I don’t have a proper hypothesis, but I do wonder something,” she admitted. Typically, she wouldn't disclose an idea which was nothing more than a what-if, especially when there were so many equally plausible possible explanations, but a fellow master was asking. "As I’m sure you know, fossilization is a very selective process. Only about one percent of all living things get preserved.

“Still, one would expect species to be repeated in the rock record at least once. The deep-sea sediments of Kamino, for instance, show a long history of mammal and plant life that flourished before the planet flooded. There are many specimens of the same species to be found there. So why not here?

“What I wonder is if the rate of evolutionary change between there and here was different.” Her lips pulled bunched to one side of her face like a purse string, a thoughtful expression. “If old species became new species fast enough, the opportunities for the former to fossilize would have been even further limited. It could explain the pattern.”

Elias Edo

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

“Interesting,” Elias answered. “Kinda scary, too.” The words came faster than he could remember the gestures, but Elias would eventually attempt each sign. Some were choppier than others but still understandable enough for Efret not to feel totally lost.

“Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years to make meaningful progress… entire generations of life should be preserved, even with such a small fraction of them actually forming tangible fossil evidence. Right?”

Elias was by no means a true scientist or paleontologist, but that was the (perhaps redundant) conclusion he’d drawn. It wasn’t much more than an observation on its own, but it did serve well to support Efret’s theory. Elias raised an eyebrow as he contemplated things a bit further.

“Rapid evolution certainly happens, but on a planetary scale? It’s fascinating,” he said after a moment of reflection. It made the objectively dull task of trekking through sand and rock incredibly exciting; if only they could peel back the desert, gather its samples, and tuck the dunes back into place. Not because he dreaded the process, but because he was so eager to see what histories the fossils were waiting to tell.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret laughed in agreement. "Scary for sure," was her only comment until he finished his piece. She did a lot of trance and illusion work informed by Force echoes in ancient objects to imagine, and interact with, the past. It was always an illuminating and humbling experience to walk as the Order's ancestor had, but sometimes it was more unsettling or outright terrifying than it was fascinating.

All knowledge came at a price. If she could pay it even if it was scary so that she could disseminate discoveries to the New Jedi, she very gladly would.

"Yes, I think so. Genetic change that creates something unrecognizable but still the same? Unfathomable. It would require global environmental change to drive it." Efret turned her face up to the clear blue sky, trying to see the possibilities up there. An atmosphere choking with ash or raining fire and bits of asteroid, or swirling with temperate storms. "A sustained pattern verging on atmospheric and geologic catastrophe." She looked back at Elias and smiled shyly. She knew that it sounded improbable, especially when communicated to another. "It's only an idea."

---

A few more minutes of walking brought them to another bend in the wide but shallow ephemeral stream that they had been loosely tracing through the desert. Nothing about this stretch of landscape appeared special, but Efret evidently sensed its possibility as she handed the rein to Elias and all but bounded across the streambed. She approached the steeply sloping ridge of stone on the other side and knelt down in the shadows it cast. She next lowered her back towards the sand, pushed her hands posed in a chevron like a high diver into the grains, and pulled her fingers apart to expose her palm. Silica poured into the bowl she had created. She took it into the air, finer particles already beginning to spill back onto the ground through the seam of her hands, bowed her head, and breathed in.

Somewhere beyond the smell of desert heat and earth was that of a lost narrative she was sure she and Elias would find here should they dig deep enough.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky above their heads, something Elias still wasn’t quite used to yet. Genetia had more ocean than solid ground, and what little it did have was either smaller than one person could stand on and stay dry, or was really just a shallow sandbar blanketed by a quilt of mangroves. The concept of a planet devoid of rainfall and storms, no tidal waves or ocean spray… he supposed it would have been just as strange for a Jakku native to see as it was for him to miss.

He looked to Efret, who was observing the same sky as he, but was reading a much different story.

"A sustained pattern verging on atmospheric and geologic catastrophe. It's only an idea."

“It’s a good one,” he said with a reassuring smile. And he meant it, too; Elias wasn’t one to agree just to make nice with new faces. Efret’s train of thought was sound, and even though he was no expert, he couldn’t suggest a better antecedent to the dunes that sprawled around them.

“A geological event certainly has the potential,” he said, remembering one of the worst of Genetia’s storms. More temperate worlds have systems to name their storms, but such a practice would be impossible on a world where hurricanes are a near-weekly occurrence.

But the one he was recalling now? It most certainly had a name- Te āwhā nui, the Great Storm. Dark clouds blotted out the sun, churning and rolling like smoke. Lightning jolted through the sky. He remembered the ocean, how angry she was, tossing and turning against the metal structure that kept Maataua City high above the surface. He was young then, only a child, but he’d never forget the wrath his beautiful world could muster.

Elias shuddered, solemnly repeating himself. “Yes, certainly a potentiality.”

Luckily for both his mind and his feet, they came upon something that set Efret off in a way that made Elias grin. She was a reserved woman, calm and gentle, but there was something about the sands here that excited her senses. He was trying to remember the signs to ask what she’d found before she was off with haste to investigate. He picked up his own pace and followed, reaching her just as she tossed a handful of loose sands into the wind.

He smirked a bit. “Find something?”

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret set the sand remaining between her hands down of the ground in a pyramid that immediately toppled over as soon as she moved her hands away from it. She nodded excitedly with a smile as she stood. "There's an echo here," she explained, indicating at the ground, "muffled through layers of rock but it's there." She closed her eyes and drummed the fingers of one hand against the dry air in the visual equivalent of a thoughtful hmm. "It feels like..."

The Force didn't offer her a picture but rather a physical experience. A tingling sensation dancing through her fingers brought them to stillness of their own. She opened her eyes.

"...something spiky." Though there were still a few options for what they were looking for was, it was always helpful to have an idea of it rather not, and she wanted to know the truth as soon as possible—without being overbearing. "I'll rope off the dimensions I think the pit should have, but we don't need to start right away if you want to rest from the trek out."

There was also plenty to do wasn't digging. They'd most likely be out here for a few days so among the equipment loaded onto the luggabeast was camping gear. Maybe it would be a good idea to accomplish that setup second anyway.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

An echo, hm? Elias had heard Cailen Corso use that terminology before. He was gifted with psychometric abilities that often proved useful, if a bit dangerous. Efret made only the second person he knew who could relive the past this way. He hoped she could do it safer than the boy did.

“Why don’t you start marking, and I’ll get the camp unpacked?” He figured it’d be much easier for her to judge where the pit was and where the stakes should be without having to relay it to him along the way. He’d be much more useful at being the muscle.

So while his friend surveyed the site, Elias led the luggabeasts a short distance away and began unloading their supplies. He picked a spot against the edge of the ancient riverbank, tucking their temporary home against a rocky outcropping that he hoped would protect them from wind and sand. It didn’t take him long to pitch the main tent before he was moving to the second, smaller one that would serve as a field lab for testing any samples they extracted. All the while, he would glance over to Efret, watching her as she worked. A light smile touched his lips.

She seemed just as at peace as he was when he stole afternoons in the greenhouse on Bogano. It was work, but there was something beautiful in the toil that made it worthwhile.

“How’s it coming along?” he asked her, approaching after finishing the brunt of the campsite. All that was left to do was unload the equipment and amenities. Elias would have moved onto that, too, if most of the technology hadn’t looked far too expensive for him to tinker around with.

He’d unload it all for her, place it wherever she needed it, but when it came to plugging things in? Elias would leave that to the expert.

 

[Efret Farr]

She worked rather slowly but methodically, following a process that had never failed her. One her knees, she shuffled over the sand in one direction until she felt no more tingles of promise in the palm hoovering over the ground. Where her Force detection had stopped, she hammered a nail taken from a pouch on her belt into the sand with the back of a trowel.

By the time Elias had set up most of the campsite, she had finished marking all six vertices of the pit and was beginning to work backwards to complete the uneven pentagon with stringed sides. She looked up as his approach cast a shadow she noticed. "Good," she replied, signing with the skein of twine in one hand. "Let me finish."

She did, then took up all her tools, and followed him back to the camp, where she informed him where her equipment should go.

It all might have been mostly new technology to Elias, but the microscope could have seemed especially strange given Efret's condition. Then again, the fact she had figured out a way to use it effectively with vision loss really just spoke to her dedication to her discipline. Still, she didn't particularly want it to inspire others because it tended to inspire them for the wrong reason.

She wasn't an archeologist in spite of her disabilities; she was an archeologist who happened to have disabilities.

"We dig tomorrow," she announced afterwards before sitting down in a camp chair around the dormant firepit. She motioned from Elias to a nearby chair, inviting him to join her. "I'd be a bad anthropologist if I kept my hands and head in the sand all the time. I'd like to know a bit about you, if I could."

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

“Sure,” Elias said with a smile. He stood back to marvel at the tools of her trade, wiped his brow, then looked to Efret. “What would you like to know?”

He wasn’t known to be shy, but he wasn’t used rk being the conversation topic. Botany? Easy. Jedi history? Done. But himself? What’s there to tell, he asked himself. Before she asked anything in particular, he started with the basics.

“I’m from Genetia,” Elias said. “It’s much wetter than Jakku, covered in oceans as far as you can see.” A grin broke across his face. “I love to surf,” he told her, struggling to make any intelligible signs to accompany his words. He settled on a playful reenactment of a surfer balancing on his board.

“Sorry, I didn’t know that one-“

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret smiled as Elias began to share, her grin growing when he acted out surfing. She was proficient in charades, so recognized what he meant to communicate immediately. “Ahh, surfing,” her clip announced when she made the sign for him. “You know more than most people I come across. Thank you for meeting me where I am.”

It really was refreshing. And humbling.

“We surf on the desert sand on Lorrd. I'm not very good at it for obvious reasons but I imagine I'd be much worse with it in the water.” She decided at once not to expound on that prediction, especially since it meant admitting that she couldn't swim and she suddenly felt very self-conscious about that fact. That un-ability was completely a product of her culture. Because of her home province's mythos, she had carried its warnings of water out of the oasis to all other bodies. It wasn't that she thought that rivers or lakes or even oceans were gateways into a planet's underworld; she didn't even subscribe to her own people's idea of the Upsa anymore. Earthbound spirits were just stories, but still one she couldn't shake.

Learning to swim felt too taboo, even if no one from her village knew.

Maybe if they became more friendly with time, she'd work up the courage to ask for lessons. But for now, she'd prompt for more of his story. “How did you come to the Order?” she asked. “Or vice versa?” Oftentimes, it happened the other way around.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias nodded along as the translator clip reproduced her signs, but his eyes were focused on her hands. Watching the gestures form and flow was the best way for him to really learn the intricacies of her language. He smiled at the thought of sand surfing, something he wished he could see in person someday - even though the thought of abrasive sand on his skin made him feel itchy. The winds of Jakku alone was enough to paint a good picture of sand-surfing.

Then she asked him about the Order, how he came to be a part of it. Elias’ smile flattened a bit before perking up again. Some parts of his initiation were harder to reflect on than others. “My mother was the one who discovered I had te-Koha, the Gift,” he said, unsure if Genetian words would convey the same. “She was a wise woman. We call them Spinners, because of an old legend that says with enough wisdom and grace, our women can shape the future with the Force - they can spin it like a bolt of thread.”

He shifted his weight to the other foot, scooting a bit of sand with his boot while glazing over the less comfortable details. Still, even with the glimmer of sadness in his eyes, he smiled.

“There are small enclaves all over Genetia, but they all convene at the temple in Matara City. That’s where the younglings go first, to meet the grandmasters and display their talents.” Elias remembered his visit to the capital like it was yesterday. The salty ocean air in his kings, the breeze in his hair, the warm sun on his skin; not a rain cloud in sight when his mother took him to the temple.

His brother, Edrick, was preparing for his Knight Trials then. Elias remembered waving with both arms when he saw Eddie on the platform above as their ship cruised between the thick metal legs that held Matara above the sea. Those were bittersweet memories, though, and Elias was eager to move past it for fear of drudging up old feelings.

“What about you?” he asked. “How did Master Farr become a Padawan?”