Private Sand and Solitude

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi was not truly unconscious, but she might as well have been. She felt her body only very dimly and her limbs didn't obey her commands. The pain clouded everything. No wonder the Chalactan Adepts had gone to such lengths developing techniques to resist it, and unlike the B'omarr monks, they were actually on to something real and important, if incomplete. Amilthi remembered the pleasant, peaceful months she had spent on Chalacta fondly, and perhaps now it was time to put to use some of the techniques she had studied there and later incorporated into her own.

She forgot about her body and let the pain expand as far as it wanted to, watching it, its location in the field of attention, its shifting patterns, its arising and passing away in rapid succession, ever flowing, inconstant, impermanent. As such it became an object - and the suffering ceased. Clarity returned, the fog lightened to feel again through it the other aspects of her body. She directed her awareness at them and found the pain, though it was as intense as ever, had lost its power to rip her attention away from anything else. She surveyed her body, becoming cognisant of where all of its parts were lying, touching the stony ground, aware of the location and functioning of her organs, and aware, too, of the metal bullet that was embedded in it.

When finally she opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was her student, half-naked without a shirt, close to tears, her hands on the wound. Amilthi smiled. "It's alright", she whispered, and reached for Lefwen's arm to direct it away from the wound. She fingered around the area, finding that some sort of cloth had been wrapped around her. "Take that away, please", she said, tugging at it.

Lefwen started as Amilthi spoke. She blinked away the tears and beamed at her master, letting out a nervous laugh. She wiped the blood and sand off her hands onto her trousers and quickly worked at the knot, pulling away the strip of fabric.

Amilthi gasped, the mammalian body not yet entirely transcending its constraints, but then leaned back and relaxed a bit, closing her eyes again, focusing inward. She felt her body vibrating, growing lighter, becoming ethereal - and all of a sudden, the bullet that had penetrated her chest, had smashed a rib and punctured her lung, came out of the wound and rolled off her. She coughed painfully, but was already straightening up.

"To the speeder. Run", she said, even as she was collecting herself slowly from the ground. Soon enough she stood, although she looked like she was about to fall over every moment, her eyes on the ground. Her hand sought out the lightsaber by her side. Once she had gripped it, she simply stood there. She did not look up.

Nor did she look up when a band of Tuskens came running at her and struck out with ther gaffi sticks. And she still did not look up when her lightsaber flashed and cut them down. She hadn't moved from the spot; now she dragged herself, shakily, after Lefwen to the speeder. "You drive." She managed a smirk.

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

Lefwen was already at the controls of the speeder, quickly working through the ignition sequence. She risked a glance back and watched as the lightsaber cut gracefully though the air into one of the Tuskens. The repulsorlift engines began to hum, lifting the speeder off the ground. Lefwen nudged the speeder over towards Amilthi, who was ambling in her direction, and scrambled over the seat and stretched out her hand to lift Amilthi in. More slugs cut through the air around them, one catching the speeder in the side, making one of the repulsors whine. More Tuskens crested the hill and began charging toward the speeder, haunting cries of anger heralding their arrival. Lefwen span the control wheel to the side and pressed the speeder forward, the roar of the thruster drowning out the Tuskens' rage and leaving them far behind.

It was only after several minutes that Lefwen noticed how tightly she was holding the controls. She relaxed her grip, the change in position sending a rush of pain up her left arm as her prosthetic fingers twitched. She set the controls to neutral and glanced over to Amilthi, who appeared to be unconscious once more, before setting to work at finding the null-switch which would disable the prosthetic. It took a few moments of agonising digging, her fingers getting scratched up by shards of metal as they searched through the wreckage of machinery, but finally she found the correct circuit and shut the prosthetics off. It felt strange to return to three fingers once more, but at least the pain would stop.

The speeder carried them forward, a tiny speck of light in the sea of sand and dunes that lay beneath the low-hanging suns.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi somehow managed to have herself pulled into the seat and settle in it. She leaned back and sighed, but it sounded more like a quiet moan. She closed her eyes and put her hands limply in her lap. "If this body seems like it's dead", she said slowly, "don't worry, it won't be."

She focuse her attention on her breath as it slowly flowed into and out of her body, tracing its movement in from the upper lip through the nostrils, down through the windpipe, into her lungs, and then further, following the energy it carried down through the abdomen into the legs all the way to her toes, and outwards through her shoulders and arms to the tips of her fingers, and then all the way back again. What was not the real flow of air was added by her imagination. Soon enough her attention warped, it detached from the breath itself and there was no merely a flowing in and out of energy that had the same rhythm, but was no longer connected to the nostrils and lungs in particular. Her body began to feel light and immensely pleasant, the pain was imperceptible now, drowned out by the rapture and bliss that came from the absorption in the awareness of one's immersion in the Force.

They arrived at their home in the last light of dusk. Amilthi didn't notice the speeder stopping. She was lost on the world and had no perception of anything that was happening around her, absorbed in a state of pure mind. Her pulse was slow and weak, and her breath almost imperceptible. Someone who merely looked at her might indeed have thought she was already dead.

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

Lefwen left the repulsors on and jumped out to push the speeder close to the house's wall, before hopping back in and shutting the speeder down. She stayed sat in the seat for a long time, just thinking. Thinking about what had happened, thinking about what to do. By the time she came back to reality it was getting cold. She grabbed Amilthi's coat from the speeder's seat-well and went inside the house. It was cold and dark in the home, and despite nothing having changed inside it felt emptier than ever. She routed around through a few cupboards and finally found a large blanket, which she bundled over her shoulder before grabbing her bag and a handlamp and heading back outside.

When she arrived back at the speeder she had a sudden realisation: she could do anything now. Amilthi was entirely non-responsive, and if Lefwen wanted to take anything all she'd need do was take it and make off towards Mos Eisley. Amilthi's lightsaber glinted in the light from her lamp. If she sold that she could buy passage to anywhere in the galaxy: she could settle down anywhere she wanted, perhaps some luxury world like Zeltros, Naboo or the upper levels of Coruscant. She could live like a queen.

Wind blew across her face. She dropped her bag and swung the blanket around off her shoulder, opening it out and then placing it over Amilthi's still form. She didn't know if her master could even feel the cold in her current state, but it felt like the right thing to do. Satisfied that Amilthi wouldn't freeze to death, she propped herself against the wall of the house and took out her toolkit from her bag. Her hand was beyond repair. She'd need a new set of prosthetics without a doubt, but she could at least perhaps stop the circuits from shorting out any time soon.

So, by the warm light of the lamp she sat beneath the moons and waited.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi had spent much of the next days in meditation, and had smilingly refused any particular care. While she did avoid any physical exertion and had asked Lefwen to help with the housework a bit more than usual, she seemed in good spirits and the injury that should have killed her was healing at a thoroughly unnatural speed.

She had then developed a habit of furtively disappearing into the cellar during Lefwen's lengthy afternoon sittings and whenever the girl was out of the house for her runs. Lefwen wasn’t especially concerned; Amilthi always had her quirks, disappearing off the basement to tinker certainly wasn’t the strangest of them.

Amilthi was sitting at the small working desk she had in the cellar, her back to the stairs. Strewn before her was an assortment of metal and electronics parts and associated tools. She put down the soldering-iron and inspected the small cylindrical portion she had just been working on, turning it around in her hand in the somewhat questionable light. As she let go of it, it didn’t fall, but remained floating in the air on its own, rotating slowly. A second part rose from the desk and fit itself neatly into it.

“What’s that?” Lefwen’s voice quietly broke the silence. She was stood in the doorway, her slightly wet hair implying that she’d been practicing in the shower again.

Amilthi plucked the cylindrical object out of the air and turned around. She wasn’t startled, but there was a look of surprise on her face. Apparently, she had been so focussed that she hadn’t felt her student approach. “Lightsaber parts”, she said simply.

Lefwen looked puzzled for a moment, and then moved over to the water reservoir to check the levels. She half-heartedly studied the gauge, giving it a tap with her finger before asking. “Is your lightsaber broken then?”

“It isn’t.” It seemed that Amilthi wasn’t going to make this easy.

Lefwen was cautious. Amilthi rarely ever showed anger or frustration, but there was something about her tone and actions that seemed almost defensive. She should just leave and return to her practice, but curiosity pushed her forward. “So what do you need lightsaber parts for?” she asked with an innocent inflection.

“To build a lightsaber”, replied Amilthi quizzically. She put the part in her hand down on the table and stood up. “Come, it’s time I showed you something”, she said, approaching the stairs and beckoning for Lefwen to follow her upstairs. Once there, she put down two cushions for them to sit on as usual.

“What I'll explain to you now is a different type of meditation. You will take the breath as your object and keep your awareness scrupulously on it. Do not regulate your breath - just let the natural, normal breath happen and observe it. Try not to miss any incoming or outgoing breath. When you mind wanders, you can make a note of it, but then bring your attention back to the breath. You will probably rather quickly reach a point now where you can keep your attention on it quite steadily, but if not, don't be frustrated.

“Do not note the breath. Simply follow it with your awareness as it touches your upper lip, goes in through your nostrils, down the windpipe, into your lungs, and energises the entire body. Do not focus on the perception of the touch of the breath in one place or another - focus on the breath itself. There is an element of imagination in this exercise. Once you are able to keep your attention on the breath steadily, feel how the energising effect of the incoming breath does not end in your longs, how it extends downwards all the way to your toes, and outwards to the tips of your fingers. And notice how nice it is. Try to see beauty in the breath, to enjoy the energy it brings into you.

“In the morning, you will practice this new form of meditation. After noon, you will practice as you have been before.”

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

Lefwen felt the cool air on her lips, the rush of air across her tongue, the tingle of breath down her neck and the inflation of her chest. She'd learned that this was the best way to begin, despite Amilthi telling her to avoid focussing on the sensation itself. She was familiar now with how to avoid distraction while focussing on sensation, and so that's where she began. She observed for some time, several minutes? Several hours? Time had started to slip away from her now that she was improving. Breathe in. Breathe out. That was the rhythm of life.

Slowly she began to detach her attention from the physical sensation of breathing, searching for that illusive feeling of becoming the breathe that Amilthi had referred to. It had been a while since Amilthi had first introduced her to this practice, but still the goal eluded her. She caught herself: it wasn't a goal, was it? It was a destination, but one from which other places may be reached. She noted her self-correction and returned to the breathe. In. out. Rhythmic and slow, controlled and yet natural.

Her attention began to shift away from the sensation of breathing and onto the pattern of breathing itself. The feelings were important, but even though her conscious mind tried to link them together they were, in truth, all discrete. They didn't track any particular journey of the air in any real sense, rather they were the outcome of the air's passage; tied together into a seamless, illusory process only by her mind. For a moment she considered that realisation: focussing on the senses was akin to studying tracks left in the sand; they told a story of occurrence, but they were not the occurrence themselves. They were shadows on the wall of a cave, reflections in a pool of water.

She suddenly felt something begin to shift. She allowed it to happen, knowing from experience that she should not interfere. She began to follow the breathe itself, not its effects on her own body, and began to feel a strange energy. It seemed to begin in her chest and spread from there, traversing every part of her body with a tingling, humming feeling. Her breath shuddered slightly as the character of the feeling changed, her attention shifting to the energy itself rather than the sensation it was eliciting. She felt the next breathe as it travelled into her body, pooled inside her and then seemed to branch out fractally until it touched every part of her. The feeling began to grow, indescribably pleasant, warm and comforting like lying in the arms of a lover. Her breath shuddered more, but that did not seem to slow the sensation at all. She began to notice panic arising, a sense of being out of control of the sensation that was travelling through her body. Quickly the noticing of panic changed, instead shifting to panic itself. She opened her eyes but still the feeling continued, sapping her of any strength or desire to move. The feeling was rapturous, overwhelming in its complexity and all-encompassing nature. She bit down on her lip and tried to breath through her nose to regain some sense of control, her fingers curling into the mat below her.

Finally, after what seemed like an impossible amount of time, she began to feel the sensation passing. It faded slowly, gradually, seeming to recede back into her. She sat still for a long time, eyes wide open, mind trying to interpret and understand what had happened. She felt like sleeping, and leaned back slowly against the cold plaster of the wall.

***
​

Lefwen spent the morning thinking about what had happened last night. Normal meditation practice was difficult, but she’d struggled through anyway, saving what she had to say until after lunch.

“I think I managed to reach that… state yesterday during meditation,” she said, almost embarrassed to share something that had felt to personal.

“Very nice”, said Amilthi and smiled. “The first one. There are others, later. It gets even better”, she said almost mischievously. “You’ll find it easier over time to get into it. So now I must warn you: do not get attached to it, do not prefer it over others, do not even prefer it over the way you normally are. The pleasure is… not the point, not really. But it is helpful. It is helpful to know that you have access to sheer infinite pleasure that eclipses all you could ever feel were you even the richest princess. It will put things in perspective, and you’ll find that even pleasure isn’t that great. But it will give you a feeling of safety to know that you have that retreat.”

Lefwen let the words tumble around in her head for a moment. “Is that what happened to the B’omarr? They got lost in the pursuit of those feelings?” she asked. Before Amilthi could answer, however, Lefwen cut her off, “I’ve heard lots about the Jedi, but these kinds of practices and experiences never come up in the stories. Why not?”

“What’s there to tell a story about? Someone sitting around and being happy isn’t a very interesting subject. Nor is it outwardly visible and well-known - perhaps regrettably, since this part works also for those who do not have a great aptitude to touch the Force. Only what we are going to do with it now is, sadly, not so universally accessible.”

“What we are about to do with it?” Lefwen asked.

“I’ll show you in a moment, it’s just the right hour of the day for it. Is there anything else you wanted to discuss? We have time.”

Lefwen considered for a moment, and then gestured towards her hand, “Well I could do with some new prosthetics…” She lingered for a moment, but she was curious about what Amilthi had to show her. “But let’s go.”

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi was glad that the question of new prosthetics had only arisen for a short moment and then passed away quickly. It wouldn't do for Lefwen to become overly attached to a perfectly functioning body, and patience would have to be born on necessity in this place - one could hardly expect to find a competent prosthetician in Mos Eisley. There were suppliers, to be sure, but they didn't specialise in what the girl needed. They paid attention to bare utility, they would produce nothing that provided the necessary fine motor skills or resolution of perception, not to speak of the aesthetic aspects. Lefwen wasn't nearly far enough to stop caring about that part, and Amilthi was not so out of touch as not to recognise that there was also a perfectly fine pragmatic motivation for wanting to have natural-looking prosthetics. Sentiens simply didn't react so well to unnatural-looking body parts in others.

"Let's go outside, then." They stepped into the midday heat outside, and Amilthi gestured for Lefwen to sit down on the sand, then did the same.

"Think of what you did with the breath, and now do the same with the rays of the sun that impact your body. Feel the heat as energy that enters your body from all sides, or from a particular spot. You should vary your attention from time to time between the two modes - sometimes explore a particular spot, sometimes your entire body. Don't worry too much about that part, though.

Enjoy it in the same way that you enjoyed your breath. Don't worry that you'll get sunburnt or have a heat stroke - you'll find you won't. When you're comfortable with the practice, you can take off your clothes so you have more skin exposed to the sun and to the hot sand."

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

Lefwen sat down as instructed. The sand was hot, even through her trousers, and the suns' heat poured down heavily upon them. She listened carefully as Amilthi explained the next practice. She found it much harder these days to dismiss things straight away, but even so the idea of sitting in the midday heat seemed like a ludicrous idea. She'd dealt with sun burn already since arriving, and that had come just from her running sessions. Sitting half-naked in the scorching heat seemed like a quick way to peeling skin. Nonetheless, the possibility of more experiences like the one she'd had the day before was intriguing. She waited until Amilthi left and then adopted her normal cross-legged, loose position.

According to her watch, she lasted 6 minutes before she'd become so uncomfortable she'd retreated under the shaded parapet by the house. Her skin felt everywhere that it was exposed, and her thighs and buttocks felt like they had had hot coals pressed against them. She savoured a mouthful of water and rubbed the back of her thighs, trying to remove the burning sensation. She glared out at the shimmering hot air around the house. The exercise was a pointless one - even if it could lead to some amazing sensation it was hardly worth getting burned to a cinder in the process.

Lefwen huffed and walked inside, heading to her room and throwing off her sweaty clothes. She had managed to pick up a few more items of clothing on their trips to Mos Eisley, and she picked out the plain, white shirt and grey shorts she usually used wore when running. She changed quickly and then went to leave, stopping herself to pick up a cushion. Back outside again, she threw the cushion down and sat defiantly on it. Closing her eyes tight, she began to focus on the warmth hitting her skin.

***
​

Lefwen was sat cross-legged on the edge of the plateau. It was her favourite place to retreat to, and it felt like the best place to practice exposure meditation. She hadn't made a great deal of progress on the practice, despite having had more success with breathing-focussed practice. She had almost given up, ready to conclude that she just wasn't built to sit out in the sun for hours on end, but she refused to accept defeat. Amilthi had been right, she was burning less and less now that she'd been practising for a little while. Not that that helped to heal the sunburn that had already set in.

She concluded a brief period of meditation and stretched before instinctively scratching away the flaky skin on her arms and chest, exposing the red-raw skin below. She sipped from her canteen and gazed out at the starport in the distance. When she'd first come to this spot, the site of ships leaving Tatooine had filled her with jealousy. Now? Well it would be wrong to say that she didn't want to leave sometimes, but the place had strangely come to feel more and more like a home. She reached out and picked her shirt up off the ground, gave it a wave to remove any sand, and slipped the slightly damp shirt back over head.

It was at that moment that a shock-wave split the air. Lefwen jumped and covered her ringing ears, searching around for the source of the sound. She quickly found it: an orange-red streak cutting through the sky. It was hard to judge how far away it was, or how large it was, but the silver glint at the helm of the streak indicated that it was a ship. A disintegrating ship. Lefwen watched it as it fell and eventually crashed into the desert some way from her, before shaking herself from her stunned staring and setting off in a run towards the crash-site.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi was meditating herself when suddenly a loud noise as if from an explosion disturbed the calm of the canyon. Not her calm - she could engaged the sound or leave it be. She noted it, and also noted its nature, as loud, sudden, explosive, and its nature as a conditioned event caused by some physical happening. That eventually - that is to say, within a second, led to the thought that she should probably investigate it, if not for her own sake, then for Lefwen's. Amilthi noted concern.

She opened her eyes, rose, and rushed to the door. As she stepped outside, she could just about catch a glimpse of the fireball disappearing behind the cliffs, not at all far away, leaving a trail of smoke behind it that reached high up into the sky. A moment later, she could see a strong gust of wind, or perhaps in fact the remnants of a shock wave, brush over the sand before the entrance of the canyon.

She couldn't see Lefwen anywhere. The girl had some spots she liked to go to that were a short distance away from the hut. Hopefully she was alright and had not been hit by the shock wave or any debris it carried - but Amilthi didn't have an immediate feeling that something was wrong. She hesitated for a brief moment, then went up to the landspeeder...

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

Lefwen arrived at the crash-site only a short while after she'd set off, the Force powering her muscles forward beyond anything she could have hoped for a few months earlier. What she saw when she arrived was appalling: a mess of metal and fire belching black smoke into the hot air. It was almost certainly a life-pod, although its condition indicated that several of its retrograde insertion systems had failed to fire. However, the main capsule itself looked almost intact.

She ran up to the rear of the pod, as best as she could determine it, and quickly found the entrance hatch. Mercifully, it appeared to be intact. She quickly grabbed her helmet from her bag and slipped it on, setting the air filters to their maximum strength in an attempt to ward off the worst of the acrid fumes rising from the charred life-pod. The circuits were entirely destroyed, the panel having been burned off by the heat of re-entry, but the failsafe mechanical lever ground open as she wrenched it. The hatch clanked open, revealing a seen of utter carnage within. Panels and insulation foam lay everywhere, and small fires were beginning to take hold on some of the consoles, and in the midst of all this wreckage lay a body.

Lefwen crept through the hatch and into the life-pod, careful to keep from touching the heating metal. Later she would recall the scene and wonder what on Epica had driven her to actually enter the ship, but at the time the option of leaving barely even crossed her mind. She made her way over to the figure, studying the flight-suited body for any signs of injury. There were no obvious wounds, except for the individual's lack of consciousness of course. She flipped over the body's wrist and found an bio-scanner built into the flight suit, its screen showing a steady, if weak, pulse. The interior of the pod was heating up: Lefwen felt the sting of sweat in her eye and instinctively reached up to brush her face, her hand colliding with the slowly misting visor.

Both arms hooked under the unconscious figure's arms, she quickly span it around and dragged it towards the entrance. She quickly made it through the hatch, pulling the body through it with her and wincing slightly as it fell heavily onto the sand. She dragged it clear of the growing conflagration and turned the figure onto its back. She hooked her fingers under the visor's emergency release and pulled, the plastiglass facing coming away quickly. The face underneath was that of a man, perhaps a few years older than her, scarred but strangely handsome in a rugged, bloody-nosed way. She noted the mist on the inside of the visor and accepted that he was bleeding, turning her attention to the bio-scanner to search for any major injuries. She flicked through the unfamiliar tabs, checking amateurishly for any readouts that were flashing red. There were several, in fact, although most seemed linked to broken bones or contusions, nothing immediately dangerous. The final tab on the readout appeared, a logo swirling into shape on the scanner's screen. The symbol of the Black Sun. She frowned and studied the figure again. Not some innocent spacer then, but rather a member of one of the galaxy's most powerful crime syndicates. A fairly powerful member, judging from the quality of his flight suit.

Lefwen sat back and shut her eyes for a moment, trying to work out what to do next. After a few minutes listening to the crackling flames she took to her feet and set off in the direction of the house. The man wasn't going to wake up any time soon, and his flight suit would keep him stable. Perhaps Amilthi would know what to do. Although, she mused, this might be one of the few situations in which she had more experience than her master.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

The way to the wreck was easy enough to find by following the trail of smoke. Amilthi spotted a figure rising to the top of the next dune behind which the wreck must have lain - perhaps the person aboard had already found to their feet? When she came closer, however, she quickly realised that it was Lefwen.

She stopped the landspeeder next to her. "What did you find?" she asked matter-of-factly. Lefwen clumsily climbed up and into the speeder and tried to catch her breath. "There's a life-pod. It crashed. There's a survivor. Managed to get him out," she quickly stated between breaths. Amilthi nodded and set the speeder in motion again.

She jumped out of the vehicle next to the body lying in the sand and examined it. She was satisfied that there was no blood to be seen and the suit hadn't sustained any ruptures. She didn't seem to notice the diagnostic features embedded in the suit. "Any idea who he is?" she asked, standing up again. "I'm not sure, a spacer for sure. I've seen flight suits like his used by some cartels and stuff."

"Hm. He might have broken bones or internal injuries, someone should have a look at him. Come on, help me, let's get him into the seat."

The two women heaved the body into one of the seats of the speeder, and Amilthi turned to Lefwen. "There's a small clinic in Mos Eisley now, run by members of the Sacred Lotus." It hadn't existed yet when she had last lived here, and its emergence was a welcome event. The charitable brothers and sisters would do much good for the many poor who couldn't afford medical treatment, and the quality they received from the Sacred Lotus would very possibly even be better than anything a local physician might offer. "You'll find the way home, right?" She briefly smiled, almost apologetically.

Suddenly the man stirred, trying to straigthen up at bit, but ceasing to do so with a moan when his body sent him very clear signals of what it thought about the plan. He managed to turn his head and look at the women he had dimly heard talking.

Amilthi smiled faintly at him. "Don't worry, you're safe. You're not dying, and we'll have you looked at by a doctor soon. I'll get you to Mos Eisley", she said, as usually pragmatic and to-the-point. With that, she hopped back into the driver's seat of the speeder, showing no deeper interest in his person for now.

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

The speeder shot off into the desert, leaving Lefwen alone beside the still burning life-pod. She took a moment to process what had just happened, and then lethargically began to move around the site searching for her bag, which she had thrown aside in order to squeeze through the hatch. It didn't take too long to find, the bag laying half-buried in the sand a short distance from the entrance hatch. She picked it up and replaced her helmet inside before brushing the sand off the bag and getting ready to head back to the house, her mind still on the man she'd saved. She was so distracted, in fact, that she almost didn't notice the small, grey-silver box that lay by the entrance to the life-pod.

She approached the box slowly, not wishing to get too close to the life-pod, the interior of which was now engulfed in flames. However, there was something about the box, something alluring about the sheen of the metal. The heat of the life-pod was overwhelming and she was forced onto all fours, stretching out with her hand to reach the object. With her straining, she finally felt the edge of the box on her fingers and was able to pull it from the sand and out of the way of the flames.

The box was about the size of a small data-pad. It was grey in colour and made of some kind of metal. It had no details on its surface except for a single, circular button on one the long sides, the centre of which pulsed with a white light. She ran her fingers over the smooth metal and then cautiously pressed the button. Nothing happened. She pressed it again, still nothing. She frowned and studied the box more carefully, unable to find any seams of manufacturing marks in its surface. She's seen similar object before - although never so well made - used by high-class data brokers to transfer sensitive information securely and inconspicuously. That's what the man was? A data-broker? She mulled the thought over in her head. In theory, she should just leave the box behind, but it was too curious and intriguing to merely discard. She placed it in her backpack, and then began to set off in the direction of the house.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

It had been a week since the incident of the crashed life pod. Amilthi took the empty plates from their lunch table and placed them in the dishwasher, then turned around. Still standing, she examined her student, looking at the girl's white skin, much of it exposed by the running shorts and skimpy top she had worn during her early morning run and then kept on while meditating indoors. They were the same clothes in which she was about to go outside for her midday sitting in the sun.

Amilthi smiled. "You're doing well", she stated, and went over to take something out of a kitchen drawer. She produced a candle and, under the questioning eyes of her student, put it on the table and lit it. It was fairly large and produced a sizeable flame, some the centimetres in length.

Amilthi sat down sideways on her chair. "Bring your hand towards the flame. Feel the heat and enjoy it, like you have been enjoying your breath, like you have been enjoying the rays of the suns. Feel the energy creeping into your body from your finger or your palm, wherever you approach the flame. Go as close as you can without it becoming too painful. A tiny little bit of pain is acceptable, to make you look more closely for the enjoyable aspects. But don't go so close that you actually get burnt. Once you manage to hold your hand into the flame without getting burnt, work on extending the time before pain creeps up as a warning and you have to withdraw. Don't become ambitious, don't start craving for anything - but do enjoy. This is a more pointed exercise, closer to an application. But do not stop also practising with your breath or with the suns to cultivate the want-free pleasure of your entire body and mind."

She did not demonstrate anything, perfectly confident that she did not need to make a show at this point to get Lefwen to believe that what she was saying made sense and was possible.

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

Lefwen scraped the melted pool of wax off of the plate and into a glass. She was getting quite good at reforming the candle in the days since she'd started practising, although she hadn't yet dared to place her hand directly in the flame. She placed the glass in the bath of boiling water she'd already poured and cut a length of string to insert as the wick. She enjoyed watching the wax melt as the heat of the water spread through it, seeing the lumps of wax float to the top before melting away. Watching it melt gave her time to think, time which seemed sparse during such a rigorous regime of meditation practice. It was one of those things she'd learned to savour: the time when she ran and the time when she attended to her duties around the house were the only time where she could really let her thoughts free. It now seemed rather strange that her entire life up until now had been spent thinking: re-analysing every conversation, mulling through every option, assessing every outcome. She was starting to find that her own thoughts became frustrating, oftentimes causing her suffering that was entirely self-inflicted.

She turned away from the candle and returned to her room. She still had a little while before she needed to begin her next practice, and that gave her a few minutes to try a few more combinations on the safe-box. It had taken a few days to work out how the mechanism worked: the button on the side of the box, when pressed and held, sprung out slightly, revealing a set of markings equivalent to those on a traditional mechanical safe. She'd also worked out that the safe-box had a three digit code, as it was after three positions that the light on the interior of the button would flash orange and lock the mechanism for several minutes. It had been fun to play around with the box, although the sheer number of possible codes made the likelihood of actually guessing the right one almost impossible. Presumably a good slicer or cracker could get into it, but that would mean revealing it to Amilthi, and she somehow suspected her teacher would disapprove of having 'stolen' the box.

Not that she ever thought about anything particularly interesting or novel. Lately she'd been trying to work out why she was here. Not in a despairing fashion, but rather a curious one: what was she doing here? Amilthi was very sparse with the details, but it had come to seem strange to her that Amilthi had chosen her over any other options. Presumably there were those who were more talented in the Force, and there were certainly those who would be more grateful for tuition. Lefwen had just kind of fallen into being her student, just as she'd fallen into every other situation in her life.

Click.

The flush panel at the top of the box sprung slightly open, a faint light illuminating the rim around it. Lefwen stared for a moment, her heart pounding. She'd been idly playing with the dial while thinking, just letting herself move through various positions without any real conscious thought. She considered for a moment, almost too worried about what might be inside to open the box. A safety-box owned by some Black Sun scumbag; it could contain anything. Credits, a bounty fob, incriminating information about some unfortunate enemy of the Black Sun, illegal snuff holo-vids, or worse. She held the box up and studied through the opening, looking for some indication of what was inside, before finally pushing the lid open with her thumb. A number of glass holo-screens splayed out like the petals of a flower, each one playing a different video. She took one of the screens out carefully and placed the box down, focussing her attention on the video being played. It seemed to show a child playing around on the pebbled-beach of a lake. Her heart began to pound again with worry. She returned that screen and took out another. A woman, this time, standing at the window of a starship as it began its orbital approach. Another screen: the woman again, this time dressed for some formal occasion, laughing and blushing as the holo-cam filmed her, and then the holo-cam spinning around to show a man's face, the man from the life-pod, laughing in a hotel bad as the woman joined him a placed a lover's kiss on his cheek.

Lefwen found herself tearing up. She wasn't sure why. She carefully returned the last slide, pressed the combination reset button, and then sealed the safe-box and dropped it into her bag before falling back on the bed. What was she doing? She's just assumed that the contents of the box would be valuable. That was all she'd cared about, all she'd thought the Black Sun operative would care about. She'd been wrong, though. The man wasn't just 'some scumbag,' he had a family, a child even. And what did she have? What did she even want to have?

She stared at the sealing for what seemed like an age, just thinking, before finally swinging her legs over the side and stepping out to find Amilthi.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi felt that something was the matter even before she turned around to see her student’s face. “Lefwen, what happened?” she asked with a note of concern in her voice.

Lefwen stood in the doorway, holding onto it with one hand as though she was about to fall over. “What am I doing here, Amilthi?” she asked earnestly.

“You are learning things about yourself and the universe. Things that cannot be told to you, things that need to be experienced to be realised. You are developing yourself, realising your potential. You didn’t know what you were doing before, either - but you didn’t know that. Now you don’t know what you are doing, but you know it. That’s progress, isn’t it?” said Amilthi smilingly, taking a few steps towards her student.

Lefwen didn’t appear to really take in what Amilthi was saying. From her pocket she produced the box and presented it to Amilthi. “I took this from the life-pod.” She pressed the button and let the box open out in her hand. “How can some Black Sun thug have all of this and yet I don’t have anything?”

Amilthi frowned briefly and looked at her skeptically, then took the contents of the box to inspect them. Her features grew softer again and she put the little screens back again, then gently shut the box before raising her eyes again to Lefwen. “What you saw are the happiest moments he managed to capture. Moments he is attached to and needs to remind himself of. He is torn between the fear that they will never repeat themselves and the hope that they will. If you see them and long for the happiness you imagined he experienced in such moments, you are falling into a trap. Because what is the fleeting happiness of that moment in the stream of moments that is existence as a whole?”

“In time, these moments will come to torture him. He will see his children go their own way, different from what he imagines or wishes for. He will see his wife’s beauty waning and will resent her for no longer being as she was. She will resent him for not giving him all that she wished of life - not that he could have. It is all because they are attached. They cannot let go and simply take reality as it is.”

“If you wish to close your eyes again, dive back into the swivel of normal life and be swept away by it, you may be able to, though I cannot promise you this. You may have already gone too far. But I cannot advise it, in any event. I can only, from the bottom of my heart, wish for you to continue on the path and liberate yourself.”

“You don’t have to live on Tatooine like a hermit forever, if that’s what you worry about”, she suddenly remarked with a wry smile. “But it really helps in the beginning.”

Lefwen gazed up at her master, trying to work out precisely what she meant. It was all she could do to choke down the tears she could feel arising, all the more infuriating and upsetting because she couldn’t work out exactly what she was upset about. When she finally spoke her voice was shaky and distant. “I’ve spent all this time here, with you, looking at all of this like it was a training course; like it was just giving me skills I could use back in my normal life. But I don’t have a ‘normal life’, do I? Not one that I could go back to, whatever ‘going back’ means. It’s all a load of kripp!”

She wiped her face with a sleeve. She was starting to pace now. “And now I’m here, learning all of this stuff I never knew I could do and I just want to run back to living on the street. I hated it, but at least it was simple! All of this is too complicated. I’m not some amazing Jedi like you, I’m more like that fether who fell from the sky. Except, he at least had a family.” She turned slightly on Amilthi. “What’s the point of all this stuff you’re teaching me if it doesn’t help me? If it doesn’t help anyone? Why bother if you’re just going to sit in your hovel and think about things? There are a billion people out there who you could be helping, why waste your time on me?”

Amilthi noticed that, most uncharacteristically, the idea of giving Lefwen a hug came to mind, a simple, basic, social mammalian instinct. But she dismissed it. Not to seek comfort in other people, to truly be at peace by herself, was one of the things Lefwen needed to learn. “This is a common thought”, she said earnestly. “‘I can’t stand this anymore. Maybe this works for you, but I’m different, it doesn’t work for me, it can’t, I’m wasting my time and you’re wasting yours.’ I think almost everyone goes through that.”

“It’s also perfect nonsense”, she finally said, a wry smile briefly flashing on her face.

“You could sit down for some hours now and ponder. Ponder the sort of life you had, what was desirable about it, ponder how you could go back to it, and what you did wrong before and what you could do better now. You could make plans that would appear very hopeful and clever to you.”

“But you shouldn’t do any of that, because it will make you unhappy. It would be irresponsible of me to just let you go and attempt to put those plans into actions. They might even work - but afterwards you’d be just as miserable as before.”

“Instead, what you should do is go back to the most basic meditation I taught you: sit, observe your body, and when a thought, a wish, a craving, an image, an emotion appears, not it and move on. You will see how fleeting they are, and eventually you will be able to let go of them.”

“When you feel like you could like here like this forever - that is when it is safe to leave.”

She paused for a moment, as if giving Lefwen time to consider. Then she smiled warmly. “You know what might make me question whether I’m not wasting my time here? If you thought that moving stones with your mind or stopping bullets is the point of any of this, if you were eager to learn that, fantasising about all the things you could accomplish with those abilities. I would have loads of work to do to put you on the right path. But you are exactly on the right path.”

“And we should really return this thing. Even if he is a ‘Black Sun thug’. How do you know that, by the way?”

Lefwen let Amilthi’s advice sink in before answering sheepishly, “I ran with them a few times. Nothing too bad, I promise! They always run their data-pads and bio-scanners using Black Sun software; it’s easy enough to find the system-stamps if you flick through the files a bit.” She paused, her face looking somewhat relieved that they’d stopped talking about her. “You could always take it to that clinic your dropped him in, if he’s still there.”

“Considering that you mention a bio-scanner, which he had in his suit, would it be fair to assume that you looked at that and knew this before I asked you if you had any idea who he was?” There was no reproach in the tone of her voice - instead, Amilthi seemed amused. “You know, one day you will tell a lie you will wish you hadn’t told. Maybe someone will find out and you will suffer consequences from them. Or maybe you just find yourself isolated from them, unable to take one action or another, because you cannot now reveal the truth. Or maybe it will simply come to haunt you that you lied to someone whom you actually wish well. All of these things will hinder you, so it’s really a good idea to practice not lying when you have the opportunity.”

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

The difference in temperature as one stepped into the clinic was the first thing anyone noticed. Air-conditioning vents in the ceiling hummed softly, nestled among the bright, clinical lights that bestowed an appropriate medical atmosphere upon the scene. Nurses, or something approximate, moved efficiently between their duties, and behind a simple front desk sat a serene looking man with a neatly trimmed beard. Lefwen felt very out of place amidst such cleanliness, stood there in her dusty clothes with her tatty rucksack slung over a shoulder. She approached the well-kept man and coughed slightly, wishing all the while that Amilthi had offered to return the safe-box herself.

"Welcome sister, how might I be of service?" the man asked with a warm smile.

"I'm here to see a patient, a man who was brought in just the other day. I don't know his name, but he was brought in by Ms Camlenn," she said with expectant intonation.

"I see. And what would be the nature of your visit?"

"I... erm... wished to return something that belonged to him."

"A commendable reason, to be sure," the man nodded thoughtfully. "I am afraid to say, however, that the individual you seek is no longer in our care. He departed just a few hours before now."

Lefwen frowned, "Did he say where he was going?"

***
​

Lefwen had checked the speeder terminal and the starport but the man from the life-pod was nowhere to be found. Presently, she had returned to the cantina, intent on finding Amilthi and explaining to her what had happened. She didn't know if Amilthi would be in the cantina, indeed, she didn't even know what Amilthi had been doing while she'd visited the clinic. That was rather typical of Amilthi though, always somewhat enigmatic. Lefwen was sat in one of the tables which was carved out from the cantina's wall, specifically one which allowed her a good view of the door. She sipped on her drink and passively watched the cantina's patrons, all the while practising her ability to stay attentive to her internal sensations while still being aware of what was happening around her. Most of the patrons were gossiping or gambling, or laughing and flirting. A Jawa occasionally tumbled through the air, accompanied by raucous laughter.

It was just after one particular good throw that Lefwen spotted the man from the life-pod enter the cantina. He walked with a slight limp, although the healers of the Sacred Lotus had clearly done an excellent job attending to the majority of his injuries. He wore local clothes and surveyed the room confidently, a blaster dangling about his hip. His eyes fell on her, his eyebrows furrowing slightly as he tried to recall why she was familiar, and then his features descended into a scowl. His hand resting on the grip of his blaster, the man from the life-pod began to stalk across the room toward her.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi had thought that it was a good idea to have Lefwen seek out the man they had rescued on her own to return the box. She did not need a chaperone for that. Meanwhile, she was engaged in the most banal pursuit: she was buying Lefwen a new pair of trousers after she had found one of them ripped in a very inopportune place from all the sitting cross-legged. It had been too tight, and the new ones were much looser-fitting and of courser fabric. Amilthi was of the opinion that her student had advanced far enough not to be bothered by such lack of smoothness.

Having procured this item and put it into her simple shoulder bag, she ventured to the clinic, but found that neither the man nor Lefwen were there any longer. Posing herself the question of where to find the girl now or where to wait for her, she decided that Berrie's cantina was a reasonable Schelling point.

***​

Amilthi blinked with bewilderment when, upon her entry, a Jawa flew through the air before her eyes and made a squeaking sound. She followed him with her gaze to observe his impact on the floor. It was not accompanied by any cry of pain, and momentarily the little creature picked itself up, seeming quite unharmed and, indeed, unoffended. Amilthi traced back its trajectory towards its origin and found a Trandoshan tossing up his hands in frustration while a Gamorrean and a number of other people were laughing and clapping. Amilthi regarded them with skepticism.

She looked around and promptly spotted Lefwen sitting at a table, a man standing next to her who must just have approached. After a moment, she realised that it was the one they had rescued. She wondered what had brought about this configuration. Keeping her attention, but not her eyes on the scene, Amilthi went up to the counter...

Lefwen Claskier

 

[Lefwen Claskier]

"Now I ain't been to this dustball before, but I'm recognising your face right now and it ain't bringing back happy memories," the man from the life-pod stated with a thick accent. He slowly and painfully sat in the chair opposite her, his eyes never leaving hers and his hand never leaving his blaster.

"It's not that hard to explain..."

The man cut her off, "See, last I think you were one of the first people I saw here 'fore I ended up getting carted off. You some bounty hunter?"

Lefwen sighed internally. Maybe this man wasn't quite as high-up in Black Sun as she'd presumed. The higher-ups tended to be quite smart... "Tell you what, you put the blaster down and I'll fill you in," she heard herself say, surprised at how calm she sounded. She reached out with her feelings for a moment, observing the criss-crossing lines of his confused psyche. He was in pain, clearly, and his dominant emotion flitted between anger and something that resembled confusion.

"Doll, I think I'll be keeping it right here," he made a show of wiggling the blaster's barrel. "So you are a bounty hunter? Shot down my ship, right?"

"If I'd been the one to shoot down your ship I wouldn't have dragged you out of the wreckage and sent you off to some clinic, would I?" Lefwen retorted with an annoyed tone.

"Could be part of some long game, bet someone like me gets more money alive." The man was becoming less certain now, although Lefwen could feel herself becoming more angry.

"I saw your life-pod crash and rescued your fething life. You're welcome!" She gestured towards her rucksack, which lay at the end of the table. "I was actually trying to return something to you today."

The man glanced around the cantina before leaning in, keeping the blaster aimed at her as he raised it onto the table top. "You think I'm that stupid. I know the tricks you lot pull. I'm guessing you're with the Hutts, out to bag yourself a big score, right?"

Lefwen paused as she considered how to proceed. She caught her attention drifting onto her internal feelings, just as it had started to do more often lately. She was surprised to discover that she wasn't angry, or insulted, and she was confused to discover that she was surprised about that. She thought back to the last time she'd been in a situation like this: the fundraiser on Eiattu 6. How had she felt then? Scared? Angry? Violent? Why weren't those feelings arising now? She looked about the table, recalling the glass in front of her, the cutlery, the fact that the man's legs were within easy kicking distance. She'd registered all of those things out of habit, just as she'd registered the fact that the cantina had three exits and four bouncers. Years of habit had tuned her senses in to all of those things, but she hadn't consciously thought of any of them. Something had changed - the Lefwen on Eiattu 6 would already have kicked the blaster away, smashed a glass on his head and left. But here she was, calm and confident with a blaster aimed at her chest.

"After I found you, and my teacher took you away to the clinic, I returned to the life-pod and found a safe-box." The man's features relaxed slightly. "I'm going to take it out of my bag and give it to you." She flared her senses and watched doubt begin to weave its way through his thoughts, accompanied by an emotion she didn't really recognise - nostalgia? Loss? Regret? She kept her thoughts focussed on the blaster, feeling out the position where the bolt would leave the barrel just as she had learned to feel for the pebbles Amilthi threw at her, and then reached slowly across the table to her bag.

The man said nothing. He kept his finger rested on the trigger the whole time, but he made no movement at all. After a short rummage, Lefwen produced the small, black box and placed it carefully on the table in front of him. The man's aim faltered as he reached out and took the box. Lefwen could have disarmed him there and then, but for some reason she didn't feel the need. The man opened the box slowly, his mouth turning as the array of screens splayed open and he was greeted by the beaming face of his wife and child. He watched the videos for a moment and then closed the lid, wiped his eyes and then turned the blaster back on to her.

"You stole this?" he demanded, anger returning once again.

Lefwen frowned and nodded. "I suppose I did, but you should have it." She smiled at him as convincingly as she could. "You can try to shoot me for that if you want, but I wouldn't try it."

The man slid the box into a pocket and began to rise from his seat, the gun still trained on her. He slowly backed away and was quickly absorbed by the hustle and bustle of the cantina. Lefwen watched the cloud of feelings that accompanied him as it moved towards the cantina's exit and back out onto the street, before contenting herself with a sigh. She put her face in her hands for a moment, noticing as she did that her hands were hardly shaking at all.

Amilthi Camlenn

 

[Amilthi Camlenn]

Amilthi came up to Lefwen and sat down opposite to her with a beaming, genuinely happy smile. “You asked what you were doing here, what you were practicing for. Now do you see?”

Lefwen gave a caught look, “You were watching? Kind of rude for a Jedi to be prying, don’t you think?” she smirked, avoiding the question.

“Yes, I’m sorry I was eavesdropping on your little dalliance”, said Amilthi sarcastically, clearly still in just as good a mood as before. “I don’t know if it means anything to you, but… I’m very proud of you.”

“He was scared, and he was covering it up by pretending to be in control,” she paused just short of making the connection to her past self. “Wait a moment, I could have been shot and you were just watching? I thought you were supposed to be protecting me?” she asked, her tone more playful than accusatory.

“You don’t know that you could have been shot. All you have observed is that I didn’t interfere and you weren’t shot”, said Amilthi, smiling enigmatically.

“Hmm, well if that helps you sleep at night,” Lefwen smiled. She leaned back in her chair and reached for her drink. “So this whole time you’ve been training me it’s all been about returning lost goods?”

“Absolutely. It’s one of the most difficult things to teach people to do”, said Amilthi so simply and naturally that it was not obvious whether she was being facetious or cryptically wise.

“Well I’m glad to have had your wise teachings then, I think a few months ago I’d have just stuck him with something sharp and run…” her mood dropped quickly as she trailed off.

“Probably. Wouldn’t that have been awfully unpleasant? I’d say you’d have been rather more miserable.” Amilthi leaned back and looked at Lefwen for a moment, then tilted her head. “What’s wrong?”, she asked with a tinge of concern.

Lefwen shook herself slightly and forced a smile. “Nothing I suppose. I guess it’s just that when you first met me I was more like him: scared and trying to cover it up. I was just thinking about all the time I wasted being like that.”

“The regret will pass. When you realise that the past is the past, and all that matters is the present - and a little bit the future. The past does not affect you, it has no power over you. There is no reason why you should be happy or sad to have had a particular past - just let go of it”, said Amilthi with gentle encouragement.

“If it helps, consider this - that if anything had happened differently in your past, you would not be where you are now. All the things that went wrong had to go wrong in order for you to come to this point.”

Lefwen nodded and finished her drink before reaching over to her bag and rummaging through it for a moment. She paused as she found what she was looking for, before pulling out a dull cutlery knife, the one she’d taken from the table at Eiattu. “So, I guess I won’t really be needing this any more?” she stated, placing the knife down on the table.

Amilthi chuckled. “I don’t think so. Do you? It’s a rather uncivilised weapon, considering...”

Lefwen laughed and covered her face in exaggerated embarrassment, before raising a hand and calling over to Berrie for another set of drinks.

Lefwen Claskier