AT THE WATERFALLS
LAKE COUNTRY, NABOO
It had been a good while since Toby last attended a class.
Beyond the foundation he was given before committing full time to this path two years before, relatively little of his Jedi pursuits for over a year now had to do with strong defense or offence, for the greatest breadth of his knowledge was more academic in nature, and along lines that employed his intellect. But the stars implored him to do more, be
more. Or maybe it was that It was harder as of late to separate one part of his pursuits, viewing and study of this less familiar night sky, from the knowledge of what those stars and their systems held... or no longer held.
And the friends he'd lost contact with, that weighed on his mind. Friends he hadn't seen in too long as their little brigade of padawans dispersed, pulled apart by what was beyond the ability of any of them to control. Pulling far from the Jedi home they once had. A home on Coruscant that no Jedi could return to, now. An Alliance torn asunder by the enduring bloom of evil. At times, he couldn't help but feel he'd been a coward for leaving, the year prior. And it was this and other feelings that gnawed at him the longer he delayed learning more about things that had little to do with the brilliance of his mind.
So he'd detached himself from the Archives and made his way here, taking in the scenery along the way, and arrived in a mood of relative peace. The young Corellian was relieved to hear that the people just ahead of him weren't deemed late by the Grandmaster, as he arrived just after them, and waited, not wishing to interrupt them, but he was hard to miss, given he could stand shoulder to shoulder with Kas' master. Lanky, present, and ready to learn.
While waiting for his turn, Toby considered the mechanics of how the barrier was deployed — that depth of understanding was an inextricable part of how he learned, for how, exactly, that the Force worked was a suite of his many early questions, when his time was still split between school and learning enough control and discipline to be able to harness the power within him. A time that included learning to settle, let the questions rest, and
feel.
Despite that early knowledge, harnessing and deploying the energy outward to create a barrier wasn't sustainable at this point. He needed practice. He needed to gain the perspectives of other Jedi. Imagining the barrier from various inspirations had made for a barrier that was fleeting: waves crashed, strong winds were not constant, great for moments of instinctive, reactionary blips of shielding, but not great for maintaining a barrier. All that would suffice in this case was the shaping of energy... and maintaining it by force of will, as the Grandmaster said.
Will.
The same damned block he stumbled over in other areas, like stronger forms of telekinesis.
Toby frowned a little. Early mentors had assured him this was fine, that such strength would come with time and use. When he asked his eldest brother about it, back then, it was explained that he was strongest in times of need, protecting himself and others, and resisting against the evils of this galaxy. Both espousing the
same answer, ‘cause he certainly hadn’t seen much action like that. He needed less than five fingers to count what dangers he’d encountered.
And what was he resisting
here? Getting wet. Oh, and the possibility of slipping off of wet stones. Embarrassing, hardly life-threatening… but maybe he was looking at it all wrong. Rik had also said it was his beliefs, his convictions, and those he cared about that granted him strength, when Toby had questioned further. Things that seemed so abstract when he was a kid. So, what did
he believe? What truly drove
him to seek further training like this, why
now?
The answer was simple. The Republic, and by extension the Jedi Order that called this peaceful planet home, was surrounded by evil. Now the only bastion of light and democracy in a sea of darkness, crime, and neutrality. The same evils that ultimately caused him to be here, and in some ways, starting over. The same ones that had whittled away the Alliance and left his family and homeworld more open to conquest than it’d been since long before he was born.
It wasn't the perceptions of others, or anything of the sort. It was probability that drove him to action. Probability and the desire to do what he could to ‘change the galaxy’s stars’, so to speak, because he knew the history, he knew the patterns. He didn't want to live with regret.
With that, he realised how he might resolve that block, once and for all: strength of will wasn't born out of imagination, it was fueled by
conviction and
vigilance. Preventing undesirable outcomes. He could very well have everything he needed. Toby refocused, wearing a firm smile as he returned to watching those ahead of him while they made their passes under the waterfall.
Awaiting his turn, to put this reframing into practise.
