The Light of the Night

[Geneva Wessiri]

Edan II was one of the planets which not a lot of people appreciated. It wasn't the most known planet in the whole galaxy, nor did it quite stand out with anything. It was just there, practically for nothing -- there was no point for its existence, no meaning. Perhaps if it had never existed, nothing would have even changed in the galactic timeline. It was one of the planets which had nearly no relevance in the galactic timeline.

Yet that's the planet Rylan was vising that day.

He had received a word that there was a huge tiger attack wave going on in the northern areas of the planet and that people desperately needed help with that. And even though Rylan was no good-doer and didn't quite care about the state of other people's lives, he'd heard that this time of the year, Edan tiger fur and fangs were rather expensive. So if he was there, how could he turn down such an opportunity?

"So you say taking down a tiger is not that easy?"

The man he was talking to was one of the locals, one of these who had suffered a lot from the attacks. He'd learned from this man that these attack waves took place every year and they were just getting worse and more out of hand as of lately.

"Indeed, it is! Grab ye best weapons and try to kill 'em, but still nothin'!" he spoke.

He had had to go through a lot and was in a state of panic, Rylan could see that from how the man acted. But that didn't matter a lot at that moment.

The worries of this man couldn't stop the boy. He had to go and kill a tiger.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

It was hours when the boy talked to the man in the village. That meant he'd been traveling for quite a long time towards the northern regions of the planet, just to find a tiger who he could kill and whose fangs and fur he could bring back to earn a whole ton of money. And even though money was not the most important thing in the boy's life, he did know that without it, he was nothing. Living was tough and one needed a lot of funds to live a happy life.

So finding some fur and fangs would be wicked awesome, he thought.

He'd reached the snowy regions a long time ago, now he was in a taiga. He had to admit, he was not very adapted to spending time in such a cold area, especially as he'd lived the most of his life in the warm underground of Iego. It was a huge difference between this taiga and his former home. Yet he also had to admit he quite liked spending some time in the cold.

It was beautiful there -- all the snow and ice.

For a while, the boy couldn't even keep his focus on the goal. He just had to stare everything, had to take occasional breaks, not even speaking of sitting down every once in a while to just touch the snow and feel its coldness. It was his life's first snow ever. And it felt amazing -- about the same feeling he dreamed a little kid who saw the snow for the first time would feel.

But he had to stand up and go on every so often.

For the last fifteen minutes he'd been trying to keep his focus on the goal of finding a tiger. According to the information he'd received, the villages where these tigers had attacked were not too far away and he would most likely start to see the beast on his way soon.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

A few more minutes of traveling passed and the boy came to think that he could see a village in the distance. But not in a state he would have liked to see it in. Rather than being a calm little place, it was all in fire, didn't look like a village at all had he not noticed some houses around which had not caught the flames yet. People tried to frantically fight the tigers and he could sense the panic in them; others tried to give their best at extinguishing the flames to save whatever they could.

Huh, that would turn into a great adventure.

The boy took a few small steps before stopping. He would wait a few more moments before getting into the fight. He wanted to eye the whole situation, see what these people were about, to see what these people manage to do on their own. Although he had to admit, they didn't look like they would have faced such a situation every year. Instead, it was if they had never even held weapons in their hands before.

That was weird to say the least.

He decided to go on and save these people or at least try to do that. Keeping these people alive was not his top priority. Well, technically, their lives didn't matter to him at all. But he would look like a huge sithspit if he would not try to save at least the elderly, women, and children of the village. The way people saw him mattered a lot to the boy. Perhaps to compensate for the way he'd been treated in the past.

Yet then he heard a growl behind him.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

The boy turned around to see the beast who'd growled, even though he was pretty sure it was a tiger without having to look. The growl actually made him feel a little bit scared -- he'd not imagined them to seem so powerful, so strong. Yet the sound he made was more than frightening. And even though he himself was seen as a monster by a whole lot of people in the galaxy, he was afraid of another monster. Isn't that odd?

Rylan finally decided to turn around to face the beast.

And what he saw was amazing. He'd never seen such a beautiful creature around, never on any of the planets he'd visited. The tiger was beautiful, it was brilliant. Its black fur was striped with seemingly glowing blue parts and its majestic blue eyes stared right into his. It didn't move at all during the stare; its posture was perfect. He stood at about two metres tall -- definitely taller than the average human, yet still shorter than him.

He couldn't move his eyes away from him.

The beast was too beautiful to lower his eyes or dare look away. So the two just looked at each other for a while; it felt like hours had passed when the tiger finally lowered his head as if it was bowing before the maelibus.

What did just happen?

He couldn't believe his eyes -- the tiger seemed to be tamed or something along these lines. Perhaps it had found out that taking on a creature as ugly and scary as a maelibus was not the best idea and thought being loyal to him and not dare attack would be a better idea. And even though Rylan disagreed with this thought pattern, he had to admit that for a tiger, he did seem quite odd and frightening.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

Rylan didn't know if trying to pet the tiger was a good idea, but at that one moment, he really felt like doing that. The beast was just too innocent to kill him; too majestic to sell parts of his body to earn him money. He felt like killing this beast would be a horrible mistake. The animal's fur was, indeed, really beautiful and amazing, but he couldn't just destroy its life to get it. He couldn't even move his hand to his belt to grab the knife he'd brought along with him. That's because he decided not to kill the tiger.

He moved a few steps towards him and the beast did not seem to back down.

When he finally reached a considerable range to the tiger, he raised his hand and brought it to the head of the tiger. And even though his hand shook from fear and his brain tried to tell him to leave, he felt like he was compelled to stroke the beast's fur, pet him and feel the softness of the layer over the tiger.

And for the first time in a while, a smile appeared on his face.

The more he moved his hand back and forth on the tiger's neck and back, the more comfortable did he feel, just like the tiger himself started to feel. It felt like the two were understanding each other, as if they weren't afraid of each other's presence. And that was something amazing to feel, especially as he'd been ignored for so long due to his appearance.

He didn't want to kill the tiger.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

The boy didn't even notice first how all the other tigers had come around to see what the two were doing, but when he did look at the village, he could see about ten to twenty tigers standing in a formation similar to an arch just fifteen metres away from the maelibus and the Edan tiger. None of them were as beautiful as this one -- they lacked the shine, the majestic look. They didn't have any blue features to them; they were black and white in colour. None of them stood even as tall as a metre and a half.

Why was this majestic tiger so different?

He turned towards the one he'd bonded with once again, mainly to confirm that his vision hadn't betrayed him. And indeed, the tiger was different from the pack. Why were his striped blue? Why was the rest of his fur black? Why was the tiger so damn tall in height?

He just couldn't figure these things out.

"Hey, somebody's taken all their attention to him!" one person from the village shouted, feeling both panicky and relieved at the same time. None of them knew what was going on and neither did Rylan himself. What the kark had just happened? Why did none of the tigers attack him? Why was this one tiger so different from the rest of the pack?

Then he realised -- the tiger was an alpha.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

"Who are you, you interesting creature, and why have you come to save us?" the people of the town asked from the boy after they'd extinguished the village and Rylan had made it sure that none of the tigers would attack these people anymore. Weirdly, the alpha tiger remained on his side and didn't leave for a single moment during the whole half an hour process. He just couldn't tell what it was feeling inside, but there had to be a bond between the two now. Something he barely felt, yet something the tiger was defined by.

"I am Rylan. I actually came to find a tiger to kill so that I could sell its fur and fangs."

And that was the truth. There was no use of lying, no need for that. The people of this town didn't have to deal with lies about how he was just a good person and wanted to save people. Jedi were for that, not Sith. He had to speak the truth, not even try to mess with the facts.

He looked at every inhabitant of the village for a short while during the silence.

"Well, thank you so much for saving us! We have no idea what you did with the tigers, but we will remain in debt for the rest of our lives!" some other person spoke, towards who the maelibus turned his head to. "How could we possibly pay for such a good deed?" These people really didn't seem to understand that saving the village was not his plan and that he didn't feel good about letting them live.

"I seek no prize for what I've done."

He turned his head towards the tiger who then turned to him. They seemed to understand each other without speaking a word. Huh, like the tiger even could speak. But that meant the bond between the two was stronger than he'd even expected. Something inside him told him that he'd not be able to leave the place without taking the animal with him.

And that actually felt amazing.

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

Rylan turned around and started to march away from the village after having decided not to spend any more time with them and the tiger followed his lead. It seemed to be so attached to the boy, even though they'd only spent no more than three quarters of an hour together. What made these two understand each other so much, he couldn't tell. But the more he spent with the beast, the more did he start to feel like he could sense the bond getting stronger and stronger.

It made him feel all so fuzzy inside.

The rest of the pack soon appeared after the two had left the village and tried to follow them, but after the alpha tiger growled at them, the pack backed down and soon after, they stopped following them at all. It was time for them to find their new alpha, Rylan could feel. He had no idea how these animals' society worked, but he imagined after one alpha leaves, they will have to find a new one.

But most likely the new alpha would not be even half as beautiful as this one.

They couldn't just miraculously turn into more beautiful beasts and grow higher and change their fur colour like that, right? That was not how nature worked at all, even if the Force was applied. There was just no way the new alpha could turn into something like that friend he'd made.

And that made him think -- what if being an alpha was determined by genes?

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

"So you got yourself a tiger, yeah?" the same old man spoke; the one who he'd talked to about how difficult it was to hunt down tigers. The accent was kind of disturbing to the maelibus -- he'd grown used to perfectly fine speech, not one which was rippled with bad dictation and vowels he had to think about before understanding. "How'd ya manage to do that?"

"It was easy. I guess I just possess something your people don't have -- brains."

He wanted to laugh at his own laugh, but that would have shown him in a bad light. So instead, he gave his best to keep his mouth shut for a while while looking a the man who seemed to be getting more furious with every second.

"Ye're a Sith, aren't ya?" the man asked.

Rylan didn't speak a word. There was no need for that as one could probably tell he was not a typical person; that he was a force-sensitive being. And being a Sith kind of radiated from people, so there was also no need to answer the question. The man had just realised he'd been talking to a Sith on his own and there was no need for his intervention.

"So ye're not gonna get yer money, eh?"

 

[Geneva Wessiri]

"My money is not your problem, you old grump," Rylan decided to reply to the man. He was getting tired of him picking at him; as if he didn't have enough to worry about. Now this old crazy man was just going to make his day slightly more difficult. He didn't like such things -- he would have wanted to show the man what he truly felt inside. But instead of doing that, he backed down.

He turned away once again and set his steps towards his ship.

These six hours he'd been on the planet just made it to both his top list and the list of the worst days ever. Bonding with a tiger was a thing he'd never heard of before, not even thought of that ever happening to anybody. Yet there he was, walking along the alpha of a tiger pack, and feeling the best he'd ever felt in his life. One grumpy man couldn't ruin his mood, he told himself.

And the thought of that, indeed, made him feel slightly better inside.

He walked into the ship with the tiger and as the left the planet, he turned to the newly found pet and he turned to him. "Buddy, now it's our adventure. Hope you like it 'cause you're definitely gonna spend a whole lot of time with me."

And even though that line was incredibly cheesy and the pet would, logically thinking, understand him in no way, he felt like he had to say that.