Private These Desperate Echoes of Woostri

[Efret Farr]

She had seen this landscape for all that it now was in her dreams.

The ocean lapped up on a beach of glass—some solid, some shattered, all shining with the horror that formed it, as blinding as the setting sun. As clear as if it happened yesterday.

The memories that had been visiting her in her sleep over the last week were ones of the last battle she had fought in for the Galactic Alliance and the New Jedi Order.

Explosions both on the ground and in the air shook the building, as well as the near-gale-force winds, causing Efret to stumble in the stairwell. The weight of the pack on her back only pulled her more off balance.

Toric seized forward to catch and steady her. When she stood again, he moved to her side and guided her forward with a hand on the small of her back.

Through a windowpane that had cracked under the pressure of the turning weather, she had glimpsed the back of a Jedi running through the streets for the beach. The image had been razor sharp thanks to Nirrah's sharp vision but still somehow had slipped out of her recollection until, suddenly, it was there again. Had she really seen him that day? Or was the Force showing her something she could have—should have—seen?

The possibilities confounded her for much of her flight here from Naboo, but she finally decided that reality must have been the latter. How else would she know that his name? She had never met him.

The Force, which she had been channeling through her feet as she walked towards the shore to help keep her balance, stopped up as she lowered herself down onto an indent in the glass surface. <#Judah,> she fingerspelled into the same wind that carried off the lightest crumbles of what was once sand. She hadn't seen a reason to turn on the interpretation unit in her necklace when disembarking her X-wing; neither did she now. If Gopsthal was home to any living souls anymore, they were nowhere to be seen or even sensed.

But it was doubtful the any beings besides Efret and Nirrah were here.

On her own, or so she thought, Efret knew a little bit about Judah on reputation alone. She wouldn't be surprised if he knew a similar amount about her, though she had been Chief Curator. They moved in circles that were too removed from to be personally acquainted with each other.

She recalled that he was listed as unaccounted for on the after action report.

<Where?>

Where was he?

The answer was somewhere is these desperate echoes that she felt shuddering just below the ground. She knew it. She felt it, the coolness of the past numbing her fingertips as she reached into the Force to see what imprint she could extract first.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Efret Farr​

The encounter had already been in motion by the time it could be perceived, suggesting that the fight itself had been brief in its opening and decisive in its intent. Judah Lesan was already engaged. Srina Talon did not meet him with brute force. Her presence in the vision carried control rather than aggression, her movements were deliberate and economical. Judah answered her with discipline. The exchange suggested familiarity, not personal, but tactical, as though she had studied the way he fought and adjusted accordingly.

Sand and glass reacted sharply where they clashed. It did not surge or flare, but bent under repeated strain, the surrounding space bearing the mark of sustained pressure rather than sudden violence. Judah pressed forward when openings appeared, but each advance was redirected, his momentum turned aside rather than stopped outright. Srina dictated the flow of the engagement by controlling where he could stand and how long he could remain there.

The environment began to fail under the weight of the encounter. Structural supports gave way as the fight progressed, debris collapsing inward as the Force destabilized further. Judah was forced back by circumstance rather than strike, his balance broken when the ground beneath him shifted and the weight of falling material drove him down. The vision lingered on that moment.

Srina did not finish him.

She left him restrained beneath the wreckage, his body pinned while the fight ended on her terms. The impression left behind was not of victory taken in haste, but of control exercised without urgency. The confrontation concluded not with a final blow, but with absence, her presence withdrawing once the outcome had been secured.

The vision did not show what followed.

It ended there, at the point where the fight ceased to be mutual and became something else entirely, leaving behind only the certainty that Judah Lesan had not been spared by chance, but by choice.

The vision did not end with the battlefield.

As the last impressions faded, Judah Lesan appeared. He did not look injured, nor whole. His gaze settled on the observer without urgency. He did not speak at first, as though words were unnecessary, or perhaps no longer reliable. When he did move, it was only enough to acknowledge that he had been seen.

 

[Efret Farr]

And these echoes were desperate—desperate to be found and desperate to be felt, desperate to be unearthed and desperate to be understood.

Psychometry, even when reliving recent events, was much like archeology.

Efret saw only the reality that had been that day, for the length of his struggle against the Dread Queen, not the remembrance and despair had she folded into his already-exhausted mind. But she didn't need to see it to feel the affect it had on him.

The pain. The fear. The horror.

At first, she didn't break the silence that fell between them after the battle had replayed, but submitted to it and focused all of her linguistic competence into a pocket of the Force. Gently, she pushed it towards him. The only way it would reach his mind was through acceptance. Should he, he would find that he temporarily understood Galactic Basic Sign Language.

<#Judah?> she asked, just to get a response. The vision left no doubt in her mind of who he was. She knew his name like it was her own. <I'm #Efret #Farr,> she added, spelling it out with hennaed fingers before giving her name sign. It was equal parts an introduction to him and a grounding back into herself after such an invasive experience. Unexperienced or careless Jedi could well lose their sense of self to the shards of others' pasts.

She faltered. Expressing sympathies seemed hollow, even though hers would truly be Empathetic. Many questions she could ask would either be repetitive or unnecessary.

She wished Elias was beside her. He would know what to say.

What would he say?

Maybe it was what he wouldn't say. If he could remember, he might say that she had disappointed him. He also might not but, either way, she had disappointed herself. Her fear for herself had been stronger than her love for him. She resolved to not be enslaved by that fear again. It had prevented her from being the first friendly face that Elias saw in the Netherworld. She couldn't change that, but she could choose to be that for Judah.

<Now you where?>

Wherever he was being held, she'd find him, Force willing.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Efret Farr​

There would be no true discovery when speaking with an apparition of what had already passed. The Judah Lesan who stood before Efret Farr was not the man himself, but an impression left behind by pain and force, a shadow cast by someone who had bled on the beach and been taken from it. He carried no weight and no warmth, and he possessed no authority beyond recognition. He could not answer a question any more than he could grasp the hand that had once signed his name, and whatever part of him lingered here existed only to indicate rather than explain.

When he gestured toward the ground, the rubble responded, and the rebar faded back into view as though it had never fully left. The metal lay twisted against the sand in a way that suggested restraint rather than collapse, and the space around it felt strained, marked by effort that had never found release. Whatever had been held here had resisted, and that resistance had been met and contained rather than overcome. It became clear that the wreckage itself had not been the prison, but only the circumstance in which it had been imposed.

Judah touched his temple with deliberate intent and then raised his hands to sign a single word.

< “Taken.” >

Nothing followed it. There was no indication of direction or destination, only the implication that what had occurred here had extended far beyond the shoreline. This remnant of Judah did not carry answers forward, but it suggested that the truth would not be found in conversation, only in what remained behind.

He turned then and moved toward the place where the landing castle had struck the beach. The structure was gone, but the land retained the memory of its arrival. The sand bore the mark of immense weight brought down with intent, and the shoreline had not yet settled back into itself. As he approached, the space tightened, and the absence left behind pressed inward, as though the ground itself resisted forgetting what had passed across it.

The place held onto the impression of conflict without revealing its details, and the sense of an exchange that had ended by decision rather than chance lingered there. The landing castle had come from the Mors Mon, and it had departed Woostri once its purpose had been fulfilled. If its path beyond this beach could be traced, then the place Judah Lesan had been taken to might yet be found, not through what was spoken, but through what the ground and the Force had been unable to release.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret stood slowly, first with the aid of her hands, to make sure that her feet didn't loose purchase on the glass below. She moved after him slightly quicker, still trying to extend the same amount of care, driven by the worry that the vision would slip away and she wouldn't be able to get it back.

The landing zone tightened. So did her chest, her breath shallowing. She and Nirrah looked up and saw the shadowy impression that had been Mons Mon, though it was not impeding the light as it would have that day.

A matching impression, albeit much smaller, broke from it, beginning to fall towards the not Judah and the very real Efret.

She didn't step back though. Instead, it fell harmlessly through her and her gaze returned to Judah's Force likeness.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Efret Farr​

The Landing Castle took shape, as did the battle which began upon it. Nothing Efret was seeing seemed to have any semblance of order to it. Judah had led her here to see how it started, or in this case, something that occurred during the battle. Words were exchanged through the fight, but even if the ebon haired woman could hear, they were not audible.

He waited for the woman to be lost and distracted in what she was seeing before the vision of the shadow reached into her mind. One moment he was distant, the next he was there, his hand pressed against her head if the incorporeal could do such a thing.

They were in a setting. Judah’s nightmare. There was no longer glass on the beach, just endless sand and a distant sea. As though time and distance were nothing they came upon the shore to find an ocean of blood. Horror filled Judah’s face and eyes as the realization struck him.

This was his doing.

Another scene flashed, this time they were on a Sith vessel. Katara kneeled before him. When his lightsaber came to life, it was red. She begged. Judah struck her down.

She was dead because of him.

Moments similar to this played out over and over until the vision of Judah turned to Efret and signed.

<Trapped. Here.>

She had wanted to know where he was. Now she knew.

 

[Efret Farr]

She had felt this kind of helplessness—the wrenched gut that came after having the sanctity of your mind breeched—many times before, but not for a long time. As his mind melded with hers, her own memory of past panic flashed back.

Familiar images followed:

Offal spilled over a stone altar.

The lattice of a blue kyber crystal cracked as it began to bleed.

A Sith flayed his Kaggath opponent alive.

Beside Judah's figure, Efret shuddered, the movement bringing her focus into his nightmare. There wasn't enough time for her to hope that hers wouldn't find her again tonight before she instinctively grounded herself in his fear and forgot her own.

She didn't do this out of any savoring. Force Empathy wasn't always a gift.

Between the horror, a strange sense of gratefulness wove; to know the full answer to the question that she asked earlier, she needed to know this part of his experience. It was a testament to his strength that he shared it, or even could considering that he wasn't actually here.

She returned his sigh with one of her own. Even under normal circumstances, she found herself dreading to be the bearer of bad news, and Judah's were nowhere near normal circumstances. He was suffering as it was. He likely hadn't heard of the Galactic Alliance's fate, and if his captors had goaded him with it he might have assumed that they were lying.

Someone had to be honest with him regardless. It had to be her, right now.

So she told him with a brave face.

<#GA dissolve. #Coruscant under Imperial control.>

The news itself was unfortunate enough to say the least, but worse yet was the implication that no one would be looking for him.

No one except the former Chief Curator.

<Don't worry. I future-find you.>

A Deafblind woman with all the determination of the stars.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Efret Farr​

Judah did not answer her fear with words.

The vision shifted, narrowing.

Cold metal pressed in from all sides as the rebar cage resolved around him, jagged lengths bent inward and fused with brutal efficiency. It held his body suspended just above the deck plating, immobilized without ceremony. There was no pain in the vision now, only pressure and enforced stillness. The ocean was gone. The storm was gone. Woostri had already fallen away.

The shuttle bay came next, indistinct and shaking as engines spooled. He could not turn his head, but the Force carried motion clearly enough. Magnetic clamps disengaged. The cage was lifted. The angle changed. Gravity adjusted as the shuttle rose.

Through the meld, he focused on his hands.

What little movement he had, he used with intent.

His fingers traced shapes against the edge of her awareness. The signs were clipped by weakness and distance, but their meaning was the same.

< Taken. >

The vision tilted again as the shuttle cleared the atmosphere. Stars smeared into lines. A familiar route pulled at his awareness, not from sight but from orientation. From the way the Force thinned and stretched as hyperspace took hold.

Judah’s hands moved once more, the signs firmer despite the restraint.

< Jutrand. Likely. >

The shuttle’s trajectory burned faintly across the void, angling away from the chaos of Woostri and toward the dark gravity well of the Sith capital. The name was never spoken. It did not need to be.

Then the vision loosened.

The rebar cage remained.

The engines roared.

And Judah held still, waiting, as the stars folded in on themselves. Judah held the vision steady long enough to add one more thing. The rebar cage swayed as the shuttle climbed. Vibrations ran through the metal, dull and constant. The Force stretched thin as hyperspace began to form, stars pulling into pale lines beyond his awareness.

He focused again on his hands.

The movement was smaller now. Every sign was chosen with care.

< Find Mal. >

A brief pause, just long enough to anchor the meaning.

< Trust her. >

The name carried weight even without sound. It was not an explanation he offered, only direction. A single thread to follow when everything else had narrowed to dark.

The shuttle angled away, the pull of Mors Mon heavy in the distance.

Judah let his hands fall still.

That was all he could give her.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret did not push for more. Recognizing Judah was at his limit, she gracefully stepped back both physically and energetically. She let go of the vision, letting his consciousness retreat from hers. The only welcome waiting for it wherever it returned was a horrific reality and a nightmare of worse quality.

Pity panged in Efret's heart as its beating fell again steady.

The mix of past and present that Judah had conjured drained from her shared vision with Nirrah, until the glassed beach and the water waves of the sea welcomed them back to the Woostri of now.

Judah Lesan
Exit thread​