grief is the great giver
Coruscant no longer burned.
Not physically, anyway.
The minds of the Coruscanti were another matter, one Efret couldn't help with if she tried. Those flames had gotten to her too, the moment she had landed. From the same moment, the Sith Temple had drawn her to it like a moth. Now, the pad of her index finger passed over a minute disturbance in the smooth surface. Its jagged halo barely raised into the ridges of her fingerprint. Psychometry climbed invisibly up her arm like an infection. She braced for it, her eyelids scrunching slightly closed.
One hand held a nail, the other a hammer. The latter drew back and returned forward, driving the bit of metal into the ancient stone and pinning Bernard of Arca's edict in place.
Two other sets of hands flashed to mind, one her own.
Ah yes, the Lightsworn's purpose. It had seemed so malicious then, back before the Dark Empire hid struck at Coruscant, before the Galactic Alliance had begun to unravel. Her mind's eye ran down the document that had coiled down and across the floor. The names and crimes that it listed were malformed and partially illegible, stretched by ever-expanding space-time. It had been years since she had stood before the scroll. If another such document was posted at the Shirayans' threshold in time, her name might just appear on it.
Efret opened her eyes and looked at her hand, mottled in tan monochrome of Force Sight and the real color of her splotchy natural field of vision. Neither gave her much detail, but she tried to somehow look past it. Though lines testifying how much she had aged were written over her skin too, they were much more subtle than the red-brown electro-tattoos overlaying them. She had had them done sometime after that invasion in the style of her people—not the Jedi but the Lorrdians from the Province Bepru. It was an update to the system that allowed her to communicate with non-Signers, which happened to be most of the galactic population, an update she felt necessitated by war.
She had physical scars too, of course, from the battles but this design was uniquely visible to her. Every day. All day. She used her hands for everything that a Hearing person did, plus more. This reminder; which traced each tendon through her fingers, across her hand, and up her wrist; would never let her forget that the war had changed her.
That, with age, wisdom had gone, not come.
Her fingers withdrew on her next inhale.
On her exhale, she turned to venture into the Grand Temple that was Jedi no more.
She traced her way through the familiar hallways of the ground floor. Among the hireath, an emotional thread, small and thin as it was, claimed topographic relief and the notice that came with it. It led into the Archive. She just knew, then she remembered that she'd have to pass by her museum to get there.
Fingers tugged her hood down further over her head as she trudged onward despite mounting distress. Into the Archives she went, thinking only briefly of
Ran Serys
. The thought tumbled from her mind when she followed the sense that had brough her here into a nearby study room, and to a bookshelf opposite the door.There, her sigh rearranged the air silently. Scent of dust and musky leather burrowed deeper into her lungs. She passed a hand over the aligned tomes' spines. The truth she sought, but also dreaded finding, stirred under her Force touch and radiated heat back with flickering candle flames.
What history was written here? What words could be so volatile?
