I Will

I will

By the grace of your training, I will not be seduced.

Archives at the Last Jedi Academy (pt. 1)

Story excerpt discovered in the databanks of the wrecked ship.

Passed down in her family, on her mother’s side, she had learned many ancient and distant arts: to write on manuscript in longhand was one of them. Years of training had made her manuscripts live despite it being merely ink on flattened and dried pulp of trees or shrubs. Legend had it the more skilled artisans had the power to control minds with the mesmerizingly beautiful design of the words.

Darkness cradled the bright pale blue orb of light where she sat in the closed archives building. Her entirety fixed on the almost finished page in front of her, her hand working automatically moving the ancient instrument across the parchment, using other senses than sight to direct it into the ink, the silver nib playing the notes a slow melody with each rhythmic dip.

By the time she sensed his presence, Ben was already in the room. The instrument instinctively lifted off the parchment at her startle. “The archives are closed.” His voice violated the quiet in which she had absorbed herself. She set down the instrument and put her hands in her lap as if in passive resistance. She stared at the nearly complete work in front of her. Then she felt embarrassed, compelled to pull it to her, to throw herself over it to hide it. But upon that thought she felt her muscles slip into his control. His footsteps sounded so loud and heavy as he approached. The only part of her that she could move was her eyes that stared at her art in a futile attempt to move it with the Force then away to avoid seeing his reaction.

She had taken the conclusions of her latest research into Darth Vader and used the sentence structures as the shimmering black lines forming the images on the page. These images framed a box of marbled silver and violet text in which she wrote her findings that led her to her conclusions. She feared embarrassment over her fascination with Darth Vader: fascinated by his fall, the Jedi wanting to learn lessons from his decision to join the dark side, her culture sympathizing with his skeptical perception of authority.

When she had first arrived and became acquainted with her fellow padawans, she had heard rumors of Ben’s fascination with Darth Vader, as well. However,

that was his grandfather, and it didn’t seem unusual. For her, she worried that not being his kin might be seen as inappropriate or an unhealthy interest for a Jedi in training. She was in awe of Master Luke and compelled to observe Ben any chance she got. Here was the kin of Anakin Skywalker, the subject of her youthful study, in her immediacy.

Part of her felt a thrill being this momentary target of his attention, and most of her was terrified of the mortification and discipline to come for breaking the rules. He paced in front of the table, his view unwavering from her expressions on the page.

She closed her eyes feeling the seconds slow and in that moment of her mind she saw the mountains of her home planet, and her vision zoomed in on her grandmother’s home, a gathering; she felt the warmth of a fire and smell of the brew, the way her uncle had prepared it for every reveal, the occasion the young people of her galèa completed their training of their art and revealed their creations on which they had spent years drawing the words. She clenched her eyelids together and the tears spilled this memory over into the present. She drew in the chilled archive air through her nose, opening her eyes wide to use the only muscles that she controlled to gasp since the breath she drank in wasn’t enough to shrink the lump in her throat. Upon the sound of her gasp, he released his grasp.

“Why do you make these writings more intricate and complex than they need to be? The same ideas can be expressed in simple Aurebesh. You would not need to violate the rules to spend your time in here to record such intriguing ideas.” For all the intimidation she had felt since she arrived at training and the intensified apprehension she felt being caught by him violating the rules, her irritation flooded over it. The ignorance of not knowing the significance of the art of her people, the lack of knowledge that the expressions demanded the intricate artwork for the ideas to be captured in the way they demanded and the disappointment that these were the first words ever spoken between them pumped relaxation and confidence through her.

“Simplicity is not best. It often just the easiest.” She stood up to look right into those dark eyes. All her adolescent hormonal attraction to him dissolved and she put on her bag and began gathering her styluses into it. She bit her lip to suppress the urge to throw the remaining inking compound that she had spent days perfecting at him. He glanced at the vial as she thought it.

“You want to throw that on me.” He said and smirked. That irritated her more. She capped the vial with a firm slap of the cap. She captured a deep breath so that she could carefully pick up the parchment and leave. As she reached to cradle the edges of the document to pick it up, he stopped her, not by exerting the force, but by placing his hand on hers. It felt as if their contact compelled her to inhale and through her mind whispers of feelings - chaotic, desperate, calm and fierce - spilled from him. She looked at him and he did not move his eyes to meet hers. He looked for a moment at his hand touching hers then moved it. His sights then caressed each letter, each word, each thought collaged on the page. She wanted to leave, but she wanted her creation. She interrupted him.

“Sir. May I leave?” He looked up at her and stepped back from the table. “Am I in trouble?” Her fear returned. His head shook slightly then more intentionally. She slipped the parchment from under his hand as she turned to hurry out. It was this beauty that halted Ben from leading her from the archives to Master Luke. He saw the method of her note taking, compelled to read it, the ideas she had found about the ambiguity of right and wrong, of light and dark.

© Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sheila Wright and Squire of the Knights of Ren with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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