Squireren-blog - Squire Of The Knights Of Ren

(614): I remember grabbing your ass. So firm. So right. I don’t regret it.

KYLO REN

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.

You Cannot Always Trust in Hope

Light Side Fallacies: Rey Sets Herself Up, Again, for Disappointment

Sometimes the things you hope for so dearly, with intense energy and focus, will never come to fruition. And you hope and hope and have faith in in and faith in hope, but it will never come to be. Many on the light side fall into this trap.

When Kylo Ren told Rey who her parents were, all her hopes of them coming back or being people of more importance, hope that they had to give her up reluctantly, and maybe once loved her, all that disintegrated. 

Although, as many do, I do wonder if he is even telling her the truth, if he even has any knowledge of who her parents are. How does he know? Like a good dark side disciple, he may just be taking advantage of this fierce vulnerability of hers. Her trust in the good in people leaves her gullible to believe him, his lies. 

Well, in her defense, how can one resist anything that pours forth from those delicious lips? I would happily lap up just about anything from them.

With his revelation, true or not, she was forced to stop. To give up hope…in them.

Sometimes we have to do that; sometimes hope is not enough to make it so, and sometimes someone in our life has to distinguish that hope for us because we are stubborn and want to believe that if we just trust to hope that this thing we most long for can actually come to be. Sometimes there will be no happy ending to one of our life’s stories no matter how much we hope for it.

But it provides a moment to move on, a moment to channel that sometimes obsessive energy into something new that could be. Rey also has hope that Kylo Ren can be redeemed, will she again put trust in hope with the possibility that she will have to accept that hoping something will not always make it so? 

Now that she’s given up on the dream that is her parents, coming back to her, revealing their identity, she has that energy to place hope in Kylo Ren. Is she setting herself up again for disappointment? (I hope so, as I do not want Kylo Ren to be redeemed; I can’t lose my dark side cupcake.)  

Oh how those on the light side willfully delude themselves with hope. 

(425): He’s very cute and has a totally sit-able face.

Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, retreating to Supreme Leader Snoke

Been coloring in my new coloring book (skills are shaky cuz of my bursitis)

Rey, Kylo Ren, Luke, Finn, Phasma and Snoke from freshly leaked The Last Jedi promotional images. These are such a total delight, and they take my already obscene hype for this movie to new heights.