[FLASHBACK] Higher Mysteries

[Apocrypha]

TYTHON
c. 1,011 ABY

It had been just under two months since the destruction of the temple on Coruscant - and Rorik was slowly coming to love Tython. Ever strong in the Force - at the cost of any real dueling prowess - he felt at home; Tython, the birthplace of the Jedi Order centuries ago, was the most spiritually invigorating planet Rorik had ever been to - the very soil, it seemed, was rich with the Force. To breathe was to take in energy; to exhale was to contribute. Despite the recent loss of his master - not to mention some dear friends - and the abrupt, perhaps permanent relocation, Rorik was oft at peace on Tython.

He reflected, doing his best to be introspective, perched atop a great boulder at the mouth of a thirty foot waterfall. He maintained his breathing quietly, his eyes tracing the length of the flowing river, dissolving neatly into a series of rapids and carving a path out of view on the horizon. He was, perhaps, a quarter mile from the temple, and he had journeyed here on foot; with few friends here on Tython, Rorik spent his time one of two ways: training or exploring. Without a class being held any time soon - aside from Shii-Cho practice, which interested the boy very little - he had opted for the latter choice and set himself off in a particularly random direction.

His mind wandered, and he raised his hand, a half-dozen pebbles and stones hurtling towards his upturned palm. He wiggled his fingers gently and the rocks began to rotate in a neat, orderly circle. Rorik closed his eyes and simply let the energy ebb and flow through his being, wholly unaware of any intruders in his immediate vicinity.

 

[Jake]

Lately, Orianna dreamt a great deal of fire.

She dreamt that she wrung diamonds from raw anthracite over the flames, a furnace of immeasurable pressure into which she fed her sadness and her fury and her impotent, impotent rage. She dreamt of bonfires on the road as she had traveled here from Coruscant, the smoke rising slow and black into the air and obscuring the stars and letting her appreciate the crushing black vacuum of the universe. She dreamt of Coruscant itself, of that shining jewel so bright in the interstellar night, of that planet so radiant that the sun it circled was merely a lamp to its own brilliance. She dreamt of the way the lower levels burned, of her mother's face in the crematorium, of the engines of the shuttle as it thrust into hyperspace like a sleek metal blade into the guts between dimensions. She dreamt of another fire, too, a fire that raged across systems and claimed entire worlds in its blaze, and the Sith all seated on their burning thrones like gods of the inferno.

So she had come to Tython: place of peace. Place of quiet. The glens untouched by human hands in which she could trust her vermiculate hopes to rest and be restored like saplings rising from the ashes of a forest. Rivers in which fish bright and colorful swam, strong and muscular as they fought against the current. Something Orianna had never been able to do: fight against the current. And it helped her in many ways, gave her that restful state of mind she so sought, but in others it destroyed her. In the infinite patterns between the scales of those sleek fish she sensed labyrinths and mazes which hummed with mystery, which whispered of an innocence that once lost could never be regained, of a thing that could not be put back.

And Orianna knew for this that she was different now. Less pure. Something had been taken away from her by the death of her mother, by the Sith's campaign against the Jedi, by her birth in a time of war and chaos... but Tython was a place of healing, and perhaps she could yet steer herself from that queer darkness.

The roar of the waterfall brought her back from her ruminations. She did not know the Padawan perched atop the boulder, but by the way he practiced with telekinesis she judged immediately that he had been in training for about as long as herself. The boy was concentrating deeply, judging by the way he had not noticed Orianna slip in and rest her back against the boulder's shaded face, searching a haven from the hot midday sun. Ever a mischievous girl, Orianna was already formulating an idea for a great prank as a means of introducing herself to her fellow Padawan. From where she sat, if she craned her neck she could plainly see the way those small stones revolved in a slow orbit around Rorik's hand, like planets spinning slowly around their sun.

Slowly, so as not to make herself noticed, Orianna began to manipulate the Force herself. She controlled it she might manipulate fine threads, attaching her delicate strings to the pebbles and beginning to tug on them ever so gently, so that Rorik should scarcely notice as they slowly deviated from the trajectories he made for them. They began to hover and rise, millimeters at a time, until they swirled above his fingertips like a halo after a few long seconds. By then it was obvious that something had gone awry, so Orianna made a single, decisive slicing gesture with her hand. Immediately the small stones leapt at Rorik, with the intent of taking him off guard and making the poor Padawan lose his balance and fall. His landing wouldn't be particularly violent, beyond a bruise or two and perhaps a new friend on whom he could take out his frustrations.

Orianna didn't even try to suppress her laughter, as pleased with herself as she was. She guffawed loudly as she stepped out of the boulder's shadow, though the noise was lost to the roar of the waterfall behind them.

 

[Apocrypha]

Wandering, his mind refused to focus on where he was - what he was doing; instead, drifting hazily between the horizon and the past, devastated over the before and uncertain about the later. Where was he to go? What was his purpose to be? With the Bothan Rorik had formed an unbreakable bond - now, even, he oft suspected the Jedi was around a corner, just out of site - the likes of which he had never known before... and, he feared, that he would never know again. A simple summary of the young boy's state of being would be as follows: lost.

Rorik could not, however, fail to notice that the stones had taken on a life of their own - or so it seemed. "What -" he began, both curious and uncertain of the stones, when they lashed out at him! He yelped in surprise and twisted, rising perhaps halfway to his feet before stumbling, catching, and tumbling the four or five feet to the grass below.

There he lay in the dirt, spitting blades of grass out of his mouth as he sat up. His great grey eyes shone up at Orianna thoughtfully, perusing her for a moment before he cocked his head.

"Who are you?" he managed, spitting a few times, "Why did you do that?" His tone was neither accusatory nor upset; the boy was, it seemed, the model of serenity. He was genuinely curious! If she was manipulating the Force, she was clearly a Jedi - and, based on her close proximity in age, presumably a Padawan, like himself. Was this some kind of... test?

Rorik: a boy not entirely accustomed to friends.

 

[Jake]

"You can call me Orianna, if you want," the silver-haired girl cooed, hands clasped behind her back. She bobbed up and down on her heels, giggling happily still at her own prank. The few stones that had not pelted Rorik bobbed rhythmically up and down with her laughter. "I did it because you looked rather awfully silly perched up there like a hawk, watching these little pebbles dance around your hand. You're young and it's a beautiful day. Leave the moody meditations for when we're masters years from now, or at least for when it's cold and rainy outside."

She pouted as a thought popped into her mind: how much time had Rorik been wasting like that, mind fixed firmly on a point that belonged to neither the past, present, nor the future, but a mere possibility among so many others. It was not healthy to encrust in one's brain the ideas of what might or could have been.

"Now, see. This is what we should be doing with telekinesis." Orianna made a swatting gesture with one hand and the rock that floated lazily beside her abruptly lashed out, skipping down the narrow stream that flanked the other side of the boulder, curving impossibly so that instead of crossing it followed the current and disappeared into the foam churned up by the water crashing down on the rocks. "Practicing and whatnot, you know. But fun-like, not pretending we're the old masters from the archives like you. I play pretend sometimes too, but I prefer to be... Obi-Wan, or the Jedi Exile, not Yoda. I've always been more of an adventure sort of girl than anything, you know?"

 

[Apocrypha]

"No, I don't know. I'm not any kind of girl," he replied matter-of-factly. Of course he wasn't.

"I was trying to find... oneness." Standing up, he swatted his tunic and pants, brushing grass and dirt back onto the ground where it belonged. "Why don't you like to meditate, though? There's so much bad out there -" oh, how he knew "- but coming to places like this and centering myself helps me forget that. Plus, Tython is beautiful." He watched her force the rock down stream, glancing back at her once it had casually plummeted to its doom from the top of the waterfall.

"Sure, I can do things like that," he said with a nod, "but the Force isn't just about throwing stuff around, silly. It's about... connection, and understanding, and empathy - not just alteration, or destruction." He crossed his arms, clearly confident in that statement - which was, to be fair, rather precocious.

"Anyway, I love to explore." A grin broke out over his face. "I grew up in the under city on Coruscant! There were tons of alleys and canals and abandoned buildings to explore. What I really liked to do, though, was go to the bars in the slums, not too far from me and my dad's apartment - they always had really great bands!" He turned and glanced out across the forest ahead of them thoughtfully. "Tython's got a lot of places to poke around, too; this is where the Jedi Order was born, y'know. Great stuff, lots of old temples, places people haven't set foot in centuries. I went out with an older girl a week or two ago and we found a temple with a database in it, and a simulation of a Jedi Master from the Old Republic. It had to be, like, at least three or four thousand years old, right?"

"My name's Rorik, by the way," he said by way of roundabout introduction, smiling.

 

[Jake]

((So sorry I've been incognito for a couple days, my friend! My posting should return to 1 or 2 times a day))

"That makes two of us," Orianna said, expression betraying her shock at having discovered another Coruscanti so quickly into her stay on Tython. "It doesn't surprise me that we didn't cross each other, the undercity's not exactly a small place, but I know exactly what you mean. My earliest memories are of poking through those places with my friends. But... I like it here more, I think. There's less violence. I can barely remember a night where I didn't fall asleep to the sound of blasterfire. Here I drift away to the pitter-patter of the rain."

A glassy look came over the girl's eyes as her thoughts drifted back to those long years spent under her mother's wing - and then the longer days spent watching as her mother deteriorated, and her proud features were reduced to a vacant waste by illness. Pushing those images away, she grabbed Rorik's hand, advancing towards the forest which spread invitingly before them. The first trees, those whose gnarled branches stretched out to embrace them, were as ancient as the Jedi temples erected upon the surface of the planet. Through the empty hollows in their bark had traveled creatures whose had gone to dust deep into antiquity, and out of whose darkness new eyes peered onward with animal intrigue at the children who now probed idly among the foliage and the underbrush.

"You found a temple? A really big one, all by yourself? Can we go?" Orianna said after awhile spent in apparent autopilot. "I've always thought old things were great. Old people's faces have got all those wrinkles hiding secrets in 'em, and the smell of old books is just great. Except old socks. Those tend to reek. By the way, Rorik, how long have you been here? Not long enough to realize that meditation can get pretty boring, I gather. It's fine when you're in the mood to just sit and think, or maybe take a nap, but I much prefer this." She made a sweeping gesture with her free hand to indicate their surroundings. "Tython's beautiful for sure, but you're not going to see anything if you sit on a rock and ponder about it."

 

[Apocrypha]

The Padawan took Orianna's hand with some hesitance, particularly uncertain and unused to physical contact with others. He trailed her into the woods, though, after a while, suspected that they were just wandering - and began to fear that they might become lost. A lush jungle planet with dangerous native fauna and mazes of trees to lose oneself in, Tython was certainly not the ideal place for two young, barely trained children to lose themselves.

"Yeah," he replied to the inquiry after a moment. "One of the Jedi Masters told me it was called 'Kaleth' - it's dangerous, though; I don't think we should go there again. There are a lot of armed droids that still patrol the perimeter of the temple, and it's mostly inaccessible anyway. It hasn't been used for over twenty thousand years; the outer walls have completely crumbled and all that's left of the underground ruins is what I've already explored. I doubt there's anything new to find there."

"If there's anywhere you'd like to explore, though, we can always go there."

 

[Jake]

Though it appeared as though the white-haired Hapan girl wound random trails through the labyrinth of ancient trees, she was not so crude. "Kaleth," she repeated softly to herself. "Well, maybe I'll go there by myself someday."

Overhead, the woven web of branches had begun to obscure the sunlight, which now fell in dim and mottled patches along the forest floor, illuminating heaps of leaves that crunched underfoot with their passing. Their course traced an incline, not steep but nonetheless steady, and a thin film of sweat soaked Orianna's brow. She knew they were close to their destination when she heard the distant babbling of a stream, and before long it came into view, flowing down the hill's face like the path a tear carves down a colossus' cheek.

She changed direction, not speaking further and relinquishing Rorik's hand. She began to follow the small creek's current backwards to its source, which rapidly revealed itself to be a small grotto isolated on a tiny islet by a pool of water that ringed the curious little natural lair.

"Well, we're here. I noticed this place while I was exploring myself the other day," Orianna said with a contented and slightly beleaguered sigh, wiping her brow with the back of one hand. "I didn't go inside, but I figure if you're going to meditate anywhere, we could at least choose an interesting place."

 

[Apocrypha]

"Are you sure you know where we're going?" the young Jedi asked uncertainly, somewhat fearful that they would lose themselves and perhaps be devoured by some foul beastie. They were venturing farther into the wilderness of Tython than Rorik had dared to thus far, and he was afraid - yet, somehow, excited. He was unbelievably curious about where the strange-haired girl was taking them.

"What is it?" He eyed the grotto warily, unsure of what to think. "How do you know it's anything special?" Of course, despite the undercurrent of disbelief in his voice, Rorik could feel the Force flowing ever so surely from the area - it was soothing, to a degree, and welcoming. It would not be a terrible place to stumble upon were you lost in the underbrush

He made no move towards the island, of course, instead standing next to Orianna with a hand gently brushing the curves of his lightsaber - an attractive thing, crafted in the likeness of the Bothan's own lightsaber. As if he would actually use it, of course - he had put the blade into action as a tool somewhat often, and as a weapon perhaps two or three times. At Kaleth, he had attempted to draw the lightsaber to fend off a hostile droid, and only managed to drop it in the grass.

 

[Jake]

"Oh, come on. Just look at it. It's practically radiating energy," Orianna said impatiently, and quickly hopped over the stream and tread forward into the grotto. Doubtless that Jedi like them had come for centuries to meditate in this place. She could hear history in the birdsong that floated through the air and smell the stale perfumes of ancient heroes trapped in the moss and lichens that clung to the moist, cold stone on the inside of the cavern.

Glancing down at Rorik's hip, she noticed the lightsaber he was prepared to brandish at a moment's notice. "Jeez, give it a rest and cool off, why don'tcha? You're probably just gonna kill yourself if you ignite that in here."

The grotto was so different than anywhere she'd ever been on Coruscant. Tython in general, really. She'd never been so surrounded by nature and its calm embrace.

"So tell me. What kind of life led you here, Rorik? Tell me about yourself. Everything, if you can. We've got a lot of time to kill, I suppose. I'd love to hear about how you found yourself here from a place like Coruscant."

 

[Apocrypha]

"Wh-" he began, but found any protest dying upon his lips as she raced through the stream and into the natural cavern. "Wait up!"

The young Jedi found himself bounding across the waterway and after his new companion, inhibitions abandoned in favor of attempting to enjoy himself - his master had often left him in the care of his fellow Padawan at the temple on Coruscant, doing his best to force the boy into being a social butterfly. He was thoughtful, intelligent, and high spirited - this, however, did not mean that friends came easy to him. He could be blunt, unintentionally harsh, and carelessly judgmental, to the point that - unless they came to know him on a deeper level - his contemporaries would oft reject him.

This had given him a bit of a thick skin.

"Everything?" That was a rather broad word. "I guess the beginning is the easiest," he said, smoothing down his hair. "I was born in the slums, on Coruscant, and my mother died giving birth to me. My father never liked me all that much, and did his best to ignore me, I think... I learned how to fend for myself, really, and did my best to help other people in trouble. I always knew I was different, but it was only a few years ago that I was told that I could become a Jedi - that I was sensitive to the Force."

"I was taken as an apprentice to a Bothan Jedi Master for about three years, and we became pretty good friends... until he died, in the bombing. I was away, on a training mission with a Jedi Knight and his Padawan, so I was all right - obviously. That's when they relocated us, here, to Tython."

He shrugged. "That's about it, I think. What about you?"