Sunset

[Fennex Zeerda]

Lothal Mountaintop
Sunset​

Fennex huffed with exertion as he clambered over the edge of the cliff- that climb was a whole lot more work when you had to do it all yourself, but it never seemed to be the same when you just flew straight to the top of the mountain. Oh, but it was worth the effort. Fen had seen thousands of sunsets on hundreds of planets in his brief few decades of life in this vast galaxy. He'd seen worlds with two and three suns setting in tandem, the ghostly light of a blue dwarf painting the endless swirling clouds of a gas giant, and even the brilliant red crystal cliffs of Berchest- a certified wonder of the galaxy. But there was something that kept drawing him back here to Lothal whenever he was in the galactic neighborhood. Something supremely serene in the simplicity of a Lothal sunset- of how the Force touched this place, binding and connecting all its trillions of life forms big and small. The gentle breeze rippling the golden tall grass of the savannah, roaming herds of wild nerf plying their way through the endless sea stalked by a lone sabrecat while a trio of edgehawks circled overhead. The whole planet was a continuous circle of life, perfectly in harmony with itself like few other places the little Knight had ever known. It was calming, and he could certainly use a bit of calm just at the moment.

Fennex took a deep breath of the cool evening air and pulled his aging grey cloak tighter about his shoulders. He shuffled over to his familiar rock and plopped down cross-pawed, slowly taking a few more deep breaths to calm his rapid little heart beat. Tail swishing gently behind him, he gazed out across the landscape painted in lush pastel hues of oranges, pinks, and purples. The clouds were just wisps on the horizon, refracting the dying golden light of the Lothal sun. The fox opened his little knapsack and took out his battered old decanter of tea and a few strips of dried Ghibli fruit, arranging them on the rock in front of him with a sort of absentminded precision that came from many years of almost ritualistic repetition. He set his tea cup in front of him with as much care as he would lay out his lightsaber for maintenance, or that he would arrange a pillow for meditation. He poured the still steaming hot contents of the decanter into his equally battered old cup, careful not to spill a drop, and brought the tea to his snout with both paws. The first sip warmed his soul, sitting here alone on the mountaintop. Content, Fen let himself relax completely, breathing deeply and rhythmically with his eyes not quiet shut, drinking in his tea, the sunset, and the perfect warmth of the Force here in equal measures, happy to let the woes of the galaxy fade into the background for just a few precious minutes.

Letting the whole universe outside this moment slip away from his mind, Fennex just sat there.


@Sreeya

 

[Andraste]

Theme​

He wouldn’t have even heard her coming, and for a moment, it was as if she were just a shadow. Her gaze set upon the same sunset he looked at, and the golden hues matched those of her own eyes. For a moment, she said nothing, simply watching the same view he was. She couldn’t deny that it brought her peace, and she was surprised by it. The very first day she had climbed this mountain with Fennex on her back, she had been anything but relaxed. She had wanted to do nothing but complain, and she could remember that random flute player. She also remembered Dennys and his abrupt landing, both thoughts bring a smile to her face. A real smile.

Eons had passed since that day, and so much had happened. Dennys was now at her side as one of the men she truly counted on. Evalyn was dead, Winters was dead, the Ossus temple was destroyed. Pain shot through her chest, and she couldn’t answer even now why she came here. She knew he would be here, as it was shortly after Evalyn’s funeral. She knew this was where he liked to find solitude and bring his strange snacks and tea.

As she watched him, noting every little ear twitch and tail swish, and watching him set up the exact same way she remembered from years prior, Andraste had to bite her lip. So many dead. So many old faces she loved that passed into the Force for good. He was one of the last left, and she could still hear his voice echoing in the trial chambers as she fled the temple. What could they possibly have to say to one another? The wounds were too deep, and she half expected him to attack her at once.

Despite all that, before she could stop herself, she began to walk towards him. Andraste said nothing, calmly coming up and sitting down beside him. She gazed out into the sunset and the way it stretched its orange and golden hues all across the valleys below. She never took the time to appreciate it before, but now she could understand why this always brought him a sense of calm. Andraste did not mask her aura anymore, and she said nothing for a moment to give him the chance to react to the fact that she was here.

After a few seconds, her gaze still on the horizon, she finally spoke, “You wouldn’t happen to have another cup with you this time, would you?” Even her voice was different, and he would know it. Everything was different. Everything was changed. But here she was, sitting next to someone that most likely wanted nothing more than to see her dead. She was sitting next to someone that had she had hurt in every way a person could hurt someone. She was sitting here, grasping for something she knew simply wasn’t there anymore. But she was here, and that was the reality.


@Loco

 

[Fennex Zeerda]

Fennex heard nothing until the scrunch of dirt and dried grass being disturbed by little feet clambering up onto his rock. The gentle breeze that had been rippling the grasslands below just like it rippled his fur had kept her downwind of his sensitive nose. Engrossed as he was in his meditation, it wasn't uncommon for Lothal's native inhabitants to go on about there business around him as if he was just another rock himself, and so he registered only the mildest surprise at being snuck up on... and then he felt her. The raw, unmasked presence hit him like a repulsor hammer in the gut.

Fennex froze, his primal animal survival instincts thinking perhaps if he didn't move maybe she wouldn't see him, even though the sentient part of his brain knew that was utterly absurd. Fear gripped his heart, which was suddenly pounding again, and his fur stood straight on end. In contrast to his frozen body, his mind was running in wild circles. How did she find me? Why is she here? What do I do? His thoughts kept coming back to the matched lightsabers in his pockets. His mind wondered how fast he really was. How fast is she? He forced himself to keep his breathing even. The little rise and fall of his chest and the occasional twitch of his whiskers the only perceptible movements he made for several agonizingly long seconds as he made his decision... No. If she was here just to kill him, he'd probably already be dead. She could have fried him from behind for who knew how long now. He slowly- very slowly- put down his tea. He kept his eyes locked forward.

“You wouldn’t happen to have another cup with you this time, would you?”

Another hammer blow. It was Alais' voice, but it wasn't. Fen took a deep breath, relaxing himself. The calming aura of this placed helped. He was sitting next to one of the most powerful people in the Galaxy- a whirlwind of dark energy and emotions, a far cry from the little girl he'd tried- and mostly failed, it seemed- to teach an occasional life lesson to. There was a strong possibility these few moments could be his last, he knew, but Grandmasters blue balls, if they were, he would go out with some Force-damned dignity at least. Fennex reached slowly into his knapsack and plucked out his equally battered spare cup. With the same ritualistic care and precision that he'd poured his own, he poured Andraste a cup of tea. He returned the decanter to it's little stone perch, and set the steaming cup by the woman's knee. He was still afraid to look at her. They sat in silence for a few more long moments. Fen's tail no longer swished.

"Mhghm…" he cleared his throat quietly as he watched the edgehawks circle above them, unsure what to say, or even if he should say anything at all... "How's Master Vox? Or Vin?

Fen sipped his tea awkwardly.


@Sreeya

 

[Andraste]

Andraste watched as he drew out yet another cup and poured the tea. It was exactly the same way she recalled him doing it years back. Back then, she practically popped a vein from how angry she was to watch him casually do that after making her almost die from exhaustion. The memory still brought a small smile to her face. The smile didn’t quite expand, mainly because she could sense his discomfort. He was conflicted on his feelings, and she couldn’t blame him. She had half expected him to reach for his saber at once, but he was keeping his composure.

She took the tea he poured and took a sip, also watching the edgehawks as the skies became a darker red in color. Andraste heard his question, and she felt more pangs in her chest. His voice betrayed him, and she knew he wanted nothing more than to inch away from her. She felt diseased, and that hurt in a way she couldn’t have foreseen. Andraste said nothing for a long moment, calmly sipping the tea.

“Kal goes by Kravos now,” She finally answered, “And Vin…she’s….gone,” Andraste sighed. It caused an ache in her chest as she uttered the words. Every thread from her past was being severed one by one. Fen was one of the last ones left. Andraste closed her eyes and looked down. When she opened them again, she was surprised to feel tears sliding down her face.

“It wasn’t supposed to go this way…” Her words were half a whisper. She still couldn’t look him in the eye, her golden gaze set on the horizon, “None of this was supposed to go this way. I don’t know what brought me here. I knew I’d find you here. I wanted to search for what it was that always brought you back here,” She didn’t bother wiping the tears away, “Maybe I’m finally seeing it. It’s a small reprieve from everything, even just for a moment.”

She took another sip from her cup, smiling sadly, “I’m not here to kill you, Master, so you may relax,” Though he did not carry that title, she had referred to him as that many years ago, and that aspect still didn’t change despite the title and power she carried now. She still felt small next to him.

@Loco

 

[Fennex Zeerda]

Fennex scoffed just a bit, managing half a smirk at Kal Vox's new moniker. I guess they're all using their made up names now, he thought with an internal chuckle. The moment of levity was fleeting, however, as the girl he'd known as Alais finally choked out Vin's fate. Fen expected to be crushed by such news. The Knight had seen those girls practically grow up and go on their first adventures together. He'd watched the clumsy dolts trip over everything and everyone in the temple, and each time come out a little stronger for it. They'd explored dark forests and fought off rabid Rathtars together. He should have been buried under the weight of guilt and anger at having not done more to stop Vin before it was too late. He'd had an opportunity the last time they'd crossed paths. He could have fought her- she was a clumsy dingus of a fighter- but he didn't. He took her warning, and let her run off on her incredibly fool hardy quest... But he wasn't crushed by guilt. He would miss Vin terribly, but he didn't mourn her the way he used to mourn people. He wasn't sure what that meant. Maybe he was in shock, or maybe he was becoming far too accustomed to losing people he cared for, or... maybe he was finally getting it. Who knew? Fen certainly didn't. He'd probably be in fits tomorrow after all this.

Alai… Andraste's tearful confession was as sudden as it was surprising. Before he realized what he was doing, Fennex had shot a sidelong glance at the woman, actually seeing her for the first time. It amazed him, in that moment, how much someone could change and yet still be the same. She'd grown. She was a woman now- not the girl he'd known. But through the little frizz in the hair, the orange in the eyes... it was still easy to see her tripping around, falling asleep in the corridors of the Jedha temple. Fen looked away, not wanting to embarrass her. Any thoughts he'd had of trying to strike her down were gone, for better or worse. He let her talk. It would have been easy to judge her words harshly- no, of course it wasn't supposed to be this way, no, you weren't supposed to kill all those people, no, you weren't supposed to resurrect the greatest threat in the galaxy... but the Knight couldn't bring himself to it. He knew better than almost anyone left alive what harsh judgements could bring about. Hearing her words, he knew he could have said exact the same thing and have it be just as meaningful. So, instead of a rebuttal, Knight Zeerda just listened.

"A bit..." Fen started quietly after a lengthy period of silence that was slightly less awkward than the first, "some of it is the reprieve- I do like the quiet...." Fen sipped his tea thoughtfully as his observant gaze scanned the horizon, his mind drifting back through the ages.

"But, part of it's something my Master, Master Quickbill, once said to me." Fennex put his cup down on the cold stone and clasped his paws in his lap, deep in thought, "He said to me: Padawan Zeerda, you are that rock over there." Fen waved a clawed finger in emphasis, imitating the shake of his diminutive little masters wings as if they'd parted yesterday. He put his hands back in his lap as he gathered his thoughts. "He wasn't being mean, or condescending, or putting me down. The way he said it was like... like that was the most amazing thing in the Galaxy. It took me a very long time to figure out what he meant, and most days I still lose sight of it..."

Fen shook his head. He'd been a brash and hard-headed furry little fool for a lot longer than he'd been a Jedi. It had taken him a long time to figure that out too. He looked at the powdery sandstone surface of the rock next to his tea decanter, and absentmindedly plucked an interesting pebble off the ground. There was absolutely nothing exceptional about it. It was rough surfaced, irregularly shaped, and probably crawling with billions of micro-organisms. But Fennex held that pebble in his hands and examined it with the same interest he'd shown the edgehawks, the sabrecats, and the nerf herds. His eyes looked at the crummy little rock as if it was every bit as important as the incredible alien sunset before them, and then he returned it exactly to where it had laid before he disturbed it.

"I keep coming back here because..." he looked around at the rock, the grass, the fauna, and the reddish and slowly darkening sky as he searched for the words... "it's... this is one of the few places in the Galaxy where- if I sit long enough, and quietly enough- I finally see it. I feel it... That rock and I really aren't so different after all. We're just two little things, playing hide-and-seek with each other."

Fen topped off Andraste's tea cup, then his own.

@Sreeya

 

[Andraste]

Andraste remained quiet as he spoke, and her tears began to stop. She gazed out over the horizon, only glancing over when he mentioned his master. She followed where he pointed, looking at the stone and allowing her gaze to linger on it. The words made little sense to her, and her face betrayed as much. She sat there silently, once again feeling like a young girl that didn’t understand things and analogies Jedi Masters made.

She watched him pick up a pebble, and as he spoke, she followed suit. Andraste looked down at the pebble in her hand, gazing at every little line on it, every little speck of dirt, everything that made it unique. After he finished speaking, Andraste said nothing for a long moment. She sipped from the tea after he topped it off, still holding onto the pebble in her own hand.

“I was led to believe I was no different than poison,” She muttered quietly, still looking down at the pebble, “No different than this pebble that has a lot of dirt on it,” Andraste slowly thumbed away at the dirt, moving it away until it was a clear, polished pebble, “Something to toss away,” She sighed, looking down, “I don’t place all the blame on the Jedi or the Council. Maybe I was rotten from the beginning. I made my choices, and I can never look back.”

Andraste set the pebble back where it was, “I came here to see you and also…. I thought solitude and a place of memories may help me feel her. Feel Evalyn,” She half whispered the words, “Sometimes I still do. I know she found her way through the Force. I can’t go back to Ossus, so this was the next best place. Selfish and terrible of me. I don’t even have the right to utter her name at this point. She was a piece of my humanity, a puzzle piece that was removed. One by one the pieces are being removed. You are one,” Andraste tilted her head to look at him, “Removing the pieces makes me lose sight of who I ever once was. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to keep removing the pieces. I don’t want to sever every thread. Sometimes I fear I have no choice.”

@Loco

 

[Fennex Zeerda]

They sat in silence for some time. Fennex had finally allowed himself relax somewhat, his tail twitching idly even if it didn't sweep back and forth in contentment like it had before she had arrived. He was still unconfident, unsure, and a tad uneasy. He would be the first to admit that he wasn't always the best judge of human emotions, clearly, but something told him Andraste wasn't in too dissimilar a state at the moment, although it was probably for much different reasons. Fennex had always had trouble understanding others, try though he might, and this was no different. After more than thirty years as a Jedi, his brashness and emotion still clouded his judgement sometimes. He wondered if this was one of them.

When she began to speak again, the words pained him. He remembered her trial- if you could call it that- and all the fear and judgement oozing from the Jedi assembled there. They'd looked at her like poison. They had tried to toss her away. If she truly didn't place the blame entirely in their laps, it was an amazing act of understanding. It would certainly be easy for her to do so, after being led so far astray. It pained him even more to feel her talk of Evalyn. The old Fennex would have just been angry, full of roiling emotion barely controlled by his Jedi training... but he wasn't. He wasn't mourning Evalyn either, though he certainly had considered her a friend. He felt pain for the circumstance. It pained him that everything had come to this, though he had begun now to suspect that it was all inevitable. It pained him that friends were enemies and enemies friends. It pained him most of all that so many felt there was no choice in the matter.

Fennex looked at Andraste as she tilted her head at him, his little black eyes meeting her fiery orange gaze for the first time since she had sat down beside him. He heard what she said about the pieces of her humanity. More importantly, he heard the words she'd left unspoken.

He looked away again, finally, but it wasn't a flinch or escape attempt. He gazed out at the beautiful Lothal landscape and sipped at his drink. He was at peace. He thought back to what he had seen in the cave on Jedha- the darkest corners of his own soul that he had never known were there. Darkness deep inside himself that he'd never acknowledged or even known had existed. It had exposed, then, how little he'd known or understood about himself. He'd faced his own darkness, and he saw how powerful it was- how corrupting, how insidious, and how tempting it was. He'd faced, and come to terms with it... for now. But what that darkness within him had really shown him was just how fragile everyone really was- how they all harbored that same darkness, deep inside them, just waiting for an opportunity to come out.

"If you're here looking for Evalyn, you picked a good spot." Fennex said, finally breaking the silence before taking another sip of his tea. He paused for another long moment, just taking in their surroundings. "There are tens of thousands of books and datacards and holocrons in the galaxy about the Force... and if I saw every last one of them, I don't think I'd ever understand even a miniscule portion of what there is to know about it." The reddish glow of the sun breaking below the horizon lit his fur warmly as he gazed out at it, the warm colors contrasting starkly with the cool evening breeze.

"The one thing I do know though, is that it's all of us. You, me, Evalyn, that Edgehawk up there," Fenenx pointed at the still circling predator, "and this rock right here." Fen pointed at the same pebble he'd inspected earlier, "We all started as the force, we all lived as part of the force, and when we're gone from this life..." He reached out a long furry finger and flicked the pebble with his nail, sending it skittering off the edge of the smooth rock he and Andraste sat perched upon, until it clattered to a halt in the broken shale of the cliffside, indistinguishable from the tens millions of such pebbles that made up the mountain they sat atop, "We'll be part of the Force once more. All of us."

"How we get there though, the choices we make," Fennex plucked another pebble from the ground and tossed it casually over the edge; it bounced and tumbled it's way down the mountain erratically, the clack of stone on stone echoing in the quiet evening air, until its its final impact disturbed a loose patch of shale, which began to run and slide a ways down the cliff in a cascading effect that gathered more rocks as it went until it gradually ground to a halt, "are entirely up to us."


@Sreeya