"Master Skywalker!" calls the little twi'lek girl, her practice sword firmly held in a hand swinging up and down excitedly. "Master Skywalker! My turn! My turn!"
"All right then padawan. Prepare yourself." Master Skywalker answers good-naturedly, readying himself in the duelling stance, facing the little girl. The girl launches into an attack that is more enthusiasm than skill. Master Skywalker responses with skill that allows him to keep the awkward duel going and gently nudges the girl's strikes into directions where they are most useful. When the girl's advance starts to lose its energy, he lets the girl hit him and falls to the ground, defeated.
"It seems that you were too powerful for me master jedi. You have defeated me!"
The girl giggles and launches over to sit over the chest of his defeated master. "Are you sure you didn't let me win. "
"Didn't you see me fighting with all I had?"
"Master Skywalker, you are being silly."
"And now you are disrespecting your master young padawan."
The girl frowns and gets up from his master's chest. "But how will I ever grow up to become a real jedi if master Skywalker won't take me seriously?"
"You will grow up to become a great jedi, I promise you. You will just have to be patient."
"I've been waiting for so long! When will you teach me to fight for real! I want to be a real jedi! I know you're just playing with me, because that one time we duelled for real you won! You won against us all and now you think we are just stupid babies." The girl pouts up at her master, it wasn't fair that Master Skywalker treated her like a baby when she was already eight years old.
Master Skywalker's eyes grow empty, like someone had stolen the light from them, and the girl's pout turns into a frown. None of the children liked making Master Skywalker sad, but Master Skywalker got sad so easily.
"No padawan. I have never lost a fight as entirely as I did then. I never want to lose like that again."
"I don't understand?"
"Don't worry. You will. Life, when you will get to live it, will teach you."
"And when will I learn to become a great warrior."
"I would hope you will rather grow up to be a great jedi. But you will have to be patient."
The girl groaned loudly and flopped back to lay on the ground. "I've already been here forever."
The gentle light returned to master Skywalker's eyes. "Surely not forever."
"For-eve-eeeeer." The girl sat back up, now looking at Master Skywalker with a hint of worry. "But you will be with us right. Until we can leave. You won't leave us right?"
"Never. Not in forever will I leave you, until I have personally made sure that all of you will get to live as the best and brightest jedis of the galaxy."
Luke Skywalker was thinking of starting a new jedi order. He could feel it in the force and he could feel it in his heart. He was the last of the jedi, if he did not pass along his knowledge, nobody would. He feels the wound in the galaxy and knows that the time for healing has started.
He will build up a new jedi order, but not like the old one that crumbled and self-destructed and bred gods and monsters and soldiers into the galaxy, but an order that would try to learn from the mistakes of the past and build something new out of it, brick by brick.
Luke knows that he will never be able to build something grand like the jedi council of the old, but sitting in the kitchen with his best friend and his sister and their baby, he feels that grandness isn't what the universe needs.
"Shhs, shshsh, Come on Ben, please stop crying. Daddy is trying. What is it that you want Ben? What? Tell daddy? Are you hungry? Cold? We just changed your nappy."
"Give him to Chewie, he'll calm down." Leia calls from the living room where she is working.
"Chewie? He's my son, not Chewie's!"
"Just give him to Chewie!"
Han relinquished the screaming baby to his oldest friend with little enthusiasm, but Ben seems to prefer his wookie uncle to his dad, as he starts gurgling happily and grabs a fistful of fur.
I've been betrayed by my own son, I can't believe this." Han grumbles, sitting down next to Luke, watching Ben happily babble to his uncle Chewbacca, while the wookie gently rocks the baby in his massive arms.
This is what the galaxy needed, Luke thought. Not grandness, but small acts of kindnesses.
"But why does Akkai get to go first?!"
"Because he is the oldest one." The storyteller tells again. This is a question she has been answering a lot lately. All the children would want to be the first ones to go on the journey, but there are rules. The children, being children, have little appreciation for rules.
"But we all came here the same time, why can't we leave the same time?"
"I'm sorry sweetie. It's just how it is." The storyteller tells, not without sympathy. She understands that the children are eager. They have been waiting for so long. As long as she has, but she was waiting for someone to join her, not waiting to leave.
"Come now, Sowilo. You get to stay here listening to Angel's stories, while Akkai will be stuck travelling with me."
Sowilo looked mutinous. In his opinion, Akkai was incredibly lucky to be going on an adventure together with Master Skywalker. The storyteller was great, but even if the storyteller was the best, going on an adventure was better.
"Don't worry, your turn will come soon enough." The storyteller told Sowilo, and then went to say goodbye to Master Skywalker. Sowilo made faces with his friends while the storyteller and Master Skywalker said goodbye in the gross grown-up way, with their lips.
The desert is vast, unforgiving and the sky above is starless void. Still master Skywalker does not hesitate to carry his burden across the scorching sands. He keeps Akkai in his arms and walks. Walks through the desert storm that howls and throws sand into his mouth and eyes and ears. Walks when his limbs ache and everything in him burns. He walks while the desert gods and demons howl around him.
He doesn't know time, nor distance. He just keeps Akkai bundled under the protective blanket and lets the child rest his face in the crook of his neck.
It is not natural for beings to travel into this direction across the desert. It will take only a blink, a heartbeat, a breath, to travel the distance the other way around, but returning will take a timeless eternity.
Master Skywalker keeps walking, when the sandstorms cut away the skin on his cheeks and make his eyes burn like tiny daggers were burrowing in them. He walks listening to the howls of the unforgiving gods of old and leaving a bloody trail behind him on every footstep.
He goes beyond pain and then comes back again when the soles of his feet start to wore off, the bones sticking through. He walks when his face gets ripped off piece by piece by the cruel winds and when he stops bleeding because there is no more blood in him to bleed.
He continues travelling, a wraith protecting a soul from the demons and their foul whispers in the wind.
When he reaches the other side of the desert, he is barely more than pure will anymore. He sets down the unharmed child onto the green land of the living, and mutters a prayer on his mother tongue as a farewell to the child. He already knows that the force will be with this child, but he hopes that the gentle gods of his people would lent their protection too.
A child is born, like millions are born thorough the galaxy every second, but to the mother who believed herself barren, this child is the greatest miracle in the universe.
The excitement that had grabbed the children was infectious. Soon the storyteller found herself just as excited as the children, playing with them and staying up late even if it was always her that insisted on proper bedtimes. How could she help it? There was smell of spring in the air, the smell of new life.
One by one the children would come to say their goodbyes to their storyteller and latch onto Master Skywalker's hand preparing for the journey. The storyteller always kissed her husband goodbye and asked if he wanted the storyteller to come with him. "You know I will always walk with you if you let me."
"Someone needs to keep the children company."
"There are many others who could, who would. Obi-wan, Yoda, Windu, Qui-gon."
"I think I still need to face myself alone for a while. I'm sorry Angel. Be patient with me."
"Always."
His husband walks to the desert holding a child in his hands, there he will waste away into a waif of bones and sinews, skin melted away and flesh torn to ribbons. Then he will return to his wife, heal and walk the same path with the next child. The storyteller will embrace the half rotten corpse that will return to her. "You are so beautiful." She will whisper.
When Luke takes his apprentices to train with him, he is afraid. All these children looking up to him, these force sensitive children who look up to him and hold the universe in their hearts and call Luke Master Skywalker with nothing but sincere hero-worship.
And Luke is afraid, but he is excited too, because finally he feels like he is doing something purely good for the world. He finally can change the world and be kind about it. There is no war to be fought, no friends dying on his peripheral vision and no death stars blowing up under his hands, taking with them more innocent lives than Luke can comprehend.
Instead of heroics there are now small acts of kindnesses in comforting a homesick child, serving tea to the boy with illness, teaching meditation to the girl who cannot calm herself during nights, guiding the youths with the ways of the force. Hearing them holochat with their parents during the evenings, reciting everything that they had learned so far with a childish wonder.
Luke finds himself in peace. Finds himself happy.
The desert gods know Anakin by now. There is a path of red dried blood easy to follow, but unneeded, as Anakin already knows the way by heart. But this time things are slightly different. The girl he is carrying is the last one and Padmé is walking beside him. "I am afraid that you might not come back from the desert when the last child is taken to the other side." She had said to her husband and her husband had nodded. I am sorry that you have to doubt me. That I even doubt myself."
"You are not the only one who wishes to purify themselves, who feels guilty and responsible."
"I do not see sins in you Padmé. But I will listen and I will learn how you see your side of the story and I will forgive you when I understand and I will love you."
"And I will understand you and I will love you, and I have already given you my forgiveness thousands of times."
The last child is brought to the other side of the desert by two worn wraiths, torn apart by the desert demons and worn thin by the sandstorms, but also light with happiness.
"I wish young Ben had gotten your temperance with the name."
The ghost in front of Luke chuckled. "You do not know what a truly insubordinate padawan looks like, because believe me, I do."
Luke lifted an amused eyebrow. "That bad?"
"Worse. I promise. Your father taught me entire new scale of second hand embarrassment and worry."
"Talking of my father, he hasn't visited for a while."
"No he has been kept busy with other things. I promise it's nothing personal against you."
"How do you keep yourself busy in the afterlife anyway?"
"I'm afraid I will not answer that."
"Figured that much."
They pass few moments in amenable silence, Luke sipping his midnight tea and Obi-wan watching his apprentice who has grown to be a better jedi than he could have ever hope for.
"But what is it like, truly. Death."
Obi-wan lets a smile slip to trickle to his face. "It is infinitely more kinder than you can imagine."
When a boy with darkness in his heart cuts through the children in the temple, the force cries in agony once again. The wounds are ripped wide open again and a shadow is cast over the galaxy. The children cry and cry and cry.
On the other side they are welcomed back with embraces and tears and promises of comfort. The children will cry to be once again ripped from life and the angel will cry all of those that she loves, for the agony that her family and friends are doomed to experience again and again in twisted cycle. Master Skywalker will cry for the shadows that he has cast across the universe.
"I'm sorry." He will whisper again and again. He apologizes because he no longer has the power to carry these children across the desert.
"We miss our friend Ben." The children whisper "It's not the same without him."
"I know. We just have to wait. A true jedi is always patient."