NERVA

A/N A few quick notes before we begin. Salinas is a world of my own creation, as are the Children of Shii, and as such do not appear in Star Wars canon. The people are primitive, and exist without knowledge of the outside galaxy, save for a meteorite that fell to Salinas hundreds of years ago. They believe the meteorite possesses magical properties and worship it – believing it was sent by the Sky God – Shii.

This fiction will follow a girl called Chakka and how she reinvents herself as Nerva.

CHAPTER 1

"'Thou mayest' – that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open."

- East of Eden (by John Steinbeck)

[1]

The two children stood on the edge of the cliff.

For Salinas, the cliff was not particularly large, nor particularly steep, but still perilous enough that both toed the edge nervously.

"Must be a-mill'yun feet," said one of them – the boy – wiping at his nose with his sleeve.

The girl squinted, as if thinking, and picked up a stone and threw it experimentally down the cliff-face. They watched it ricochet off the black slate crags – spinning and flipping – until it became a speck and then fell out of sight, hurtling towards the primeval forest at the basin.

"I dare you."

The girl looked at the boy. "What?"

"I dare ya to climb down."

She reflexively stepped back from the cliff edge. "Don' be stupid."

"You 'fraid, Chakka?"

The girl called Chakka looked at the boy – Tad - with a wary, calculating gaze. They lived together at the orphanage, and were both dressed in little more than rags; filthy fur pelts pulled round their shoulders to keep them warm against the bitterly cold air.

Chakka was not good at the games she and Tad played. He was bigger and stronger than she was, and always won. She yearned for the day when one day she would beat him, when he would no longer be able to make her feel so small or weak. A wild part of her thought that maybe she should climb down the cliff – just to win, finally.

"You 'fraid Chakka?" Tad taunted again.

"No" Chakka snapped, taking another step back from the steep drop before her.

Quick as a flash, Tad was behind her – and there was a thrilling, horrible sensation of being pushed – of actually pitching forwards, of falling. Something froze deep in Chakka's chest and a terrified scream tore from her throat just before the back of her shirt was grabbed in Tad's fist, and she was left dangling over the precipice, imagining the stone flipping sickeningly through the air.

She could hear Tad's awful, stupid guffawing behind her and the moment she rebalanced herself Chakka spun round, flying at him. Her small fists beat ineffectually against his chest. "I hate you!" she screamed at him – the fact that her blows had only little impact spurned her rage and the rage caused tears to leak from her eyes – hot and humiliating. "You're a bastard!"

One of her fists connected with his nose and red blood sprayed satisfyingly onto the white rocks they stood on. At that, Tad knocked her to the ground, as easily as if he were brushing off a fly. When she tried to scramble upright he held her down with his boot.

"You were 'fraid Chakka," the blood from his nose ran into his mouth and he gave her a horrible, bloody smile.

"No I was't" she yelled – her voice cracking with sobs. "No I was't."

Assessing that he'd broken her to a satisfactory degree, Tad removed his foot and left. If he'd looked back, he – and the other children at the orphanage – might have thought twice about bullying Chakka again. She was gazing after him with such a look of hatred that she would have frightened him, finally.

[2]

Chakka took to carrying an array of homemade weapons on her person.

Over the years, the orphanage staff confiscated from her small flint knives; wood whittled down into stakes; barbed wire from the Yakyak fences and other worrying objects.

They noticed that she stopped playing with the other children – or, at any rate, the other children stopped playing with her. They agreed she was growing into a rather ill-favoured young women, despite the fact they never caught her actually using the weapons they found.

In fact, there was little they could fault Chakka with, except generally agreeing that there was something off about the girl. She prayed to Shii each morning and night and helped till the fields or plant crops, depending on the time of year. In the evenings she and the other older girls prepared dinner and mended clothes – and though she evidently found the latter activities highly tedious, she never complained.

Still, no one was sad to see the girl go that dark night on her fourteenth birthday.

As was customary for every child who reached the age of fourteen on Salinas (and not many did, due to the harsh winters) they were subjected to a visit from one of the Children of Shii – or 'Elders'.

Why the Elders came was only vaguely understood by the people of Salinas. They didn't take every child away – indeed, sometimes many years went by and no child was taken; they only took those deemed 'special'.

That year, it had been Chakka, Tad and another boy, called Rag's, birthdays. The orphanage nurses lined them up by the fire. The children were a sorry sight, with lips cracked and blue from the cold. One of the woman had found a strip of blue cloth to tie round Chakka's head – hiding the greasy roots of her red hair from view.

Chakka couldn't help but be both nervous and exciting – both feelings twisting together in her gut uncomfortably – but the emotions didn't show on her strangely blank face. She'd grown adept at hiding her feelings.

Finally, just as the moon was fully rising into the night sky and the Yayaks could be heard snuffling sleepily in barn adjoining the orphanage, there was a knock at the door. All three children stiffened, and Chakka's heart leapt into her throat.

The man who entered was unlike any she had ever seen in so many respects.

For a child such as herself, the thing that struck her first was that the white robes he wore were clean.

The second thing she noticed was his skin; he had rivulets of metal no thicker than her little finger welded in an undulating pattern to his body – even on his face. She had never seen a person like this before in her life.

The man was tall (and didn't look very old, despite being an 'Elder'), and had to stoop slightly to accommodate their low thatched ceiling. His gaze travelled round the room uncritically before landing on the three children stood by the crackling fire.

"Greetings, children, I am Elder Telmanes," he said. He spoke in a strange way – not lazy and broken like most Salinese, but rich and fluid, like a river, Chakka thought. She began to wonder if he had fallen from the sky like the legendary meteorite Shii had sent from the heavens all those years ago. "...I am a member of the Children of Shii. My purpose here tonight will be quick – as I am sure you children are aware, our visits come every year. We seek children who have experienced their fourteenth birth date, and only require you to perform a simple test." Rag must have looked scared because the man smiled slightly. "Worry not, I assure you the test is quite simple."

Chakka glanced at Tad out of the corner of her eye. Tad who had only grown bigger and more arrogant in the years since the cliff. If it was a test of strength, this time she would win. This time. Her hand sank surreptitiously inside the folds of her shirt to grasp the familiar flint knife at her waist. The orphanage nurses were never sharp-witted enough to find every one of her knives.

Telmanes must have seen Chakka's small movement because he looked at her suddenly and sharply. His blue eyes seemed to pierce her soul and she felt her spine stiffen defensively.

"Miss?" He asked, tearing his gaze from Chakka eventually. The orphanage nurse the Elder had addressed jumped and blushed, clearly not used to being spoken to so politely. Like the children she tended to, she was unclean, and – like the majority of the children – possessed little intellect.

"Are these good children?"

"O, yay, they say their prays each morning an' night an' are mighty help'ul with farmworkin' an' the like."

This was essentially true with respect to Chakka and Tad, but Rag was lazy and did little in the way of work at the orphanage. As for Tad and Chakka, well, neither of them were 'good' children.

Chakka could tell that the man was not convinced, and her eyes narrowed with suspicion when he approached the fireside slowly. The metal on his skin caught the flames and seemed to glow molten and from the depths of his robes he removed a simple wooden box.

The children leant forwards despite themselves when he opened the lid to reveal a rock the size of a rabbit's head nestled inside.

Instantly, Tad looked up at the Elder, perplexed, but Chakka's gaze remained fixed on the rock. Her thinking seemed to go blurry and – was it her, or did a faint whispering seem to be emitting from it? She felt like the room was tilting and shifting and her hand tightened reflexively round her knife.

"Can you hear anything?" prompted Telmanes, softly.

"It's a rock," Tad scoffed – his voice sounded distant, but when his words finally registered, Chakka made a slow, beautiful realization. Tad couldn't hear the voice but she could. She'd won. She was the special person the Children of Shii were looking for…part of her felt like she'd always known it. Every time Tad had thrown her to the ground, belittled her – bullied her – made her bleed - she'd known she was stronger than him, knew she was better than him, which was why it had all been so humiliating – so frustrating -

"I can hear it," Chakka said, looking up at Telmanes, her eyes shining, her face strained in the firelight. The nurses were privately surprised by the show of emotion on the girl's usually impassive face. "I can hear it," she repeated, almost like a prayer – a reverent thank you.

It's calling to me.

[3]

She was instructed to pack what little belongings she owned into a pack and leave with Telmanes. Chakka had no qualms about leaving the orphanage behind her. She was not close to any of the children; the low-slung long house, with its saggy thatched roof, mud floors and permanent smell of shit, had never felt like home. Her face flushed with excitement as she flung her few clothes and a little food the nurses had permitted her to take into her sack and then galloped back into the main room – breathless. Telmanes stood calmly waiting at the doorway.

"You may choose not to come, if you so wish" he said, almost warningly "To leave one's childhood home is no small sacrifice."

"This isn't my home," Chakka said, too quickly.

He merely raised an eyebrow. "Very well."

They stepped out into night and along the tusocky, gnarled fields of crops to the orphanage's borders. Tied to a tree trunk were two beasts Chakka had never before seen: like Yakyaks, only, their fur was shorter and sleeker, their legs longer and their bodies bigger. The beasts lifted their heads at the sound of their approach and Chakka took a step back – there were four heads for two bodies. Each beast had two heads.

"What are they?" she said, forcefully, to hide her hesitation.

"Hy-mules," replied Telmanes, busying himself with untying the reins from the tree. "They are a good deal faster than your ponies and will allow us to reach our destination by the second nightfall. You need not be afraid of them." She looked at Telmanes dubiously and thought she saw the man smiling to himself slightly, as if she had said something ridiculous. It was that, more than his assurances that made Chakka square her shoulders and place her foot into one stirrup, hauling herself up onto the Hy-mule. She was a passably good rider, but had never sat upon a beast this tall before, and felt unusually precarious. When she nudged the beasts flank with her heels to follow Telmanes', she found it so skinny she could almost feel its ribs.

Telmanes led them to the descent down the cliff's less steep western face, following a narrow mountain track. After an hour they passed through a small village where she was sometimes sent to buy wool or meat for the orphanage – the furthest she had ever been. She did not hesitate, however, as Telmanes led her past darkened huts, not wanting to give him any cause to think her sentimental or hesitant.

She wanted to go forwards. They'd chosen her for this…whatever 'this' was.

Chakka dwelled uneasily for the first time on what the rock's whisperings meant, looking mistrustfully at Telmanes back. She tried to remember some of the mythology of Shii that the nurses told them – though she didn't trust most of it, because the nurses were stupid, and she didn't see how one man - even if they were a God - could make all of Salinas by himself.

She had never met anyone who had been chosen by the Children of Shii. Old Ma Yibber at the village used to tell anyone who would listen that her great-great-great-Papi had been chosen, but Ma was raving mad, and also claimed a rock she wore on a chord round her neck was the meteorite Shii had sent. All Chakka knew for sure was the Elders dwelt in a temple, which lay at the end of the valley at the bottom of the cliff, and you couldn't enter the temple unless the Children said so. She knew that because one of them had said so when they'd visited the orphanage when she was only a bairn.

They chased their own shadows – still descending the cliff-face down a road Chakka herself had never trodden. The whole night, two emotions warred with in her: her yearning for the place Telmanes was taking her, and her natural mistrust for it. She in turn imagined a golden temple, where she was feared and respected, and a place like the orphanage, where she would be thrown in with many other children; a helpless voice among the many.

Still, despite her fears Chakka never once considered turning her mule round and riding back to the orphanage. You were chosen, she reminded herself. You're special.

[4]

They didn't stop until morning – finally halting their horses on a rock field.

Whilst Telmanes prepared a fire, Chakka chewed thoughtfully on a piece of salted meat from her pack. Finally, she said what she'd been bursting to say for the entire night.

"You don't b'lief he's real, do you?"

"Who, child?"

Chakka chewed, trying to look nonchalant. "Shii."

Telmanes paused and then straightened from his crouched position, wiping his hands on a rag from his pocket. Always so clean. "Don't you, Chakka?"

She shrugged.

"Your nurse said you pray morning and night. Why pray to Shii if you don't believe in him?"

"Kips 'em happy." Stopped them from watching her too closely.

Telmanes surveyed her for a long moment before gesturing for her to come forwards. He held out his open palm to her – lying flat on its surface was a perfectly round gold coin.

"I want you to focus on this coin and levitate it."

Chakka scowled, disliking it when he used long words she couldn't understand. "Levi-what?"

"Make it fly, Chakka."

She was about to protest, sure Telmanes was making fun of her, but then she remembered how Tad had looked up – 'But it's a rock,' he'd said, because he hadn't understood, because he wasn't special, like she was.

A gust of wind blew unbroken and unopposed across the rock field, pulling at Telmanes brilliant white cloak and Chakka's furs. She looked for a moment at the metal on his skin and decided making a rock fly could be no more impossible.

She focused on the pebble; it was flat and chipped at the edges. Chakka focused for a solid minute before she grew irritated and gave up – suspicion rotting her. He was making fun of her.

She grabbed the stupid pebble from his hand and threw it as far as she could. "There!" she snapped, "I made it fly."

For the first time, Telmanes serene face tightened with irritation and suddenly all the loose bits of rock and dry wood on the ground around them rose a good foot into the air. Chakka looked around herself, wide-eyed.

"How're you doin' that?" she demanded.

"By focusing and controlling my emotions."

Abruptly, Chakka forced all her emotions down deep inside her and thrust out one hand to the closest pebble, as if reaching for it. She felt all her yearning, all her desire for the power Telmanes had just displayed and felt her mind go blurry – like it had when she'd heard the rock whispering at the orphanage. Suddenly, the pebble she was reaching for shot into the air like a geiser – so high it rocketed out of her control and fell back to earth, cracking in two as it connected with the ground.

Excited, Chakka reached out for the rock with her mind again, determined to see what else she could do. With glee, she split the rock's two pieces in two again, and the Hy-mules reared up onto their back legs as the shards were sent scattering with the force of the separation.

She reached out for the four fragments of rock again – finding it more difficult now that they were smaller and there were four of them, but she was high with the feeling of power, surpassing the difficulty with ease. This time she managed to float the segments of rock over the ground before experimentally snapping her hand into a fist. Instantly, the rocks exploded into dust.

"Impressive," said Telmanes.

Chakka turned, breathing hard, her face flushed to see that Telmanes was bent over the fire, boiling something in a small travelling kettle and wasn't looking at her. "Did you see tha'?" she asked, approaching him. It felt like her whole body was buzzing – like there was a hive of bees in her bloodstream.

Telmanes' face remained impassive as he poured some hot, herbal tea out of the pot and handed her a cup. "I saw that you have a penchant for destruction, Chakka." He raised his own mug to his lips and drank. "The Force is not merely about power."

"The force?" asked Chakka, impatiently, ignoring her own cup. Telmanes obvious disapproval was like a blanket being thrown over a fire – her excitement was bleeding out of her.

"The energy that connects all living things in the galaxy. It is not a mere weapon, but a life system."

"An' this place your taking me – you're goin' to teach me about this force?" asked Chakka, shrewdly.

"Yes."

Content, Chakka finally lifted the mug to her lips. She found that the tea was surprisingly pleasant – the hot water smelling of some fragrant spice.

"Where are you going?" asked Telmanes, sharply, when she wondered a little distance across the rock field.

"Jus' for a walk," she threw back over her shoulder. After a few paces Chakka came to a deep crack in the rock where a trickle of water flowed – she followed it with her eyes up – up – up until she saw it's a source: a large waterfall further up the cliff.

Warming one hand round her mug, Chakka crouched and traced a fingertip a little over the water. This time, she recognised that the water did indeed have a different feel to the rock – more fluid, more supple. She sipped on her tea absentmindedly and gave the water a little bit of a nudge with her mind…and grinned to herself as she watched its path alternate, and flow in a completely different direction.

A/N This is a Kylo Ren/OC story, I'm just taking three or four chapters before I get to that point to establish Chakka's back story and how she comes to the dark side.

Chakka is NOT a good character and has sociopathic qualities – this story in no way condones her actions.

Last Of The Lilac Wine