(FROM THE PERSONAL DIARIES OF OBI-WAN KENOBI)
Stewjon, two years after the battle of Geonosis:
Truth be told, I like the water. I do. It's just that…well, I haven't quite pin-pointed the cause of this, haven't yet determined why I have this little H2O fancy of mine. Just know that it's there—here—and that today, practically all I did was stare into the currents of a river, watching as it cut through the landscape like a tear across a cheek.
Oh, and you want to where this river is? No, I'm afraid I can' give you precise geographic coordinates—not because I'm trying to be clandestine or anything, but because I'm entirely uncertain of what they are. Or of where I am, in terms of precise latitude and longitude. All I can tell you for sure is that I'm home, on my birth-planet. On my parent's farm, to be more exact, listening to my mother and father and brother prattle on in the kitchen.
I know what you're probably thinking: do you know them? Do you truly, deeply know, know them? Or are you a stranger, distant, unfamiliar, removed? And frankly, I'm not entirely sure what I am. Because I don't quite know them. But they aren't entirely unfamiliar to me—not yet.
But to them, I might as well be a stranger.
Not that I don't try and converse with them or anything. We actually enjoy one another's company, will be laughing and smiling wide, wide whenever we're together. But when I'm alone with one of them—with either my father, my mother, or my brother, Owen—I feel as though they're studying me intently, like they aren't sure who I am. What I am, even though they themselves handed me off to the Order. Even though they've seen the wartime holo-broadcasts, have watched my face flash across a screen as an anchor gravely details the exploits of "General Kenobi."
My brother had asked me about this, how I felt about being hailed as some illustrious war hero. And you know what I told him? Lonely—that's how I feel. Because when you reach this level, when you've been elevated in society's expectant (and easily disappointed) mind, you've been isolated from everything…and everyone. You walk a lonely path, one filled with heart-ache, pain, loss—the latter of which will haunt your waking steps till you've left this world for the next.
That's partially why I'm here: for loss. To cope with it. To prepare myself for it, too, building up the necessary defenses about the ragged tatters of my heart.
And perhaps to prepare them for it, too.
But none of family has asked about this. About why I'm here. They've simply excepted it, looked its reality in the eye and surrendered to it without qualms. Questions. Natural curiosity.
It's funny, but the other day, I met someone who actually asked questions. About me. And strangely enough, having someone break my silence came as a relief. It was…soothing. As smooth and cool as the river.
That's where I met her—at the river. I'd joined my brother in the fields that day, helping him goad a throng of eopies from one pasture to the other (I've always been good with animals, you see), and after five or so hours of work under Stewjon's merciless summer sun, we'd decided to head to the river. We'd waded into it, the two of us, allowing its icy flows to banish all memory of our toil. And we'd talked, too, chatted about this and that and everything else until he decided to leave. Wanted to wash up before dinner, I guess—but the only washing I'd wanted was from the river, so I'd stayed behind.
Stripped to the waist, I'd waded once more into its current. Eddies and flows had rush past me, massaging my rigid back with steady fingers; liquid ice had kissed my skin, carrying away all the struggles and toils of the day. Then I'd straightened, suddenly aware of a presence nearby, and I'd whirled around. Spotted a woman standing on the edge of the bank, a small urn clutched to her chest.
"Can I help you?" I'd asked, both vexed somewhat self-conscious at her presence.
Instead of answering, her gaze went straight to my bare shoulder. "How did you get that scar?"
Bemused, I'd followed her eyes to spot of inquiry. Yes, I had a scar their—still have it now, in fact, can feel it just beneath my tunic. But until that moment, I'd scarcely given thought to it. That should surprise you, given how awful the scar is: pinched and dark, its snakes down my right shoulder onto my pectoral muscle, marring it indelibly. For all their expertise, not even the Jedi Healers could wipe away this scar—and neither will smothering it with clothes, apparently.
Lightsaber wounds are the only injuries that can scar Jedi.
Shrugging, I put a hand over the spot, as if that would wipe the sight of it from her memory. "This? I recall picking a fight with a man I could never beat, then almost dying at the hands of said man. Luckily, I had a friend with me then, so it didn't come to that—and really, I ended up faring better than my comrade did." Noting her nonplussed expression, I'd elaborated: "He lost his arm."
"What kind of weapon did…" With a free arm, she gestured to both my shoulder and something unseen. "…that?"
"The nasty variety," I'd replied, then opted to leave it at that. I nodded at her urn. "May I ask what that's for?"
She glanced down at it solemnly, as if the thing she'd held was unbelievably sacred. "I'm remembering."
"Remembering what?"
"Something," she'd answered distractedly, then she'd turned on her heel, heading back toward wherever it was she'd came from.
When I'd arrived home, bone-dry and fully-clothed, I asked my brother if he knew if any local women made it a habit to stop by the river. He'd listened in silence as I'd described her—around my age, brown eyes and hair, with a plain face and a plainer voice—regarding me with interest. According to him, she was their late neighbor's widow, and given that her husband had passed in the last couple of weeks or so, I was possible that that urn had contained his ashes. When asked if she'd scattered them there, I only shrugged, told him she'd just upped and left.
"Is she…crazy?" I'd asked, voice low.
He'd shaken his head. "No, but I think she's sick. Like, she's dying from some karking stubborn disease."
My eyebrows lifted. "She's dying?"
"Yeah. But I'm not sure what it is she's got. Whatever it is, though, she'll probably be in an urn herself sometime soon."
After that, I haven't asked him anything more about the woman at the river. But you know what? I think I'll make a point to visit this woman tomorrow, after the sun crests the golden fields. Ask her a few questions.
And maybe she'll ask a few of her own.
For now, however, I'm left to mull over this little encounter. Puzzle over it. It's a tad familiar, after all, having someone ask about my scar: roughly a year ago, I underwent a similar encounter, just with a different face. It was still a woman, still someone I vaguely knew but desperately wanted to know, to peel away the film and see what actually lied beneath. True, I had known her in my younger days, had been friends and beyond for some time—but for whatever reason, she had grown as alien as the homely woman of the river.
Satine Kryze had asked about my scar.
No wonder I haven't dwelled on my scar in long, long while, then.
Yet—no. I'm not going back there. Not tonight. I came here to escape that, to leave it all behind in the stinging wake we call the past.
Perhaps the woman will ask me about this, too.