Chapter 2

As I said, I was only eight years old. To me, everything seemed large in Coruscant: the buildings and the people, though it seemed that there was less space since I was used to wider spaces in our moisture farm and the expanse of the Dune Sea.

I was sent to a charity school where I was given room and board. After I received that letter from home, I stayed on the school as a Republic scholar.

A few days after Darren died, I had recurring nightmares of coming back home and not finding the house. In some dreams, I would go back home to a demolished house. It had no roof and no furniture. Only walls. Because I had no bed, I drew a moon on the sand and lay on it under the starry sky and let the sand cover me.

In most of those nights when I had those dreams, I woke up crying. One night, I couldn't sleep. I stepped out of the room. At the hallway, lay a twilek girl. She was freezing. She had no coat or blanket. As I was covered her with my coat, she woke up, startled.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Why are you sleeping here outside?"

"The other girls kicked me out of the room," she replied. "They said that twileks and orphans do not deserve to study here."

I hugged her and said: "Don't worry. I have no family either."

That night, I stayed with her outside the room.

Her name was Livia. Her mother was a slave dancer who got pregnant by accident. Her mother escaped from her master so Livia was born free. However, since her mother could not find decent work, she came back to dancing to feed her child. A year later, she died from a sexually transmitted disease. Livia was sent to an orphanage. Later, she was sent to school as a scholar. Many students made fun of her because she was a twilek in a school that has predominantly human students. Also, since she had one of the best grades in the whole school, many girls envied her. There were many girls who bullied us. We tried to fight back but most of the time, we got beaten up. It's a good thing that she could heal herself at times, sometimes even without using medicine. I always wondered how she did that. She was also good at languages like many people of her race. She taught me some languages she knew. I taught her how to fix some droids as I had learned from Father.

One time, as our class was having a tour of the city, Livia and I saw two men wearing odd robes. I saw that one of them has a weird thing hanging on his belt. Out of curiosity, I asked our teacher about those two men.

"Those are Jedi," our teacher said. "They are the guardians of peace in the Republic. Those things on their belts are lightsabers."

Later, Livia told me that she wanted to be a Jedi.

One semester passed. Livia and I became the best of friends. I studied hard. I was very interested in politics, history and computers. One of my teachers noticed me and she recommended me to advanced classes. When the school year ended, Livia and I were tied as number one students of our class. A lot of girls didn't like us for that but I didn't mind as long as I had a friend.

That summer, Livia and I stayed in the school since we had no homes to return to. The good part there is that Livia and I became roomates.

Now I did not tell much about our school building. Though the Republic did not have that much credits, they did provide ample facilities for us scholars. The dormitories was a building annexed to the main building where the classrooms were. It had about 20 levels along with a basement. The library were also annexed to the main building. It had 5 levels. Since Livia and I didn't have much to do during the summer, we volunteered to be student assistants in the library. It our free time, we were able to get our hands books and records that are for higher levels. Sometimes we read novels simultaneously to compare stories. We truly enjoyed our time in the library.

One time, a librarian asked us to find a record in the stacks. We took the elevator down to the basement. The stack room was dark, although there were some areas where there were dim lights. Since only a few people went to this place, it was poorly maintained. There was the smell of dust everywhere. We easily found the record that we were supposed to find but we stayed a little longer because we wanted to browse through the archives' old records and books. Livia climbed the ladder since she was trying to get something from an upper shelf. Suddenly, one of the steps of the old ladder broke. She fell on the floor.

"Livia! Are you alright?" I asked frantically.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"You have a bruise on your elbow. I will get you to the nurse."

"I'm fine. I can do it myself. But— Hey! Look!" she exclaimed, pointing to small pyramid-like object that fell along with some other records. She grabbed it and hid them quickly in her pocket.

"I think we should turn that over to—"

"You there!" a voice shouted. It was a boy. In the dim light, I could see that he had dark brown hair and dark eyes. Although I guessed his age to be 13, his stern look made him look like he was 16. He asked, "What happened?"

"My friend was trying to get a record from an upper shelf. But the ladder broke and she fell down."

"You shouldn't be here. It is dark. As you have noticed, it is easy to get hurt. Find anything?"

"We found a—" Livia kicked me.

"We found the book that Ms. Ye, the librarian, asked us to find," Livia continued.

"Anything else?"

"Well—" Livia kicked me again.

"Nothing," Livia said.

"Alright, get a nurse to see to that elbow immediately."

"Okay."

We proceeded to the elevator. We wondered if he was an archive assistant or something. He seemed to have some authority in his voice. As I was assisting Livia to the elevator, I caught a glimpse of something hanging on his belt. It looked like a lightsaber. I thought that I was only dreaming.