I don't know how many of you remember it, but in chapter 25 of Over The Hills And Far Away, Anakin makes a comparison between him and the main character of an old fairy tale his mother used to tell him when he was a kid. So, the other day, I was translating that chapter for the Italian version of the story and I thought, hey, what I write the fairy tale? Since it's going to be mentioned again in Red Rain (and it's going to be very important!) I thought it would be nice to write it! So, here it is my dear readers!

But remember that this doesn't appear in the canon of Star Wars, I made it, it's my own creation, functional to the continuity of the story.

Be careful though: this version is not the one Anakin knows and tells in chapter 25 of Over The Hills... His mother (in my head of course, not in the canon universe) told him the shorter version, without the bad endings of the Red and Yellow Knight and the happy ending for the Black and White Knight. This change is useful for a future chapter of Red Rain, it's not a mistake.

This is the whole story.


Once Upon A Time There Was a Black And White Knight

A long time ago, on a planet far far away,

there were three brothers. Their name is lost in time, but their deeds are not forgotten, even after thousand of years have passed since they lived.

They were knights, strong and valorous. They trained every day of their youth to become protectors of the harmless, those who couldn't protect themselves from the actions of the criminals that infested the galaxy.

The eldest one, the Red Knight, was the bravest of all. He lived for the fight, he traveled all around the galaxy since he was twenty years old and fought thousands of battles. He always returned victorious from every battle and his actions decided the results of hundreds of wars.

He was well known and trusted by millions of people he had helped and they created stories around his figure. Some say he once fought against a dragon, a creature from the myths that devastated entire planets with his breath of fire, which caused havoc everywhere it touched.

Other say that he enslaved huge creatures that ate human beings. Other stories regarded his ability to fight with his sword and the strength of his shield.

His red shield was the real source of his power. It was infused with the power of a raging volcano. He had forged it himself from the metal extracted by the soil at its roots, then carried all its weight to the mouth of the flaming mountain. It took him six months to reach the peak of the volcano, and three months only to melt the metal. During that time, he meditated for long hours, in the heat generated by the continuous eruptions, and by the time the iron had melted, he had reached a level of knowledge few other men could achieve.

Then he spent a whole month forging his shield, making it his own, personal weapon of defense, but also offense. Its edges were sharp as razors, and he could cut his enemies in half using it. It was his own, because he added some of his own blood to the melted iron, and pronounced an oath to the Gods, asking him to make that shield invincible. The Gods, seeing into his pure heart that he wished nothing but to help people, granted his wish and made the shield invincible and weightless, also turning the shiny layer of iron into a flaming red magical item.

With it, it could endure the worst conditions, resist to desert heat and glacial cold, stand the flames of dragons and break teeth and bones of the toughest creatures. If he stuck it in the ground, during a sandstorm, he could find shelter hiding behind it, for its power would deflect the fiery sand and survive the worst of the sandstorms.

He was invincible, as long as he had his shield with him.

But other stories, stories that usually are not included into the records of his deeds, told that he was detached from the others. He had found a balance within himself that allowed nothing to penetrate his soul. He wasn't able to see that in the Galaxy there was more than wars and battles, than wrongs to be made right. He didn't see the feelings that the people in front of him, most of the time his enemies, experienced. He knew nothing about friendship, compassion, love. To him, everything was either right or wrong, there was nothing in between.

He had also forgot he had two younger brothers.

This state of total detachment made him do choices that from his point of view were absolutely right, but for others, they were immoral. The Red Knight, in his late years, was unable to distinguish between morality and righteousness. And sometimes, the two concepts didn't coincide.

After years of total emotional emptiness, years during which the Gods watched over him and hoped he would return on the right path, but he didn't. For this, he was punished. His shield was snatched away from his hands, and he wasn't even able to feel the difference. His apathetic state of mind made him decide he could go on without the powerful artifact. This sin of pride was the fatal flaw that drove him to his death, when, at the age of 156 years, he tried to fight a group of farmers turned scavengers by the famine that had struck their region.

Again, he wasn't able to choose between right and moral, and was killed in action, both because he was now old and weak, and both because he didn't have his shield anymore.

He now rests on that same volcanic planet he had forged his shield on, his tomb forgotten underneath the earth and the solid lava. The initial purity of his intention was tainted by his inability to feel the love as normal people do.

His younger brother though had a better life, though he was far from perfection too.

By the age of ten, he had discovered his love for archery. He built his first bow the same year, and started practicing every day. By the age of twenty, as his older brother had done, he embarked on the quest to make the perfect bow.

He traveled on one of the farthest planet of the Galaxy, where the best trees grew and for six months, he searched the perfect wood to make his perfect bow. He fought with wild beasts and strange creatures. He also befriended some of them, the most docile, those who helped him and protected him by the predators during the night, when he rested his limbs aching from the long and strenuous search.

Finally, one morning, he found the perfect tree. Strong, but soft at the same time. Perfect for the purpose. It took him a week to cut one of the biggest branches and two months to carve it to his needs.

The efforts he put in the process left him marked for life. His mind was now resolute and steady, his arms strong and when he pulled the string of his bow, he could stand motionless for hours, aiming to his target.

His deeds are more silent than his brother's, but famous nonetheless.

The Yellow knight seldom spoke, he traveled alone from planet to planet, he listened carefully to what people had to tell and reassured them, with a wide, sympathetic smile on his face. That smile never left his lips, and that made people love him even more.

Still, even if he had devoted his life to the guardianship of peace and his people's safety, he wasn't happy. He found solace in making things go better, but still there was something very wrong with his life.

There was no love.

Non that he couldn't feel it, no, he was full of love for everything, living and unliving, but there was no love in his life. He rarely remained in one place long enough to create bonds with people there, and he felt like there was something missing from his soul. A missing piece.

But that wasn't enough to stop his quest.

He never put his personal wishes in front of the others' safety. He protected people from the infernal creatures he met on the way, banishing them from the face of the Galaxy.

He was deeply saddened by the news his brother had perished, but he didn't leave space for his own sadness to stop him. He was already advanced in age, but still he roamed around and shoot arrow after arrow from his bow, until he was too weak to do so. He was 230 years old.

At that time, he was on a beautiful planet not far from the place his brother rested. Its beautiful, thick forests and wonderful lakes were the frame of his last days. A young woman carefully and lovingly took care of this weak old man, listened to his tales and wrote them all, to tell her children about the man that captured her heart with his adventures.

He died peacefully, but still unhappy, for there was still that missing piece from his heart that crippled his feelings. He was able to love unconditionally all the living things, but was completely incapable of having a special person at his side.

The younger brother, the Black and White Knight, he was the most unfortunate.

He was much younger than his other brothers. He was born when his older brother was already thirty years old, at the apex of his glory.

He grew up in the shadow of the two Knights, always trying to be worth of both of them, but his disposition was not as balance as theirs. He was a young boy who wanted to make his brothers proud of him, but rarely managed to do so.

He suffered an ill temper, always on the verge of burst of rage because of his failings. He felt like he wasn't worth of any of this. He couldn't concentrate on anything long enough to master it, so he didn't excel in anything.

By the age of twenty, he traveled around the galaxy himself, like his brothers had done, but during this long and seemingly endless voyage, while his brothers had earned a strong faith in their beliefs, he lost it, completely. He saw too many wrong things around him, and he didn't feel powerful enough to do anything. He tried to help, he freed slaves from their tormentors, but new ones returned. He fought hideous creatures and sent them back from where they had come, but in a couple of years everything returned like before.

This made him lose hope in himself, and his self esteem was as low as the lowest rung of hell. He couldn't find a sense in his life, everything he did seemed to be wrong or useless, and he easily was prey of a deep despair and depression, not to mention that his rage sometimes caused him to lose control of his strength and he risked to kill, or even killed, innocent people.

Unlike his brothers, who had earned great and special abilities, the Red one through an oath to the Gods, the Yellow one through his own actions and the sweat of his brow, he didn't earn anything from his long voyages all around the Galaxy. He earned only a long list of bad memories and even worse failures.

But he possessed something they lacked. The Black And White Knight could feel love. He could feel the emotions the other two completely lacked. And one day, after years of loneliness and after being stranded by all those who loved him, he found a special woman, a very special woman who gave him refuge during a snowstorm. He fell in love with her, a deep and unconditioned love that renewed his hope in life. She taught him the patience and the acceptance of our own failures, she explained that not all failures come to punish us. She told him, one afternoon while he recovered from the damages the bitter cold had done to him, that failures come when we need to learn something. Failures come to teach us how to do things better, and our place in life. She herself had learned to deal with failures in a different way as she grew up.

The Black And White Knight listened to the young woman in rapt, eagerly gathering every word she said and keeping it safe in his heart forever. He then resumed his voyage, but going against everything he had been taught as a child, he promised to return and to marry her.

So he did. Ten years later, when he was thirty six, he returned and married the girl. When his brothers knew of his forbidden marriage, they disowned the Black And White Knight, but at that point he didn't care anymore.

He had found what they lacked. His balance came from the strength of their bond, and it was far stronger than their so called balance, something that brought them only unhappiness.

In the years that came, he grew stronger and his deeds changed the lives of many, all around the Galaxy. He didn't even have to travel like his brothers. Some of the actions he did on one place had a strong resonance on other planets and caused many good things to happen, other than what he had done himself. His deeds caused people to start believing in themselves and stand up and fight for what they thought it was right.

Through failures, the Black And White Knight had found his path, through love he had found his balance. He had endured the adversities of life and found his own place in the circle of life. At her side.


So, here it is. It's a tad different from the story Anakin knows, but it's better you know before I go on with the story because it's gonna be rather important. The idea of the different forms comes from the tradition to cut some parts of fairy tales and stories in generals to make them adapt for kids, the Brothers Grimm tales are always cut and somewhat censored before they are told to kids. The real tale, it's a totally different matter most of the time. So it is in this one. The fairy tales for kids is "censored", to make it somehow educative, while the real myth (of course in my own story, not in the canon of Star Wars, this doesn't exist, it's a creation of my mind, roughly inspired by an italian song) is completely different, and if you read carefully, you'll notice the three knights are nothing more than metaphors. It's up to you understand what they stand for.