Supply Run
(16 BBY)
"Serina! Can you give me a hand?" Marisa had just returned from the supplies store at Marhead and was starting to unload her cargo speeder.
"Coming!" Serina quickly laid down the pad with her special assignments from Marc and rushed out of the house to help her aunt. "Is there anything left at the store or did you empty it all together?" she teased her aunt when she saw the huge number of bags. She grabbed as many as she could manage and started toward the house.
"Hmm, wasn't it you who wanted a party? Or do you want me to bring everything back to the store?" Marisa's pretended indifference turned into a broad smile when her niece dropped her bags and gave her a big hug.
"We're really going to have a party? That's great! I love that. I never had a party before." Beaming with excitement, Serina picked up the groceries she had just dropped and took them inside. Soon there were only two large sacks with supplies left in the speeder.
"Just leave those there," Marisa told her niece as she wanted to pick up one of them. "They are not for us. You remember Carla?" Serina nodded. Carla was one of her aunt's friends from Marhead, whom she had met once or twice in the past two standard years. "Carla has an older woman by the name of Tantra whom she delivers some supplies to regularly. But she has some health issues and can't do the run up into the mountains this time. So, she asked me, if I could step in for her."
"Up in the mountains?" Serina was curious. Only very few people lived that far away from the settlements.
"Yeah, apparently that woman is some sort of hermit; has been living up there for quite some years all by herself. Must be in her late seventies, from what Carla told me. Would you like to come with me later on?" It would take a good three hours to get to Tantra's house. She would have to fly by the directions given her by Carla and hoped that Serina would come along. You never knew what could happen on a trip into an unfamiliar area. It would be better if she didn't go there alone.
"Sure, I'd love to!" Serina was only too happy to accept her aunt's offer. Vacation time at her aunt's place could not be compared with what she had been used to from her parents' farm. Her uncle grew only exotic vegetables and some rare types of grain. Harvest time for those did not necessarily coincide with her vacation time. Therefore, besides working on her special school assignments from Marc and continuing her work-out plan, she had just been lazing around the house, reading or watching the HoloNet for the past few weeks. Driving to the mountains was a welcome change to that routine.
They had opened up the convertible top of the cargo speeder and were carefully following the directions Carla had given them. The gentle caress of the warm breeze and the beauty of the untouched nature at the base of the mountains had caused Serina and her aunt to lapse into a comfortable silence. They had done a lot of planning for the upcoming party during the first hours of the trip; now they were just enjoying the surroundings, while they threaded their way between the gradually rising slopes deeper into the mountains.
Serina let her thoughts wander back to the awful events two standard years prior. She seldom allowed herself to dwell on what had happened, since she still put most of the blame on herself. The death of her parents had left her devastated, but the shooting down of the attacking ship had been something else. At first, she had been filled with pride at her success; then she had realized that she had just killed three human beings. It left her conscience-stricken and drained. Apathetically she had endured the commotions of the week that followed: the funeral, the appointing of a trustee, who would sell the crops and afterwards the whole farm, packing up all her belongings and what she wanted to keep of her parents' stuff and finally moving to her aunt's place, the only close relative she had left.
When school resumed, she had finally been able to return to a certain amount of normality. Since her parents could no longer object, Marc, after a long talk with her aunt and uncle, had made arrangements for her to skip two grades. This had also caused him to no longer be her class teacher. Thus, nobody could object to him becoming more of a fatherly friend for her in the months that followed. They had continued their extracurricular training and she would try to skip another grade after the next school term.
Actually - even so she scolded herself even thinking it – there was one positive aspect of her parents' death: unlike her mother, her aunt was a firm believer in the Force and shared her conviction that the blame put on the Jedi was a lie of the Imperial government. But Marisa knew only too well, that with the way the Empire had developed in the past three standard years since its declaration it was dangerous to say either out loud. And she had urgently besought her niece to stick with her mother's advice and not tell anybody about her visions.
"Serina, please concentrate on the directions, we should be getting close to that turn-off Carla told me about." Marisa had slowed the speeder to a mere crawl. Serina looked at the map they had brought along and Carla's directions. After checking their exact location on the speeder's dashboard and comparing it with the map, she pointed to some bushes just a few hundred meters ahead to their right. "The entrance to the valley should be right over there, if the map is correct."
Slowly Marisa edged the speeder forward. Once they had reached the bushes, a narrow valley became visible. The entrance was barely wide enough to pass with the cargo speeder. Careful to not scrape along the sharp edges of the rock wall that bordered the ravine they moved forward. Soon the path started winding upwards and finally opened onto a plateau with a small house built tightly against the rock wall on the left side.
As the speeder pulled up in front of the house, the door opened and a small woman, leaning heavily on a wooden cane, peered out at them.
"You are not Carla!" she greeted them.
"No, I'm Marisa and this is my niece Serina." Marisa introduced them as they got out of the speeder. "You must be Tantra. Carla is sick and she asked me to bring you the supplies." They walked around the speeder and pulled the two heavy sacks from the cargo area. "Where do you want them?"
"Just follow me." The old woman turned and, with short, halting steps, led them deeper into the house. In the far back, hewn into the rock wall, was a small storage area with several shelves in it. "Just put them there, I'll sort them out later."
As they were getting ready to leave the house again, Tantra suddenly grabbed Marisa's arm. "A special niece you have there," she told her. "Do you know that?"
"What are you talking about?" Marisa looked at her with a puzzled expression on her face.
"Come, sit with me for a moment; tell me about her." With unexpected strength, the old woman pulled Marisa toward some chairs arranged around a small table in her front room and made her sit down. Not knowing what to make of the strange situation, Serina followed suit. As she watched their host fetch some glasses and a pitcher with fresh water and place them on the table, a strange sensation stirred in her. Though she was certain that she had never met Tantra before, yet there was something strangely familiar about the woman, as if there was an invisible connection between them, a sort of kindred spirit. The longer Serina sat and watched her, the stronger the impression got.
Suddenly, Tantra turned and looked her straight in the eyes. "You can feel it too, can't you?" Her gaze was piercing, leaving no doubt in Serina's mind what she was talking about. Unable to utter a word, she just nodded.
"What are you talking about?" The confusion on Marisa's face deepened as her glance wandered from Serina to Tantra and back again to her niece, yet for long moments she received no answer.
"The Force is strong in her," Tantra finally explained as she sat down in an empty chair and poured water into the glasses. "But I think you know that already. That's why you are here."
Before Marisa could respond, Serina gushed out, "Are you a Jedi?"
"No, no," the old woman chuckled, "I never got that chance; might not have been suited to it either. I guess my parents were not much different from yours, eh? Didn't want to lose me, didn't bring me to the Jedi. So, I never got proper training. But I once had a close friend who was a Jedi." Serina could sense the sad longing that memory caused in Tantra, as she sat there silently lost in thoughts of the past.
"He tried to teach me, basic stuff, limited, but sometimes helpful," she finally continued. "But tell me about yourself. You are in turmoil. Something has happened. Not that long ago. I can feel it in you."
As Tantra looked expectantly at her, Serina shot a quick glance at her aunt. Marisa gave a short nod of approval. After what she had just heard, her niece's secret would be well-kept by this old hermit.
Serina turned back to look at their host. "You must know: I have these dreams. I've always had them; as far back as I can remember, even as a little child. And some of them really take place, hours or days later. The others might too, but I can't be sure." Serina swallowed down the lump that formed in her throat. "Two standard years ago, I saw my parents get killed in one of those dreams." While tears welled up in her eyes she recounted the events of that fateful night. "So, in the end, it was me who caused their death. It was all my fault!" She buried her face in her hands and wept bitterly.
Marisa put her arm around her niece and gave her a tight squeeze. "It's all right. It wasn't your fault," she tried to comfort her.
"Listen to your aunt. She is right: it wasn't your fault," Tantra confirmed. "Had it not been you, something else would have distracted your mother. There was nothing you could have done to change it." As Serina threw her a dubious look, she added, "When I was young there were many stories told about the Jedi Knights, about their adventures and their powers. Force-visions, that's what they called what you are seeing. I remember some of the stories about these visions and they all have one thing in common: as much as some of them tried, only very, very seldom they were able to change the outcome and if they did, it mostly ended worse than the vision had foreseen. There was nothing you could have done, believe me, nothing at all! So, quit blaming yourself!" She reached over and gently padded Serina's knee. "Blaming yourself will not bring your parents back. It just keeps you from moving forward."
For long moments, they sat there in silence. Serina was trying to consider what Tantra had told her, but her mind was in a fuddle and she couldn't think it through to the end. "I will have to think some more about what you just told me," she finally conceded.
"You do that," Tantra admonished her. "And if you want to, you can come back anytime you like and I'll try to teach you all I've ever learned about the Force."
"Really?" Serina was surprised by the unexpected offer. Then she looked at her aunt. "Would that be all right with you?"
"Sure, I don't mind." Marisa was pleased with the grateful smile that spread across her niece's face, glad that the horrors of her parents' death seemed to be forgotten, at least for the moment.
