Interlude One: Reflection
Some say that water is the medium of truth. It does not judge, does not create. Instead, it reflects only and exactly all of what it sees.
In one of the Chiss worlds, at the very edge of the Unknown Regions, lies a small lagoon, the bottom deeper than many of the highest buildings in Coruscant. Due to its depth, it is a perfect shade of blue, its flaccid waters only undulating gently when the breeze chooses to come. The sapphire color yields an exactly mirror, although only one has been able to stare into its depths.
This lagoon is also the key to understanding the link between past and future.
A small clearing of grass lies around the lagoon, perfectly green. These blades are only ever trodden once a month, and by feet that leave but the barest impression.
Trees surround the entirety of the clearing—the same forest that covers half of the planet. In their millennia of growth, these trees have formed a thick canopy, so that the only rays of sunlight in the clearing fall onto the water, and are thus reflected.
In the day, the clearing is harmless, looking like nothing more than a tangle of bright green vines running over the grass. Purple flower buds grow here and there from a vine; while there is no pattern to their location, they appear uniformly throughout. They look innocuous, but with one exception: these flowers remain closed during the day.
In the moonlight, the wisteria petals—now spread wide—are reduced to dusky, shimmering grey. In the moonlight, the flowers become deadly: poison coasts the inside of the petals—a poison where even the smallest smudge or trace is enough to kill. This is a poison that corrodes any container it is placed in so that, although many have tried to gather it, only one has succeeded.
In the night, creeping vines quickly grow over any bodies, so that by daylight there is no trace remaining but for a raised bump in the vines. It is a method used by many tyrants: the bodies and the people they represent are never destroyed, but merely pushed out of sight until they are forgotten—pushed out of sight until memories of them fade away.
To the north, a small path guides the traveler towards a worn wood cottage—the dwelling of the Guardian. She who lives in that cottage never answers the door, and any who pass by scurry away before the moon can shine upon the flowers.
She exits only once a month to gather the poison from the flowers when it is at its most potent. Her bare feet tread softly down the path, making light noises when they hit the dirt path. Each time she reaches the end—the beginning of where the vines overgrow the path—she pauses to take a long look. These looks are all she has ever seen of the outside world, and all she will ever see.
Each time she comes out, the path is ever short—the domain of the flowers is growing. Eventually, they will overrun the path and the cottage, and she will die. She will die as she lived—alone in her cottage, neither known by nor knowing what happen away from her little world.
But, for now, she lives on, with no goal but knowledge.
She picks the flowers, choosing each one with care. To her, each flower represents a human life—every stem a family and every vine a planet. She works briskly, picking the flowers of all those who have died—the few flowers in the many who have lost their poison.
In order to ascertain which are safe, she drags the vine over to the lagoon. Rather than using her failing vision, she trusts the water to show her the truth—to reflect the vine back to her. In these cases, however, the flower never appears in the reflection at all.
Then, she turns her attention to the flowers of those who are soon to die. As with before, the lagoon reveals this to her; looking at the flower in its waters, the petals are wilting.
In one place, she spots a perfectly circular vine—a circle of friends. There are already many places scarred from when that circle was broken and pieced back together, with new additions pushing themselves sin each time. Seeing the flowers in the water, she moves her mind towards the future, keenly searching to see their fate.
Seconds later, she has returned to the present, and picks exactly two of those flowers with immunity. They sting her fingers, but the poison has already weakened—the effects, if any, will be slight. This time, however, she does not bother to place the broken pieces of the circle back together, for she knows that it will never heal. The ends will eventually close by themselves, but they will be forever scarred by the breaking.
As she casts a last look into the clearing, she can see five particularly extravagant flowers. They are the future—the stars with the potential to shape change, and the ones who are moving towards that potential rather than away. And yet, because the clearing cannot sustain such growth, she knows that only one will survive the battle, and she will have four more flowers to pick.
The beginnings and endings of these lives are woven into the fabric of green stems and blossoming petals.