People were dancing, laughing, eating sweets, and in general making merry. Every species I had ever seen and heard of could be seen somewhere, and even others I could not describe. Everyone was dressed brightly in beautiful clothing. When I looked down, I no longer saw my dark Jedi robes. I was wearing a pale green dress, and my hair was down. I could hear music through the laughter, a flute and a violin playing the same tune. I tried to push my way to the edges of the crowd, but it seemed to have no end. The day was warm and the single sun was high in the sky. My feet were bare, I realized, as I felt soft grass under them.
I wiggled my toes, digging into the soft ground. I felt so calm, so at peace. This place was so beautiful. All I could sense in every direction was love, acceptance, understanding, and peace. Peace! I saw a pair of girls holding hands, walking close together, and an elderly pair giggled and said 'how cute, our grandchildren's generation'. No malice. No judgment. Just games, and laughter, and love.
"What is the cause for all this celebration?" I asked a young man as he skipped past. He nearly tripped over his own feet as he looked at me as if I had grown another head.
"Why, it's Midsummer's Day, Miss!" He said. "Though I can't blame whoever's been keeping you locked up in their basement, you'd think they'd tell you about this day! It's the most important one of the year, even more important than Christmas and All Hallows Eve!" Somehow I knew that these days he spoke of were no different from this one, but because this one was today it was ultimately more important.
"I'm…not from around here," I said. "Can you explain this 'Midsummer's Day' please?" He shrugged.
"Sure, why not? It's the day the Angels came, and the day that peace was made." With that, he skipped away. Suddenly I heard the sound of the flute rising in volume. It felt like a summon. I spun around and shoved my way through the crowd. They were tightly packed but many people moved politely aside for me.
The stage for the band was little more than a small raised dais of wood about a foot above the ground. Both musicians were human females. A tall and slender woman with light brown hair and brown eyes played the violin. She moved her hips and shoulders with every rock of her bow and dipped her chin along with the notes. Her shirt was green with gold trims, as was her long and baggy pants. She was barefoot. Both ankles bore a golden bracelet adorned with leaves that stood out against her creamy chocolate skin.
The flautist was shorter than the violinist. She had green eyes like Shanti's, but her hair was golden as the sun and her skin the color of pale milk chocolate, the color of someone who saw a lot of sun. She swayed back and forth in time with the notes, her long blue dress billowing about her knees. She wore a single necklace around her neck. It bore an unusual animal I had never seen before cast in pink transparent crystal. The creature looked aquatic.
'Dolphin,' something in me called it.
Sitting at the edge of the raised dais, at the feet of the flautist, was Jiam Akshay.
"It's so lovely here, isn't it?" He said. He rose to his feet. He wore green and brown, and his black hair was loose. "I'm so glad I can show you this first, Luminara."
"But what is this? Where am I?" My former master did not answer my questions. He instead raised his hands, and suddenly I flew from the celebration, up, up, into outer space. I could see the planet below me. It was the most beautiful planet I had ever seen. It was patterned with green and blue, and gold. I could see huge mountains, great lakes, and clean air. A single large star could be seen off in the distance, illuminating the planet.
The place radiated pure light energy. It was an entire planet of the light side.
"It is called Earth," Master Akshay said. "It was an old planet, older than the republic, older than the Jedi. Once it was a dark planet, dying and rotten. Then the angels came. They were angels of the force. This planet," he pointed to Earth, "is the original home planet of humans. It is the birthplace of the Jedi. A planet of pure light and love."
"Earth," I said, tasting the name. I had never spoken a word that sounded so...right. When i looked upon the planet, my heart danced. 'Home!' it said. I turned, looking for other planets in the system. I saw none, but as I turned, I spotted the largest asteroid I had ever seen.
"What you now know as the planet Kessel," Master Akshay said from behind me. I gasped. The asteroid was on a direct course for Earth!
"We have to stop it, Master! We have to do something-" he raised a hand.
"We are powerless here, Luminara. The events we view have already transpired, a long, long time ago."
I could only watch with my breath caught in my throat as Kessel crashed into the planet. The planet where the Jedi order had first began. Destroyed completely.
No! It had only split into two parts. Both went hurtling off in different directions, one to the east and one to the west. The huge planet was no more, and the space it once occupied was replaced by Kessel.
"There is still more to see, Luminara," Master Akshay said. We moved. It looked as if we had jumped into hyperspace. We came out a mere three seconds later. The half of Earth that had been flung east lay before us. It had fallen into orbit along with eight other planets and one tiny body I couldn't classify as a planet or an escaped moon. I could tell time had passed, as the planet was a sickly green color and radiated the dark side. As I had choked on the light side in the presence of Earth, now I was flooded with darkness.
"The left half of the pure planet of light," my former master said softly. "Known to its inhabitants as Maix."
"Maix?" I frowned. Where had I heard that name before?
A dying girl on a dying planet who sent out a distress signal with the force and was found by a certain Jedi master….
"Shanti!" I gasped. Master Akshay grimaced.
"After Earth was split, one half stayed in the light, while the other fell far into the dark. It was on this dark planet, on Maix, that Shanti spent her youngest years of life."
"That is the most…horrible…disgusting…It doesn't even deserve to be called a planet…that I have ever seen…" I murmured. I felt sick just looking at it.
"But for every dark planet there is a light one," he said. He took my hand, and we jumped into hyperspace again. When we came out, the swing from utter darkness to complete light almost blinded me. It was almost like being at Earth again, but smaller…
"Xiam, the right side of Earth, and the side that stayed in the light," he said. "Many people have attempted to settle it, for it is the most beautiful planet anyone has ever laid eyes on. But every species, every group, that has ever attempted to settle it has simply left. They say that it just doesn't feel right for them."
"What are you saying, Master?" I asked. He was getting at something, that was for sure.
"The Jedi have no choice but to leave the known galaxy. The only place for them to go is here, Xiam. It has been waiting for the Jedi for a long, long time." His eyes twinkled. "You must go, and take your friends, your love, your Padawan, there. Your number is 1 third."
I fell back into wakefulness. My heart was thumping. Xiam! I jumped out of bed. Tann burst into my room just as I was about to open the door.
"Master, I had this dream, and I-"
"You had a dream too?" I asked. She nodded fervently.
"Luminara!" I heard a voice yell from down the corridor. Shanti!
"We need to call a meeting, now!" She said. She was wearing a blue nightgown, and she looked-no. No time for that right now, Xiam is waiting!
"It seems I was not the only one visited in my sleep," I heard Master Ti say as she stepped around the corner. "Am I late to the party?"
"No, but Bultar and Master Choi are," Irka said.
"Slowpokes," Aayla's new Padawan Wone mumbled. Aayla chuckled. The two Jedi in question didn't take long to show up.
"We can go into my room," Shaak Ti said. Hers was the largest.
We sat in a circle, and talked. All of us, even the newer Padawans, had had a dream about the Planet of Light, Planet Earth, and its destruction. About how it split into Maix and Xiam, the planets of light and dark. . Everyone had been guided by someone who was dead, and who had been a mentor for them in life. And each of us had gotten a number from the person who guided us moments before waking.
"Master Fay gave me 1 first," Shanti said. "And not first as in at the beginning of the dream, she said it like it was part of the number."
"Master Akshay gave me 1 third," I said.
"I got 0 fourth from Kit," Aayla said.
"Yaddle gave me 0 sixth," Shaak said.
"Let's put them in order, and see what we get," Master Choi suggested.
When we did, we got 121040504319.
"What do you make of it?" I asked Shaak. My best friend was shaken after finding out she had been born and grown up on the darkest planet in the universe. She was laying her head on my shoulder and being very quiet.
"It sounded like coordinates at first, but it's too long," she muttered. "I don't know."
We tossed around ideas for a few minutes, and came up with nothing. Shanti had been silent the entire time, until she sat up suddenly.
"It's a date," the brown-haired woman suddenly blurted. Everyone looked at her.
"I should have seen it sooner," she said. She pulled out a piece of paper. "On Maix, we kept track of dates with seven days a week, four weeks in a month, 12 months per year, 10 years per decade, and 100 per century. The first two numbers tell what day. The twelfth day. The second two numbers tell what month. Ten. The month of October. The next four numbers tell the year. Four-thousand-fifty. If I can remember the calendar correctly, October 12, 4050 is in about two weeks. It's also the day I turn twenty-five."
"That's all well and good, but what about those last four numbers?" Bultar asked. Shanti laughed.
"That's easy too," she said. "If you take the numbers '4319' and flip them upside down, it reads 'Help' in my native language. In my school others used it to get their friends to give them answers on tests."
A dead silence had fallen over the room.
"October 12, 4050. Help." Shaak repeated what Shanti had said.
"Do you think it's a distress signal?"
"If it is, don't you think that the people who guided us would have told us outright?"
Things went downhill from there. Everyone was yelling except Shanti, myself, Shaak, and the Padawans. Well, no, Wone was yelling too. But I was getting a gut feeling.
"We need to go to Maix," I said. I stood up.
"Are you crazy? Go to that rotten block of filth? No offense, Shanti," Bultar said, jumping to her feet.
"None taken," My best friend said.
"I know that we need to go there, I just do. The people there must be in trouble."
"I sense it as well, Bultar," Master Choi said.
"But that planet almost killed her!" Bultar said, pointing in our general direction. Shanti shrugged.
"I agree with the others. I feel like this is the people of Maix asking for help." Bultar looked angrily at the ground.
"You sense it too, don't you?" Master Choi asked her. She nodded.
"I sense something else, though. The dark side."
Shanti bit back a laugh. "It's a planet made of the dark side, Bultar. Of course you'll sense the dark side."
"I sense more than just the planet…" she mumbled. Master Choi touched her wrist.
"It will be okay, Bultar," he said gently. "Shanti is strong. She will be fine." Bultar snatched her wrist away.
"Fine. I'll go with you. But don't expect me to like it." She stormed from the room.
"Do we even have the coordinates of Maix, anyway?" I asked, breaking the awkward silence.
"I do," Shaak said quietly. "I thought…someday if Shanti ever got homesick, I wanted to be able to take her to see her home…" Shanti smiled.
"You thought of everything."
"If you give me the coordinates," I said, "I'll take them up to the bridge and start our new course."
"The coordinates are 117-229," Shaak said. I turned to Shanti.
"Are you okay with this? I know…you don't have the best memories of that place. Do you think you'll be okay?"
"I'll be fine," she said. "I'm a lot stronger, physically and mentally, since then. I can deal with a few days of that atmosphere." She touched the mark on her forehead.
"Okay. I'll go to the bridge now," I said, turning and going up the stairs.
When our course was plotted, I started back to bed, but something stopped me. I went to Shanti's room, feeling something pulling me there.
"Hey, Lumi," she said as I stepped in the door. She was laying on her bed, facing the ceiling. I sat down beside her.
"Hello."
"You won't like Maix. The people there are…are…bad people." I touched her shoulder.
"I know. I know what they did to you." She grabbed my hand.
"I'm scared…" she whispered. "My family will probably try to kill me…" she gripped her lightsaber, Master Farr's old one, and squeezed it tightly.
"I won't let anything hurt you," I promised. "And you're far too strong."
"Thank you…I think I'm just letting Bultar's paranoia get to me…" she squeezed my hand and put her lightsaber back under the pillow. I started to stand, but she didn't release my hand.
"Don't…please don't go," she murmured. She sounded half-asleep. I sat back down, rested my head against the wall, and held her hand. She drifted off to sleep soon after.