Time, Memory and Forgiveness. Leia played her finger in the flame of her candle. Such important roles, the goddesses that escorted the dead, but Leia hadn't thought of them in a long time. The- not the goddesses, but the idea, the things- were also three that made up a large part of a living being's consciousness, weren't they. Time, memory, and forgiveness. Yes.
Roles, Dr. Renzatl had noticed.
Change is what Leia noticed.
Not change. Upheaval. Reversal. The dead outnumbered the living.
It was the living who needed shuttling to a new place. That's what Leia told the boy, Jargist, the first to leave Buteral. The dead were all together, in the Graveyard. Their home. Alderaan. Leia said the word, whispered afterlife, let the word fall from her lips, and the flame jerked with her breath.
She wondered if there was such a thing. For the living there had to be. A life after.
Leia had found her way to Buteral so far. From the Death Star to Yavin, to a brief dalliance among the dead in the Graveyard, and now she was here. She wasn't done, she thought. And the others, the not-dead, they were being gathered from any point of the galaxy and brought to Buteral, and when they could, they would be launched outward again.
How would they know? What would tell them they found the home they were looking for?
The role of the goddesses was to escort. They got body from the smoke and flame of the candle and soul from the stories. If the flame didn't burn to light the way and the living didn't bridge the connection with tales of life, then the dead wandered, forever seeking.
But these dead were fine, Leia thought. Home. Together, and so many. There was no getting lost. It was the living who needed help.
Lost... What did they look like to the goddesses? Were they small figures, endlessly moving? And she pictured herself, the Death Star gown billowing in the wind while she walked the shoal in the dark, while she paced the circular corridor of the Falcon, while she was careful to stay on the paths at Yavin and not fall into the suck sand.
She lost her way on the Death Star. She saw herself- she and Luke- he was lost too, wasn't he?- turning random corners, evading stormtroopers and trying to find their way back to... Han. And the Falcon.
And what about the Death Star? Leia's eyes were hypnotized by the yellow shape of the flame; it showed her things she shouldn't be able to see. Didn't the Death Star need escorting too? At least so it wouldn't haunt the living. So it wouldn't be found again.
Time, Memory and Forgiveness. There were candles in the courtyard, there was a recording booth. The three could have a body, if they still existed.
It didn't feel like they did.
But they were goddesses! They danced among the stars and wove an earth from their hands! They existed before all else, when there was nothing. And now there was nothing again. They should be able to be here.
It was the Death Star that made nothing. The Death Star took their creation, and humans built the Death Star. Not from nothing; from pieces of metal perfectly engineered.
Humans gained the power of the gods. They weren't supposed to, were they, Leia asked the god of irony and truth. Your own riddle backfired on you. Maybe you are dead, too.
Dead, or didn't exist? The Month of Flame- really, if one considered the course of human life, the flame must be eternal. Everything died. Time was life and death. And Memory was so a soul would let go the living, and Forgiveness so the living freed the dead. That's why there were three. Each needed the other.
And Leia's mind gave them form. They wore the white of day and the black of night. Below their flowing forms, trapped like from under a floor shiny and polished, was them again; faint and ghostly, neither shadow nor reflection, but full of feeling. Sadness, anger and perseverance.
She had evoked a memory of the Death Star again, hadn't she. The tapered roundness of the flame returned and Leia blinked. It was a true memory; she hadn't before consciously noted how... clean the Death Star was, how perfectly waxed and smooth the floors were, but there she was, or her reflection anyway, hers and Luke's, rippling along their feet as they fled-
And Luke shot the controls and the bridge fell away.
As quickly as that, their reflections disappeared. Before them was open air, below them a long drop. Wouldn't it be nice, Leia mused, a soft smile on her face, if they had looked like gods, Luke throwing a grappling hook, like spinning a strand from his fingers, and he and Leia had swung across the void, creators-
But all they had done was find Han. Leia frowned, because that was not all; there was Chewie and the Falcon, but this was a matter for humans.
Three.
The pilot, the farmer, the Princess. Time, Memory and Forgiveness.
Leia shuddered, and brought her finger to her mouth, letting her tongue salve the burn.