========
The Commenor Years - A Tale Of Danni Quee
A Star Wars New Jedi Order fanfiction
Tale Two - Knowing Without Knowing
By: Mark "Moogle" Brown (moogle@fanforce.net)
========
Disclaimer: People way richer than me own a lot of the things in this story, but since they
are so nice they don't care.
***
"Mommy!" shouted a five-year-old Danni Quee as she bounded into the foyer in the
Quee residence. The bag the girl carried went flying over against the wall as she threw her
arms out wide.
Danni's mother turned and smiled at her, though she made no move to get up from the
reclining chair she sat in. The girl knew that was because soon she would have a new baby
sister, although she didn't understand why or how. "I'll tell you when you're older," her
mother kept telling her.
"Hello, sweetie," replied Marla as Danni leapt onto her to kiss her on the cheek.
"Be careful, dear, you don't want to hurt your sister."
Danni gave an emphatic shake of her head indicating the truth of the statement. "No,
ma'am."
The woman motioned for Danni to sit down in a chair next to her. Danni complied.
"Why don't you tell me about your day at school?" suggested Marla.
Briefly, Marla considering tuning out Danni while she was relaying the events of the
day. She had practice with it, after all, considering how often she found herself dealing
with politicians, and was good enough that she could even pick up on important bits of
monologues without actually paying attention. But it didn't feel right to do it to her own
daughter.
Her daughter absolutely bubbled. She recounted the mundane events of the day with
animated gestures, smiling the entire time as she told Marla all about the teacher praising
her, the boy who would not behave, her schoolwork and how she'd finished it all before she
left the school and had none to do at home.
The smile was infectious. Marla smiled back.
Danni continued to prattle on about what she'd eaten for lunch - which Marla knew
already since she'd packed it, - about how one of the other students said she was really
smart. Her eyes were lit up the entire time.
"...and that's what happened at school today," the girl concluded.
Marla reached over and mussed her daughter's hair a bit. "Do you want to go out and
play with the other girls and boys?"
Danni pursed her lips and considered for a moment. She smiled and nodded. "Mm!"
The door chime rang. "Go get the door, then you can clean up and go outside," the
woman said.
"Okay!" Danni beamed as she ran over to answer the door. It opened to reveal an old
lady whom she didn't know very well.
"Hello, Danni, how are you today?" Danni had seen the old lady a few times before,
mostly in the last few months. The lady was about seventy years old, she knew, and came over
to see her mommy. And she remembered the lady's name was Kari.
"Good afternoon, Miss Kari. I am doing fine," the girl said with a smile, trying her
best to be polite. She offered a clumsy curtsy.
A smile crossed the old woman's face. It would be just like Marla to teach her
daughter how to speak politely but forget to teach how to curtsy. "Can I speak to your
mother, young lady?"
As it turned out, that step was unnecessary, since Marla recognized the voice.
"Kari!" the pregnant woman called out. She propped herself up with one elbow and waved with
her other hand.
"Don't get up, I'll come over there." Marla was about to get up to try to walk over
to where Kari was standing, and so earned the rebuke. Kari crossed the space and sat down in
a chair next to her 'patient'.
Danni followed her over, but was waved off by her mother. "You can go clean up, then
go outside when you're ready, sweetie." Danni didn't think much of this, so she grinned and
skipped off.
As she retreated towards her bedroom, she caught a couple of pieces of the
beginning of the discussion between her mother and the lady.
"How is it?" the lady asked softly.
"Why do I let him do this..." she heard her mother say, somewhat angrily, before she
passed out of earshot.
Being five, Danni held little interest in grown-up talk, even if she could
understand of it, which she couldn't. All she knew was that it was boring and time she spent
listening to it would be better spent changing out of her school clothes and into play
clothes.
It took Danni a couple of minutes to change; she was not quite yet an expert at
dressing herself, or finding and picking out clothes to wear. She knew well enough what she
liked, just not where to find it. When she emerged she was wearing a plain navy shirt and
pants.
Neither of the adults paid her any attention as she made her way out of the house.
This was no surprise to Danni, as more than one adult never paid her any attention, or any
children, because that was just what adults did, even her mommy. As she passed, she ended up
hearing more fragments of the conversation.
"...Rodan doesn't know?" Kari was finishing.
"Of course not, and I intend to..." her mother replied.
The name Rodan sounded somewhat familiar to Danni, but she put it out of her mind.
Whoever they were, if her mother didn't want him to find something out, then he wouldn't
find out. With that thought, Danni walked out of the Quee residence.
***
Right across the way was the playground where Danni and some of the other children
went to spend time after their school was out. Danni knew her mother would have been proud
if she were watching; Danni crossed only after looking both ways for approaching speeders.
It was not a necessary precaution, this time. The day had not progressed far enough for the
business folk to be on their way back to their homes.
Danni noticed that there were several other children there already. This did not
surprise her when she thought about it. She knew that she had been delayed some by the
arrival of her mother's friend - no, midwife, she reminded herself. Whatever a midwife was.
Danni didn't even know what a wife was, let alone a midwife.
"Hey, Danni! C'mere!" a girl's voice called out. Without looking, Danni knew it was
a girl she knew from school, Rachelle.
She looked up and waved back at Rachelle, who was sitting on one of the swings.
Danni walked over to join her when suddenly there was a sharp pain in her head and suddenly
things started flashing in front of her eyes.
She saw herself swinging next to Rachelle, then Rachelle saying, "I'm going to go
home and get a drink." She saw a bad man lurking by a speeder. She saw the bad man
approaching Rachelle on the way home. She saw Rachelle, bruised, bloody.
They were very disturbing things for Danni to see, because she knew as she saw them
that they weren't happening right now, but they just felt... real. Far more real than
anything Danni had ever experienced before in her life. She did not know it, but it was a
very sheltered life.
Danni realized that she must have stopped in her tracks, that there must be a
shocked expression on her face, because her friend came running off the swings at her like
a pack of Stormtroopers were chasing her.
"Danni? Hey, Danni! Are you okay?" Rachelle was over next to her now, and she nodded
as she tried to catch her breath. "What happened?"
"I... I don't know." This had never happened to Danni before, where something had
come along that she could not begin to try to explain in her curious child's mind. And she'd
never felt so scared either.
Of course, Rachelle knew none of this. "Let's go play, Danni!" She grabbed Danni by
the wrist and dragged her off to the swings.
A child's mind is at times a liability. Most of these times are when things call for
them to be well-behaved, and the well-meaning curiosity of the child simply interferes with
things. It can also be a liability when trying to scold a child, or impress some other sort
of lesson upon the child.
But for this same reason the mind of a child is a blessing. Because no matter how
grim something may appear, it will not bear much thinking for a young child, whose curiosity
will naturally take over and shift thought to less dark subjects, whether or not the child
might actually want to think about something else.
Fortunately for Danni's sake, despite her intelligence that seemed to be far above
the average five-year-old, she still had the typical mind of a child, and playing on the
swings with her friend was plenty enough to take her mind to other things. Like being a
five-year-old girl and playing with her friend.
Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to half an hour. The strange experience Danni had
was out of sight and out of mind. She looked over at Rachelle, who was slowing down on her
swing.
"I'm going to go home and get a drink," the other girl said. "Do you want one?"
Things all came crashing down in the front of Danni's mind. She gulped and shook her
head, too unsettled to even respond verbally. Rachelle did not notice this.
Danni's swing came to a halt as soon as Rachelle turned and walked away. She tried,
oh, did she try, to put what she had seen out of her mind. She was frightened more than she
had ever been, would ever be for a long time to come. Even so, she might have successfully
ignored the feeling.
Just then, a speeder pulled up near the playground, a speeder that looked so
familiar that it increased the sense of dread Danni was experiencing. That feeling tripled
when she saw the bad man from her vision get out of the speeder and fall into step behind
Rachelle.
Part of Danni wanted to scream, part of her wanted to cry, part of her wanted to run
home, to never go outside again, to forget all of this. None of these parts were at the
forefront, however. The biggest part of Danni knew, somehow, that she was the only one that
could stop what she had experienced from coming true. She took off running towards her
friend, too scared to scream anything, but too scared to stay in place.
Time seemed to slow for Danni. She ran, as fast as her little legs would take her,
towards where her friend was standing. The bad man sped up and grabbed a hold of Rachelle.
Rachelle tried to scream but the bad man covered her throat. The bad man tried to put
Rachelle into his speeder.
Someone screamed "THAT MAN IS A BAD MAN!" A mother of one of the children turned to
look and saw what was going on. Danni realized that she had been the one to scream. The
mother reached into her purse and pulled out something. The bad man had his back to Danni,
to the mother.
A red bolt shot past Danni, struck the bad man in the shoulder. The bad man spun
around, letting Rachelle fly. Rachelle hit the ground and started to cry. Danni reached
where Rachelle landed. She felt the tears running down her cheeks.
Time returned back to normal. The other children were all crying for their mommies
and daddies. Parents were showing up all over the place, including Danni's mother, with a
fussing midwife in tow insisting she should not be on her feet.
Rachelle looked at her through tear-filled brown eyes. She hadn't even been crying
long enough to have bloodshot eyes. "Th-thank you, Danni," she whispered right before she
started sobbing.
Danni muttered something back. It might have been "You're welcome," but then again
it might not have been. She felt the arms of her mother around her at the same time she saw
Rachelle's mother reach Rachelle and start comforting her.
Danni expected her mother to say something to her, or start asking her questions,
right then and there. But instead she sent the midwife home and brought Danni back inside
before Danni ever even looked like something was on her mind.
***
They were inside a couple of minutes later. Marla did not yet know what had gone on,
but she was expecting her daughter to lose her composure at any second, and she was actually
quite surprised that it had not happened yet.
"What happened, Danni?" she asked softly. She was sitting in her chair from earlier,
reclining again, and Danni sat in one of the other chairs.
At first Danni looked confused, as though she was considering which of two answers
to give. Marla made a note of that for afterwards.
"Rachelle was going to get a drink." Danni's voice was barely a whisper. The
outburst was coming soon, Marla knew. "I saw... I saw a man get out of a speeder, and he
looked like a... a bad man. He went after Rachelle and tried to take her into his speeder,
and I wanted to get help, so I screamed, and then..."
Tears streamed down Danni's cheeks, and Marla reached out. Danni caught on and came
over to embrace her mother. Marla made soothing noises and gently ran fingers through
Danni's hair.
She already knew what had happened after that. Her years as an astrophysicist had
taught her nothing if not to be observant. One of the mothers across the playground had
pulled a hold-out blaster and nailed the man, though where she got the gun and how she
learned to shoot it so well, Marla wasn't sure she wanted to know. Another thing she'd
picked up on over the years was when it was better not to ask.
There seemed to be a pause in Danni's sobs. Marla looked down at her to find that
Danni was staring at her intently, working her lips. "What is it, sweetie? Is something
wrong?"
Slowly, Danni nodded. "I saw it happen... before it happened. I was walking there
and things started appearing in front of me, and I saw the bad man, and Rachelle, and I... I
knew Rachelle was going to get hurt if I didn't do anything..." Danni grew quiet, looking at
her mother's face to see if she could find some answer, any answer.
Marla's countenance was steeled into an unreadable expression. She had been hoping
this day would never come, but expecting it all of the same.
"Danni," she began with conviction, "it's time I told you something about you and I.
We're both special, you and I and only a few other people. I don't know what exactly it is,
but I know that we're special." That last part was a lie. She did know very well what it
was, but she also knew that Danni would be better off figuring it out on her own, as she had
figured out from her own mother what was going on. "Some times, you might see things. Other
times you might just look at someone and know that something is going to happen to that
person.
"It's like you know things, without actually knowing them."
"Should I pretend they aren't there?" Danni asked innocently.
"No," Marla snapped immediately, startling Danni. "No," she said again, softer. "It
is very important that if you feel like that again, you do what you did. What makes us
special, makes that happen to us, and it wants us to know that we need to do something."
"What is it?" Danni wondered. Marla could see the tears had stopped, that the
child's curiosity had taken over, which was probably for the better.
"I don't know." It hurt to lie to her daughter, but she knew that Danni was better
off not knowing right now.
"I can't wait to tell Rachelle!" exclaimed Danni.
"No!" Marla snapped, louder than before, startling Danni worse than before. "This
has to be a secret between you and I and nobody else. A lot of people out there don't like
special people, and if they knew about us they would want to hurt us. You don't want us to
get hurt, do you?"
Danni shook her head obediently. "But why would they do that?"
"I don't know, Danni... I just don't know." replied Marla, glad that she could
answer and tell the truth for once. It hurt her that she had to explain things like this to
Danni when she was so young, but it had to be done.
"Mommy, I'm tired."
Marla knew she was supposed to stay in the recliner or Kari would get mad at her,
but exceptions had to be made, like when her daughter wanted to take a nap after she was
very frightened. She walked with Danni into her bedroom, tucked the girl under the covers,
and kissed her on the forehead. Danni was asleep before she was out of the room.
Once she was back in the main room, Marla flicked on the holoprojector and had on
some old holos, but she wasn't watching them. She was far too busy wondering about things.
Wondering whether the events of the day were ordained to happen, and if so, how long
they had been. Wondering if Danni told anyone else before Marla told her not to - she didn't
think so. Wondering if her next daughter would be special, too.
Most importantly, she was wondering what her own mother would think about how she
had told Danni that she had Jedi heritage.
"She'd be proud," Marla said to no one in particular. A smile crossed her face just
then, and that was how she fell asleep. With a smile on her face, and dreaming of long-gone
good times.
***
The Commenor Years - A Tale Of Danni Quee
A Star Wars New Jedi Order fanfiction
Tale Two - Knowing Without Knowing
By: Mark "Moogle" Brown (moogle@fanforce.net)
========
Disclaimer: People way richer than me own a lot of the things in this story, but since they
are so nice they don't care.
***
"Mommy!" shouted a five-year-old Danni Quee as she bounded into the foyer in the
Quee residence. The bag the girl carried went flying over against the wall as she threw her
arms out wide.
Danni's mother turned and smiled at her, though she made no move to get up from the
reclining chair she sat in. The girl knew that was because soon she would have a new baby
sister, although she didn't understand why or how. "I'll tell you when you're older," her
mother kept telling her.
"Hello, sweetie," replied Marla as Danni leapt onto her to kiss her on the cheek.
"Be careful, dear, you don't want to hurt your sister."
Danni gave an emphatic shake of her head indicating the truth of the statement. "No,
ma'am."
The woman motioned for Danni to sit down in a chair next to her. Danni complied.
"Why don't you tell me about your day at school?" suggested Marla.
Briefly, Marla considering tuning out Danni while she was relaying the events of the
day. She had practice with it, after all, considering how often she found herself dealing
with politicians, and was good enough that she could even pick up on important bits of
monologues without actually paying attention. But it didn't feel right to do it to her own
daughter.
Her daughter absolutely bubbled. She recounted the mundane events of the day with
animated gestures, smiling the entire time as she told Marla all about the teacher praising
her, the boy who would not behave, her schoolwork and how she'd finished it all before she
left the school and had none to do at home.
The smile was infectious. Marla smiled back.
Danni continued to prattle on about what she'd eaten for lunch - which Marla knew
already since she'd packed it, - about how one of the other students said she was really
smart. Her eyes were lit up the entire time.
"...and that's what happened at school today," the girl concluded.
Marla reached over and mussed her daughter's hair a bit. "Do you want to go out and
play with the other girls and boys?"
Danni pursed her lips and considered for a moment. She smiled and nodded. "Mm!"
The door chime rang. "Go get the door, then you can clean up and go outside," the
woman said.
"Okay!" Danni beamed as she ran over to answer the door. It opened to reveal an old
lady whom she didn't know very well.
"Hello, Danni, how are you today?" Danni had seen the old lady a few times before,
mostly in the last few months. The lady was about seventy years old, she knew, and came over
to see her mommy. And she remembered the lady's name was Kari.
"Good afternoon, Miss Kari. I am doing fine," the girl said with a smile, trying her
best to be polite. She offered a clumsy curtsy.
A smile crossed the old woman's face. It would be just like Marla to teach her
daughter how to speak politely but forget to teach how to curtsy. "Can I speak to your
mother, young lady?"
As it turned out, that step was unnecessary, since Marla recognized the voice.
"Kari!" the pregnant woman called out. She propped herself up with one elbow and waved with
her other hand.
"Don't get up, I'll come over there." Marla was about to get up to try to walk over
to where Kari was standing, and so earned the rebuke. Kari crossed the space and sat down in
a chair next to her 'patient'.
Danni followed her over, but was waved off by her mother. "You can go clean up, then
go outside when you're ready, sweetie." Danni didn't think much of this, so she grinned and
skipped off.
As she retreated towards her bedroom, she caught a couple of pieces of the
beginning of the discussion between her mother and the lady.
"How is it?" the lady asked softly.
"Why do I let him do this..." she heard her mother say, somewhat angrily, before she
passed out of earshot.
Being five, Danni held little interest in grown-up talk, even if she could
understand of it, which she couldn't. All she knew was that it was boring and time she spent
listening to it would be better spent changing out of her school clothes and into play
clothes.
It took Danni a couple of minutes to change; she was not quite yet an expert at
dressing herself, or finding and picking out clothes to wear. She knew well enough what she
liked, just not where to find it. When she emerged she was wearing a plain navy shirt and
pants.
Neither of the adults paid her any attention as she made her way out of the house.
This was no surprise to Danni, as more than one adult never paid her any attention, or any
children, because that was just what adults did, even her mommy. As she passed, she ended up
hearing more fragments of the conversation.
"...Rodan doesn't know?" Kari was finishing.
"Of course not, and I intend to..." her mother replied.
The name Rodan sounded somewhat familiar to Danni, but she put it out of her mind.
Whoever they were, if her mother didn't want him to find something out, then he wouldn't
find out. With that thought, Danni walked out of the Quee residence.
***
Right across the way was the playground where Danni and some of the other children
went to spend time after their school was out. Danni knew her mother would have been proud
if she were watching; Danni crossed only after looking both ways for approaching speeders.
It was not a necessary precaution, this time. The day had not progressed far enough for the
business folk to be on their way back to their homes.
Danni noticed that there were several other children there already. This did not
surprise her when she thought about it. She knew that she had been delayed some by the
arrival of her mother's friend - no, midwife, she reminded herself. Whatever a midwife was.
Danni didn't even know what a wife was, let alone a midwife.
"Hey, Danni! C'mere!" a girl's voice called out. Without looking, Danni knew it was
a girl she knew from school, Rachelle.
She looked up and waved back at Rachelle, who was sitting on one of the swings.
Danni walked over to join her when suddenly there was a sharp pain in her head and suddenly
things started flashing in front of her eyes.
She saw herself swinging next to Rachelle, then Rachelle saying, "I'm going to go
home and get a drink." She saw a bad man lurking by a speeder. She saw the bad man
approaching Rachelle on the way home. She saw Rachelle, bruised, bloody.
They were very disturbing things for Danni to see, because she knew as she saw them
that they weren't happening right now, but they just felt... real. Far more real than
anything Danni had ever experienced before in her life. She did not know it, but it was a
very sheltered life.
Danni realized that she must have stopped in her tracks, that there must be a
shocked expression on her face, because her friend came running off the swings at her like
a pack of Stormtroopers were chasing her.
"Danni? Hey, Danni! Are you okay?" Rachelle was over next to her now, and she nodded
as she tried to catch her breath. "What happened?"
"I... I don't know." This had never happened to Danni before, where something had
come along that she could not begin to try to explain in her curious child's mind. And she'd
never felt so scared either.
Of course, Rachelle knew none of this. "Let's go play, Danni!" She grabbed Danni by
the wrist and dragged her off to the swings.
A child's mind is at times a liability. Most of these times are when things call for
them to be well-behaved, and the well-meaning curiosity of the child simply interferes with
things. It can also be a liability when trying to scold a child, or impress some other sort
of lesson upon the child.
But for this same reason the mind of a child is a blessing. Because no matter how
grim something may appear, it will not bear much thinking for a young child, whose curiosity
will naturally take over and shift thought to less dark subjects, whether or not the child
might actually want to think about something else.
Fortunately for Danni's sake, despite her intelligence that seemed to be far above
the average five-year-old, she still had the typical mind of a child, and playing on the
swings with her friend was plenty enough to take her mind to other things. Like being a
five-year-old girl and playing with her friend.
Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to half an hour. The strange experience Danni had
was out of sight and out of mind. She looked over at Rachelle, who was slowing down on her
swing.
"I'm going to go home and get a drink," the other girl said. "Do you want one?"
Things all came crashing down in the front of Danni's mind. She gulped and shook her
head, too unsettled to even respond verbally. Rachelle did not notice this.
Danni's swing came to a halt as soon as Rachelle turned and walked away. She tried,
oh, did she try, to put what she had seen out of her mind. She was frightened more than she
had ever been, would ever be for a long time to come. Even so, she might have successfully
ignored the feeling.
Just then, a speeder pulled up near the playground, a speeder that looked so
familiar that it increased the sense of dread Danni was experiencing. That feeling tripled
when she saw the bad man from her vision get out of the speeder and fall into step behind
Rachelle.
Part of Danni wanted to scream, part of her wanted to cry, part of her wanted to run
home, to never go outside again, to forget all of this. None of these parts were at the
forefront, however. The biggest part of Danni knew, somehow, that she was the only one that
could stop what she had experienced from coming true. She took off running towards her
friend, too scared to scream anything, but too scared to stay in place.
Time seemed to slow for Danni. She ran, as fast as her little legs would take her,
towards where her friend was standing. The bad man sped up and grabbed a hold of Rachelle.
Rachelle tried to scream but the bad man covered her throat. The bad man tried to put
Rachelle into his speeder.
Someone screamed "THAT MAN IS A BAD MAN!" A mother of one of the children turned to
look and saw what was going on. Danni realized that she had been the one to scream. The
mother reached into her purse and pulled out something. The bad man had his back to Danni,
to the mother.
A red bolt shot past Danni, struck the bad man in the shoulder. The bad man spun
around, letting Rachelle fly. Rachelle hit the ground and started to cry. Danni reached
where Rachelle landed. She felt the tears running down her cheeks.
Time returned back to normal. The other children were all crying for their mommies
and daddies. Parents were showing up all over the place, including Danni's mother, with a
fussing midwife in tow insisting she should not be on her feet.
Rachelle looked at her through tear-filled brown eyes. She hadn't even been crying
long enough to have bloodshot eyes. "Th-thank you, Danni," she whispered right before she
started sobbing.
Danni muttered something back. It might have been "You're welcome," but then again
it might not have been. She felt the arms of her mother around her at the same time she saw
Rachelle's mother reach Rachelle and start comforting her.
Danni expected her mother to say something to her, or start asking her questions,
right then and there. But instead she sent the midwife home and brought Danni back inside
before Danni ever even looked like something was on her mind.
***
They were inside a couple of minutes later. Marla did not yet know what had gone on,
but she was expecting her daughter to lose her composure at any second, and she was actually
quite surprised that it had not happened yet.
"What happened, Danni?" she asked softly. She was sitting in her chair from earlier,
reclining again, and Danni sat in one of the other chairs.
At first Danni looked confused, as though she was considering which of two answers
to give. Marla made a note of that for afterwards.
"Rachelle was going to get a drink." Danni's voice was barely a whisper. The
outburst was coming soon, Marla knew. "I saw... I saw a man get out of a speeder, and he
looked like a... a bad man. He went after Rachelle and tried to take her into his speeder,
and I wanted to get help, so I screamed, and then..."
Tears streamed down Danni's cheeks, and Marla reached out. Danni caught on and came
over to embrace her mother. Marla made soothing noises and gently ran fingers through
Danni's hair.
She already knew what had happened after that. Her years as an astrophysicist had
taught her nothing if not to be observant. One of the mothers across the playground had
pulled a hold-out blaster and nailed the man, though where she got the gun and how she
learned to shoot it so well, Marla wasn't sure she wanted to know. Another thing she'd
picked up on over the years was when it was better not to ask.
There seemed to be a pause in Danni's sobs. Marla looked down at her to find that
Danni was staring at her intently, working her lips. "What is it, sweetie? Is something
wrong?"
Slowly, Danni nodded. "I saw it happen... before it happened. I was walking there
and things started appearing in front of me, and I saw the bad man, and Rachelle, and I... I
knew Rachelle was going to get hurt if I didn't do anything..." Danni grew quiet, looking at
her mother's face to see if she could find some answer, any answer.
Marla's countenance was steeled into an unreadable expression. She had been hoping
this day would never come, but expecting it all of the same.
"Danni," she began with conviction, "it's time I told you something about you and I.
We're both special, you and I and only a few other people. I don't know what exactly it is,
but I know that we're special." That last part was a lie. She did know very well what it
was, but she also knew that Danni would be better off figuring it out on her own, as she had
figured out from her own mother what was going on. "Some times, you might see things. Other
times you might just look at someone and know that something is going to happen to that
person.
"It's like you know things, without actually knowing them."
"Should I pretend they aren't there?" Danni asked innocently.
"No," Marla snapped immediately, startling Danni. "No," she said again, softer. "It
is very important that if you feel like that again, you do what you did. What makes us
special, makes that happen to us, and it wants us to know that we need to do something."
"What is it?" Danni wondered. Marla could see the tears had stopped, that the
child's curiosity had taken over, which was probably for the better.
"I don't know." It hurt to lie to her daughter, but she knew that Danni was better
off not knowing right now.
"I can't wait to tell Rachelle!" exclaimed Danni.
"No!" Marla snapped, louder than before, startling Danni worse than before. "This
has to be a secret between you and I and nobody else. A lot of people out there don't like
special people, and if they knew about us they would want to hurt us. You don't want us to
get hurt, do you?"
Danni shook her head obediently. "But why would they do that?"
"I don't know, Danni... I just don't know." replied Marla, glad that she could
answer and tell the truth for once. It hurt her that she had to explain things like this to
Danni when she was so young, but it had to be done.
"Mommy, I'm tired."
Marla knew she was supposed to stay in the recliner or Kari would get mad at her,
but exceptions had to be made, like when her daughter wanted to take a nap after she was
very frightened. She walked with Danni into her bedroom, tucked the girl under the covers,
and kissed her on the forehead. Danni was asleep before she was out of the room.
Once she was back in the main room, Marla flicked on the holoprojector and had on
some old holos, but she wasn't watching them. She was far too busy wondering about things.
Wondering whether the events of the day were ordained to happen, and if so, how long
they had been. Wondering if Danni told anyone else before Marla told her not to - she didn't
think so. Wondering if her next daughter would be special, too.
Most importantly, she was wondering what her own mother would think about how she
had told Danni that she had Jedi heritage.
"She'd be proud," Marla said to no one in particular. A smile crossed her face just
then, and that was how she fell asleep. With a smile on her face, and dreaming of long-gone
good times.
***
