He dreams of Autumn.
If Autumn was short, for him, it was precious all the same -- and he remembers those lessons that Autumn taught him, all the same.
Autumn wears the robes of a Jedi Master, a cloak made out of wisdom and strength as surely as it is made out of brown fabric. Each stitch in that cloak, each thread in that fabric, was created whole from blood and sweat and tears -- but not really that, either. There is a certain something intangible about Autumn, a sense of compassion and understanding that the nine-year-old boy can't help but love.
The aura that Autumn carries about him is the aura of someone who walked through fire and was tempered by it rather than destroyed. A tree, perhaps -- marked by time and wind and rain, but grown stronger and taller for it rather than being knocked down. The trunk remains strong, and if the leaves drop ... well, they will come back next year.
Because by the time that Autumn ends, he is not a boy anymore, not really.
By the time Autumn is laid out upon his burning bier, the nine-year-old child has found out about death and sorrow, loss and grief. Those are lesson he has not forgotten, lessons that, he suspects, he will never have the luxury to forget.
Autumn is about fallen leaves and fallen heroes, broken idols and broken dreams. It is about hopes that withered upon the vine, that were never harvested and left to rot in the field. It is about faith and fidelity and futures that might-have-been, that all somehow crumbled to dust with a single swift stroke of a bright red light.
When he remembers Autumn, he remembers the funeral, more than anything else -- it is a bit morbid, no doubt, but it remains true all the same. In his mind's eye, he can still the Jedi Master laid out in state, the flames glimmering as they devour the remains. Flickering dancers, or so they seem -- worshippers in a ceremony older than words and older than time. An ancient explanation of the Living Force, at least, that has did not perish through time ...
The god falls and is burned upon the flaming pyre, falling to ash to join again with the soil and be reborn in the coming year.
Autumn is a season for maturity -- harvesting those crops that have grown to ripeness through the efforts of the farmers, the crops that have born fruit in testimony to the hard work put into their production. And, when the harvesting is done, feasting and dancing and laughing ... but if Autumn ends too soon, if chance or fortune or the will of the Force cuts off Autumn before the crops have matured to their full potential ... well, there is little that can be done, isn't there?
Perhaps, had the child's Autumn been longer, he would have been more prepared for what awaited him yet -- he was not yet a man when his Autumn ended, his full maturity not yet reached. Sometimes he wonders what would have happened to the crop, had Autumn lasted a while longer -- would things have been different, perhaps? Would it have been a better harvest?
In daylight, he knows that pondering that question is useless -- the past is unchangeable, and it is futile to wonder about the ashes of maybe.
But in the Autumn, when the veil between life and death is the thinnest, the ghosts walk and the dead sing.
So, when he dreams, his dream-self walks out beyond the circle of mourners to approach the funeral pyre. Everything else is frozen -- the people standing around the bier, the flames that lick at the body -- save for the Jedi himself, in spirit if not in fact.
His dream-self approaches the fire cautiously though -- in the dream -- he does not, perhaps, wholly remember why. The searing heat of the fire, the half-remembered taste of pain, keep him at a discreet distance from the flames themselves as Autumn nears.
When Autumn smiles, though, his dream-self -- his old-self, not yet grown into his full height or his full maturity -- throws caution to the winds in favor of running forward into Autumn's embrace. It is all he can do not to sob, even in the dream, because of what he sees reflected in Autumn's eyes.
Understanding.
Compassion.
Force, for that alone he would do anything -- the regrets of a decade and more pile upon his shoulders, a lifetime of mistakes and blunders that brought everything to ruin. Brittle twigs on barren trees and all the fragile limbs reaching futilely for heaven. The accusations he saw in a thousand eyes, the fear and terror he brought to a galaxy -- in Autumn's eyes, there is something akin to mercy ...
And then his dream-self is sobbing into Autumn's robe, holding onto it for something dearer than life itself. Not a drowning man clinging onto his last hope of rescue, but a sinful man clinging to his last hope for salvation.
When is a man no longer a man? When is a soul beyond redemption?
In daylight, he has the universe. He has a galaxy at his feet, sits at the right hand of his dark master -- anything he wants he will have ... save for what he wants most of all. And in the dreams he receives his only solace -- in the dreams where brown eyes reflect a taste of forgiveness, a hint of what may have been ...
Autumn ended too soon.
And the dreams, the dreams ... when he dreams of Autumn, he cannot help but remember the sympathy, the compassion reflected in the eyes of the Jedi Master, things that he cannot help but covet ... and when he wakes, it is never quite enough.