87 BBY, Kiros, Expansion Region
"Regemo... Please... take care of our children," a woman said in Veledosian, her voice weakened by a battle now lost.
"Shada, don't die!" Regemo cried out. He did not want to live without his dear wife whom he had known for as long as he could possibly remember.
"Regemo, my love... You know that I can't... My time... it has already... come..." Shada said. The faint light in her eyes disappeared for good as life left her.
"Shada..." Regemo whispered. The tears rose to his eyes. Tears that he kept inside. The traditions demanded it.
"Mom..." A little girl walked closer to them from the other side of the room where she had stayed with her brothers and her aunt.
"Mom is gone now. She... she has been released from her pain," said the girl's older brother, Tureq.
The girl stopped, understanding. Instead of uncontrollable grief that she had expected, she merely felt calm sorrow. She did not shout, just looked at the floor. She did not need words. The cry of her two-year-old little brother, Gamu, was enough.
"Aunt Ni'Dea... When will the funeral be arranged?" asked the oldest of the girl's brothers, Arak.
"When everyone has done their sorrow rituals. I'll go to announce the sad news to the tribe. Tell me if you need something," Ni'Dea told and left the room.
She was already waited outside.
"Seer!" one shouted.
"Seer Ni'Dea! Is... is Shada...?" asked the closest woman.
"One with the Force," Ni'Dea announced with a loud voice. The words were difficult to say but she let them sound. She had lost her older sister, but she could not betray the oath she had given her teacher. It was one of the responsibilities of a Tribe Seer.
The silence fell. No one said anything anymore. They had all expected this, they had all felt it, but to have it confirmed... The confirmation sealed it. Ever so slowly, some left to the sanctum next to the temple in order to carry out their sorrow ritual. Others returned to their chores to wait for the right moment. Soon the Seer stood alone in front of her sister's family's house and wished that she could have done something to help her nearly-300-year-old sister who had been sick for so long. It all had started soon after she had given birth to Gamu. The vicious circle of diseases had eventually escalated into one serious disease.
Ni'Dea herself was just nearly 250 years old and her teacher, Seer Xa-Dor, had become one with the Force and left his place as the Seer of Lianoros tribe to her just two decades ago. She was all alone with this burden and the unthinkable reality of having lost one of her family members with no one to share it to, not even an apprentice.
And then there was Arya, Shada's only daughter. The girl was now five years old and even though she did not stand out from the other children much, as the Seer of the tribe of Water Ni'Dea had noticed one clear difference between Arya and the other children: even though Arya, just like everyone else, was purely of the tribe of Water from many generations now gone, Arya's birth element was not Water but Fire. Ni'Dea knew that the time would come when Arya – and everyone else – would notice it. But what would ensue from that, Ni'Dea could not see. She only believed that this was not Arya's place. The girl was supposed to be somewhere else. But where? Where does the girl belong to? What did she have to do? Arya's place was somewhere away from this planet, Ni'Dea knew it, but only it. And that was not enough at all.
/Author's note: Star Wars (c) Lucasfilm, any characters you cannot find on Wookieepedia, Veledos, Veledosians and their language (c) Me/
