"Very good," Master Skywalker praised from her seat just inside the door of her home. "No distractions. Let the Force flow through you, through your saber, and the bars..."
Her voice seemed far away to Metarie, immersed in the Force as she was, blocking intermediate level shots from the seeker droid and keeping silver bars levitated high enough to meet her Master's approval. Once she successfully mastered this task, she had been instructed that the lesson would grow harder as she would have to deflect the droid's shots while managing to dodge the silver bars that would also be hurled at her. The exercise was proving to be daunting, yet exciting, and one that Metarie eagerly looked forward to completing.
The hum of an approaching speeder caught Metarie's attention, her eyes automatically scanning the distant horizon as a full smile broke over her face. A warning jar through the Force caused her to react swiftly, dropping into a crouch and raising her saber to successfully catch the last of seeker droid's shots. The bars tumbled down into the sand around her upon her relief, and she flushed, angry with herself for losing concentration.
There was no time to consider her mistake, though, as Urias pulled up in front of them. Master Skywalker nodded from her seat, content to stay in the shade as Urias pulled down their rations box. Metarie walked over to lend a hand, noticing his load was heavier than usual.
"Hi," she said, moistening her lips and wondering at how she must look, hair frizzing from the band that held it off her neck and sweat pouring down her neck and into the open collar of her tunic.
"Hey yourself," he said, grinning his irrepressible grin. "What was that you were doing when I pulled up?"
"Oh, that?"
"Yeah, that," Urias said, laughing.
Metarie liked his deep laugh, and hoped the rosy flush that flooded her cheeks would still be attributed by him to the exercise she had just completed. "That was me showing you what a Jedi can do." He raised an eyebrow, but before he could reply, she rushed on. "As you're Force sensitive... maybe I just ... maybe you could be trained, too."
Shifting the large box in his arms, Urias looked down at her incredulously. "I... really can't see me being a Jedi."
"Oh," Metarie said, taken aback. "Well, here, let me help you." Reaching out with the Force, she levitated the heavy box from Urias's arms, allowing him the freedom to reach into his speeder and grab the other one.
"What, you mean you couldn't levitate both?" he asked, turning back with another box in his arms to watch the first one fly steadily in the air to land at Master Skywalker's feet.
"Well, if you're not going to be a Jedi..."
"I have to do things the hard way?"
Metarie grinned at him. "Something like that."
Reaching the Master, Metarie moved out of the way to give Urias room to set his box on top of hers.
"Everything all right, ma'am?" he asked, giving her his customary greeting. "Any troubles? Anything you need from me?"
Waiting for her Master to tell him that everything was fine, Metarie again reached out with the Force to the two boxes, lifting them with the intent to guide them into the house.
"Metarie." Master Skywalker's voice made her jump, and the boxes fell to the ground.
"Yes, Master?" Turning, she looked at Urias before giving her attention to the seated woman.
"What are you doing?" the wizened Master asked, looking at her intently.
Again, Metarie looked at Urias. His blank look made her feel uneasy. Was her Master confused?
"I'm going to move supplies in doors," she answered, after a moment's hesitation.
"With the Force," Master Skywalker said.
"Well, yes," Metarie agreed.
"I thought you understood the lesson of the veil," the older woman said, before heaving a soft sigh.
The veil? Again, Metarie looked at Urias who was shifting on his feet uncomfortably. She understood his frustration, but didn't dare rock back on her own feet. But what did that blasted veil have to do with anything?
"Look at Urias," Master Skywalker said after a moment. "How does he bring the boxes in to us?"
"He carries them in," she answered, confused.
"Exactly," the Master said. "He carries them in. Force sensitivity in his blood, yet he carries boxes."
"Only because he doesn't know how to reach out with the Force yet," Metarie argued.
The Master closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, they pierced into Metarie's own. "What about others, then? Those who are not Force sensitive?"
"I guess..." Metarie trailed off, feeling foolish. "They would carry in the boxes."
Master Skywalker nodded and pushed herself up from her seat. "Don't trivialize the Force, Metarie. It's not merely a tool, and not a toy to be played with. Both you and Urias are more than capable of carrying in the supplies."
Metarie nodded, ashamed that her Master felt she had used the Force so carelessly.
The Master looked at her for another moment before turning to nod at Urias and walking back inside with a crisp and even stride.
Embarrassed, Metarie turned to the boxes she had dropped and knelt to lift one, catching her breath as Urias stepped close to her and reached for the other container. His fingers lightly grazed her arm as he stood with his box.
Together, they carried them inside.
Later, Metarie found the veil lying across the table. Master Skywalker was already behind her partition, but still Metarie picked up the opaque cloth. She ran it through her fingers and thought about the Master's earlier words, on power and guidance and using the Force as something more than just a tool.
The words and ideas jumbled in her head, confusing in their simple complexity. The Master evidently saw a great lesson in this small piece of fabric, but to Metarie it seemed nothing more than a functional object, merely a veil.
.
.
The months passed quietly and slowly, but soon Metarie realized that she had been working under her Master's guidance for almost two years. Soon, she knew, she would have to leave her Master's presence. Master Skywalker herself demanded it. She could not give the girl the practical training required at her advanced age. Metarie regretted leaving her Master, whom she had come to love, but she understood the reasoning behind her Master's actions. Ben Skywalker had already made arrangements for his youngest daughter and himself to come and stay with her for a time, though Master Skywalker had objected, saying she didn't need to be tended like a child. Metarie thought she was pleased with the idea of seeing her son, however.
Late one evening, after their last meal, Metarie sat working on her lightsaber. She had decided on a blue blade and she worked over it meticulously, honoring the words and lessons she had been taught. She had also decided on a handle grip not unlike Master Skywalker's own, similar to the first saber she had made as a Jedi Knight in the months following her marriage to Grand Master Skywalker. The Master had allowed her pupil to experiment with the many different lightsabers she possessed, and Metarie was in awe of the thought that she was wielding Anakin Skywalker's saber one day, Luke Skywalker's the next, Master Skywalker's the third.
Urias had informally sat in on a few lessons on the days he came with supplies. In the deepest corner of her heart, Metarie knew that he only did so to be close to her, but as the months progressed, the interest on his face and the strength building in his Force sense showed that he was getting more out of the lessons than just a chance to be near her.
Metarie looked forward to his visits and, as the months passed, he would stay later and later until he had to leave for fear of the Tusken Raiders that might attack in the dark of night. Their friendship and quiet flirtation had grown considerably but with the ever-knowing and watchful presence of Master Skywalker always nearby, the relationship hadn't progressed beyond the boundaries of an attraction-laced friendship. Metarie sensed it was a good thing, as she needed to focus on her apprenticeship, but her heart ached to think of leaving Urias at the end of her time on Tatooine.
Lost in her thoughts of Urias, Metarie fumbled with the intricate wiring deep inside the core of her saber and broke the sensitive metal before she could stop herself. Ashamed of wasting such a precious material, yet wanting to hurry and finish with her new saber, Metarie decided to break precedent and seek out her Master during her silent time, out-of-doors.
Exiting the house, into the light, Metarie reached out with the Force, seeking her Master's presence. She found her and frowned at how far from the house the older woman had walked. The suns weren't quite down yet. Tatoo I was almost set, but Tatoo II was still making its descent. Did her Master walk this far every evening?
Metarie set out and reached her Master, finally, leaning against a long cane she used to help herself traverse the deep sands. Metarie was a hands-breadth from touching her when the surprised older woman whirled around and stared at the girl with wide, almost panicked eyes.
"Metarie!" she exclaimed, trying in vain to hide her surprise.
Metarie started to ask what had caused her mentor such amazement, when a flicker of white caught the corner of her eye. From the outcropping they stood upon, Metarie could see down to an old piece of equipment, junk likely. It was probably an archaic moisture vaporator that no longer worked, like the hundreds of others that littered the landscape. But as she watched, a young man dressed in white hopped down from an old speeder and approached the vaporator, tools in hand as if he expected to fix it, even though it was mostly buried in the sand.
"Master..." Metarie breathed, her gaze following the boy as he removed his white hat to wipe at the sweat on his brow. She watched the dying light of the suns shine against his bright hair.
But Master Skywalker wasn't listening, it seemed. Her eyes were riveted on the boy with the gleaming hair. Metarie was amazed at her, seeing for the first time not her Master, a warrior, a mother or grandmother; but a woman, a wife, and a lover who stared down at a boy maybe only Metarie's own age.
It was... But how could it be?
"Master?" Metarie tried again, as the boy jumped back into his speeder and swung it around the vaporator, dangerously fast, before speeding off into the distance.
Master Skywalker sighed, seemingly caught. "Come with me, Metarie," she said, "and I'll tell you all I know."
.
.
Spreading her hands across the table in front of her, the Master spoke in low, measured tones, her precise accent articulating every word. "I saw him for the first time a few weeks after I came here. I was feeling stifled inside and went out to breathe. We are on the edge of the Lars' property, of course, and I instinctively walked that way. I had thought of Luke almost constantly since I'd landed on planet, but that was partially due to the after effects of our bond. I know what he knew; I can still feel what he felt. I stood on the edge of the property, looking towards the suns, when a noise caught my attention. I turned, and when I saw him..."
Metarie stared, riveted, her broken lightsaber forgotten.
"He was young, maybe your age. He looked a lot like Ben as a teenager, and I began to wonder: What am I seeing? Echoes of the past? Did I long for him so much that I created a vision? Or worse, was I witnessing a rip in time?"
A chill ran over Metarie's body, and she shook visibly. "Did you - do you - know?" The girl's mind raced.
"I believe I do," Master Skywalker answered in a whisper, fingers curling up into her palms.
Metarie waited, her eyes wide.
"One day, he spoke to me," the Master said, her voice haunted with emotion.
"So it is a... rip in time?" Metarie asked carefully.
"I'm not exactly sure, except to say that all things are possible with the Force," Master Skywalker whispered. "And that when he spoke to me, he was as real as you are sitting before me."
"How could you speak with him? We're so far away. How could he see you?"
The wizened face before Metarie took on a blush, faint at first, but growing until the lined cheeks were red with familiar embarrassment. "When I first saw him, I wanted to get closer. I watched from the rock for, perhaps a year or more, and then one day, I descended."
Metarie drew in her breath, exhaling slowly. As unbelievable as it all seemed, she had observed it with her own eyes.
Master Skywalker continued, "I think that I wanted him to see me; I wanted to hear his voice. So I stupidly placed myself right in his path, like a love-sick loon." The Master laughed harshly, at herself, before pausing to take a deep breath.
Metarie waited. Her Master always spoke in her own time.
"He was surprised to see me and was worried about an elderly woman so far out in the Dune Sea. He offered to drive me where I needed to go, so trusting, so naïve - but then, what harm would I be to him, after all? Old and frail as I am," the Master sighed. "But it was so good to speak to him again that I hardly cared about that."
Metarie could imagine the moment in her head. Her Master, over one-hundred years old, speaking to a youth - still a boy, really - the boy who would one day be her husband. How had that boy looked upon the old woman he found that day in the middle of the Dune Sea? And did he notice the love that must have flared, unconsciously, in her eyes?
Abruptly, Master Skywalker straightened her hands and pushed herself up from the table. "I must rest," she said, and without a look back at Metarie walked behind her partition.
The sudden silence was deafening. Many hours passed by while Metarie sat alone at the table. Its surface was still covered with the pieces of her disassembled lightsaber.