Inheritance
13.
I'm s'posed to be meditating, but I just can't. Not when everything is so twisty and jiggery all over the place. Master says the Force is disturbed, and we have to meditate. He really likes holding still, and I just don't get it. I mean, I feel really weird right now, kind of like everything is messed up on the inside and the outside together, like I'm being squeezed in a lot of different directions and I can't really breathe – and wouldn't it make more sense to just go really, really fast? When I'm flying – podracing, I mean – then this feeling can't catch up with me. It's like I can think clearly and see things how they really are and there's nothing in the universe but me and the stuff and the people I care about and everything will be okay because I can make it be okay.
I really wish I could be podracing and feel that way right now, but Master says we have to meditate instead. Like he always does. 'Cept I can't focus too good, not with all these other things messing around in my mind. I squint my eyes open to check on Master, and he's still sitting there, with his hands resting on his knees, and his eyes are closed. I think he actually likes meditating. You can tell. He sort of shines and he's really, really calm almost like he was that day when Master Qui-Gon was still alive and they were talking in the ship on the way to Coruscant, before they got all mad at each other. I was watching and I saw how calm and happy Master was then, too. He was joking about the hyperdrive failing again because of Master Qui-Gon getting defective parts. And they kept saying stuff to each other that I didn't understand but the more serious their faces got the more the Force sort of danced and spun and I could tell it was a happy argument and more like a game.
Master hasn't really smiled the same way since then, except I think when he meditates sometimes he smiles on the inside like that, a little bit. Or maybe when we joke around, which isn't that much 'cause I'm still getting the hang of it, but that's different anyway. Do you think the Force talks to him? I mean, not in words exactly, but somehow? That would be wizard. Maybe if I practiced more it could be that way for me too but I don't know. I think it takes a long, long time to be able to do that. Being a Padawan takes for like forever. You should have seen how long Master's braid was, before it got cut off. It was past his waist. That's a whole lotta years. I'll be about a bazillion by the time my braid's that long and Master will be an geezer like Old Man Puuler back home on Tatooine.
This is soooo boring, but I'll get in hoocha big trouble if I fidget too much, so I'll just hold still and think about something else. Hey! You know what? That train thingummy could work a whole lot better if they would just calibrate the repulsors on the different sleds. I bet I could rig that up in no time. All you have to do is tweak the regulator on the drive for the first one, and then run a sync-pulse circuit through the polarizer for the rest. If I can scrounge up the right parts, I bet I could make it ride like a sweet landspeeder. It would be easy. I bet the Feorians would like that. Who wants to go riding around in a rickety old piece of poodoo?
The Feorians are weird. They gave us dinner in that big common house place, with the fire pit inside. I thought the food was pretty good, mostly tuber-mash and flatbread, sort of like the stuff Mom made back home. The other vegetable dish I didn't try, and the insects I think made Master's stomach turn. They did have a lot of legs and stuff, and hairs, I think. But if you're hungry enough you will eat anything, and that's how Mom and me learned to eat bugs. They aren't so bad, really. Master Windu ate them without blinking, almost like he thought they were good, and then Master Obi-Wan actually tried one or two but I noticed that he said no thanks to seconds when the serving tray came around again. I kinda thought he would say that eating bugs is "uncivilized" but he was super polite when the chieftain offered him some, so I guess it was a diplomacy thing. And he's really good at keeping a straight face. The music the Feorians made was pretty sad, I thought. They had that big drum thingy with the hide stretched over it like Tuskens use on their shelters, and those long reed tubes for blowing into and the music sounded kind of like a herd of dying banthas mostly but I didn't make a face or anything and I even clapped at the end because Master did and I can be diplomatic too, if I have to.
Some of the music was s'posed to be about that jabuur-weki thing, too. It sounds a lot like some of the stories people used to tell around Mos Espa, like the scary ones that mostly just kept slaves from daring to run away. There was this one story about Ben-Attur-Yavi, Wizard of the Black Hills, and all the terrible stuff he would do to folks that he caught up in the rock formations on the dune sea. That one was a whole lotta boshuda lies… I think. There's no such person as Black Ben the Wizard. But people talked so much about him that sometimes when stuff went wrong everybody would blame it on him, like he had put a curse on the town. I think this jabuur-weki is like that, maybe.
But then again, there were people that got crisped by this thing.. And somebody real had to do that. I really want to ask Master about it, but his eyes are still closed and I don't think I should bother him. And what I really want to talk to him about is the Feorians and the whole story of how him and Master Qui-Gon freed them.
I've gotta lot of questions about that.
