Part 33 - The End of Exile
Bryony Thuvell stood in the open door of her small hut and let the breeze stream through her small living space. The grasses on the rolling hills around her undulated in yellow waves across the land. Insects chirped and droned away the afternoon while a small flock of the orange birds that the Tchuukthai called mariith chirped in the treetop above her hut. It was the only tree for kilometers in any direction. There was no telling how that single seed had made it to the top of the small hill, but it had planted, rooted itself, and grew on that spot. Rather like herself, in fact.
That was one of the reasons she chose this knoll for her home. She built the mud and adobe walls from bricks that she baked for herself in the summer sun and kept it thatched from the elements with the grasses of the fields that surrounded her. The first rainy season, her roof leaked torrents and her walls melted into mud. It had been a steep learning curve. It was a frustrating cycle of building and repairing, but the process was purifying. All the work she did with her hands seemed to purify the dark taint left in her from the wars. By now, ten years later, she had more or less perfected her little mud hit. It kept the weather out and the warmth in. It was her home, her exile.
Every day, she still meditated for hours. First when she rose in the morning, again in the mid-afternoon sun, and once more in the evening before bed. Although the Force had abandoned her ten years ago, at the end of the wars, she still meditated. It was comforting. It helped her forget and it helped her remember. She gave the signal that killed so many. She did not know at that moment just what destruction it would bring, but desperation moved her hand. The guilt of her desperate action would stay with her for her entire life, as would all of the deaths she caused. Bryony would never be truly pure again.
She gardened all of her own food. Since that day, she had never taken the life of another animal, directly or indirectly. She ate no meat. The Tchuukthai who first welcomed her helped her find the supplies she needed to start her little garden and provide herself with food. Still, several times a year, she would hike the long trek to the nearest settlement to trade for supplies she needed. She had little to trade with, only grass weavings of different sizes, shapes, and functions. They were worth very little, but the Tchuukthai had sympathy for her—more sympathy for her than she deserved—and gave her what she needed in return. The guilt of being a dependent guest got to Bryony sometimes, so she did her best to subsist on her own from season to season.
She worked in the dirt, drew life out of seeds into flowering and fruiting plants. This also was part of her purification. If she worked to live, worked not to harm any other living beings, not to be a burden to any other living beings, just maybe she could find peace with herself.
That was what she kept telling herself, but the peace never came. The longer she stayed in her exile on Tchuukthai, the farther away that hope of peace seemed to get.
As she stared out past the waving grasses to the strand of trees at the horizon that marked the beginning of the village territory, she saw someone moving through the grasses. Instinctively, she reached out her senses to investigate, but she sensed nothing. Even after all these years, her subconscious kept forgetting that the Force had been ripped from her, a punishment for her actions during the war.
Instead, she watched. She followed no schedules. Time for her was organic, rather than the clicking of a chrono her her wrist. She squinted at the figure that headed directly for her tree and her hut. The figure became more than just a speck as it drew nearer. Whatever it was, it was not a Tchuukthai. The brilliant blue color gave that away. Was it blue skin or blue clothing? A blue shirt was more likely, given how many alien races there were in the galaxy that had skin that particular shade of brilliant blue.
The figure was also too small, she realized as it came closer still. Too thinly built to be a Tchuukthai, it also walked on two feet with arms swinging at its sides.
For a moment, the figure disappeared behind a rise in the land and the waving grasses. When he appeared over the crown of the hill—and it was a he—Bryony could easily make out that he was an average looking human man with dark hair and olive colored skin much like her own. For a moment, from the shaggy cut of his hair, she had the thrilling hope that he might be her brother Kaden, come to get her and to forgive her. That hope was quickly dashed. His eyes and his walk were all wrong. Still, why would another human come looking for her here? Who even knew that she was here, other than the Tchuukthai of the nearby town?
This man, evidently.
As he approached the base of her own little hill, Bryony stepped out of the shadows of her thatched roof and onto the dirt path from her garden to her front door. Whoever he was, she would greet him. It had been years since she spoke Basic to another human being. She hoped all this time alone had not altered her too badly.
"Hello there," he called with a congenial wave as he topped the hill to her house. "Sorry to intrude on your privacy," he apologized immediately.
"It's nothing," Bryony waved, "I haven't had company in a long while. It isn't so much privacy as exile, and even an exile welcomes company."
"Especially an exile, huh," the man commented with a warm grin as he walked up the path towards her. He extended his hand in greeting, saying "I'm Arvor Flowers, pilot and businessman. I trade with the Tchuukthai here."
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Flowers," Bryony replied, shaking his hand, "I am Bryony Thuvell. I garden and serve out my penance for the war here."
"You're that famous Jedi general, aren't you," Arvor wondered out loud.
She nodded. Her fame chased her still. "I served under the Revanchist during the later part of the Mandalorian Wars," she admitted, "But I returned to the Jedi to face judgment for my war crimes."
"And they cast you out for daring to end the war," Arvor whistled, "Funny how things like that work out for Jedi like you. I never understood how the Jedi run things."
"I am a Jedi no longer," Bryony clarified, "Just a war exile. The Jedi Order cast me out. I no longer feel the Force like them."
"Tough punishment for Malachor V, if you ask me," Arvor replied. Bryony did not need reminding. Every day that she woke up, feeling the silence of the Force pressing in around her like the void, it tore at her very being. She was incomplete in a way that could never be completed again. History could not be rewritten. "Though, you wouldn't know it if you've been out here all this while: the Jedi are gone now. No one has seen or heard from the Jed council in over a year, maybe two. I'd say there's no reason for you to hang around this bit of unknown space any longer. No one is going to send you back out."
"They're gone?" Bryony gaped, "But how?"
"There was another war. I guess if you've been out of touch this long, you wouldn't have known that Revan took all of her ships and went out to the Unknown Regions herself, chasing after Mandalorians, or so she said. Two years later, she came back, with an even bigger fleet, and spent the next couple of years beating the Republic to a bloody pulp. Until she reformed, turned around, killed Darth Malak, and ended the whole bloody war herself. I hear the Jedi and the Sith wiped each other out pretty good and kept picking each other off since the war ended until now there's none of them left at all. Except you, I guess."
"I told you, I'm not a Jedi," Bryony reminded gently.
"Fine," Arvor raised his hands defensively.
"So how did you find me here anyway? Why walk all the way out here?" Bryony asked. Not even the Tchuukthai visited her.
Arvor shrugged. "I was curious," he replied noncommittally, "When I heard the locals mention that there was another human on this planet, permanently, who came into town now and then, I had to see for myself why anyone would want to live out here alone. They said you were a war exile, so I had my guesses, but I had to know for myself. I was a soldier in the Republic Navy back then, pilot, actually. But my squadron was on escort duty for the Leviathan, we didn't see that last battle, except for the aftermath of it." He let that hang in the air with all of the images associated with it.
"But you did not go with Revan when she went into the unknown regions?" she asked.
"Nope," he replied causally, "My squadron was actually on loan from Corellia's Royal Navy. When the war was over, we went home and defended our own borders again. I served up my tour and moved into freighting. I got set up with this job on Tchuukthai by a favor of an old friend who was retiring, on the condition that I keep it a complete secret, and I have until this day."
Bryony nodded but found nothing to say. It had been too long since she had held any kind of conversation, even with the locals.
"Say, why don't you come back to the living? It's been, what, ten years since the war ended? That's a long time to waste away in the Unknown Regions. I can give you a ride back to known space on my way out of here," Arvor offered, "Your Jedi Council is gone, so what harm can it be? You might find life more fulfilling with more than just this tree for company."
Bryony wanted to refuse. Duty pinned her to exile, but if the Jedi truly were gone, the same duty drew her back to the Republic, wanting to help. She missed people more than she could admit to herself. She wished for a normal life again, but what could basket weaving do for her future career? It was something, though. At the very least, she could find work on a remote agricultural world. That would be a step in the right direction, a step that was difficult for her to take even after all this time.
Arvor waited patiently while she thought. Again, she reached out to the Force for guidance, but found nothing, as always. "Thank you, Mr. Flowers, but I don't have anything to pay you with besides what's in my garden and a few baskets I've woven."
"Then call it a deal," Arvor grasped her hand and shook it to confirm his commitment to it, "I wasn't expecting you to be rolling in riches: an ex-Jedi living by herself in a mud hut in the Tchuukthai wilderness."
"I will need a bit of time to get ready," Bryony said slowly, still terrified of the commitment she was making, stepping off into the unknown. "When do you plan to leave?"
"Sometime tomorrow morning," he replied with a shrug. "I can come and pick you up," he offered.
"No, that's alright," Bryony argued lightly, "I will walk to town when I am ready. I don't have much."
"Suit yourself then," he shrugged again. Glancing at the sun, he raised his hands to the horizon and counted his fingers, "It looks like I don't have much time left before the sun sets. It does set quickly here. I should get going back to the village."
"Thank you, Arvor," Bryony said, "Thank you for the offer. I will see you in town tomorrow."
"Alright, Bryony, I'll see you tomorrow," he said, and with one last wave, sauntered off down the hill, back towards the trees on the horizon.
Bryony watched him go. The sun sank lower on the horizon and cast long shadows on his departure. The shadows accentuated each wind-teased blade of grass. She thought over the afternoon. Where had he come from? Why? Why would a trader like him want to visit her or offer her a ride, an escape from this long exile?
Camaraderie perhaps? He might bear survivors guilt from the war, just as she did. Though she doubted anyone's guilt could be as heavy, short of Revan or Malak.
She wondered about her old friends, Alek and Roan'ev. Malak and Revan. They had turned to the Dark Side, that much was evident from Arvor's story. Half of her wanted to deny that that was even possible, but the other half knew that it was entirely too likely. She had seen the beginnings of their fall in the end of the war; their desperate tactics and calculated sacrifices. Roan'ev had known exactly what she was doing with every move. She knew exactly what it cost her, as much as she would deny it publicly. Alek—Malak followed her lead with all the subtly of a hammer, never catching onto Revan's subtleties himself. If Revan fell, Malak would have followed her into the darkness.
And then she was redeemed, but Malak was not. Again with the subtleties of character. Bryony stared at the sky, the first starts beginning to appear by twilight. She mourned for him. She had mourned for the people she had killed for years, but never thought to mourn for her friend. Malak may have become a villain, and she was sure that the galaxy celebrated with his death, but Bryony would always remember Alek Squinquargesimus, her friend. While no one else mourned him, she would.
With a sigh, she started out at the horizon and the tree line again. Even if Arvor hadn't reached the village by now, his silhouette was lost to the shadows. Bryony turned back to her hut and slowly walked back inside. It was time to get packing. She needed to decided what of these ten years she need to take with her and what she would leave behind.
It was time for a new beginning.