Sola sighed, putting down the lace she was working on and gazing off into the distance at nothing in particular. It was a dangerous thing to do, sometimes it came with strange visions. But her heart wasn't in her lacemaking, which she knew would show in the finished piece. She wasn't good enough to have the same quality when she wasn't in the mood.
With Jax now gone, the house was unnervingly quiet except for the sound of the house droids going about their work. Huge swaths of her day were now open to do whatever she wanted as she no longer taught her son the bulk of his lessons.
The house felt empty. She felt very alone.
She hadn't told Uriellien about pushing the Jedi down the hallway. The last time she had done anything like that was during The Clone Wars when she was being shot at by battle droids. Was using her abilities on Ryloth making them stronger?
No, that couldn't be right. The other Jedi, the one from her childhood, said a person was born with an innate ability.
"But you need to learn to control it," the Jedi said to her as they sat together on a warm rock in the mountains. The Mirialan Jedi sat with her hands behind her back resting on the stone, her head back, basking in the sun. Her facial tattoos reminded Sola of swirling marks on her own face, made more red with a dye pigment so they would show up like her cousins did. Her pale skin, while not lavender, gave her enough of a look that those around her immediately knew she was Astarraxi. She wondered if the Jedi had to color her tattoos, if they faded like they sometimes did on other people.
At twelve, Sola sat next to the Jedi, her legs drawn up to her chest, side to the setting sun. It made the Jedi's yellow skin almost glow with a warm, sunny light. "How do you learn to control it?"
The Jedi turned to her and smiled. It was one of those secret smiles that one gives when they know something you don't. Those types of smiles always put Sola on guard, it usually meant something bad was going to happen soon. "You get trained by the Jedi," she said. "But you're too old to begin training."
It hurt Sola's feelings like it was an insult. She frowned.
"But I can show you a few tricks that might help you control yourself better," the Jedi said, tossing her dark brown hair behind her shoulder.
"You can?" Sola asked excitedly, dropping her legs down to the rock.
"I can teach you to meditate," the Jedi said. "It's one of the first things the younglings learn to do."
"Ok!" she said excitedly, wiggling on the rock.
"First, cross your legs," the Jedi instructed, "put your hands on your knees and close your eyes."
Sola did as she was told, a small smile on her face.
"Now, pay attention to where you are. Be here now. Not in memories of the past. Not in thoughts of the future."
As if on cue, as Jedi said that, thoughts began to bounce around in Sola's brain, both memories of recent battles and fears of battles to come.
"Think about rock you're sitting on," the Jedi said. "Reach out to it. Reach out to the mountain."
Sola felt the rock underneath her, pressing against her thighs and sitting bones. As soon as she did the thoughts began to subside. She could feel the solidness of the rock below her. Its denseness became her denses. She got the feeling that it wanted to say something, but that they did not speak the same language, so they could not communicate with each other. It was a fascinating feeling, and even to her 12 year old mind, she knew she touched something special.
She did not know how long she was in her reverie, but was jerked out of it by a strong shake.
"How dare you!" Her mother, with her hand firmly around Sola's thin upper arm, glared at the Jedi. "How dare you try to fill my child's head with your religious mumbo-jumbo."
The princess jerked Sola up to a standing position and pushed her behind, as if protecting her from danger. Sola got the sudden impression she had just done something very, very wrong.
"You will stay away from my daughter," her mother hissed. Then she turned and dragged Sola away.
It was then that Sola learned Jedi stole children, babies, to raise them in their monastery on other planets. To her surprise, she had an uncle, her mother's brother, who was taken by the Jedi and never heard from again.
"I thought Jedi were supposed to be good," Sola said.
"I don't want you talking to her," her mother said in a much gentler tone than she'd spoken to the Jedi with. "Do you want to be taken away? Never to see any of us again?"
Sola blinked as tears came to her eyes. Wasn't that the entire reason why they were fighting? For the planet and their family? "No," she mewled.
"What you can do, never let anyone know, you hear me?" Her mother, taller than she, bent down so they were eye to eye. Her mother had the beautiful black eyes of her people, her pupil taking up almost all of her dark iris and barely distinguishable from it. "Never let anyone know. I can't keep you safe forever.
Sola nodded.
And so she kept it a secret.
A house droid's beeping at her brought her back to the present.
She huffed at it annoyed. "Stop saying I abandoned you," she told it. "If I had abandoned you, I wouldn't have come back."
It beeped at her.
"I know I was gone for quite a while," she said. "But I needed to get away."
Another round of beeps and bops erupted from the droid as it drove in small circles near her feet. "I had to leave you here with Teo, who else will take care of him?"
It beeped mournfully.
"I know he doesn't understand you, HS13-O3. I speak to him in Basic and half the time I don't think he understands me." She sighed. "Or he isn't listening at least."
HS13-O3 bumped into her foot and twittered. "Fine, next time I'll take you, but I doubt there will be a next time."
This seemed to satisfy the droid, who drove off to finish its housework.
Sola sighed deeply. She missed Ryloth…
No, she didn't miss Ryloth. It was hot and dry and sandy. She liked the heat, but it wasn't the same kind of heat as back home. That was hot and wet, coating the skin and smelling of life. Ryloth wasn't like that.
She missed having tea time…
No, not per se. There were times when she hadn't felt like hosting tea, but had made herself do it everyday. If not for herself, then to give the officers who worked so very hard in the blasted dry heat with those heavy uniforms a little reprieve from their work and a little culture on a primitive planet.
She missed Thrawn.
That's what it came down to. She missed the intelligent conversation, the camaraderie, the feeling of sameness. It was hard for her to describe to herself, she would not be able to tell someone what was the same about them, they were very different from one another. But the feeling was there, and when she parted from him, it sometimes felt as if there were a rope around her waist that she had to tug to get him to let go of.
She sighed again and fingered her lace.
Unlike with her brother on the Crimson Asp, she couldn't invite herself to the Chimera for tea. Gasping,she smiled, satisfaction filling her chest. Nothing was stopping her from inviting him to Coruscant.