Of Days Long Past:
Taken, Yet Not Lost.
By Emparra.
*sigh*
(insert witty disclaimer here)
Oddly enough, among the peoples of the galaxy, there are few that do not mourn the Jedi. Even though they are often too afraid to help if some uncanny being shows up in their midst, the once Guardians of Peace are mourned with sorrow and a very certain tang of bitter hopelessness and pity. For long centuries, Jedi had numbered in hundreds and thousands, always passing by, calmly cris-crossing the galaxy, lending their own weathered hands as they might on the way.
The war might have poisoned the systems, the Chancellor may have denounced them, but enough of the small people in the galaxy had looked into the eyes of one Jeid or another and seen truer things, felt kinder hands, found keener wisdom, just enough that they were not wholly forgotten in slaughter.
Meera Trundigger called herself one-such, and softly sang her stories to her grandchildren as the days darkened.
Meera had been one of an entire settlement of Togruta colonists that had been kidnapped into slavery to the mines of Kadavo, and Jedi had been the ones to find them and bring them out. Jedi had come to slave beside them in order to see that none were left behind, it was the Jedi that brought them home and reassured them that their captors had been taken down. It had been Jedi that aided them in building homes and planting new crops, just as they had done for centuries.
She had not loved the Jedi, not then, not for a long while after. A bruised soul, the Elders had said, not to worry because time could heal.
And time had, somewhat.
Respect came first, reaped with the first harvest (the reaping in her soul was a surprise), and she found peace in that.
Another year to sow, to tend, and to watch seeds grow again, and the harvest was a little greater.
The next year brought peace to the galaxy, and wreckage to her heart.
She hasn't realized that had begun to heal until it broke again. In the rubble and the chaos of governance and harvest, Meera's soul remained still and unafraid- unafraid because wreckage was not new to her, and now she was stronger .
With the next season, many seeds were sown, a few things tended, a little less flourished, but there must still be a harvest.
That was the cycle of life.
Meera looked in her soul and found it less bruised, more steeled, and found it far more full with peace than she had ever known. Hard-won peace, which perhaps might have been the sweetest she'd ever tasted.
Another season, new beginnings, and a family of her own was planted. A new hope, clean and untouched, and fresh joy touched her heart. They sowed many things, built up a few more, steadied themselves against the creeping darkness, and watched the horizon. This harvest would mark another end, another cycle, another gathering of all the fruits of their labors.
This must be what the Jedi saw as they laid their eyes on the devastation of their home when her people were brought back to it. They must have seen a more completed work, an established people, healing, and the fruit of it.
Perhaps that was the little light she saw in those eyes, under those earthy hoods, as unjust as it seemed so long ago, for what light was there left after it had all been stolen from them?
The Jedi had seen the kindling of a new light, and offered it a spark.
Then, it seemed so hopeless, so foolish to dream.
Now the fruits of their labors were coming in, the Jedi were no more. They would never see it. Meera's heart had healed, and the Jedi were hunted to extinction.
They would never see the harvest of the seeds of light they had sown.
Meera and her husband sowed again, tended their field, and nurtured hope in the quiet. The hands that had helped them were hidden away and gone, but the powerful touch lingered.
Jedi were no more, but they had done too much to forget completely.
In the darkness of a failed harvest, Meera delivered the greatest joy to surpass all joys she had yet known. In the darkness, the light of her heart shone on her daughter, and in secret she told the oldest of stories, the stories nobody but the Eldest remembered where they came from.
Hope must be tended, after all.
Season after season, cycle by cycle, the land bore fruit and its people grew. They had been planted in good soil and tended carefully, after all, so they had grown well even after guiding hands had left them.
Meera became one of the Elders, and her tongue became more careful as time became more dangerous and the world even more dark.
She watched young hands sow and toil and reap through the seasons as her own grew knobby and old and weak.
She watched her children and grandchildren with fading sight that still caught the uncanny, the inexplicable moments that made her heart race and skip , because the Jedi were dead . The Jedi had been hunted and extinguished, and the Jedi had been uncanny .
The Jedi were dead. Meera would soon be. The Empire had sown hatred and dissent liberally, and the galaxy did not prosper.
Whispers of hope and dissent floated on the wind, aimless, until they reached even her old montrals.
Meera had nothing to do but sit and hope and murmur her old, old stories and hope the governor didn't have her killed before she died in her bed. Her eyes no longer saw the sun or the faces of her children and grandchildren, though her hearing still caught whispers that became murmurs that became a roar across the galaxy, and then- and then!
Word of a living Jedi set aglow hearts across the galaxy and set something right in her old, sad heart that has long lain bruised.
The last bruise.
The Jedi were gone. Their hands had left unfinished works for the people to carry on.
The Jedi had returned!
New hands would pick up the work of hope again!
Meera Trundigger lived long enough to teach her children the way the Jedi had imparted their kindness and mercy and love, because somebody half to carry that light for the Uncanny ones, the ones that might become Jedi.
Meera lived long enough to hear excited, young voices say, "Granny! There's a Jedi here!"
Her heart leapt one final time, and her soul passed the veil and into the light.
The Jedi had come, and her people were free.
Finess