Nothing in the universe is still, Lorash. All things are change, all things are motion. Harmony is the cultivation of balance amongst competing demands and desires, order naturally arising out of what seems chaotic.
With Nabeila's latest lesson to contemplate, Lorash settled into her position on the little island she'd found for herself. Corr's ship was nearby the lake, but here she had distance from the splashing of the twins and the various other people hustling about a small camp in the forests of Tython. The lake had a shallow pathway out to the central island, but it was still under three feet of water. The twins hadn't found it yet, thankfully. She had enough to worry about without them clambering all over the place.
The Force was everywhere on the surface of the verdant world, a placid and peaceful blanket surrounding her. But even then, just as Nabeila had described, there was movement: like little ripples in the surface of the pond itself, it reflected the people who moved through it. The beautiful serenity came not in conflict with the rushing of the wind through the leaves or the stirring of fish in the waters, but because of it.
Here, surrounded by reeds and under the shade of weeping trees, Lorash finally felt solitude sink in. Nabeila was somewhere deep beneath the surface of her thoughts, leaving her privacy enough to feel all the things that needed to come up. None of the others knew where she was to pester her.
Once she felt appropriately grounded, Lorash turned her attention to the small handful of pebbles she'd collected on the way, pulling them out of her satchel. She set each one beside the next, letting her thumb graze the surface of each in turn, smooth and cool. Nabeila's task seemed easy on its face, to stack the pebbles and hold them in alignment without using her body. Unfortunately, it was targeting probably her weakest area in the Force: anything with physicality.
Even as weak as Lorash's grasp on motion using the Force was, on Tython it seemed much more achievable. She closed her eyes, trying to attune to her surroundings just as she'd reached out to the lightsaber crystal. These stones, however, did not sing back. Lorash sighed a little as she settled into her lotus meditation position. At least she could be comfortable while she flailed at the task.
She frowned as she focused on the first pebble. There was no sense in trying to grasp all of them at once, not when each would be stacked atop the other. She knew that was beyond her. How to encourage a stone to float? That was not its natural state of being, nor was raw willpower her own strength.
It is like a muscle, she heard Seia's voice coaching her, a memory from one of their sparring sessions when her grasp of sense was being honed. It takes time to develop any power in the Force. You do not run before you can walk.
In the absence, the comfort of just feeling that connection to Seia for a moment was like a taste of honey after bitter ashes. Lorash felt a little jolt of focus hit her, a reminder that this was not leisure: she needed to learn. She turned it on the pebble, willing it to rise.
It felt like trying to lift an eight-hundred pound boulder. She gasped and dropped the tiny rock. How the hell had Seia managed to hurl herself in that Force-empowered leap at Dren?
You are thinking too small, Nabeila coached softly, words rising to the surface of Lorash's mind.
"I don't understand," Lorash muttered.
Connect to what is larger than yourself and make small your burden. Let the Force carry it, not your will. After all, it is already moving. Your combat training with Seia taught you many times that it is easier to redirect power than generate it.
Lorash opened her eyes, studying the pebble. It looked perfectly still on the ground, as if silently mocking her with her inability to lift it. "But it isn't moving."
Nabeila didn't answer, leaving the padawan alone with her thoughts.
The young woman picked up the pebble and tossed it up into the air, but it resisted every attempt she made to stop it with her mind from reconnecting with the ground. Fortunately, Lorash had always been more inclined to curiosity than frustration. This was a puzzle that Nabeila had given her, a riddle of sorts, not merely an exercise as simple as moving weights. Her mind was what the jedi master intended to hone, after all.
A wind picked up, caressing Lorash's face and hair as it ghosted across the surface of the island, carrying the chill of the lakewaters. She shivered a little and pulled her outer shirt tighter around her body.
Think bigger… Lorash placed her palms on the ground on either side of the little collection of stones, slowly thinking through everything Nabeila had said. These pebbles seem still, but really they're spinning on the surface of a planet that is spinning, revolving around a sun that itself continues to rotate. It is in motion through a system, through a galaxy, through a universe. In the grand scheme of the cosmos, a pebble and the mountain it was once are both are infinitesimal in size. So why would it be difficult to move?
The pebble started to quiver on the earth as she focused on it with care, imagining it not as some static thing, but a tiny mote of dust moving on the great, cosmic sweeping wind of the Force that bound and made up all things. She was moving too, so it made sense to align herself to its motion for a moment, tumbling through space, spinning endlessly and endlessly.
The stone still felt heavy when she tried to budge it, but it was beginning to give by millimeters. She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, focusing more and more on the idea of not stillness, but a coordinated motion. Everything in the universe worked in concert in its own way, endlessly connected webs and cycles playing themselves out over and over again. She thought of the slow lapping of currents that had given the stone its shape, imagining them sweeping it ever so gradually from peak to ocean. How different was that from the wind weaving its way through Tython's trees, pushing air all around in a constant state of flux?
Lorash focused her mind until all the extraneous thoughts fell away and was rewarded by the soft click of the little pebble settling on top of its brother. There was no time to feel triumph: she had six more stones to stack and keep in their precarious balance, defying gravity.
Or was it defying? If all things were connected, did direction even matter? Did distance?
Balance, Seia's voice said sternly in her ear, another memory surfacing. Niman is useless without balance, without focus.
The second stone started to wobble its way upwards as Lorash kept her breathing steady, redoubling her focus on the rocks. She was beginning to understand why Nabeila had started the lesson with her lecture on harmony as a balance between demands and desires: she wanted to break down crying, but she also wanted to train so she could search for Seia. This meant walking the bitter edge of tears towards her goal. If she could accomplish this little, tiny task, it would be a step in the right direction.
A soft click announced the next pebble was seated on the ones that had come before it. Lorash felt a little shot of hope hit her in the chest. I can do this, she thought with a welling of relief. I can do this.
The sudden burst of emotion and the hint of tears was too much for her little rock pile. It teetered over immediately, collapsing back onto the ground. That was a lesson as well, though: she needed to keep an even keel to manipulate the Force delicately. Brute force was much easier with emotion, as her misdirection of Dren had proven, but dexterity required calm. Lorash took a deep breath and calmed herself again. It was only slightly easier to stack the stones as she had the first time, still very much a struggle, but there was distinct improvement now that she understood.
The Force was carrying the stone, not her, as just as it carried all things. She was a hollow reed, a vessel shaping it in a direction. Her willpower didn't need to be more than the rock's: she could surrender to the Force as it flowed through her and let it brush aside everything else.
You are an apt pupil.
Lorash smiled faintly at those words of praise from Nabeila as she balanced the seventh rock at the top of the stack, even though her head was pounding from the mental exertion. "I hope it gets easier."
It does. The more you understand your role and place in the Force, the more it will answer when you call upon it. Seia was right about you: you are gifted, and thankfully with an inclination not so different from my own.
"Lorash, where are you?" Mal called, splashing along the shallow path towards the island. "Dinner!"
The padawan blinked. She hadn't realized so much time had passed, but the sun had indeed moved substantially towards the horizon as she worked. "Nabeila, you said you trained many padawans in the old days, right?"
I did.
"How do I measure up?" Lorash asked curiously.
She felt Nabeila's amusement as a flash of warmth through her body. While our arrangement is…unconventional to say the least, it reminds me in the best way of my favorite pupils past. You learn quickly when you set your mind to something. It makes you a pleasure to teach. The only thing that concerns me is the hardening of your heart, but such things are unavoidable when we experience betrayal. I hope you will come to trust them again, Lorash. They intended only what they thought was best.
"For me. They didn't care about Seia."
Out of ignorance, yes. If they knew Seia as you know Seia, or as I know Seia, they would have acted very differently. Nabeila sighed slightly. You must remember the scars your master bears from the sith. Just as you have a perception of her molded by your past experience with her, he comes to her shaped by his own brushes with the Dark Side. Perhaps you should speak with him about it.
"I'll try," Lorash mumbled, letting the tower of pebbles fall as the splashing grew closer. How did you know Seia, Nabeila?
We battled many times in the days of the Old Republic, beginning when we were both newly stretching our wings in the world. Seia went beyond the edges of the old Sith Empire after her master died, seeking knowledge of the Force so she could retaliate against his killer. I was a freshly minted jedi, inexperienced with the world but well versed in combat. Perhaps it was the twisting of the Force that sent us to the same planets. Eventually I was tasked to hunt her, such a thorn she proved for the Order.
"But you protected her instead?"
Later, yes. At that time, I meant to capture her. She had returned to the sacked Jedi Temple on Coruscant in search of relics that had survived the vicious attack she had helped spearhead alongside Darth Malgus. She was able to evade the others sent after her, but I was persistent. We clashed many times throughout the temple, lightsaber against lightsaber. Our battle awoke a powerful force ghost, a sith slain in the attack. Both of us agreed upon a truce until we had dealt with his presence, aware that he was the greater danger. Once he was defeated, honestly, we were both so spent we could not continue our combat. I demanded she surrender herself and the holocron in her possession.
"What did she do?"
She laughed and said if I could take either, I was welcome to them.
Lorash smiled despite all the pain. "Sounds like her."
Our battle with the ghost had weakened several support pillars: Seia's prowess with a lightsaber and moving objects was advanced, if perhaps more reckless than my own. I accepted her challenge and squared up to fight her, even though I could barely stand. One of the pillars started to crumble the moment I did. I don't know why Seia decided to shove me out of its way. All I remember is her suddenly bowling into me and then the pillar falling. I thought it had crushed her and the holocron until I heard her laughing on the other side of the pillar. She mocked me some more, until I shouted at her that she could take the holocron and go as repayment for my life.
"You didn't think she was too dangerous to let go?"
I was in no condition to follow, even without being crushed. Besides, she had shown me mercy in a way I had never heard of a sith doing. The next time we met was at a diplomatic dinner, since the Republic and the Empire were technically at peace, and she was in the company of a Mandalorian clan we were trying to court. You should have seen her grin when she realized where she recognized me from. I received the most sarcastic thanks for charitably parting with a sacred relic for the low price of one jedi's life.
Lorash smiled at the mental picture, pulling her legs to her chest. "You know, for a jedi-killing sith, she has a habit of saving them. I would have died on that planet if she hadn't intervened."
Seia is a complicated woman, a double-bladed saber. On one hand, she burns with compassion for those she cares about and sometimes even those she doesn't. On the other, she hates the injustices and crimes she perceives against those. She has never appreciated the strong preying on the weak. She always liked her foes and challenges equal or stacked against her. When she was training her apprentice on Tatooine, before the krayt dragon, she told me that they encountered a local village plagued by raiders, scum fresh off Hutta ready to enslave anyone they came across. She carved through those slavers until not one was standing, then taught the locals how to use the advanced blaster rifles they'd dropped, all with Yaikâ hidden nearby. There were many things she admitted she found intolerable about the Empire and Republic both. One, abusive, and the other, spineless.
"There you are!" Mal cheered, pouncing on Lorash. The twi'lek boy threw his arms around Lorash and then wrapped his legs around her waist, like a little monkey clinging to her back. He hadn't understood the change in the padawan who had been his older sister for most of his life.
Lorash wished she could have continued her conversation, but now that Mal was here, she would have to return to the others. "Let me up, you ewok," Lorash said, flicking the back of his hand. "Where's your sister?"
"Training with Master Vori," Mal said as he kept clinging. "They wanted me to come get you for dinner, though."
She knew that meant Vori was at least trying to give her whatever space she needed. Lorash wrinkled her nose when she realized that Mal was dripping wet from the wading, but couldn't find it in herself to scowl at him. Instead, she clambered up to her feet, harder with Mal on her back but much easier after training with Seia's weights. "Alright, let's go get dinner."
Mal cheered, but when Lorash didn't set him down, he chirped, "Did your muscles get bigger, Lor? You used to say I was too heavy."
"You are too heavy, but you're also going to catch a cold if you go splashing through that water again." She held still while the twi'lek boy clambered up higher onto her shoulders, then trudged along with her head bowed, carrying his weight without much of a problem. "Stop squirming, though, or I'm going to carry you like a sack over my shoulder."
Mal busied himself with prodding at her bicep. "You're not all scrawny. What happened to your staff?"
"It's back at the ship," Lorash said absently. She wasn't carrying her lightsaber or the staff, just the crystal on a cord around her neck. The glowing dimmed to normal amber when she wasn't focusing on her attunement with it. "You can have it if you want."
"Really?" Mal sounded awed. "Will it make my muscles strong too?"
"It's a good start." Since they'd landed on Tython, Lorash hadn't had much use for the thing. She'd taken the lessons she learned from Seia and made good use of them, practicing off away from the others. The weights she wore now were stones tied to her body, not chunks of metal, but the conditioning was basically the same. She'd taken to some of the older, sturdier trees for the body hardening exercises Seia was so fond of. Whatever came next, Lorash had no intention of losing her edge as a combatant. Corr probably had someone watching her, but so far it hadn't been a problem.
We should spar when you are ready, Nabeila commented softly in her thoughts. There are many techniques of Niman to show you as well and you should become comfortable with using a lightsaber.
How do I spar with a ghost? Lorash asked, letting Mal prattle on without paying much attention. He was full of endless energy and stories of all the things she'd missed in her absence.
I can still manipulate the Force, even in this state of being. That will be more than sufficient to train you.
Tonight? Lorash reflected hopefully, anxious to get put through her paces again. She missed the challenge of sparring and even though it wouldn't have the fiery connection of her time with Seia, she was looking forward to learning from Nabeila.
Midnight, Nabeila agreed. The moons will shed enough light to allow you some vision, but not much. You will have to rely on your sense…if it is not deceived.
Lorash grinned at the challenge in Nabeila's voice. This would be another test, another honing of her mind to compliment the pressing of her physical abilities. As long as the others didn't intrude, she would probably be fine. Fortunately, Tython was full of old ruins and hiding places in the natural world. She could easily find somewhere quiet and off the beaten path. Deep in her heart of hearts, she hoped that the next time she saw Seia, the sith would be pleased with her progress.
You are every bit worthy of her love, Lorash. You needn't doubt that, Nabeila said in her mind as they finished the walk and she set Mal down. But yes, I think that she will be delighted.