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Anbira Hicchoru
Apr 18th, 2015, 01:59:33 AM
The wind stopped blowing. The birds, their night songs ceased. The natural rhythms of Ossus night that held Anbira fast in slumber suddenly fell away. In the still of perfect silence, the Jedi hermit cracked an eye open from his tree bough perch.

"I'm dreaming."

They weren't words spoken on his lips, but the world spoke them around him. Distantly aware and yet still without higher agency, Anbira fell from his branch, feet meeting the ground. Even the sense of weightlessness mid-freefall seemed real in his gut. Around him, his farmed plot and the stream beyond sat in cool moonlight. It was a perfect evening, and Anbira had above all things - a sense he had been here before.

On Felucia.

It was the stillness. That sense of perfect serenity and calm that wrapped the noise of the world beyond up in velvet. As if there was something he needed to strain to hear without interference or interruption. There, years ago, he had rested beneath mycolic awnings to shelter against beating sun and smothering rain. One night the rain stopped. Not in the gradient shift of downpour to trickle to petering downspouts. It ended with finality. And in that place, he'd woke into dream in a world without strife or war or Empire. As peaceful as the womb. A place where rebirth could take place in the plane between wake and sleep.

Anbira took a walk from his tree. His bare feet pressed into lovingly-tilled loam, sinking into comforting footfalls in warm earth. It was more vivid than reality - a sum of every step he'd taken to bring life out of his toils. Yet try as he might, Anbira could not smell the soil. This was a place of selective feeling. A place where he was brought to understand. On Felucia it had been a truth he was not prepared to hear. What he swore were the imaginings of a desperate and lonely person slowly succumbing to his eroding sanity. Seeing and hearing spirits. The visages and voices of the dead, manifest only to him.

He'd refused to suspend his disbelief, fleeing from dream state every night in a sweaty panic. He returned to a familiar world full of loneliness and the long shadows of war and death that surrounded Felucia. A place where a Jedi named Aayla Secura, he would come to know later, had been murdered. It wasn't the dead Twi'lek who haunted him on those hot humid nights. They were faces he didn't know, names he did not recognize. It mattered not to the spirits. They had chosen to speak to him.

He'd learned long ago not to abandon this realm between wake and sleep. If he did not hear, he would only return again.

"I'm here."

The world around him spoke his words. Anbira saw through his own eyes a man he knew through only the ethereal sense.

"Luke."

Some time later, Anbira woke, a gasp of air piercing the night over the wind and birds and life around him. Unable to sleep any longer, the hermit dropped from his tree perch, and fell to his knees under the weight of his inexorable destiny.

Destiny held fast to Anbira Hicchoru as surely as roots grew from a tree. What was seen would transpire. Once, he'd tried to escape this fact, only to return to his solemn commitment.

He'd known these days would be coming for a long time. And now they were upon him.

Ndonsa
Apr 18th, 2015, 10:01:08 PM
Ndonsa traveled to Master Anbira's tree, and his carefully tended field, while the second sun was just beginning to rise, the first still very low in the sky. She found him under the tree, and frowned. "Are you all right, Master?"

Anbira Hicchoru
Apr 18th, 2015, 10:46:27 PM
"Padawan."

Scrabbling to his feet, Anbira reached for Ndonsa's hand, carrying her along with him as he walked hurriedly to the periphery of the field and the edge of the stream bank. He stood there at the water's edge with her, staring across the meandering stream to the trees beyond.

"Let go your thoughts and spread your senses to the sky above and the earth below and the wild between. Feel. Remember how this feels."

Ndonsa
Apr 19th, 2015, 02:05:06 PM
She looked sideways at the disheveled man, but then obediently closed her eyes and reached out with her senses. It was an intense rush of information, but she wasn't trying to understand it, merely drink it in and remember.

After a a few silent minutes and no further instructions, Ndonsa opened her eyes and turned to her master. "Something is wrong. Why are you sad?"

Anbira Hicchoru
Apr 19th, 2015, 04:42:24 PM
Anbira's hand gripped against hers, set fast with a desperate longing. Her presence was a source of both comfort and sadness. His padawan but for a short time, she'd experienced the ways of the force through his counsel, and in turn had helped him to see the world around him differently. Her perspective on the universe was so unique. Littered with her own curious ways but with a clarity and honesty that so many Jedi could only hope to emulate.

Something is wrong. Why are you sad?

She drew him into her embrace of words, pulling Anbira free from stormy water. A Jedi must not despair. Anbira opened his eyes and set his attention full upon her face, and her rapt, feeling eyes.

"I want to stay here."

Ndonsa
Apr 19th, 2015, 04:57:16 PM
She frowned at the answer, and looked back out across the water toward the trees and the foothills. "So, stay."

Anbira Hicchoru
Apr 21st, 2015, 11:21:08 PM
Anbira thought to his teachings in the wilderness. His teachings were now those of his student. She too knew the ways of the Whills, learned so suddenly as they were within the expanse of the great library. She'd explained it to him as if she'd simply had one long and busy day, and though it was hard for him to fathom, his feelings did not cause him to waver from her words and the truth that was faithfully carried on them.

"In time, we all leave."

It was the way of things. The way of the force. Even the spirits that guided his path would in turn return to eternal communion in the energies of the universe. It was not death as men understood it, but it was existence beyond life. Though they were all luminous beings above the base matter of their mundane bodies, it was no small task stepping past that threshold.

"Ndonsa, I've failed you."

Ndonsa
Apr 23rd, 2015, 12:58:15 AM
So he was not talking of taking a journey. The finality of his words meant more. A metaphor. He spoke of dying. Ndonsa did not understand why - he was young, and the Long Hunt was surely far in his future. Perhaps he had seen something, some secret from the Force.

When he spoke of failure, she looked sharply at him, tail flicking with agitation. "Why do you say that?"

Anbira Hicchoru
Sep 19th, 2015, 11:17:39 AM
He thought on her simple question. Simple but on the surface.

"Because I can only see so much. I can only teach so much."

Anbira could feel Ndonsa's apprehension. Like a young bird with new feathers that looks to it's parent in the nest. A feeling of intimate betrayal when they're pushed to the threshold.

"When we met, I hesitated to be your master. My destiny was revealed to me some time ago, and I know our paths will part."

The hermit squared to face his padawan, a hand placed on her shoulder.

"I regret that I can only train you so far on your journey as you know it. You are a wonderful student."

Ndonsa
Sep 20th, 2015, 09:48:51 PM
Her tail flicked sharply, and then stilled at his compliment. Her ears drooped a bit, the sensitive skin inside turning pinker. "A student is only as good as her teacher," Ndonsa said. "We journey together, Master. I will go with you, and protect you. The future is a river. It always moves forward, but," and she levitated a rock and plopped it into the stream, sending ripples in all directions, "it can be changed."

Anbira Hicchoru
Sep 20th, 2015, 10:20:19 PM
While he could not reconcile his belief in destiny with her irreverence for it, Anbira appreciated the steadfast earnest nature of her guiding principle. Indeed, the Jedi had been divided over the nature of destiny, and many in the order questioned it entirely.

"There is no luck. No chance. No coincidence. No destiny? You are correct in that we travel the same river. There is continuation. Not of the flesh, as even a Jedi does not live forever, but of something beyond."

She knew of what he spoke of.

"You spoke of training I gave you in the span of a day. Things you learned as I once did. The spirits visited me so many years ago, and they visited you as well. I believe no matter where the river carries us, there is reason to our journey. I think we're meant to give a message."

Ndonsa
Sep 20th, 2015, 10:57:54 PM
She considered that, her ears pricking forward. "And what message do I have to give?"

Anbira Hicchoru
Sep 20th, 2015, 11:29:36 PM
It was a small word. The way it formed on the tongue almost demanded a whisper.

"Hope."

Ndonsa
Sep 21st, 2015, 09:59:24 AM
"Hope?"

Ndonsa shook her head lightly, not in denial, but confusion. What hope did she have to give? And what hope did she have in the face of Anbira telling her she was to be alone? "I do not understand."

Anbira Hicchoru
Sep 26th, 2015, 07:53:29 PM
"Hope that the light will never be put out in the darkness. That no matter what, there will always be someone to stand up for what's right."

They had so very nearly been undone before. The Jedi had been pushed to the brink, and with the Jedi so too went the people of the galaxy. Without champions to defend them from evil, the dark side could have consumed everything.

But it didn't. And it wouldn't.

"The life of a Jedi is sacrifice. It isn't that the galaxy takes from us, but that we give. And if we give all of ourselves, and if that's what it takes, we have given so many people a chance to live lives of peace, meaning, and fulfillment. Hope is powerful and pure, Ndonsa. It beats in every heart waiting to be heard."

Ndonsa
Sep 27th, 2015, 02:30:04 AM
"I still do not know how you are sure your time to die has come," Ndonsa said. "Sacrifice may be necessary, but you must still fight to live. If I can give hope, what more can you give the galaxy, Master?"

Anbira Hicchoru
Sep 27th, 2015, 08:48:24 PM
"The spirits came to me with a message; a vision. I saw myself fall."

Even closing his eyes, Anbira could see the representation clearly in his mind's eye. He again looked to his student.

"You are right to question, Ndonsa. I have spent a long time doing just that. There was even a time that, in fear, I fled from the Jedi to hide from my fate."

Anbira knelt down by the stream, looking up at the distorted reflection of himself and his pupil.

"Visions of the future are uncertain. Every action we take in the present changes the outcomes before us. If this vision is not the future as it is meant to be, then it may be a message."

He looked up to the Kufu padawan, and then back down to the stream, where he broke the plane of water with his fingers, distorting the image.

"Without seeing how my story may end, I may not have become your teacher."

Ndonsa
Sep 27th, 2015, 08:57:50 PM
She took a breath, blew it out quietly, and then nodded. "I understand. It is like when I throw the bones - a message of what will be. To react with fear is the wrong path. To avoid it may not be possible. To face it as a Jedi Knight... to stand tall in the storm." Ndonsa folded her arms over her breasts and stood straight. "I will stand with you, Master. I do have hope, but I will see you on your journey to the Long Hunt."

Anbira Hicchoru
Sep 27th, 2015, 09:24:38 PM
Anbira's smile was earnest as he looked up to his pupil.

"Though I did not want to teach you at first, you have made me glad I changed my mind, Ndonsa."

The hermit nodded with a degree of certainty.

"I think it was meant to be."

Anbira rose from his perch at the stream, and returned to his tree to pick fruit. One of which, he threw to his padawan.

"Now, eat. We still have plenty of day remaining."