Swords into Plowshares (Eah)

[Rev Solomon]

Adega Besh had barely crawled above the horizon, a searing blue-white lantern in a sea of red fire that heralded the imminent ascension of the larger and brighter Adega Prime. A cold wind, stirred by the first rays of morning, sighed down from the verdant mountain slopes that rose up on either side of the Sanctuary One colony, sweeping over the grain fields and the tarpaulin-covered roofs of new construction, and tugging at the edges of Reverend Solomon's broad-brimmed hat as he squinted toward the eastern sunrise from his spot at the edge of the parade grounds. It was a good morning.

The Jedi preacher wore his customary brown nerfskin coat over a black tunic with a white clerical collar, ample protection against the unseasonable chill that had crept over the colony by night. But he didn't mind the cold. A couple hours' exercise would chase it away long before the heat of day could make such work uncomfortable. From his belt hung the tools of the day - two training sabers, indistinguishable from the real thing except by a practiced eye. Already a few eager initiates had taken to the sparring circles, limbering up for some early morning velocities to get a jump on their classmates later in the day. The art of the lightsaber was a seductive one. Solomon remembered well how the elegant, luminous weapons had captured his imagination when he was a youngling watching the Padawans spar on the elevated dueling stages at the Great Jedi Temple, and if he were that age now he would probably be drilling right alongside the other early risers, eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing his saber forms to the exclusion of all his other studies.

He knew that wasn't likely to be a problem for the student he was meeting this morning. For as enticing as the lightsaber had been to his own pre-adolescent sensibilities, it could also be intimidating to the uninitiated. And that's why he was here. To provide a little friendly initiation.

Solomon breathed deeply, filling his broad chest with the cool morning air, and closed his eyes to feel the first, yellow rays of Adega Prime on his face. Behind him he sensed a smaller, still luminous presence crossing the parade grounds toward him from the dormitories, bright with curiosity and not a little nervousness. The Jedi preacher smiled.

"Good morning, Eah. I'm glad you could join me."

[Eah Kell]

The way the sunlight slanted on this world made everything seem a little dreamlike to Eah. Her goggles color-corrected for the wrong spectrum hitting her eyes and for the most part filtered the angle of refraction in such a way that she could see all three dimensions properly, but there was only so much tech could do to improve biology evolved in a completely different atmosphere. She could see fine, but the edges of everything seemed very sharp and the colors almost garishly vivid, and she'd already found herself battling headaches in the few days she'd been on Ossus. It was something she probably had been warned about in her pre-departure physical, when she'd been fitted for her mask and goggles, but she couldn't remember, now. At the time so many things had been on her mind that trying to retrospectively isolate one caveat among the lot of them was pointless. It remained now only to adjust, to adapt, and she had found in the few trials she'd ventured that the light (or, perhaps, lack of it) in the twilight, dawn, and early morning - that is, in the paler light spectrum - she saw better and struggled less. She had been up for several hours already, which had given her ample time to really whip herself into a state of nervousness about this morning's practice.

Master Solomon, a tall, dark bulk standing proud against the sky in the dawnlight as Eah approached, was not the intimidating part; indeed, Eah found him almost a comfort on a personal level - odd, but in a familiar way. He was like many of the older sages in the measured ways he spoke and his tone of conversation, a teacher's aura about him. No, Eah was not frightened of him, but of the ideals he planned to introduce to her. Perhaps...perhaps frightened was not the right classification for how she felt. More like repulsed. Eah had so far seen mostly the constructive and educational pursuits of the Jedi in the Sanctuary colony, and by extension of their Alliance around them: these were a people who could build, who could train, who could produce beautiful and useful things that had far-reaching impact, who could speak with authority and skill. But as much as she and her people admired Jedi skill and tact and mastery of the Force, no one of the Baran Do had ever seemed quite easy about the Jedi, and it was not hard to understand why. Jedi were not called knights for no reason. These were warriors - proud, yes, and mostly moral, but fighters, killers, warmongerers by profession. War and death were substantive to the Jedi way of life, and what was even more confusing was that they would never admit this. Not once in all the histories of the Jedi that she had read, written by galactic historians, many Jedi themselves, had any seemed to acknowledge that the Jedi dealt fundamentally in war. Death was a righteous act in many situations; killing was not foreign to her or repulsive in itself. She had seen half a dozen executions in her life. But all the people put to death on Dorin had been criminals, found guilty under the law by their own communities. Jedi were...they had been known to go rogue, at their worst, and even when they abided by their own code, they often found it necessary to end lives on their individual judgment alone. And the judgment of most races, she had learned, was not always very sound.

She didn't fear so much that these Jedi were untrustworthy. She could sort the hotheads from the more stable, rational ones, she was sure, and so far Master Solomon had shown himself to be more the latter type. But Eah was deeply concerned - as she had been for several months, as her family and teachers back home had been for probably longer than that - about what this training would do to her. She was going to become a Jedi knight, if she could manage it. Did that mean she would have to shed her own sense of rightness? Of justice? Would she have to forget her own ideals and morals and take up, unquestioningly, someone else's? And if so, whose? Master Solomon's? Could she trust in his judgment, a human, shortsighted and impetuous as all humans were if her teachers could be believed? She didn't know. She was...unsure of the way forward, if her concerns on this matter could not be put to rest. The truth was, it would be difficult to return, now, to Dorin, to her old way of life, not only because she had planned her future here in her mind, but because so many others had, too. The expectations she felt about learning to be a Jedi weighed on her, occupied her thoughts now as she heard Master Solomon greet her, as she put on a politic face and settled into as much patience as she could muster.

"Good morning, master. Thank you for inviting me out to train. I'm eager to learn."

[Rev Solomon]

If Solomon had any inkling of the knots Eah had been tying herself into on the way to meet him, he gave her no indication. Instead he nodded down the path that led past the grain fields to the East. "Let's walk a while before we get started, warm ourselves up a bit before we get to work."

And put some distance between themselves and the other initiates already drilling in the sparring circles. Anyone, no matter how composed, could feel self-conscious about an audience when trying out a new skill for the first time, and he wanted Eah's mind clear and focused. They fell to a brisk pace down the paved path, easy enough for him with his long strides, but calculated to raise her heartrate just a hair.

"Why don't you tell me what you've learned so far about lightsabers?"

[Eah Kell]

Eah took two and a half steps at least to every one of his, but she was small even for a Kel Dor, so she was more or less used to having to jog to keep up with anyone. "Only what I've learned from books and diagrams," she told him simply. "I know...the metals and components they're made of. I know this system used to be the main export site for the focusing crystals used in them. I can name a few famous designs and lightsaber craftsmen." She smiled a little. "I know that Jedi Master Plo Koon -" and here she interjected a phrase of blessing and remembrance that she did not translate "- was one of only a few to use a yellow focusing crystal, an heirloom from the first Jedi in his family, a thousand years ago. Is there something specific that you want me to tell you?"

[Rev Solomon]

"How about the combat forms?" Solomon asked. "Do the Baran Do teach any similar techniques?"

[Eah Kell]

Eah frowned slightly, more out of embarrassment than anything. "No, sir. That is...I studied that there are seven forms and I know a little about the strengths and weaknesses of each. But the Baran Do don't know any of them and there were no lightsabers to practice with. I watched some training footage of sparring matches; I believe it was rather old, and only showed the first six forms. I am practiced with some hand-to-hand combat, and with a staff weapon, both very old Baran Do martial arts. I was told our skills in combat were nowhere near as well developed as yours."

[Rev Solomon]

"That's still a good foundation," Solomon replied. "You'll find that most martial arts share many of the same basic concepts. Your experience will serve you well."

They left the grain fields behind for wild meadows of spindly panic grass, whose spidery flowers, higher than Eah's head, nodded freely in the wind, while masts of sunflowers climbed even higher to greet the rising suns. A bird with flickering wings of blue and gold darted through the high grasses, lighted on a sunflower, and began gobbling up the freshly sprouting seeds. Solomon couldn't help but slow his pace and admire the life flourishing all around them.

"Master Plo Koon was a powerful Jedi, and a great man," he said. "I count myself fortunate to have served with him during the Clone Wars."

[Eah Kell]

Eah was grateful for a momentary lull in their pace, not because she was winded but because walking through the thick, tall grass was somewhat difficult, and she had to part it ahead of her with a slight adjustment to the air around her. Her attention was drawn by the bird as well, a jewel of color almost painful for her to look at in the now-full light of the twin suns. She wondered what the name of the species was, if it even had a name among the people here, or if it was just as alien to Master Solomon as it was to her.

His words surprised her out of her thoughts, and then surprised her again as she really understood them. "You...you knew him?" she asked, completely forgetting not to sound awestruck.

[Rev Solomon]

"Only briefly," Solomon said. "My master and I joined his fleet in the Arda system late in the war. The fighting there was hard. The enemy was deeply entrenched. But Master Plo Koon never lost his calm, nor his compassion. He treated every life as precious, even the lives of our enemies."

The grasses thickened around them, enough that Eah nearly lost sight of the towering Jedi, but he swept the tall, jointed stems aside and revealed a clearing of soft, pillowy heather bordered on one side by the thicket and on the other by a breathless drop into a deep, bowl-edged valley, carpeted thickly with trees and split by the snaking branches of a river wreathed in mist. Where moments ago the suns had seemed crowded by the horizon, now they soared above a distant chain of purple mountains, blanketing the land below in hatches of golden light and muted blue shadows.

"It is important to remember, Eah, that when we fight, we do so in the service of life. The lightsaber is both a sword and a shield. Just as the Jedi are both guardians of justice and keepers of peace. War does not make a warrior great. But the peace you carry with you - that is your strength."

[Eah Kell]

Eah listened as she shielded her eyes briefly from the onrush of golden light. When she blinked her vision clear again, the valley sprawled out below them, just obscured enough by lingering morning fog to render the colors painterly, the entire thing limned and dreamlike to her eyes. She felt momentarily dizzy, focused very intently on the solid ground beneath her feet and the energy of the air around her, the planet itself grounding her in the Force even as her other senses were dazzled. She took a deep breath, let it out, feeling steadier - and feeling somewhat emboldened by his words, enough to venture to ask him questions.

"Master, may I ask...you speak of peace. Whose peace do we enforce, as Jedi? The Alliance's? The Council's?"

[Rev Solomon]

"Oh, our calling is higher than governments and councils," Solomon replied. "The peace we defend is the peace of our neighbors. Everyone. Alliance, Empire, Human, Zabrak, Twi'lek, Cizerack, Kel Dor."

He smiled at the wrinkling of her face around her breathing mask. "I'm sorry, I know that's not the question you were asking. Politics is complicated, and has a way of clouding our personal responsibilities. So though we offer fealty to the Council, and uphold the laws of the Alliance, we must also judge them, and ourselves, by a higher standard. The Jedi Code helps to orient us in the right direction. But even the Code points beyond itself to the Force."

[Eah Kell]

Eah was quiet a moment, thinking that through, becoming confused and feeling that there were levels of his answer she did not understand. "So. The Force itself has a...a judgment? A morality? And Jedi can know this morality, and enforce it?" Her head ridges flushed a little, her curiosity flaring as her mind sped ahead. "But what of planets where the people aren't Force-sensitive? Or those who have never heard of the Jedi, or of the Force? Do the same rules still apply?"

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon's smile broadened. Eah's was a powerfully inquisitive mind, and he didn't doubt the suns would set again before she ran out of questions. The training sabers at his hip were beginning to feel superfluous, but for the present, he didn't mind.

"Remember that the Force flows through all living things, not just adepts. The Jedi way is one of many traditions that explore the nature of the Force. The way of the Baran Do is another. The Faith that I preach is another still, and one that is open to all who will receive it. But when we speak of the will of the Force, Eah, we don't mean its destiny, as if we were soothsayers looking for signs of the future. The will of the Force is to protect and to cherish all life. And to commune with the Force is to make that will your own."

He pulled back the left hem of his coat so she could see the sabers hanging from his belt. "And that is what guides our hearts, as well as our blades."

[Eah Kell]

She saw the weapons, and did not recoil, because that would be foolish, and they were merely inert pieces of metal, collections of screws and electrical components and minerals. But in her heart she still felt misgivings, and did not know how to voice them without sounding insubordinate. She focused on the training sabers a moment, then back on Master Solomon's face.

"I am afraid," she admitted, over her own better judgment. Jedi were not supposed to be afraid - in fact, it was more or less expressly forbidden in their Code. She had been warned by so many not to show fear or weakness wherever she could help it, but she did not want there to be any misunderstanding. If she could not be honest with this man, here in an isolated field on an alien world, she supposed she could not move forward with this way of life. "I have learned about many Jedi who did terrible things, believing they were right. Is that, too, the...the will of the Force?"

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon met Eah's goggle-covered eyes with a look of surprise. He'd sensed her misgivings, but hadn't guessed their shape. Fear in the face of the unknown was perfectly natural, whether it be a new weapon or a new way of life, but Eah's fear was much more personal, and farther-reaching, borne of a contemplative mind and a powerful imagination.

"Even the wisest Jedi is mortal, and liable to stumble," he replied soberly. "And the power we wield can be terrible if turned to selfish ends. But, no. I don't believe the Force ever wills us to do evil. Sometimes difficult choices must be made, in the face of death and before the eyes of all sentients. How we respond in those moments has a lot to do with how we've prepared ourselves in our daily lives. Practice becomes habit. Habit becomes instinct. The Force guides us, but it does not control us. It's more like a counselor than a rulebook."

He considered the young Kel Dor thoughtfully. She was luminous before the rising suns, but luminous to his other senses, too, a quivering flame of hopes, doubts, and potential. "Are you afraid that your fellow Jedi will make the wrong decision when the chips are down?" he asked. "Or are you afraid that you will?"

[Eah Kell]

Eah felt staggered by the question, almost a physical blow. Reflexively, she bristled, knowing even as she did that she shouldn't; but it wasn't her with the vague morality, among all these Jedi here. "I am afraid," she said, a little stiffly, "that just being a Jedi will mean making wrong decisions, and thinking them right. I am only one person, and there are a million different laws and moralities and ways of life in the galaxy. If the Force reveals itself to individual Jedi in individual ways, and sometimes those Jedi choose a dark path, or a convenient path, and believe themselves to be doing the will of the Force, how am I to know it, truly? What is to stop any of you from knowing the Force wrongly?" She huffed a frustrated sound. "On Kel Dor, there are systems in place to check any one person's power and influence. What checks the Jedi?"

[Rev Solomon]

"We have our checks as well," Solomon replied. "We are citizens of the Alliance, and so we are beholden to its laws. Individual Jedi are answerable to the Council, and the Council is ultimately answerable to the Senate of the Alliance. But you're not asking about matters of jurisdiction, are you?"

Though her facial cues around her environmental gear were still obscure to him, the preacher could sense Eah's knotted frustration, her desire for clarity. He could respect that desire. If only a young Sol Iman had been so thoughtful, and quicker to think before taking action.

"A Jedi's first defense, Eah, is to recognize his own fallibility. The moment any one of us believes he is beyond reproof, he is already lost. If you're looking for a law that can answer all questions in all circumstances, I'm afraid I can't give it to you. Any attempt I could make would be tyranny. But this doesn't mean I can offer you no guidance. The Jedi have been seeking the will of the Force for millennia, and through their teachings and their examples we learn what it means to be a Jedi. Some of these teachings form the bedrock of our way. Some have shown their age, and so have been discarded. Our code is a finite thing trying to understand the infinite. But that is only a frank appraisal of our place as finite beings. If you insist on perfect understanding before you use the Force, then you will never use the Force at all."

[Eah Kell]

Eah realized she was shaking - her emotions too braided to pick them apart, but some mess of anger and frustration and, yes, fear. But somewhere down deeper than these was a kind of yawning hope, breathless and too big to fully grasp, too elusive to hold onto. It sucked at the pit of her, ached around the edges of her heart: she wanted to be a Jedi. She wanted to learn to use the Force. It was all she'd ever wanted, really, reading stories about Plo Koon and hearing her family talk about her great-uncle Aad, always with a little edge of apprehension, because his way was not the way most Kel Dor would choose. But it was a path he chose and walked with utmost integrity, true to the tenets of the Jedi and the ways of Dorin. These were heroes in her eyes in a way they hadn't ever been for her sister or her parents or any of her friends back home. She had wanted to be like them since she was only a tiny thing, and even now, buried beneath her learned fear and her lack of understanding, their example was still a bright flame, hungry and eager and sure. She realized, belatedly, feeling foolish, that she was so frustrated and angry in part because she could not bear to watch that old, childish dream of hers die, knowing that it must if it was not the right path.

But then, she supposed Master Solomon was saying...that there was no one "right" path, or "wrong." There was only the judgment of the Jedi and the Alliance and her peers. That...wasn't nothing, she supposed. It wasn't what she'd hoped for, but Plo Koon had navigated this life before her, and other Kel Dor before him, and she was reasonably sure he didn't manage that by becoming so lost in doubts and questions that he could not move forward with decisions. This was a point where Eah needed to make a decision to trust the Jedi - or at least this Jedi - the same way they had trusted her and accepted her into their number, even though she wasn't well-trained and could barely tell one end of a lightsaber from the other.

And, after all, someone needed to have a level head around this place. Maybe that was meant to be Eah's fit, here. Probably not, she reasoned...but it wasn't impossible.

She became aware she'd been quiet too long, and she quickly pressed her trembling hands to her thighs so the shaking wouldn't be obvious, cleared her mind and her face, nodded once. "I understand, Master," she said in a more subdued tone. "I...I thank you, for helping me to understand, and for explaining to me things that are difficult to explain. I'm. I'm sorry I interrupted what you meant to teach me. I'm ready now to do whatever it is you'd like me to."

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon offered Eah a gentle smile, then backed off a few paces to give them ample distance for their next task.

"You are right to ask questions, Eah," he said. "But questions without experience will only take you so far. I have sometimes compared walking in the Light Side of the Force to learning the steps of a dance. At first your attempts are going to be awkward, faltering. But once you learn the guiding principles - once you have made the music a part of you - your confidence will begin to grow. Your path will at once be in unity with your fellow Jedi, and a unique expression of your own character. Today is about taking those first few steps."

He lifted his remaining hand, and one of the training sabers rose from its holster on his belt and floated, emitter pointing up, within Eah's reach. "Take your weapon, but do not ignite it. Feel its weight in your hand. Its balance. This is a training saber. Its blade will be non-lethal. But in most other respects, it will behave just like the real thing."

[Eah Kell]

Eah reached out, reverently plucked the unit out of the air; the pressure of the air currents felt strange and cool on her hand, there, manipulated through the Force as he moved the saber through space. Then that cool pressure was gone and the weight of the metal haft settled into her hand, warming to her skin. A million new questions popped into her mind and she drew breath to speak...but then thought better of it, remembered Elder Surrik telling her in his clipped manner, The greatest value of your education will always come from listening, not speaking. She felt a little wrung already from her own questions, so instead she let out her breath and did as Master Solomon instructed.

It was such a simple and unassuming object. In the main, lightsabers weren't even very beautiful, mostly utilitarian, not works of art. They were described variously as tools of the Jedi and as weapons; some more poetic historians said that a Jedi's lightsaber was as much a part of them as a hand or an eye. Eah didn't think she quite grasped this. A lightsaber was a useful grouping of component parts, and it had had a satisfying weight and balance in her grip, but even her longstaff did not feel like a part of her, and she'd been training with that since she was only a small child. These were all tools, as the Force was a tool in her experience: limited, finite, tamable for domestic use, but always to be approached with caution, and never to be used extravagantly. With that thought firmly in her mind, she tightened her three blunt fingers around the unit and turned her wrist to feel the weight of it back and forth, memorizing the dimensions of it, feeling the grooves and dials along the side. She would know this object now in the dark or blindfolded, and she supposed that was as well as she could know it, for now. She looked up at the Reverend, expectantly.

[Rev Solomon]

"There will be a time to discuss the technical details of the lightsaber," Solomon said. "For now, I want to help you get used to the saber as a living whole. Starting with matters of safety and etiquette. A lightsaber is always to be treated as if it is ignited. It is not to be swung carelessly or tossed about. Always be mindful of the emitter, and of the space in front of it. Your life, and the lives of those around you depend on it."

He watched her closely as she integrated this knowledge with her own sensory exploration of the hilt. He would not leave her without specifics for long. "What have you learned of Shii-cho? Are you familiar with the Jedi Ready stance?"

[Eah Kell]

Eah replied by assuming it, with care and fumbling momentarily to find the best way of holding the lightsaber with both three-fingered hands. It was easy enough to imitate what she had seen in training videos, but she didn't believe for a moment this was really going to help her very far. "I have learned it was the first lightsaber technique ever developed, and that it is mostly now used for training," she said.

[Rev Solomon]

"That's correct," Solomon replied. "It is an adaptation of techniques used with physical blades. Compared to the other forms, Shii-cho is easier to grasp for the novice, but its disciplines and principles lay the foundations for all the other forms."

He studied her stance with an appraising eye - a slight crouch, well balanced, with her dominant foot held back and her saber held vertically in a two-hand grip to her right side. He closed the distance between them and gently made a few adjustments. A little more space between her feet, her left elbow a little higher. He made her relax and assume the stance again, and offered a few more corrections. On her third attempt she was textbook.

"Shii-cho is defined by six zones of attack. Your first lesson is in defending those six zones. Starting with zone one, your head and shoulders."

He brought the edge of his hand down in an arc toward Eah's domed head. "A zone one attack is a vertical strike from above. You defend against it with a horizontal block, just above eye level."

He took her hands in his own and positioned them up and to her right, so that the force of the imaginary blow would be absorbed through her right arm and braced with her left. He pushed against her hands to be sure she would hold, then stepped back away.

"Return to Ready. Zone two is your right arm and side. Zone three is your left. An attack to zone two or three is a horizontal strike from either side. It is defended with a vertical block. You'll notice you are already positioned to defend your right side. To defend your left, simply move your saber to the other side of your body."

Again he moved Eah's hands, this time from side to side. When he was satisfied, he stepped back again.

"To learn Shii-cho is to learn how to attack and defend all six zones. Not just the forms, but the transitions between them. We will begin with the first three zones. I will call out my attacks, and you will defend them. Now. Press the activation plate to ignite your weapon."