Seed

Minutes after the summons came, I was in the council chamber. It was dark; outside the sun had not yet crept over the horizon, and the lighting in the chamber was warm and dim. I bowed before the Masters of the Dantooine Council, holding it for several seconds before coming up. They all regarded me soberly, not saying a word.

I could not help myself; as the silence stretched on I became more and more uncomfortable. Finally, I blurted "Where is Bastila?" I hadn't seen her after waking.

It was another moment before I got a response. "Young Bastila has been sent to mediate a disupte at Garang Spaceport, apprentice," Dorak said. Every word seemed to have been carefully mulled over before being uttered. They all talked to me like that, as if I would attack them if they spoke out of turn.

I wouldn't, of course. They were Jedi Masters. What possible reason could I have for so much as being angry at them? Even the thought was outrageous.

"Today we will try to establish your connection to the Force, apprentice." That was Zhar, the pinkish Twi'lek and tallest of the Council. His face was just as opaque as that of any of the other Masters, but his headtails weren't quite so expressionless. From the way he held them over his shoulders, I could see that he was troubled and sad. Why?

"It is our belief that Bastila's interference could doom this effort to failure," Master Vandar told me. His triangular ears were held at a conservative angle.

Now I frowned. "I mean no disrespect, Masters, but how could Bastila do anything but help? If we have a bond in the Force, surely she could help me to sense it."

The faces of every member of the Dantooine Council changed to reflect worry and faint alarm. I had only been on Dantooine for four days, but I saw those expressions cross their faces every time I expressed a difference in opinion. This time, I thought I sensed it in the air, a kind of tension. It was at once disturbing and amusing.

"You should listen to your elders, apprentice." Vrook. For some reason, I felt uneasy around him. He disliked me, I could tell - but that was wrong, somehow. He wasn't supposed to dislike me, and he wasn't supposed to look so bitter. None of them were. They were Masters, I had to defer to them... but...

"Very well," I said. Almost immediately the tension drained away; Zhar's headtails reflected relief. "What would you have me do?"

They asked me to remove my wrist com and took me into a part of the Enclave that I had passed through countless times. It was the small courtyard with a single spiky blba tree in the center, floored with long, waving grass. Tiny gnats rose from the grass, mingling with the puffy seed plumes that the wind was carrying away from the blba. Several Jedi walked along the duracrete paths or sat on the neat white benches, but at the sight of the Masters and I most of them left.

Two didn't. Belaya, the young Knight who had chastised me about my clothes, and an old woman wearing a brown cloak on a bench against the wall. Her hood was up, concealing her eyes, but I could feel her watching me. Was this a procedure that anyone could sit in on?

Evidently not. I saw Belaya frowning as Vrook addressed her briefly. She nodded reluctantly and left. The old woman did not move. It was as if the Masters didn't even see her.

That odd thought went out of my head entirely as Master Vandar bounded up to stand atop a bench close to the blba tree, showing an agility that belied his diminutative stature and wrinkled face. He beckoned, and as I approached I saw that the other Masters had formed a sort of perimeter around me. It made me feel faintly uneasy. Master Vandar reached out and snatched something out of the air with one small three-fingered hand. He examined it briefly, pulled away the white fillaments, and nodded to himself.

"Take this." Vandar's enourmous eyes were solem. He held out his hand with whatever he had caught, something tiny and round. The Master set it in my palm, and I saw what it was.

It was a blba seed, no larger than my thumbnail.

"Wha-"

Vrook cut me off rudely. "Apprentice, you are to meditate on this. Focus on it and remove all thoughts until you have opened yourself to the Force."

My mouth opened and closed again as I blinked at him. Is he crazy?

"Please." Zhar's lekku stirred, the tips coiling into an expression of uncertainity. "Apprentice Kyta. We will meditate upon you and attempt to open your mind." At the use of my name I blinked, surprised - I hadn't heard any of the Masters say it before. It was as if they avoided it. I wonder why?

"It is a risky procedure, but we believe it to be worth it," Dorak added, clasping his hands together behind his back.

"If it works," Vrook added. There was a trace of scorn in his voice. Just a trace, but it stung.

On the bench, Master Vandar dropped bonelessly into a meditative pose. "We may begin."

They are the Masters, I reminded myself as I copied his pose, settling on the dry grass. They know best.

There was nothing special about the little seed. It was heavy and dry, the texture of its exterior smooth and rounded. In color it was a rich dark brown, paler around the dried stem where the filaments had attatched.

I frowned at it, but my thoughts were on the Masters around me. I had known who each one was almost before I was introduced; Dorak, the archivist and historian, Zhar, an advanced trainer of Padawans who usually lived on Coruscant, Vrook, who disciplined apprentices and along with Vandar served on the High Council. I knew their quirks - Dorak collected autobiographies and had a weakness for shroomchips, sometimes finishing a family-size bag in two days. Zhar's headtails telegraphed what he was feeling, but he intentionally allowed them to move, knowing that few people outside of his species could read Twi'lek headtails. Vrook pretended to be harsh and uncaring, and he often was, but he was also fair and would let pupils off easy if he felt they warranted it. Vandar's species usually had an odd way of speaking Basic, but he personally strived to keep subject and verb aligned "correctly", a cause which he claimed justified watching an astounding variety of holofilms.

How could I know that? Through Bastila? Well, that's a possibility.... I'm not sure I like the thought of sharing her memories like that...

"Clear your mind, apprentice!" I shut my mouth and obeyed Master Vrook.

The first part of meditation was breathing. There were several breath patterns that would work, but I settled on tidal breathing - forcing all the air slowly out of my lungs, then relaxing and letting them fill. That was easy enough. Meditating to the Jedi code was simple enough, but that was a different, more thoughtful form of meditation. Harder was clearing my mind, keeping it open and empty. I felt like I was supposed to think, to act; passively allowing thoughts to drift in and out was difficult.

I felt the smoothness of the seed, the way it warmed slowly in my hand. Then I closed my eyes and pushed all thoughts and then all sensations away, one by one. Gradually, my world narrowed to the seed in my hand and the slow, even whoosh of my breath.

Out. All the way out. Relax.... In. Out. All the way out. Relax...

I became aware of the oddest sensation, a sort of light tickling inside of my head. Although I tried to push the feeling away, it only became stronger. It became a sort of touch, firm but gentle, slowly pressing further, probing about by minute increments. I might have been bothered, but I could feel the meditative state coming on, and a contact on my mind wasn't as important as it might have been.

The state crept over me as I exhaled. It covered me completely and utterly before I took my next breath. True absense of fear, anticipation, pleasure, pain, memory, regrets. Thoughts still stroked in and out, but I made no effort to grasp them or hurry them along. The past is frozen, the future is formless. The moment is all there is. I made myself empty, and waited to be filled.

A sudden spark of pain, small and sharp and hot, flared up and throbbed from where the gentle pressure had been questing. Had I not been caught deeply in an empty meditative state, I might have yelped and clapped my hands to my head. As it was, my breathing hitched momentarily before resuming the deep exhale and the passive inhale.

The pain spiked and continued, filling my emptiness, blotting out my stray thoughts. All I could do was wait it out. It hit an intense peak and lingered there, white and searing, then began to level off, declining and becoming more bearable.

As the pain ebbed I felt something else in its place. Something new, yet familiar. Something... At first it was nothing but a confusing series of impressions and sensations, jumbled together and meaningless. I struggled to make sense of it, but it was utterly alien - and yet, bewilderingly, as familiar as the breath in my lungs. It rushed over me and swept me away, one moment threatening to strip me bare and crush and swallow me, the next offering comfort and insight and understanding.

It was terrifying. As if I'd found a pool of water, warm and pleasant, and had shed my clothes to wade in it, and found myself far from shore, unable to see how deep it was. It was alive, dark and bright and too huge to grasp or imagine. It was terrifying.

Like a drowning man, I cast about for some way to comprehend what this was, for some anchor.

The blba seed in my hand, warm and smooth, seemed to beckon. Fighting past the torrent of incomprehensible sensation, I curled my fingers tightly around it, now slippery with my sweat. Despite my closed eyes I saw it clearly, many time larger than real life, all but towering over me.

There was the seed coat, hard and protective, waterproof to keep the seed from drying out in Dantooine's parched summer. Beneath it was the endosperm, oily and rich with fats and starch and nutrients, making up most of the seed's mass. Within that, feeding off of the stored nutrients, was the embryonic plant, tiny and perfect.

I saw this, and saw and felt and somehow tasted it. It seemed to glow, if dimly, brightest from the tiny plant. I could see and feel and taste this glow - it flowed like blood through invisibly tiny arteries, passing in and out and all around. Through me, as well. Through... everything.

My attention widened, took in the patch of grass I was sitting on. Now it was golden, the leaves dry and dead. But I saw and felt and tasted the life force glowing, faintly in the stems and dried flowers, more strongly in the bulbs and the roots underground. They were dormant. Summer would pass, and rains would come; the stems would come alive again as new shoots, pale and lavender, would grow and thrive and seed. And then some would die away in the cold, dry winter, but some would live to see spring, and their seeds would sprout and grow.

The plants glowed, but not so brightly or warmly or intensely as the fauna that scurried among them. The myrmins in their colonies, rushing to fight each other and gather carcasses and droppings to support their underground mold "farms". The little beetles and clinging powder gnats, which were even now flying erractically towards my face and the moisture in my eyes and nose. The crawlers and anneleid worms tunneling under the soil, the primitively clever rock spiders which fought each other over individual prey and banded together to dig open myrmin "nurseries" and make off with soft, writhing myrmin larvae. The mantids, winged with bands of red and black to startle larger predators, which caught and ate everything smaller than themselves with their long forelimbs. I sensed all of this and more, details about advantageous adaptations and life cycles and reproductive habits, in what felt like an instant, an inrushing of knowledge. The life force linked me to them, and them to each other and all other things. It always had. I just hadn't known before.

It fed and was fed by life. It was life. It was the Force.

I guess it worked, I realized with the tiny part of my mind not wholly occupied with marvelling at it all, only now remembering that this was what the Masters had been trying to do. I'd gotten lost while in the meditation, forgotten everything but the moment. That same part insisted that I had touched and been aware of the Force before, that it was not new to me.

And maybe it wasn't. But that really didn't seem to matter. It was like I had been trying to see with closed eyes, percieving little more than bright light or shadow, and they had finally been opened. Subsconsciously, somehow I had known that there was more to living, and I had cast about for it blindly, reaching out and shrinking back from it, because it frightened me. The Force, still bright and dark and immeasureably great and unknowable, reached back.

I knew it; to my shock and delight and joy I recognized it. It was not alien to me, not some strange cold touch, it was what I had been straining for, what I had lain awake missing, what I had yearned for and feared in my dreams on Taris. It had brushed against me while I was there, and I had feared and loathed and denied it, but now I felt it within and without. It opened to me, and for a moment all the little dark closets and corners of my mind were flooded.

This was more a part of me than my arms, my legs, my hands and fingers. More crucial than my eyes or my ears or my voice, and harder both to lose and to regain. Irreplaceable and wonderful beyond words, more intoxicating than any of the most mind-shattering drugs dreamed up by the galaxy's best pharmacists.

The Force set me free. I saw felt tasted connections that I had scarcely dreamed existed, became aware of things I had never thought important. It was empowering. Mine was a power granted to few, a power as feared and misunderstood as it was needed. The Force, a power that was not pure strength, nor trickery, nor great will or stubbornness, nothing that looked special on the outside, something common and mundane but no less important for that. The power to build and tear down empires, to sow war or nurture peace, and it was both the Force and some nameless crevice in my mind that told me this.

Images, visions, ideas, flowed through me, pouring endlessly, strong enough to take my breath away but not clear enough to let me grasp them. From exhiliration I fell into desperation, unable to catch up with myself. There was so much I needed to do, so little time in which to do it, and I couldn't do it alone, I couldn't possibly do it alone, but he was no longer at my side or following just behind, he had betrayed me, cast me aside as I had taught him, and everything that had began with the best of intentions had long slid into ruin and ambition-

Ah!

I felt as though someone or something had fixed a leash on me, and I had lunged to its limit and been yanked back. It was a shock, a disruption that finally caused the ceaseless flow to silence, made the dark corners and closets and crevices close again. The Force was still with me. I would never truly be without it again; it still filled me and more than filled me. I would never be without it again.

But my best and oldest friend was no longer with me. No more would we walk together in the light. No more would we argue companionably, no more would I feel that surge of joy at seeing him after a long absence or that miserable anxiety when he was hurt. No more working together to get ahead, no more grand plans, no more sharing a pot of tea on a chilly autumn day. He wasn't dead. But he was gone beyond my reach. I should have been furious.

But all I felt was sorrow.

I woke, then, as if from a very deep sleep. Opening my eyes, I found that they were overflowing, tears spilling in tracks down my cheeks as my breath hitched. Hoping that none of the Masters had heard that, I drew in a deep, shuddery breath and glanced around, blinking rapidly.

Odd. When I'd started, the sun hadn't yet risen and it had been dark, but the sky had started to get lighter. Now it was truly dark again, and I could see the stars scattered overhead, bright and cold. I couldn't have told how long I had been in meditation, it had seemed like all time and none at all. I guess I was out for at least a day, then.

No one came to stand over me as I stirred and picked myself up off the grass. My body felt completely fine - I wasn't at all cramped, the way I had been after Master Zhar taught me meditation. Come to think of it, I felt no bodily want at all. I wasn't hungry, or thirsty, or tired, nor did I feel any need to seek out the refresher. There was no sweat residue on my skin, and the insects which had crawled over my body fell away from me without a fuss. The Force, returning to me, had allowed me to go without. There was no way that I could live on it alone; I would still need to eat, drink, sleep, eliminate, and bathe as often as before. My needs were met for the moment; nothing had really changed.

And yet...  nothing would ever be the same again.

I felt it as across the courtyard the old woman in the brown robes stood to leave.  I might have gone to her, but Vrook was before me.  His face was set and sad, and when he spoke his voice was more gentle than I had ever heard him since arriving on Dantooine.  I knew what he was about to say.  He'd said it before, years and years ago.

"Welcome, apprentice.  You have taken your first step into a larger world."