Epilogue
Saede couldn’t sleep. Over the last year and a half, most nights she found solace and quiet strength in dreams. The young woman had become an easy sleeper, drifting off into uninterrupted, peaceful repose with little thought. So tonight was an anomaly, one that she’d thought was long past her.
A storm raged outside of the small hut she shared with Kyrshi, battering the forest in wave after wave of fierce winds, heavy rains, thunder and lightening. She stood a few steps away from the entrance, letting the water pelt against her with all of its fury, feet spread apart, hands hanging loosely at her side. Her face was upturned toward the sky, eyes closed, lightening bringing a stark contrast to her, shadow and light abruptly slashing across her features, only to fall into darkness once more as the thunder rolled somewhere in the heavens. Kyrshi had given up trying to get her to come back inside hours ago, contenting himself, as well as he was able, to covering his head with bedskins and trying to ignore the storm that frightened him so much.
Storms like this were as perennial as the trinas flower, an ever present, but ever changing part of Dathomir. They swept savagely across the landscape, felling trees, upturning boulders, at times even flooding areas beyond recognition. Tonight, Saede wanted the tempest to do its worst to her, give everything is had to trying to push her back, break her down, bury her in the earth. There was a certain thrill in the hurricane force winds, and a small smile broke out over her face as she opened her eyes, screaming into the gale.
“It that all you have? Hit me! Take me! Destroy me like you’ve tried to do so many times before! Tried and failed!”
She flung her arms out as though to invite the blow, and almost in response to her taunting a particularly vicious gust sprang up, flinging pebble sized chunks of hail down on her, the sharp bits leaving tiny cuts across her face. But she didn’t step back, didn’t flinch, riding out the storm like some would ride a rancor, wrapping her hands around the explosion of air and letting it take her where she wanted to go.
The usually calm and cheerful Karina was lost for hours, or moments, it was hard to tell, replaced by something intense, a being of pure energy and passion, someone with a hunger that was hidden so often it had become second nature. Lana had occasionally felt it, Niara as well, but neither understood, nor would ask where the sudden fierceness in their predictable Karinadath came from.
Dathomir had shaped Saede more than she’d ever thought it would. Something in the air, the experiences, the loss and the finding of everything had brought her to this place, this time. She opened her mouth in a primal scream, closing her eyes again. She screamed for strength, screamed for knowledge, screamed for everything gained and everything lost. Every part of her life was encompassed in that primitive cry. Tatooine, Correllia, Dantooine and Dathomir. Clint, Greenbacca, Lana, Niara, Kyrshi and Koranthis. Nicodemus. The pain that went along with it all, and the joy. The fact that she lived, and had survived everything thrown at her, and was stronger for it.
Suddenly her scream echoed out into an almost total silence. She let it die, lowering her arms in the eye of the storm, passing directly overhead. A break in the clouds moved over her in the strange quiet that marked the middle of the hurricane and her eyes focused on a strange star. A tiny blue pinprick in the darkness around it, unobscured by storm or Dathomir’s twin moons. For a moment she just stared at it, remembering the last time she’d seen that particular star, what seemed like a life time ago. Slowly, her hand reached up, as though in a silent greeting, eyes locked on the far away sun.
The storm crashed back into her a moment after the clouds covered the star again, but she kept her hand raised, eyes fixed on the place the star had been.
Return to Saede's Page
Return to Main Page