Saga - PT Saga - OT Rose’s Eleven (Kessel Run Challenge; OCs and possibly others)

Thanks so much! He's not only a Gand but a very trained and erudite Gand, and I figured that would definitely show in his writing!

Thanks so much! That is the long and short of it, yes. She will miss him, but she will understand, too, as Zuckuss's tense relationship with his father has had its ill effects on her, too (something I hope to continue writing about in Book of Gand soon, or at least soonish).

Thank you. I have to admit it was inspired by a similar line in a Gand story by an author no longer active here, who was describing someone seeing a dead loved one in the Mists, but I figured it might be workable for this kind of parting, too.

Isn't it a gem? My first beta and writing partner, with whom I wrote the first version of Book of Gand long ago, introduced me to kreetles and overkreetles, and they just seemed perfect for a planet where arthropods dominate!

Thank you so much once again—always appreciate your comments and readership so much!

 

11. The Rose between the Worlds

Era: Saga–late OT (on or about 18 ABY)
Characters: OCs: Shulma Trilasha Orrelios (Lasat female from Lasan, now resident on Lira San), Glockel Sternenkranz (Human female from Nydringia), Telfien Viurraanvi (Gand female from Gand), Lualani’Draba’Takiil (Drabatan female from Pipada), R1-K4 “Rika” (feminine astromech), other OCs, some brief EC mentions and appearances
Genre: 5+1 one-shot; drama, friendship, time travel (sort of)
Summary: Five reuniting friends have the opportunity to go back in time to retrieve something from each of their pasts.
Notes: Written to fulfill two challenges: (a) the 2000–8000-word “5+1” story component of the Kessel Run Challenge, run by @ViariSkywalker; and (b) the Douglas Adams Quote Challenge, run by @DaenaBenjen42. The quote I received was #50 of 50 on Daena’s list and is given at the beginning of the story as an epigraph. I thank @Kahara for beta reading while @Raissa Baiard was away on vacation.

---

“If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t. It’s like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don’t hurt it. Not even major surgery if it’s done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.” —Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

---

Prologue

Lira San, 18 ABY

Shulma Trilasha Orrelios, First Priestess of the Returned Lasa-Lira’sat, looked up from the tome she had been reading in her study in the western spire of Lira San’s White Shrine. The chronometer was prompting her, as were her currents. Her friends would be arriving soon.

They were no ordinary friends. They were very old friends from many storm seasons ago: the four women, all outworlders, with whom she had traveled the Galaxy from the time she had been exiled from a devastated Lasan through her near-miraculous reunion with her husband almost ten standard years later. Since coming to Lira San she had thought often of them, remembering the losses, exiles, joys, and adventures in which they all had shared and which had shaped them all. Shulma rejoiced that they would all soon be together again, to reminisce, converse, embrace, laugh, and perhaps weep. But there was another purpose to their reunion as well.

Shulma looked again at the tome, fingered its supple vellum pages. It was the same one she had been reading again and again for the past few tennights, in preparation for this visit. It was not one of the mystical or prophetic texts that were the usual subject of her studies. It was instead a treatise on the mysterious region the Lira’sat knew as Nterrai, the Between: a realm said to exist outside the bounds of time and space while granting access to all times and places. If one knew which of its myriad portals to seek, one could see—or even visit—one’s own past or future.

The Between had many names: other sages from other worlds had named it variously the Inter, the Outer, the World between the Worlds, the Vergence Scatter. The sages of ancient Lasan had written of it, too, calling it Mher-San, the Not-World, and had warned of its dangers; the wrong step through the wrong portal, they said, could irrevocably alter space, time, and even reality itself, with potentially disastrous consequences. Perhaps fortunately, no entrance had ever been found on Lasan.

Here on Lira San, however, the Between was reality. An entrance to it was well known to exist here within the White Shrine itself, to which Shulma, as the spiritual guide of the returned Lasa-Lira’sat, had graciously been granted access. Nor was it accounted at all dangerous. If one was careful, the Lira’sat sages had written, and was moderate in what one sought to know, change, or retrieve (the treatise gave details, some quite technical), time and space would heal themselves quite naturally around any resulting disconnects. A stone thrown into a river, they had reasoned, does not alter the flow of a river; even a boulder or a pile of stones does not necessarily disrupt its riverly nature.

It was there that Shulma planned to bring her four friends of old, once they arrived. Like her, they had lost and suffered greatly; like her, they had much they sought to know, change, or retrieve. Shulma, reasoning that the Between might be able to help restore some of that loss, had proposed and arranged this meeting with them long ago, with their full consent. Yet her currents still bristled and tingled with a feeling of potential danger, or at least of upheaval. She was, after all, still a child of Lasan, brought up with that world’s concepts of time, space, the universe, and the Ashla. Perhaps that was why she had spent this past tennight reading through the treatise again and again.

She was about to begin again when she heard a knock. “Come in,” she said.

The door opened, and in came her younger daughter, Chava, saying, “They’re here, Mama.”

“Thanks, love,” Shulma replied, rising. “I shall go to them directly.”

---

Shulma and Chava walked together onto the landing pad of the White Shrine. Silvery sunlight from an orange-gold sky glinted lavishly on the ship that sat there: a sleek, bronze-colored scout vessel, decorated with designs of twining stylized roses in green and dark pink. Mother and daughter waited in silent anticipation for the boarding ramp to be lowered; Shulma even found herself tracing the Triangle on her breast. (A quaint and archaic gesture, the Lira’sat always said; they signed the Four Virtues instead.)

Presently the hatch opened, the boarding ramp unfolded, and four beings descended. Two of them—Rika the astromech droid and Telfien Viurraanvi, the golden-eyed Gand Findswoman—looked just as Shulma had always remembered them; if anything in Telfien’s appearance had changed with age, her thick robes and breath mask hid it well. Glockel Sternenkranz, the Human who owned and piloted the ship, still wore her red hair in braids, but her face was graver now, with a few more lines.

Last and slowest of all came Lualani’Draba’Takiil, Lua to her friends: an elderly Drabatan female once skilled in handicrafts ranging from sewing to electrical wiring. She walked with a cane; her leathery, gray-green face was filled with wrinkles, and her hands shook. She had aged more than any of them, and Shulma knew why: Lua’s son, her only child, had been killed years ago during one of the battles of the Galactic Civil War.

Shulma embraced Lua first, then Glockel, then Telfien (carefully so as not to upset her respiratory gear), then gave Rika a friendly pat on her transparent, blue-green-tinted dome. She introduced her daughter, who saluted each of the new arrivals hand over fist.

“It’s so lovely to see you all,” Shulma said. “I hope you have had good travels.”

“Yes, smooth flying, by and large,” Glockel said, with the same nonchalant toss of her head that Shulma remembered from so many years ago. “The Maze was a bit of a challenge, of course, but nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“Your husband’s map was of invaluable help,” added Telfien, inclining her head. Rika booped an addendum. “Yes, as was your considerable navigational expertise, dear Rika,” Telfien added, touching the droid's dome.

“I’m so glad that was of use to you,” smiled Shulma. “He was more than happy to make it available, as we have done to his companions of old in previous years. Now, come—surely you want some rest and refreshment after your journey. And we have so much catching up to do!”

They went off together toward the home of the Orrelios family, which was a short walk from this part of the White Shrine complex, engaging in conversation as they went. Only Lua said nothing, but she clasped Shulma’s and Chava’s hands once more.

---

Rooms and a sitting room had been prepared for the visitors in the White Shrine’s guest wing. After they had some time to unpack and rest, and after Chava had returned home to help her family prepare dinner (for the Orrelios family would be hosting everyone for a grand feast), Shulma gathered her friends in the conversation circle of the sitting room.

“It’s so lovely to see all of you,” she began, “and especially lovely that the High Council of the Shrine has so generously approved of our plan of visiting the Between. It will be a different experience for each of us here beyond the basic structure: each of us will see and hear different things there, each from her own past or future. Of course, it is ultimately up to each of us to discern which is which.”

She paused for a moment, looking at the others; Telfien and Glockel looked back attentively and full of interest; so did Rika, as far as Shulma could tell (it had never easy to tell with her, as with any droid). But Lua was looking down at her hands, her already wrinkled face wrinkled even more in thought.

Shulma continued. “The High Council has assured us that no real harm will be done if each of us retrieves one small thing that we miss from our past years. Our past selves will simply come up with explanations for any losses, and time will go on uninterrupted.” A few quizzical murmurs arose. “Yes,” she went on, “very different from the common wisdom on the subject, I know”—I hope!, she thought to herself—“but I have now been honored to be a colleague of the council for many of our storm seasons, and I know them to be deeply learned, deeply sensitive, and absolutely trustworthy.

“So, when you are ready, let us go.”

The four others rose and accompanied her, and Shulma smiled to herself to notice how quickly Lua sprang up, despite her age and frailty.

---

The Between, despite the narrowness implied by its name, was vast, profoundly dark, and profoundly quiet. Lines of light outlined narrow paths that endlessly crisscrossed and mazed in intricate patterns, some leading to what looked like doors or portals made of the same lines of light. The women made their way along them slowly, cautiously, and their footfalls made strange eddies on a surface that was not really there. It looked as though one could all too easily fall from those light-lined paths into the void, but no one could or did.

“All right, what now?” asked Glockel quietly, coming up on tiptoe alongside Shulma. “Where do we go?”

“It will be different for each of us,” Shulma replied, “but I am told that one will know once one listens.”

So for a few still moments they stood, listening, until distant mingled voices began to filter through the silence, no two of them hearing the same…

---

1.

Shulma came forward first as her sharp Lasat ears picked up sounds of Lasat voices she remembered from very long ago: her parents, her older twin brothers, mentors and friends from the Academy of Shamans. Following them to one of the portals, she peered through to a familiar scene: her old bedroom, in the attic of her family’s home in the mining town of Flowstone Vale. She looked for a moment to make sure no one was there, then signed the Triangle (still following the custom of her youth) and stepped through.

The room was exactly as she remembered it, simple and cozy, with a cushion-piled bed in its alcove off to the side and a desk in front of the small bay of windows. There were books and papers from her old shamanic studies on the desk. She paused for a moment and looked at them. Even one of them could restore so much of the lost shamanic lore and wisdom of Lasan! But she had not come for them. Perhaps some other time…

On a shelf near the bed was a box of various items from her childhood. Standing out, almost literally, was Shulma’s favorite doll from her childhood: in the form of a young female Lasat, dressed in an ancient-styled gown and cloak of red and gold, the kind the ancient sage-maidens were usually depicted as wearing. She had long, dark hair and golden-green eyes that really opened and closed. Carefully, so as not to disturb anything else in the box, she removed the doll and gave it a hug and a kiss. Then she returned through the portal (which she noticed had become visible in the opposite wall).

(After marrying Zeb and setting up house with him at the Captain’s House on the grounds of the Honor Guard base, Shulma began unpacking what she had brought with her from her parents’ house. She could not find the long-haired sage-maiden doll but figured it had simply either gotten lost in the move or left behind, as happens.)

2.

Telfien came prepared with specialized equipment—an airtight transparisteel terrarium tank with its own environmental control panel. She proceeded through her portal (found via the sound of distant chanting and, somehow, the scent of ammonia) into a room that was exactly as she remembered it: her dormitory at the Great Temple at the north pole of Gand, where the advanced stages of her Findswoman training had taken place many long years ago. As typical for apprentice Findsmen’s accommodations, it was small and simply furnished, with a round meditation alcove where many other species would have a bed. (The Gand did not need to sleep long, for they could store up their sleep-energy to expend later.)

Telfien set her terrarium on the floor and stood for a moment, listening. It was quiet, bizarrely so. As finely as she tuned her earholes, she could hear none of the distant chanting or familiar voices that had called her here. She held up her hand, feeling the Mists of the place, noting how (uncannily, yet familiarly) thin they felt.

Then she turned to the business at hand. On the windowsill, which looked out to other spires and domes of the Great Temple complex, sat a pot containing a plant with thick, leathery dark-purple leaves. It had not been fed or watered in some time, for its leaves were sere and a bit grayish, and there were no bloom stalks. Telfien took it carefully in both hands, taking care not to spill any of the blackish, coal-like medium in which it was planted, and placed it in the terrarium. Then she closed it and adjusted a few of its controls before returning through her portal once more.

(Ever since the Imperial invasion, the Great Temple had been closed and empty. But some time later, when things were beginning to be restored, a single temple servant happened to come through on cleaning and maintenance duties. He surmised that the moonbow orchid in that small suite at the end of the hall had finally met its end and had been disposed of by one of his colleagues.)

3.

Glockel, too, found herself back on her homeworld, though not at home. She stood in a grand, pillared hall, its vaulted ceiling upheld by elegantly carved buttresses and its magnificent balconies festooned with the banners of the planet’s different cities and districts. She knew the place well: it was the building her people called the Rathspalast, the Palace of Counsel, and it was the seat of the planetary government of the Free and Sovereign World of Nydringia. Even apart from the landmark that it was, Glockel knew it as the workplace of her beloved Uncle Wym, her only relative after the tragic death of her parents in a speeder crash, who had served as the bodyguard to the Nydringian head of state.

She also knew it as the place where her uncle had met his end. Years ago, Lord Vader had come to the planet looking for him, for he was a Jedi—one of those who wielded the Force, as Shulma wielded the Ashla or Telfien the Mists. But Wym Sternenkranz had cut himself down in the Sith Lord’s full view, and thus was not taken. Finding nothing else there worth taking, Vader and his forces had left.

Glockel looked around, taking in the grand staircases she used to love climbing, the grand banisters she used to love sliding down, and the colors and patterns of the banners. (There was the one from her parents’ home district, still in the northwest corner: yellow, with a green tree.) But she also noticed lamps and fixtures that were broken, and heard the tentative echoes of whispers and cautious footsteps. She wondered if she had arrived soon after it had all happened. In that case, perhaps she would find something that had belonged to her uncle, something to remember him by…

Through the railing of one of the balconies, on its floor, Glockel spotted something. She went upstairs to get a closer look, and startled a bit at what she saw. It was a pile of clothing, and on top of it was a dark green vest lined with gold trim—one Glockel had often seen on her Uncle Wym. In fact, once she sorted through everything in the pile, Glockel realized that all of it had belonged to Uncle Wym. His protest and death must have taken place only a short while ago. She wondered suddenly if his lightsaber were there as well, for the belt and leather sheath that had held it certainly were. But a quick glance around told her that was a vain hope. (As did her own intuition; Lord Vader certainly had it now.)

She picked up the pile of clothing and folded it carefully into a bundle. Perhaps she could give it a proper burial somewhere. The green vest, however, she put on. It was a little too large, but not overly so, and she had always liked it.

(Everyone assumed that Lord Vader had come back and taken Jedi Sternenkranz’s personal effects with him.)

4.

Rika’s portal took her to a place she had been earlier that same day: the cockpit of the Rose Evergreen. This time, however, it was in the middle of a hyperspace journey, with bright blue-white star-lines whizzing past outside, and she was the only one there. Her sensors registered only one other lifeform, faint from being separated from her by multiple metal bulkheads. From this, and from the relative quiet, Rika deduced that she was sometime in the very first years of her travels with Glockel, before Telfien or any of the others had joined them.

Rika ran a few quick calculations. Odds of Glockel or the Rika-of-then returning to the cockpit? Negligible; back then, as now, Glockel often spent routine hyperspace runs relaxing in her quarters with a hot caf. Furthermore, a light on one of the control panels indicated that the lubrication chamber in engineering was active and at full temperature, suggesting that the Rika-of-then was enjoying a luxurious oil bath and not likely to emerge anytime soon.

So the Rika-of-now got to work. She rolled up to the scomp link of the navcomputer and connected. For a few minutes she scanned its memory banks. All the usual, familiar hyperspace routes and calculations were there, just as she remembered them from the Rose Evergreen of now. But far in one tiny, fragmented back-corner sector of the navcomputer’s memory she came across something different: a hyperspace route, but not one of the usual ones, as it was older and much less granular than the others. Its identifying metadata was somewhat garbled, but she could make out M–K–R. Perhaps MAKER? If it was what she thought it was, it was a route that she (like many droids) had long been curious to take. Unfortunately, it had fallen victim to a routine memory clean some years ago.

Which was exactly why Rika was here now, of course. She initiated a copy operation, duplicating the data of the old, fragmented route and transferring that duplicate into her own memory banks. It took time, as the archived data was old, large, and unwieldy; Rika almost felt herself growing heavier. But it would be worth it someday, she considered as she disconnected at last with a contented boop.

(Some time later, Glockel, having finished her caf, returned to the cockpit to check on the progress of the route. She noticed nothing different.)

5.

Lua stood several moments before her portal, leaning on her cane, not moving, and watching it intently. The others, who by now had all come back from their own portals, could make out the scenes and sounds of a bloody battle within: explosions, screams, curses, carnage. Fire rained down on a lushly forested beach, burning its proud trees to ash. Shots and detonations sent bodies and plant life alike flying asunder. Immense armored walkers lumbered through the shallows, crushing all that stood in their way; blue-decorated starfighters swooped down at them; all of them fired at each other again and again and again. From the attire, armor, and materiel, Lua’s companions could tell this was part of the Civil War of almost two decades ago, between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. But it was impossible to make out faces or specifics; no one wanted to come closer or intrude on Lua.

Lua, completely transfixed by the horrific scenes before her, paid her companions no notice at all. Occasionally she let out a gasp of surprise or a horrified keen. A few times she stepped or reached forward, as if about to enter the portal or take something within it, then pulled back. Was she going in, or was she not? Would she be safe? What would she do? The others wondered that, and perhaps she did as well.

Suddenly, one cry pierced the din: “SA’KALLA!” And Lua shrieked and plunged forward into the portal, arm outstretched.

+1.

The others ran over, terrified. They peered in; the battle still raged. Try as they might, they could see no sign of Lua amid the chaos. Several tense moments they waited, but she did not emerge, and they dared not go in.

Meanwhile, the horrific scene seemed to be turning darker, fuzzier, more indistinct, and the sounds began to blur into a lurid stormlike roar. Still the four friends waited, and waited, and murmured anxiously to each other, and waited…

Then, suddenly, the blurred scene went bright white, then pitch black. And Lua bounded back through the portal, pulling someone with her by the arm.

It was another Drabatan: a male, younger than Lua but just a little taller, and with similar gray-green leathery skin. He wore fighting gear of thick leather, somewhat soiled and torn from fighting, though assorted explosives and weapons were still packed in his belt and in vambraces on his wrists. A protective leather kepi covered his head. He was shaken and out of breath, and he seemed bewildered by the strange, dark place where he now stood.

But Lua put an arm around him and led him toward her waiting friends. And the frail, elderly Drabatan lady who had been silent and bent and shaky ever since her arrival on Lira San—she held her head up high, smiled broadly and brightly, and said, “THIS my BOY. THIS PAO.”

He lifted his head and smiled, too, and said, simply, “HELLO.”

And the four friends rushed forward to welcome Lua’s son back to life and peace: her boy, her Pao, whose story they had heard and been inspired by, whose loss they too had mourned. On the dark, winding pathways of the Between there were gasps and exclamations and laughter and tears; bleeps and bloops; handshakes and salutes and embraces. Thus they began their walk back to time and space and the golden light of Lira San, five old friends and the beauties that they had recovered: Shulma her favorite doll, Telfien her moonbow orchid, Glockel her uncle’s green vest, Rika the happy secret of her hyperspace route, Lua her only son.

And the moment they returned, Shulma commed Zeb and the kits to let them know to set one more place for dinner.

(Corporal Paodok’Draba’Takat of the Alliance Special Forces, like all who fought at Scarif, was presumed dead. His body was never found.)

fin

Spoiler: Note

I’m the mother of an only son, too, and this was posted on his 12th birthday. Happy birthday, Findsboy—love you much!

 

Thank you all for reading and commenting!

Thanks so much, I’m glad you enjoyed this! It’s a concept I had in mind for a while, and the 5+1 prompt was the perfect opportunity to give it a try. Really, both that and the Adams challenge were!

Thank you so much! You know, I think you put your finger on why I find the WBW compelling even when time travel (in, say, the Star Trek sense) isn’t usually my thing: because Star Wars does indeed put it more in the mystical, unexplainable realm rather than try to “scientificize” it somehow. I just feel like the whole concept works better, at least for me, when it’s not scientificized, if that makes sense. And the Adams quote really brought that to the fore for me, too; I was intrigued by the idea that maybe this kind of travel doesn’t necessarily lead to paradox and wanted to run with that. Instead, it became a way for each of the characters to ‘live” their memories, if only for a brief bit, and bring part of them back with them, if only a small part. That’s a kind of time travel I can get behind!

Though it hasn’t happened to me personally (thank goodness), I’ve heard that losing a child is like no other kind of loss there is—you never really do get over it. I could see a loss of that magnitude really taking a physical as well as psychological toll on a person, and that’s what I hoped to portray—as well as the opposite once the one lost is found again! So I’m glad that came across well for you.

Thank you so much, Thumper! It really was wonderful to have you here reading and commenting—it always made my day. I’m so glad you enjoyed these stories—I’ve really been loving your contributions to this challenge, as well!

Aww, thank you so much! It’s been my great honor and pleasure to have you as a reader of this ‘verse since pretty much its beginning, so I’m especially glad you found it a satisfying read. The fix-it fan in me knew I wanted to bring Pao back as soon as the time travel theme came into the equation—Lua had suffered way too long! <3

Wow, thank you so much—that really means a lot to me coming from a writer I admire as much as you!

Of course she did! What else? She’s been weak and lonely for so long—now is her chance to offer strength and love back again. That, as much as finding her beloved son again, is giving her new life and strength. Those things go together, really!

Ah ha, I thought you might! I’m sure she and the High Council of the Shrine would be happy to oblige, if it weren’t for the practical matter of getting the books through the Maze to the rest of the galaxy each time! But they would do their utmost to at least try, I’m sure!

Many thanks to you all once again!

 

Yes, her treasure was the most precious of all, because it’s the one for whom one more place had to be set at dinner! Thank you so much for coming by to read and commit; so glad to see you back here again!