Saga - Legends A Moment Of Peace (Talesan Fry, OC - drama, vignette)

Title: A Moment Of Peace
Author: Valiowk
Timeframe: 1 BBY–4 ABY
Characters: Talesan Fry, Original Character
Genre: drama
Keywords: Talesan Fry, Fyodor Tyutchev, ‘Ya vstretil vas’, ‘I came across you’
Summary: A companion vignette to Above A Sea Of Clouds, featuring the same professional holographer. Can also be read prior to Above A Sea Of Clouds or independently of it.

People live not by bread alone. During the Galactic Civil War, Talesan Fry learns what people live by.

A gift accumulates more significance than its bestower had envisioned.

Author’s notes: The poem in this story, ‘Ya vstretil vas’ (‘I came across you’), was written by the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev in 1870; the translation here is my own.



A Moment of Peace

‘For you.’ Dasha, my lover, handed me a previously opened parcel with both hands. She had cancelled her name on the address label and written ‘Talesan’ with a broad-nibbed stylus.

I frowned at the postmark: the Imperial crest, with the marking ‘Imperial Planetary Ore Extractor 35:3:7’. Why was Dasha sent a parcel from the Death Star just before the Battle of Yavin? Does she even know what ‘Imperial Planetary Ore Extractor’ was the official name of?

Apparently anticipating my confusion at her association with an Imperial station, she made a reassuring smile. There is always more to Dasha’s infrequent presents than meets the eye, I told myself.

‘Recommend me a poem you like to learn the language,’ I requested Dasha, recollecting an acquaintance mentioning almost forty years ago how he practised languages.

‘You’re serious about doing so? I can speak with my family in Basic during holocalls if that would make you more comfortable,’ she responded. I nodded in confirmation.

‘I think Tsvetaeva’s poetry is not your cup of tea.’ After deliberation, she determined, ‘Tyutchev’s.’ On my datapad, she searched for ‘Ya vstretil vas’ on the HoloNet. ‘I’ll give you a translation. Give me an hour or so.’

I had become acquainted with Dasha on Quadrant Seven the previous standard year. There had been nineteen years between the two times I had met Siri Tachi and Obi-Wan Kenobi; I visited Quadrant Seven to observe the passing of another nineteen years since then. It was the lone aspect of my life in which I took sides: as the founder and owner of a leading surveillance company that catered solely to non-governmental entities, I had been approached both publicly by the Imperial government and clandestinely by the Rebel Alliance urging me to work with them, but had refused both.

In the marketplace of Settlement 5 where the departing freighter was docked, a viewscreen broadcasted the Emperor announcing the success and conclusion of the Great Jedi Purge, and promising the same to any rebellion against the Empire on Imperial HoloVision. Entering the passenger area of the freighter, there was but a human female seated at the far end, other passengers evidently preferring the variety of stalls and good weather outside to the cramped seats and dim lighting of the freighter. I paced silently down the aisle, seeking the same privacy as the woman—repeatedly having had to be on the run had caused treading noiselessly to become second nature.

The woman was viewing a hologram on a holocamera. Siri and Obi-— She switched to a hologram similar to the previous one but without the presence of beings, as my shadow fell beside her. It displayed a sparkling panorama of clouds and a waterfall, but I was too distracted to heed. It was definitely them, even though I only saw the hologram in detail for a split second. Is she an operative attempting to elicit my attention?! No…she wouldn’t have sat at the far end had that been her intention.

I engaged her in conversation, sharing the muja muffin, bread and fruit purchased from a marketplace vendor with her; she reciprocated with homemade quinberry and Luilris mushroom flatcakes, juja-cake and moof milk yogurt. She introduced herself as Dasha, an independent holodocumentarian, and mentioned that she had visited Quadrant Seven to see how an unprosperous planet had avoided war for six hundred and eleven years and had not been afflicted with toxic pools or chemical air. The trip had turned out unuseful to her work, but the experience had been interesting. In turn, I talked about commemorating a formational life event on Quadrant Seven and the enterprise of operating a surveillance company.

Only after the journey, watching the holodocumentaries she had filmed, did I grasp the scale of Dasha’s work. She drew upon the quality education on her homeworld to produce eye-opening holodocumentaries on science, geography, current affairs etc.…and there seemed to be hidden depths to these holodocumentaries that toed the Imperial line and emphasised commonalities between planets, such as a chemistry holodocumentary detailing the process of mining and smelting quadranium, including footage of its growing health and environmental impacts on various planets during the last years of the Republic; a military holodocumentary discussing the quantity of equipment in the expanding Imperial Military and the extensive use of quadranium in their protective coverings… Had I grown up with Dasha’s holodocumentaries, perhaps it would not have been surveillance that engrossed me…

‘Did you succeed in enquiring about the projects that the Imperial Military has in the pipeline?’ I affected insouciance over a holocall with Dasha, having found her work com code on the HoloNet; she had unhesitatingly replied with her private com code.

‘The officers were tight-lipped,’ she responded. ‘One can figure out that the Imperial Military is working on mammoth secret projects, though, by comparing the quantity of quadanium steel mined over the years to that used on known projects.’

I fell in love with Dasha’s mettle, ingenuity and perceptivity, and to my joy, my feelings were returned, although she never explained beyond ‘You treated me so well when I first met you, that I was convinced that bringing food to share with others on passenger ships was traditional on your homeworld too’. I never broached Siri and Obi-Wan to her, lacking the courage to divulge that I had trusted her initially because she had seemingly been acquainted with them.

What gave Dasha the gumption to work as she did? I reflected in shame on my search for security through wealth and power. Behind her back, I searched for news reports about her past, first in Basic, then in her mother tongue. A translatacomp translated the text, but not cultural nuances.

And unbeknownst to Dasha, I agreed to join the Rebellion.
​

‘I came across you—and all bygone
Rekindled in my moribund core;
I called to mind a golden aeon—
And my chilled heart turned so warm once more…

Just as, from time to time, transpire, gleam
Some days, an hour of late autumn,
When suddenly some breaths of spring stream
And something in us doth awaken,—

So, all surrounded by the zephyr
Of those years of internal fullness,
With long-forgotten relish, rapture
I gaze upon your precious features…

As after centuries-long parting
As though in slumber, you I study,—
And lo—more audibly those sounds sing,
That had not fallen silent in me…

Therein was not just recollection,
Therein life stirred anew, aroused, hove,—
And in you that same fascination,
And in my soul that very same love!…’

Dasha kenned my thoughts? Tamping down the question, I noticed that she had only presented me with the text of the translation, and not a link to it on the HoloNet. As I entered the first verse of the translation into my datapad to search for it on the HoloNet, she halted me: ‘It’s not on the HoloNet.’

‘Did you translate it yourself?’ Dasha had rued that unlike I, a native speaker of Basic, she had little feeling for poetry in Basic.

She chuckled at the query. ‘It was by a person who made me who I am. I hope I reconstructed it from memory correctly.’

I understood: she too had met someone who had transformed her life. And that was enough explanation for me.
​

The parcel contained a deep blue crystal—a warming crystal with a star in the centre, my brain filled in even before I finished unwrapping the durasheet around it to reveal the star and clutch the crystal. Siri’s warming crystal! Why— Dasha’s eyes met mine—they were placid—before she lowered her gaze to the writing on the durasheet. She doesn’t expect me to recognise the crystal, I realised.

‘Dear Dasha,

I disposed of a rebel’s clothing today—that is all I am at liberty to say. Rumours about him are flying everywhere and I do not know what to believe. I would have judged him deserving of an ill fate, if not for…you see the reason before you, tucked into an inside pocket sewn specially for it.

My children and wife would not understand the significance of a warming crystal. Our families back home—the old folks—would. But all that is neither here nor there as concerns this crystal.

You know the tradition regarding a warming crystal on Pyc: it is a gift to one whose fate is assessed to be hard, but their feat great—hence a crystal to warm them in a cold galaxy. Breath-hold diving for a warming crystal is itself a feat to honour its line of recipients.

As children, we doubted that a warming crystal would invariably be passed to one deserving of it and laughed at the superstition that its shape symbolised its recipients’ path, yet never found a single counterexample despite our research… This rebel’s path was per aspera ad astra.

I am sorry for quarrelling with you that you should have submitted the hologram of a cloud sea and waterfall together to holography competitions, which sowed the seeds of our breakup. You spoke true: it was a moment of peace too good for the galaxy we inhabit.

Subsequently, I accepted the easy credits of the Imperial Military, while you gave up a successful position at a respected holojournalism broadcaster and holomag for the freedom of an independent holodocumentarian… In you was born boundless thought. May the time come when you are fully unleashed. Until then, may this crystal warm you in the vast expanse of the galaxy.

(Hopefully) an old friend’​

This crystal had been a gift to Siri. I could envisage her former Master, Adi Gallia, diving in search of it. Siri had bequeathed it to Obi-Wan, who had perished on the Death Star. Thus it had come into the hands of two who only together could appreciate its tale.

As is the case with the hologram of Siri and Obi-Wan.

I disclosed to Dasha my encounters with the Jedi and that I had joined the Alliance, and she in return revealed listening to Obi-Wan translate ‘Ya vstretil vas’.

❂​

We became husband and wife. In the years that passed, I wished to requite Dasha for her gifts of what people live by, only the latter of which I had repaid—puerile as it was to consider this a game of numbers.

Then transpired the Battle of Endor.

‘Dasha. The second Death Star was destroyed! The Emperor and Darth Vader are dead!’ I shouted.

The holovid of the celebration on Endor being livestreamed on Alliance channels would have to be redacted by the Task Force on Alliance Security for public release, but it would do scant harm for family members of Rebels to watch the original at this historic moment. We wordlessly watched Ewoks and Rebels revelling together to music, using stormtrooper helmets as drums.

Why am I showing Dasha this? I should show her footage of the explosion of the second Death Star. As the thought came to mind, leading members of the Rebellion appeared in the hologram, and I put away the thought in order to identify them for Dasha.

‘… Lando Calrissian…and Red Leader Wedge Antilles, who took out the Death Star.’ Dasha looked on zestfully. ‘Luke Skywalker.’

Pensively, Dasha observed, ‘Obi-Wan trained him.’

‘How did you know?’ I had not previously disclosed Rebel secrets to her.

‘His lightsabre hilt.’

She gazed at Luke Skywalker as though in a dream, and I knew that in her sang a poem and the noise of a waterfall.

At last, the galaxy merited it. I breathed in what I had sought all my life: a moment of peace.

Fin​

 

Ooh, this is really nifty! The way that the narrator and Dasha's relationship is intertwined with the story of Obi-Wan and Siri -- a story that only comes full circle and is revealed in total by the combination of their different crossings of paths with the pair -- is really compelling.

Aww, I liked this part; it's so sweet in an understated way, and that really suits what we see of both of them!

I loved the world-building of the warming crystals and how they are perceived in popular culture. Are they kyber crystals, or something else? Either seems very possible and in any case I really like the details of the lore and customs surrounding them. A crystal from the sea just sounds really cool, as well.

Love that this not-really-coincidence is tied to both Dasha and the narrator in this way!

I can imagine that after seeing what happened with the Empire there would be some mixed and even guilty feelings about the idea of peace; it's only with a new beginning that the narrator is able to accept that there might truly be a fresh start for the galaxy and that rings very true for someone who lived through all of that turbulence.

 

@Kahara Thank you for the detailed comment!

The last part of this vignette (Dasha watching a holovid of the celebration of Endor being livestreamed on Alliance channels and recognising that Luke Skywalker's lightsabre hilt was similar to Obi-Wan's) was originally intended to be the ending of the companion vignette Above A Sea Of Clouds, but when writing Above A Sea Of Clouds, it made more sense to have it end where it eventually did, and thus I deliberated how this detail could be moved to this vignette (which initially only comprised a stormtrooper recognising the warming crystal and passing it on). Whe devising an identity for Dasha's contact in the Rebellion, it occurred to me that Taly was the perfect character who could join loose ends together and provide Dasha with new insights. From there I just had to bring the two characters together and let them become comfortable revealing secrets that they had held close to their chest for a long time.

I'm glad that you understood what Dasha was trying to do: spread knowledge to the public of the harm that the Empire had caused to the galaxy while circumventing censorship, and emphasising that the harm was not isolated to a few planets, but was a galaxy-wide phenomenon—I was afraid it might not be clear to the reader.

Dasha is actually not being coy to Taly—the way I imagine it, because Taly trusted Dasha, he was his young, eager, likeable self with her, and that made all the difference.

From the way they are referred to in Secrets of the Jedi, they are different from kyber crystals (otherwise the book would just have referred to them as kyber crystals?). It was fun to invent tradition regarding them.

I always imagined what happened to the warming crystal with Obi-Wan's death, as well as how Siri obtained it to begin with. It felt correct to have somebody recognise its significance and pass it on.