Saga - PT Waterstories (OC Summer Challenge + more | Ahyolu, other OCs | Mix of genres)

Title: Waterstories
Author: Ewok Poet
Genre: Action, angst
Characters: Ahyolu, Shri-Lan Rhane, Xia Tonha (all OCs), mentions of canon characters
Timeframe: 19 BBY
Rating: PG-13 (violence)
Length: Probably 3 chapters?!
Summary: Ahyolu, the eccentric Jedi Padawan from Astrea, goes through a handful of experiences that will change her life.

Beta: I could not wait to post this. But perhaps somebody can do it later? #yolo

A/N: This is a response to both the Summer and Spring/Summer OC Revolution challenges. It would be, of course, classified as a non-competitive response to the latter, because that one's over. The prompts are...

Your character confesses a secret to another character (who can be either an OC or an EC). This can be anything from mildly embarrassing ("I still watch Brave Little Banthas"), to heartfelt ("I've always loved you"), to deep and dark ("I killed a man in the spice mines of Kessel"). How does the other character react and how does your character respond?

...and...

An event from your OC's childhood that influenced them and change them, whether it was for better or worse.

***​

01 The Water in Her Palms

Shri-Lan Rhane was at the point where her best friend’s irrationality and quirks were starting to bother her. There was no doubt that Ahyolu clicked with the Blumbreen from day one, but after some time, they should have parted ways. Whatever systems those outside of the Temple believed in, the two Padawans must have been at its very opposite ends. Wasn’t the point to slightly lose one’s identity and not, on the contrary, become slightly…loose?

She was now completely sure – Ahyolu was unable to let go. And whatever she was to tell her now was going to be worse than the one time she wanted to get into a fist fight with Caleb Dume, who was initially supposed to serve as her role model, before it turned out that he had been quite something himself.

And this could have in no way been attributed to the culture that the birdgirl came from. She had a history of strange behaviour already. There was something about the “accidentally having slashed my wings during practice with training remotes” story that never made sense.

There was that one time when she wired a construction droid and wreaked havoc around the Temple’s beloved Room of a Thousand Fountains. At the hearing before the Council, hours later, she claimed that she wanted everybody else abandon the room, so she could, in her own words, take a bath and read from her bathwater, to figure herself out. She was caught before she could even take a dip, fully clothed in her robes. Later on, she confessed to her, Shri-Lan, that she managed to submerge her right hand in water and read that she should search for the two moons in her eyes and a star on her forehead if she wants to stay alive.

Oddly enough, the ability Ahyolu claimed to have did not become the subject of jokes. To Shri-Lan’s surprise, the other younglings and later, when they advanced to the next stage of their training, Padawans, would ask Ahyolu to read from their bathwater. They would bring her buckets full of it and she would come with these outrageous predictions. Apparently, according to her so-called readings, everybody but her was going to die in a horrible tragedy.

“So, you don’t die and we all do?” Kyiaye, the Elom from across the hall said one night, when residents of seven female sentients’ dorms gathered in the nearby droid chamber to play. “Yeah, right. So, how do we die, smartyrobes?”

Ahyolu put her clawed finger on her forehead. “I don’t know that much. I don’t know how to make the water still enough to read further on, but…”

Kyiaye was furious. “What? And I paid you three ohvanille cream-buns for…that? You scammer!”

This “session” that the Blumbreen recalled ended pretty much as they always would – with nearly everybody chasing Ahyolu down the hall, until she would grab her training saber and direct a bunch of remotes at them. How could she get away with it and still be called a Jedi Padawan?

Oh, right, the Clone Wars. Hundreds, thousands of beings were slayed every single day around the Galaxy ravaged by a bloody conflict between Republic and the so-called Separatists that the Council needed any help they could get. Even the unruly Padawans such as Ahyolu and the Jedi Masters suspected of flirting with the Dark Side in the corridors of the Temple were sent to the battlefields, leading hordes of Clones. In most cases, the Clones would be no more. But, every now and then, the funeral pyre would be lit. Every now and then, a Jedi would fall, fighting for what the Republic stood for.

And Ahyolu would always make it alive, despite what even her Jedi Master, Xia Tonha, called “a style of its own”. Some hounds were better at synchronised swimming than the Astraal was at respecting any particular lightsaber form.

Still, Shri-Lan was fond of her friend as much as she often wanted to hurl training remotes back at her.

Sometimes Ahyolu would talk badly of her father, Kravadam, who willingly sent her to Coruscant, regardless of what was, she claimed, common in Astraali culture. The little she remembered of her mother, Krayolu, she spoke of with nothing but fondness and love. A couple of times she outright said that she hated her father.

More often than not, the Blumbreen’s roommate seemed to have been balancing on the not-such-a-thin-line between Light and Dark most of the time. There were times that Shri-Lan was honestly afraid that her red eyes would suddenly turn yellow. But it never happened. Ahyolu would rant for up to a couple of hours, wearing down the carpet as she walked through the corridors resembling a caged convor on caf…and then she would just plain stop, as if nothing had happened.

This time, however, the Astraal stopped just next to the window and gazed at the speeders flying outside at the peak hour of afterwork sky-jams for the district. The break lasted long enough for Shri-Lan to nearly jump in her chair once Ahyolu suddenly turned around.

“I’m frustrated.” She screamed and then, with a pout, turned to the window again.

“That would not be the first time.” Shri-Lan thought to herself, barely refraining from rolling her eyes to the hyper-focused Astraal, who was now – how so very predictable - nervously pacing around their dorm room. “Can you at least look into my eyes and tell me what is going on, please?”

“You should know! We’re Jedi. We have these bounds, you know?”

“Why do you always speak in such a vague manner, Ahyolu?” The Blumbreen was frustrated.

“Because I do.” The Astraal crossed her arms. “Problem?”

Shri-Lan sighed and shook her head. “In that case, I cannot help you. I’m going to…”

Just as she was about to leave, Ahyolu grabbed her hand.

“Wait, don’t go! I will tell you more about it, I promise.”

“You will?”

“It’s about that…sandy-blond…hater of sand. You know him. I know him. I mean, everybody knows him, right?”

That sounded like a very vague description of somebody they both knew, yes.

“Anakin Skywalker?”

Ahyolu nodded.

"Oh, boy...here we go again..."

***​

NOTES:

Ahyolu previously appeared in Death, Life and Other Goals and a set of my UDC drabbles. The other characters have been referenced in the latter. If you don't want to be spoilered, do not read the first story before this one is done.

There is a fanon post about Ahyolu's species, Astraali and their planet, Astrea.

 

Ahyolu was such an enigmatic character where her story met with Anjie's, and it seems that she has always been surrounded by mystery in some ways. I like that we get enough of her character to know that she's no cipher and has a distinct history and personality of her own, but that there's also still that touch of the uncanny about her life. Even Shri-Lan, who has known her since they were very young, has no idea of what's going on with her emotional upheavals or the ability to read those "waterstories" -- interesting that that method of divination seems to be something Ahyolu just knows on a gut level rather than some rare Jedi specialty that she's researched. (Also, it sounds really cool! Very unlike a lot of the "standard" psychic abilities.)

This paints a grim and all-too-real picture of how things go in an environment like that. As long as they can fight, they must be fine. Nothing to see here. Right?

Spoiler

This quickly shifting temper sounds familiar from how she is later in life. But she doesn't become a dark Jedi or anything like that -- in her, the storms seem to pass as quickly as they arise.

It's really interesting to see characters with that kind of ambiguity, and I've always wondered how much of what makes a Sith comes from the culture of the Jedi. Are they actually prone to be more dangerous because they see themselves that way? Because Ahyolu doesn't seem to really feel that she one hundred percent belongs at the Temple, if that makes sense; certainly she doesn't think much of her father for his perceived abandonment.

 

I love the interaction between Shri-Lan and Ahyolu. You can sense the perceptiveness that Shri-Lan brings to galactic events as well as to the motives of Ahyolu. Ahyolu has a lot to put up with, due to her special gifts from the other Padawans.

 

This is really a fascinating character, your bird girl who divines water. She is so intriguing! And yet, she sees clearly what others are blind to, not because of her Force sensitivity but because she sees through the dogma:

I was following a similar vein, in a way, with my own diary last year, when I thought about the need to churn out Jedi padawans and initiates by the score because they were being eaten up by the Clone Wars so prodigiously. And they take it as an honor to die as cannon fodder. Of course, the true cannon fodder are the clones, but they don't get funeral pyres, only the Jedi. (Which brings me back to the song you posted on my reply to the corollary story about Anjie - "If we forget about you, don't worry/If you forget about us, then hurry.") And that leads to my sincere apologies for not continuing my comments on your brilliant "Death, Life and other Goals."

Ahyolu is a survivor, not because she is well-trained but because she fights everything. She makes her own wings unflyable. She subverts the droid's programming to get the Room of Fountains to herself. She sees the destruction of the Jedi in the Order 66 Purge but can't articulate exactly what it is, and like every true prophet she is not believed and scorned by her own "people" (fellow Jedi trainees) as being a charlatan.

I'm very curious what connection Ahyolu sees with Anakin. Does she sense his involvement in this imminent betrayal? Or does she just have a weird feeling about him? And I like Shri-Lan, too; I hope nothing happens to her. Shri-Lan's question:

is interesting because what if your identity is the very thing that keeps you sane? If adopting someone else's sense of identity conflicts so much with who you are that you are a sane outsider rather than an unhinged conformist?