Summary: Obi-Wan reflects on the nature of silence
Notes: Thank you to michelle for encouragement and to Gloriana
for her glorious beta.
They say that silence is golden, but ours is like a tree
-rooted and strong and alive. It's shot through with silver
-delicate threads of quiet and peace and love.
The people who populate this harsh planet believe me to be a
hermit. They call me crazy old Ben Kenobi and the children tell
stories of how I haven't spoken in 25 years. It hasn't been
quite that long and my silence is hardly complete, but it is
close enough to truth. I have no need to be noisy when, even in
this time, the Force is loud around me. They do not hear what I
hear in the quiet hours of my existence.
I was only fourteen when we began the silence exercises. We
would go days, sometimes even months without speaking, talking
to others only when necessary, but never to each other. Even
our link would be closed to all but our emotions. In time we no
longer needed words to communicate, able to read each other
without effort or thought. I knew how my Master would react to
any given circumstance, what each movement of his body meant. I
could recognise his wants, needs, thoughts and passions in the
colours of the Force around him. And likewise he could read me.
It made us a formidable team.
I can remember holding myself still as well as silent, trying
to curb any sound I made. My Master taught me how to move
without making any noise. We started first with the kata of
serenity, working through it over and over until we could do it
noiselessly -two bodies moving together without even a rustle
of cloth. I learned that stillness and silence were not the
same, but companions to each other -lovers.
I grew to love the silence. The way it filled the spaces
between us. The way it completed us where words and sounds
could not.
The first time we made love was during one of our silences. A
shared communion of bodies and souls without words to interfere
-it forged a bond within us that even my Master's death could
not sever.
Silence never stung the way words could. With words my Master
broke my heart, flung me away for another -a brighter student.
But in the brittle silence of our lovers' bed he healed me and
we quietly became whole again.
It is in the silences that I can feel him near, even now. In
the silence of the funeral pyre, I felt him, body whispering
around mine, warming me against the chill, promising me his
presence, always.
There exists a stillness within me that my Master recognised
while I was still a youth. A stillness that matched his own. We
fit together like two pieces of a child's puzzle, but it was
our silences that were the glue.
Our world is filled with silence. Solid oak and threaded with
silver, it wraps around us, welcoming us into its warm embrace.
It holds us together. In the silence I have no doubts that I
belong at my Master's side. In silence I lost him. In silence I
live without him. In silence I will join him once again.
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