The Way of the Mystics

by Tilt

(continued from Part 2)

Kee stood in front of his old Master's door, centered himself, took a deep calming breath, and touched his transponder button to the door sensor. The door slid open immediately.

Master Yoda's quarters stayed in a perpetual state of meditative twilight. Low furniture filled the spacious rooms, furniture scaled down for his Master's two-foot height. Very old furniture, some of it, and not a piece of siliplastic or metal in the entire lot. It was all made out of mostly wood and braided rope and leather and fur. Eight hundred years worth of history surrounded him as he walked forward through the curtains of tinkling wooden beads that filled the door from the entrance hallway past the meditation room to the main living area. The scents of mylara incense floated on the air currents. Kee looked up at the thick wooden branches that cris-crossed the ceiling just above his own head, and sure enough there was his Master's pet snake Boodle. He gave the huge python a friendly scritch on the head like the old friend he was and grinned. He'd been deathly afraid of Boodle as a child. But after so many years of watching the old snake lounging around his Master's rooms he had lost all fear of the great reptile now. Boodle was a part of the living Force too, a particularly lazy part.

"Master?" he called into the gloom.

The familiar burbling chuckle answered him from the corner of the living area in deepest shadow, and Kee saw his Master standing in front of one of his many wooden chests filled with all the odds and ends he'd acquired in his long life. He walked over to kneel on the floor beside his old Master as the old one dug through the contents of the chest, tossing things out in annoyance now and then, mumbling to himself. Kee caught a few of the luckless items as they went flying straight over the frizzle-haired head. Bundles of beads strung on some sort of plant fiber. Scrolls made of animal hides. A leather bag. Several focussing crystals for lightsabers. A glass bubble filled with some sort of pink sand. A printed book with it's leathern covers crumbling away. An animal skull with jaws full of frightful sharp teeth. A textreader of some sort with the back panel gone, wires springing out everywhere. Yoda was practically climbing into the wooden chest now in his zeal to find whatever he was looking for. Kee watched affectionately and caught the heavy lid of the chest as it started to fall closed.

"Ooo-ho! Found it, I have!"

"Yes? What did you find, Master?" Kee asked.

Yoda tumbled over into the chest, laughing, then thrashed around inside it for a minute before he reappeared, smiling hugely at his apprentice with his ears waggling in satisfaction. "Found Mystic teachings, left from time before! Must read! Yes! Little One will ask questions!"

Kee smiled and nodded. "Yes, she will. But I've told her you don't know everything about the Way and to be patient when you don't know something."

Yoda held up the bound book with both hands, staggering under the weight. Kee took it from him instantly, putting it on the floor gingerly. Yoda held up his arms and Kee lifted the old one out of the chest with great care and set him on his feet on the floor beside the book. Yoda caught hold of Kee's uniform tunic front and pulled his apprentice down beside him as he dropped where he was to sit on the floor in the midst of the pigpile of his scattered belongings. Kee lay on the floor, propping himself on his elbows beside his master. It might have been a strange sight to anyone else, the tiny green wrinkled form of the ancient Jedi Master and the very tall, long-haired human stretched out beside him, both peering at the crinkly pages of the worn printed book. But this was simply how Yoda did things, and after forty years of perfect understanding and trust Kee would not wish his old Master to be anyone else but himself. However eccentric it may be.

"Yes! Little one will ask many questions! Will want to know everything!" Yoda said emphatically. "Will ask what Mystics really said, really thought, what were like. Will want to know next why sky is blue, yes?" And Yoda laughed at this heartily. "Little one! Always asking questions! Like you!"

Kee smiled. "Was I really like that?"

Yoda looked over at his apprentice, knuckled Kee's shoulder gently with one hand. "Questions lead to answers, answers lead to knowing, knowing leads to wisdom. So questions good! But living life is better. Learn more that way." Yoda nodded, suddenly solemn. "Learned much that way, you have. Not all good, but that is the will of the Force."

Kee shrugged. He had caught the thread of this thought from his Master's mind. Thretketh, and the things he'd seen and done there. "But even then, Master, it was your teachings that kept me from going Dark. I was too young to know better myself."

Yoda nodded. "Know better now! Keep Obi-Wan and Little One from Dark, you will!"

"Always," Kee agreed. "Master, did you feel a ripple in the Force last night? Ben said everyone else did..."

Yoda's ears lifted at this, and he poked Kee's arm with one finger. "Oooh-ho! Little One! You! Together! Touched the Force, you did! Felt it, I did, yes!"

Kee looked down, embarrassed a little, but Yoda chuckled and poked his arm again to get his attention.

"Not bad! Little One will learn soon to do by herself, alone, without needing you to boost. Right now needs you and rolling together in blankets to go into the Force. Mystics found this, long time ago. Was easy way to do. But no control, could not stay in the Force long enough this way. Only little time in Force this way. Meditation will show true path to the Force. Little One will find soon."

Kee thought about this for a minute. "If it's easiest to use sex for this, could that be a sort of path to the Dark Side for her? Too quick, too easy?"

Yoda tilted his head up at his apprentice, his ears quivering in thought. "Not Dark Side exactly. Too quick, too easy, yes. Little One will see wisdom in meditation. Too quick, too easy, she does not trust. Thinks already the only true path is the most difficult. Mystics always this way, never take easy path when true path is more difficult."

Kee nodded. "Theri isn't the sort to be easy on herself, that's true. I have to remind her to eat most of the time."

Yoda nodded. "Mystics always forget to eat, sleep. Sit in meditation, sit out in sun, sit out in rain, sit in snow, never take easy way. Always banging heads on walls." The old one poked Kee's arm again. "Must watch Little One! Take care of Little One! No banging head on wall!"

Kee smiled. "She won't like that."

Yoda stomped one foot in annoyance. "Last one, she is! Must not do stupid things. Mystics don't believe in Dark, but Dark for them is madness, craziness. Fine line between going to Force and going crazy. Must watch Little One, keep from doing too much."

Kee shook his head. "She'd agree with you about the insanity part. I thought that may be a danger for her. I think she's afraid of it too, deep down."

Yoda nodded. "Fear is warning something is wrong. Instincts always right." The old one turned to the book in front of them, turned a few pages carefully. It was thickly written in a strange looping script that Kee couldn't read. "Little One comes here, second bell, every day. Will teach. What classes you will give her, eh?"

"Soritsu-ji," Kee said, watching his master turning pages. "I'll have her complete up through sixth-level before I let Ben start the lightsaber training. That's as far as we require anyway for Soritsu-ji. If she wants to go up through Ratashi-level, I'll let her do it."

Yoda grunted in agreement. "Bring her old Ratashi from Zharvan, you will?"

Kee shrugged. "I hadn't planned on it. We have Ratashi-level Jedi here."

Yoda hummed and chuckled to himself, turning pages. "Other classes?"

"Ethics and Philosophy," Kee said. "I thought that would be a good first class for her. She's fairly ethical, but I'm worried that this life of surviving she's had to live may have taught her to cut corners a bit too much. A Jedi can't do that. She can't justify something because it's the most expedient or the quickest way to do it, especially if it might be morally or ethically wrong. And she'll enjoy the philosophy part."

Yoda nodded, turned another page. "Little One pick class yet?"

"I left her looking through the schedules. She said she wanted to do at least two hours of meditation a day, but she'd do that on her own time outside of classes. But maybe--" Kee rolled over onto his back and reached for Theri's mind. [Beloved? Have you decided which class you want to take?]

[Either Religious Symbolism or Cultural Anthropology. Could I take both?] Theri Sent. [I can't decide which I want to learn more.]

Kee smiled. "She wants to take either Religious Symbolism or Cultural Anthropology or both, she can't decide which," Kee said to Yoda. "Those sound so dry I need a drink just thinking about them."

Yoda chuckled, his ears waggling.

[I don't think you should take more than four classes right now, dearheart. Remember you want to do two hours meditation too. That would be twelve hours a day, and I think that's a bit much,] Kee Sent to Theri. [And you might want the extra time for Soritsu-ji, especially if you want to go up to Ratashi-level. Pick one and take the other next time.]

He felt her thinking, considering. [All right. Cultural Anthro then.]

Kee smiled and Sent her a mental caress that she returned with a surge of love and a twist of laughter.

"Cultural Anthropology," Kee said with a quirk of one eyebrow at his Master. "I think our real problem with her will be trying to convince her to take classes about something unrelated to philosophy in any way. I think we're going to have some real problems with her when we make her take something like starship mechanics or electronics. She tends to ignore such things, and it's going to be an uphill battle for her to make ninety percentiles on those simply because she doesn't like them. She doesn't even know how to fly a speeder, much less a ship, and she'll have to learn those sometime. She can't get everywhere she may need to go on her own two feet."

Yoda nodded, carefully closing the book before peering up at his apprentice. "Must learn that all things are worth learning. All things are part of the Force. Even starships. Even electronics. Like, not like, this is ego. May need someday to fly ship away, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan not there, what to do? Or worse, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan hurt, need to fly ship, can't, what then? No. Must learn someday."

Kee nodded silently. "I think she may have a problem with learning the lightsaber too. The Mystics usually didn't fight, and Theri prefers to use all her tricks and her mindpowers to sneak rather than fight. I have a suspicion that when the time comes to actually learn how to fight, she's going to be afraid of it. Soritsu-ji is something she can handle, you can kill with your hands but it's not easy. I think she may have a problem with the lightsabers. It's too easy to hurt someone with one, and I think she may be afraid she'll hurt Ben or me. I've caught shadings in her Sending when she and I talk about her learning to fight. She's hiding something, holding something back inside. I think it's fear of hurting either Ben or me."

Yoda closed his eyes for a long moment in thought. "Possible. Obi-Wan will know for certain. Can tell from movements when fighting."

Kee nodded. "She'll hesitate. She won't put her full strength behind the saber. She might try to avoid saber practice altogether."

Yoda opened his eyes again. "Speculation, this is. Until learning of the saber begins. But tell Obi-Wan."

Kee nodded again.

Yoda poked Kee's arm with his fingers again gently. "Go now. But Little One comes here second bell tomorrow. Must begin to learn."

Kee nodded again and got to his feet, bowed to his Master, and left, giving old Boodle another scritch on the way out.

Kee's time sense woke him fifteen minutes before dawn. He kissed the back of Theri's neck and hugged her gently to wake her, murmuring in her ear. She woke instantly, rolled over and snuggled for a moment. Much as they would both have liked to repeat the previous day's long lazy morning of lovemaking and sleeping, they couldn't. There was a full day ahead for them both.

The chrono showed ten minutes til first bell as Theri jerked up a her bag and tossed her braid over her shoulder. Kee smiled over at her, searching through a box from the shelves over his desk. He came over to her and handed her a transponder button. "For the lifts. You remember the code for the door?"

She nodded, stuffing the transponder button into a pocket of the small backpack Ben had given her. "I'm still afraid I'm going to get lost in this gigantic place. Probably five minutes before my next class."

"You'll have R2 with you," Kee said, caressing her cheek. "At least for a few days until you learn your way around. He's followed Ben around enough to know where all the trainee hangouts are. And he knows where your classes are." Kee straightened his uniform tunic, picked up his lightsaber from the table by the bed, checked the charge indicator, and slipped it onto his belt. He held out a hand and they turned to go.

The main practice floor of the Temple was on Level 15. One whole entire level of the Temple was divided up into four huge practice areas for Soritsu-ji and lightsaber. Kee led Theri to the Soritsu-ji areas where students were just beginning to gather for the first class of the morning. Theri looked all around her at the huge room, the walls made of plascrete made with sandstone instead of the usual granite or shale, giving the impression that she was back in the rocks of Tatooine's desert. Bright overhead lights with a faint yellow-orange tinge. Thick blue mats on the floors, standard Soritsu-ji matting forty-five feet on a side square. Benches between the mats where the other students were gathering, doing stretches and chatting, some carrying practice weapons used in the higher levels of the Zharvan martial art. There was one wall of the room with several feet of padding at the bottom of it, set up as a rock-climbing wall. Theri watched with some interest as two trainees not much younger than herself pulled themselves up the wall carefully, moving sideways along the wall and upwards til they got to the top and jumped laughing back down into the padding below. That looked like fun.

[You could show them a thing or two on the climbing wall, dearheart,] Kee Sent on a narrow line to her. She grinned up at him. [But not right now. Later.]

[Kind of stupid to do that with boots on anyhow. I climb much better in bare feet,] she Sent. She felt his amusement.

Kee pulled her in front of him as they approached the small group gathering by the first mat. "Qualara, I've found you some fresh meat."

The odd alien man in a loose Soritsu-ji practice uniform chuckled at this and came forward out of the knot of students surrounding him. Jedi Master-Ratashi Qualara stood half a head taller even than Kee. He had pasty yellowish-white skin, light green iridescent hair that fell halfway down his back, and a pair of startling almond-shaped, slanted purple eyes. He was willowy and graceful and seemed elongated like some strange humanoid insect. His Soritsu-ji practice uniform was made of black silk with silver edging the hems, with a Ratashi's silver and black sash. As he came forward he smiled at Kee's remark and held out a hand in greeting. He and Kee clasped forearms.

"Hello, Theri," Qualara said, smiling down at her. "Kee tells me you are fourth-level already."

Theri nodded. "Yes, Ratashi. My Ratashi on Zharvan was Corwilin Banthar of Mylassasi. I trained with him for over a year." Theri looked down and shrugged slightly. "But it's been about four years since then. I've kept up with the katas, but I expect you'll want me to start over."

"We'll see what you remember first, then decide," Qualara said. "I seem to remember a Corwilin on Zharvan. He was of the lineage of Dentharan, wasn't he?"

"Yes, Ratashi."

"Well, you look ready to get to work, so let's see what we can do," Qualara said, indicating the practice uniform she was wearing. "I'll put you in the third-level group for the moment."

Theri nodded and turned to Kee.

[See those doors there?] Kee asked, pointing to a set of double doors leading to one of the lightsaber practice areas. [That's the beginning lightsaber area. Ben's due there in an hour, he's helping teach some of the beginning classes this term. So don't worry, you'll be fine.] He Sent her a swift mental caress and turned to go.

[Kee?]

He turned back, smiling. [Everything's fine! See? There's R2 over there, by the wall. And Ben will be here in an hour. I'm not going to leave the Temple, I've got some stuff I need to do today, research. Don't worry! You won't get lost. And I can always hear your mind, just as you can hear me.]

Theri stood biting her lip in worry anyway. He smiled at her again and turned firmly to go and didn't look back. This time Theri didn't Send after him, even when he got to the door and disappeared from her sight. He felt her confusion and fear, but the feel of her mind changed in a moment to determination and independence. Kee smiled. The long habit of relying only on herself had kicked in, and she was once again the stong, capable, independent, streetwise young woman. He headed down the hallway with a considerably lightened heart.

Almost two hours later, Theri bowed to Master-Ratashi Qualara, one hand over the other fist in the Soritsu-ji way, and after a moment they both stepped back and relaxed. She was bruised in a half-dozen places and would probably be sore tomorrow, but she felt she'd given a good account of herself.

"Yes, you are fourth-level, but I think we'll keep you at third for a little to get back into shape," Qualara said, motioning her off the mats to the benches. "It shouldn't take long to remind yourself of everything and to get back your edge. I'll have you re-qualify for fourth-level in a few weeks, and we'll go from there."

Theri nodded. "Yes, Ratashi."

She glanced up at the chrono. This class had gone on much too long, whoever thought up these two hour classes anyway? She grabbed up her backpack from under the bench and followed the few other girls heading toward a nearby doorway to the showers to get cleaned up.

The hallway beyond the door was comparitively dark, and she didn't see the tall girl waiting in the shadows. Theri had a fleeting impression of menace just as the girl lunged forward to grab her by the front of her Soritsu-ji uniform and pushed her hard against the wall and held her there.

"You're that bitch Master Kee brought back, aren't you?" snarled a voice full of venom. "The one from that dustball Tatooine!"

Theri didn't feel it worth the trouble to correct the girl. Through the girl's hands on her arms she could feel who this was. Ben's girlfriend Khali.

"What's it to you?" Theri asked, letting an equal snarl creep into her own voice. The more worked up she got the girl, the harder the fall.

"Don't even think about Ben! Don't look at him, don't talk to him, and don't Send to him. You try anything with him and I'll make your life hell," Khali continued in a low growling voice.

Theri snorted a laugh. "My my. We're just a bundle of insecurities, aren't we?" she asked in a sugary voice. "Might want to let Ben make his own decisions. He's a person, not your property."

The other girl was physically bigger than Theri, taller, with a longer reach, and obviously no stranger to fighting. "I'm your better, bitch! You want anything to go right for you here at the Temple, you'll come begging to me for it first. And believe me, if I want you gone you're gone. I'll have you thrown out of here so fast you'll make orbit without a ship around you."

Theri grinned in the dark, rolling her eyes. "Is that so?"

Khali jerked her away from the wall and whirled to throw her against the opposite wall. But Theri was ready for something like this and grabbed onto Khali's arms, slipped a leg around, tripped the girl easily, and threw her head first against the wall she herself had been meant to hit. She left Khali half-stunned on the floor and headed calmly to get cleaned up.

[Are you all right, beloved?] Kee asked in her mind suddenly, startlement in his mindvoice.

[Ben's girlfriend is a real sweetheart,] she Sent with a twist of sarcasm.

She felt Kee's worry. [What happened?]

[Khali just told me in no uncertain terms to stay away from Ben. And threatened to get me thrown out of the Temple if I didn't.] Theri grinned slightly, feeling the burn of her bruises as the hot water hit them. [It's nothing. Just jealousy talking.]

She felt Kee's anger then. [We've had problems with her before.]

Theri snorted. [I've heard better threats from ten-year-olds.] She felt Kee still worrying and Sent a mental caress for reassurance. [I'm fine! I'm getting cleaned up, I'll be up at Master Yoda's in a few minutes. You can always meet me there.]

[Unfortunately, I can't. Windu and I are caught up in something and we can't leave it til third bell,] Kee Sent ruefully. His parting caress warmed her more than the hot water, and she smiled and turned her attention away from him.

She got dressed and stuffed her practice uniform into her backpack. Time was of the essence now if she wanted to avoid another go-around with Khali. Two of the girl's friends had managed to get her sitting on a bench and were holding her up. Khali still looked stunned by the impact of her head against the wall, but Theri didn't see any blood. She walked casually past the three, feeling glaring eyes on her the whole time. R2 was waiting for her outside the door and whistled cheerfully at her as she appeared.

"All right, R2, take me up to Master Yoda's," Theri said, putting a hand on the little droid's domed head. R2 beeped and extended his third leg, starting off with an enthusiastic jump. Theri straightened her gray Jedi tunic and followed him quickly.

Theri touched the transponder button to the sensor pad outside Yoda's rooms just as the Temple bell sounded from above. The first morning she'd heard that great bell sounding, it had startled her awake from a deep sleep. The huge auralanium bell was in the very heart of the Temple, down below on Level 10, in the Great Hall. It hung suspended in the domed apex of the huge nine-sided room and was rung five times a day by the Keeper of the Hours. Traditionally, the bell was to signify times for meditation, work, and meals. Now it rang to tell students when the next class began. It was also rung eighty-one times to signify the passing of a Master into the Force at his death. Theri shuddered. Would she live to hear that bell ringing for Kee's death? She hoped not.

The door slid silently open, and Theri went inside.

The gloom was comforting, like being underwater. Quiet. A slight noise from above, a faint rasping sound. She looked up--

--And was crashing through the bead curtains before she knew what she was doing as the huge snake lowered half it's body from the branches of wood near the ceiling. Theri was halfway across the room before she got hold of herself and managed to recover.

Yoda's familiar burbling laugh drifted over her as she stood there, trying to get her heart to stop pounding. She turned to see the old one sitting in a pile of pillows and cushions in a faint pool of blue and green-shaded light from the wide stained-glass windows across the room. "Found Boodle, you have. Only curious, he was. Will not hurt."

Theri swung her backpack off her shoulder, still trying to calm herself down. Yoda pointed to a large round pillow a few feet in front of him, and Theri dropped down onto it slowly. She pulled off her boots and folded her legs up in the lotus position. Yoda grunted at this and peered over at her with his eyes half closed.

"Questions you have?" Yoda asked after a moment.

Theri's mind went blank. Here she was, she could ask anything, and she didn't have a clue...a million questions seemed to flit through her mind all at once. But only one rose to the surface, the one even her old Master Therasslen had refused to answer. "Why were my people exiled from the Temple?"

Yoda nodded, closing his eyes. "Know you not?"

Theri shrugged. "I know what my Master told me. We were exiled. But he never told me why or how."

"Mistrust. Jealousy. Misunderstanding. Fear. Envy." Yoda's small green hand waved to indicate the Temple. "Jedi not know everything, but forget we don't. Mystics find another way to the Force, another way to live in the Force. Jedi established many thousands of years, fear to change. Fear of unknown. Fear of the future. Fear Mystics may be right. Jealous of greater mindpowers and deep knowledge. Fear to trust in the Force as Mystics do. Fear of madness. But Mystics not afraid to go into the Force, not afraid to die. Jedi in the Light want growing, want life, want creation. But Mystics want nothingness of the Force. " Yoda seemed to get smaller for a moment, sighing heavily, eyes still closed. "Great fight. Jedi gather Mystics together, say have only two hours to gather things and go or Jedi will kill. Mystics exiled. Given old freighter and chased away from Coruscant by Jedi starfighters."

"The Moonstorm ," Theri said in a choked voice, reciting from memory the oldest story of the Mystics she knew. "Their ship. They went out to the Rim looking for a planet to land where they wouldn't be found. Two of them died along the way from injuries they must have gotten in the fight here at the Temple. They went out past the Rim into the Rifts and let the Moonstorm drift for days while they made repairs and thought about what to do next. They thought about suicide. They had nothing to live for. They'd been exiled from the Jedi. But their leader and teacher Sowelu Inda said they would begin again elsewhere, and that while one life may have ended for them, already a new one had begun. They came back from the Rifts and travelled for many months and came to many places, but it wasn't until they reached Cae-Tauvon that they found a place to settle down and begin anew. They built their own Mystic Temple there and began to teach and learn." She looked up at Yoda, her eyes bright with a mixture of grief and accusation. "I memorized all that before I'd been with my old Master a month. But why were the Jedi afraid in the first place? Were they so closed-minded they couldn't tolerate any other Way but their own?"

"Fear. Always fear it is," Yoda said with a long sigh. "Mystics will follow Way of the Force, willing to accept all things as the Way, even death, even cruelty, even madness. Mystics face fears, go through fear, learn. Jedi too, to a point. But cannot go past all fears. Some cannot accept their own Darkness. But Dark is part of the Force too. Ego, it is, not to accept own Darkness, take Darkness into self, go past Darkness. Mystics do this. Walk very thin line between Dark and Light, sometimes fall off, go mad. Sometimes give up Way and go back to Jedi, or to Dark. But never truly fit in Jedi or Dark again. Always different." Yoda sighed again and clutched his walking stick, opened his eyes to peer up at her steadily. "Inda knew this. Great Jedi he was. Saw in ways others did not. Lived truly in the Force."

Theri looked down at the floor, the shifting patterns of blue and green light around her. She took a deep breath, focussing on her breathing, identifying what she felt. Anger at the Jedi, but understanding for their fears. Who'd want their racket threatened, especially when it had gone on so long? the streetwise part of herself said. She heard the cynicism in that thought as well. Frustration with lesser and smaller minds. But she herself was closed-minded about some things. Ego. She had a self-concept too that she would act to preserve intact, just as everyone did, even if the Way taught her to shed that concept as well. Pride at her people, at their refusal to give up the Way when they knew it was right, but refused also to press that Way on others who didn't want it and couldn't follow it. Admiration for Inda, who gambled all his students' lives on his own convictions that the Way was real and true, and had the courage to begin again. " 'For redemption`s sake I teach you the rejected truth, for the sake of which I was rejected,' " Theri said, quoting from the Book of the Force. "There can't be just one truth, can there? Why does the Force choose to manifest itself in people, why does it choose to manifest at all when we get it all wrong? Why does it choose to manifest as these flawed things that can't even truly see what they're made of?"

Yoda's ears rose at this, and his wrinkles all turned upward as he smiled. "Cannot see what you are made of? Can see in others? See the will of the Force in Qui-Gon? Obi-Wan?"

Theri's thoughts jumped to Kee instantly, her mind filled suddenly with his presence, his scent, the feel of his hair in her hands, the strength of his arms around her in the night. The calmness of his mind, steadying hers. His love for her.

[Beloved?] Kee's mindvoice said gently, a warm snuggling caress of thought. She laughed. He had felt her thinking of him.

[Nothing, sweetling. Didn't mean to call you,] she Sent with a giggle in her mindvoice. She could feel his smile as his presence faded again.

Yoda's burbling laughter brought her out of her trance and she shook her head slightly, turning her thoughts away from Kee. "See the Force in Qui-Gon, you do! What is Qui-Gon, eh? Only Jedi Master? Only lifemate? Only tall human with long hair?"

"No." Theri said, trying to understand. Things were shifting in her mind again, that feeling of things wanting to connect. "Do you mean that if Kee was just any one of those things without being the others, he wouldn't be Kee? But that the Force wanted to be a Jedi Master named Qui-Gon Jinn, so it ...arranged things for all those elements to come together? Just so it could be Kee?"

Yoda thumped his walking stick on the floor in emphasis. "Yes! And No!"

Theri blinked at him. "Why yes and no?"

"You tell me!" Yoda said, leaning back against a pillow and poking his walking stick at her.

"I've already said the yes part, I guess," Theri said slowly, trying to think. Her mind was a blank. She reached for the Force, felt the calmness come over her, asked the question of it in her mind. Why are we made so that we can't see the truth? she asked the Force. And waited for the answer.

"We can see the true Force," she said slowly, her eyes closed in a half-trance, her soul touching the Force. "We're created as separate distinct beings. But once we're created, our souls are our own and we have our own minds and wills. The Force doesn't make us see itself because that's not the way of it. It waits for us to turn ourselves to it, because if it influenced us to see it, it wouldn't be a true seeing. It would be like putting on a mask and looking in a mirror. You wouldn't see the real Force. It wouldn't see itself truly. So the Force was there, the elements were all there to create everything in the universe, and we can touch the Force always, but it lets us make our own decisions and live our own lives. If even one being can see the Force truly, it sees itself truly through that being. Even if it's only a blade of grass or a Mynock or a person. It's up to us to clear away all the extraneous garbage in our minds so we can see it." She opened her eyes and looked up at Yoda. "In the Book of the Force it says, 'The multiplicity of the Force correspondeth to the multiplicity of man'. It isn't just living beings, though. It's all the concepts we make as well, all the thoughtforms we create and the wrong ideas we walk around with in our heads."

Yoda hummed to himself for a moment, poked his walking stick at her. " How can ye be true to your own nature when ye try to change the many into one?" he said, nodding. "Even in the smallest point is the Force endless, eternal, and entire."

Theri recognized the words. "You know the Book of the Force too, sir?"

Yoda laughed. "Know? Helped Inda edit! Bad speller he was!"

Theri cracked up laughing.

Theri sighed as she left Master Yoda's rooms, standing against the wall outside the door, closing her eyes and rubbing them with one hand. She felt like her mind was expanding exponentially like a supernova exploding. But at the same time she felt focussed to laser sharpness, like her whole being had been tuned to higher resolution. Was this how it would be every day? she wondered. She'd be a vegetable in a week...

She felt Kee's amusement and agreement. [You survived, dearheart?]

[You've been listening to this for forty years?] she Sent in amazement. [My head feels like it's exploding!]

She felt Kee's laughter and the swift mental caress he Sent before she felt his attention taken elsewhere for a moment. [Hungry? I'm free for lunch now.]

R2 came whistling and beeping up to her, stopped in front of her to turn in place for a moment. She laughed and put a hand on his leg-strut. [My guide-droid has appeared now. Wonder where he's been hiding? He wasn't here when I came out.]

She felt Kee's laugh. [He's been with Ben. Tell R2 to take you where Ben is. I'll meet you both there.]

"R2? Can you take me to Ben?' she asked the little droid. R2 beeped a blue streak for a moment and started down the hallway toward the lifts.

A few moments later they were on Level 5 just as the great bell rang. A wide hallway led from the lifts to a great open space ahead. Theri could see dark walls and bright sunlight streaming in, heard the chatter of many voices echoing. There were small groups of trainees and Knights and even Masters gathered together in various spots, talking. R2 rolled forward toward one of these small groups, whistled loudly as he approached. Theri heard Ben laugh from the midst of the group and a moment later he pushed through his friends. He swept her into a hug with an enthusiastic kiss while his friends laughed.

[I'm sorry about Khali, she can be a real pain,] Ben Sent to her. [Master said you had some trouble with her this morning.]

Theri shrugged and hugged him back as R2 beeped and bumped into them playfully. [She's going to give you chapter and verse about me, I'm afraid. I threw her head first into a wall when she tried to do the same to me.]

[Ouch!] Ben Sent, but he was grinning at her. He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her in front of him. "This is my new apprentice-sister, Theri bel Kaitryn. She's from Thretketh originally, but Master Kee and I found her on Tatooine. Theri, that short guy there with the bad hair is Torin, the Kaivanin with the purple markings is Shosin-ka, and here's Serala and Adara, they're sisters from Malakdere."

Ben hugged her briefly as she looked up at all his friends, suddenly shy.

The young female Kaivanin trilled a laugh and extended an elongated, clawed hand to Theri. Her willowy form spoke of avian ancestry mixed with some reptilian elements. Her skin was light tan with faint purple ripples and Theri thought her skin must be made of tiny scales. She wore a Jedi uniform of white with a braided sash of rainbow colors and a beautiful intricately-decorated lightsaber hung on the sash. Her eyes were a liquid blue, and woven through her purply hair were crystal beads and a few large black feathers. But her smile was mischievous and Theri sensed nothing of the menace she had from Khali, only a calmness of open skies. Theri touched the offered hand tentatively.

[It's good to have another girl in the group, all these men are so tedious,] the quiet laughing mindvoice said as Shosin-ka winked at her.

"Ha! That's not what you said this morning!" Torin said with a grin. He was a small, compact, stocky human, with darkly tanned skin and a mane of black hair and dark brown eyes. His Jedi uniform was tan and gray and his blue-metal lightsaber hung at his belt. "I had you running all over the cube this morning. That's not tedious!"

Shosin-ka smiled slowly and winked at Theri.

The two sisters came forward as one to grip Theri's hands. They were human sisters but not twins, one ten years older than the other. They both had long honey-colored auburn hair, the same oval shapes to their faces. They both wore light tan Jedi uniforms and wore their hair tied back in braids. Serala wore a silver-handled lightsaber at her belt, but Adara didn't. The older one Serala was about Ben's age. "We've been hearing about you all morning," Serala said with a smile at Ben. "And we all fervently hope you'll be the one to put Khali in her place. She's needed a good taking down for quite some time, but every time any of us tries she always manages to get us in trouble and gets off scot-free herself. Ben says you're a Mystic?"

Theri nodded. "The last one. Or the first new one, if you want to see it that way."

Adara nodded. "Master Windu has assigned my history class to research all we can find on the Mystics." Her voice was low and tentative, not at all like her older sister's, and Theri felt the shyness about the younger girl. Adara was younger than Theri herself, only seventeen. "How can you just accept everything, even the Dark? That just doesn't seem right!"

Theri shrugged. "That's a very long story and we only have two hours for lunch."

They all laughed at this, and R2 began beeping again loudly. They turned to see Master Kee coming down the hallway, smiling at them all. He held out his arms toward Theri and she ran forward and jumped into his arms. He whirled her around in a hug, kissing her soundly, then put her down and took her hand. Shosin-ka and Serala exchanged looks at this and then looked sideways at Ben, who shrugged.

[Lifemates,] Ben Sent to the two girls. [Found each other on Tatooine.]

Shosin-ka nodded acceptance. Her homeworld had such things. But Serala looked faintly uneasy.

Ben reached over to touch Serala's arm so he could Send to her easier. [What? You know Master Kee's been alone too long, Seri. They fell for each other practically from the moment they met.]

Serala looked over into Ben's eyes for a long moment. [Because he's her teacher, Ben.]

Ben shrugged. [What difference does that make? He's my soul-father, and he has no problems making me behave! They'll be fine! You think Master Yoda would have allowed it otherwise?]

Serala had no answer for that.

[Besides, Master Yoda's having me teach her lightsaber, not Master Kee. He couldn't anyhow, not with their lifebond.] Ben shook Serala's arm and she looked up into his eyes again. [You'd rather Master Kee was still alone? Believe me, they're lifebonded! Remember that ripple we felt the other night? That was those two making love!]

Serala blinked in astonishment and looked over at Kee and Theri again, then back at Ben. He nodded.

"So, children, what have we missed since Ben and I went to Tatooine?" Kee asked as the little group headed through the crowds together. They came into the great open space now that Theri had only glimpsed. It was a large room built of several levels, shallow steps leading up to terraces, lit from above by skylights. Some of the terraces along the outside walls opened out onto outside terraces. More of the purple flower vines draped over the terraces, and at various places small sunsplitter sculptures like that on the first floor of the Temple sent rainbow streamers around the walls. Tables and chairs were on every terrace and scattered about the floor area of the main level. "Torin, Serala, you get food detail today. Shosin, you and Ben get the drinks," Kee said, putting an arm around Theri and Adara. The four turned away with groans and laughs to do as Master Kee ordered. "You two," Kee said, giving the two younger girls a gentle shake. "Find us a table."

Adara was already looking around. "I don't see any free that are big enough, Master Kee," the shy girl said.

Theri gathered herself for a moment, asked the question of herself and caught the fleeting thought before it got away. "There's one up on that second terrace there. In the shadows under the overhang."

Kee smiled down at her and nodded. "There are senses other than eyes, Adara. Remember?"

The younger girl's shoulders slumped. "Yes, Master Kee."

Theri looked over at her and grinned. "Not used to using your ESP, huh? Not for mundane stuff?"

Adara sighed. "No. I have it, I just have trouble using it."

Theri shrugged. "Once you learn the trick of it, it's not hard to do. Just got to learn how to catch the answer before it gets away. It's like trying to catch fish with your hands."

The younger girl nodded. "That's the truth. What's your homeworld like?"

Kee smiled faintly as the two began talking, following behind them up the steps to the table Theri had found. Theri was having to re-learn how to get along with others near her own age. Having to live on the run for so long, she'd not been able to trust anyone far enough to truly socialize. And those she had known well were all adults much older than she was. That was part of the reason she thought of herself as an adult and not as a child, though by Thretkethan standards she wasn't even fully physically mature. She fell through the cracks in many ways, lifemated to a man twenty years older than she was, treated as an adult though in many ways she was still a child, older than her years from a life spent on the run. Kee didn't blame her at all for not knowing quite how to react.

"..so I came here when I was ten, because Father told the Jedi he wanted to wait until he had a son before he let another of his daughters go to the Temple. Master Mundi said he was about ready to strangle my father for that, I mean, no one tells the Jedi to wait when they come to take a child away! But Father could do that because we're the ruling family of our province and Master Mundi knew my father could have started a civil war if he'd wanted to so that he could put the family into hiding, and Master Mundi wouldn't ever have gotten me then." Adara shrugged. "I had to wait three years! Longest three years of my life! But then Master Mundi brought Seri home for a visit, and she got Father to let me go."

Theri grinned a little. "My Master just kidnapped me. He came to Thretketh trying to escape from the Demon Maul. He had a ship but there was something wrong with it and he crash-landed in the ocean near my Apa's fishing routes. Apa rescued him and brought him back to our clanhold, and he kidnapped me. Put an impulsion-loop in my head to make me wander out to the old water-beryl mines just outside our clanhold lands and had me take him to the capital in Delia to find a way off planet. Next thing I knew, I'm on a ship up in space. Hadn't ever been in space before that."

Adara looked up at her with a grin. "It's the most wonderful thing, being up in space! Shosin's training to be a fighter pilot, she wants to go to the War College after she does her confirmation. So what do you want to do when you're confirmed?"

Theri shrugged, and Kee slipped a hand into hers. "I don't know. I've kind of got my life laid out already, with being a Mystic. I'll have to teach, I guess."

Ben and the others came back with the food and drinks then, and Adara didn't ask again. Thoughts of a bright future ahead of you take second place to crunchy vegetables with three kinds of dip when you're only seventeen. But Theri didn't give up thinking about it so quickly.

[So what do you want to do once you're confirmed?] Kee asked gently in her mind as she crunched through a slice of some odd blue vegetable that tasted faintly lemony.

[I don't have a choice. I've got to teach,] Theri Sent back.

[But is that truly your choice?] Kee asked, popping a carrot stick into her mouth with a grin.

Theri quirked one eyebrow at him and crunched the carrot loudly, trying to avoid answering him. He caught her eyes and gave her a very level look. [All right then. No. It's not my choice. I don't know enough to make a real choice in the matter. And I resent that I've already got everything laid out for me all nice and orderly. I'm not even thirty yet, but already I've got my life all planned out. You're my lifemate and I love you with all my soul and I wouldn't change that part if I could. But the rest of it, well, I just don't know. Now. Satisfied?]

Kee sat back in his chair and curled one knee against the table edge and nodded at her, squeezing her hand where it rested on his leg.

"...so I'll have those new droid-brains by a week from tomorrow," Ben was saying to Torin and Serala and Shosin-ka. "I'll put one in one of my old remotes and see how it works out. If it looks like it's going to work, I'll make up half a dozen with the new brains and we'll have ourselves a party."

Torin nodded. "Want to see if we can get a little action going on the betting? I think I could probably rope Master Windu into being our test pilot. Long as you only set the remotes for stun!"

Ben laughed. "Maybe. Though with these new droid-brains, you and I could do the testing. Or Seri could." Ben smiled over at Serala as charmingly as he could. "Though I wouldn't want you to get anything numbed by those stun charges, Seri."

Torin snorted. "Yeah, last time she chased the remotes around a cube and got zapped, you had to kiss it and make it better. I thought I'd have to mop you up with a towel the next day."

Ben kicked him under the table while Serala and Shosin-ka laughed.

[Ben and Torin run a gambling ring on these remotes of his?] Theri Sent to Kee, amusement in her mindvoice.

[Just Torin. Ben just builds the remotes,] Kee Sent back, nibbling on a slice of bread. [They build the remotes to practice with, yes, that's legitimate. Torin's just the sort who likes to stir things up a little. His family have been involved in organized crime on his homeworld for generations. He doesn't have a sinister bone in his body, but after all those generations of gambling and protection rackets, it's practically encoded in his genetic structure.]

Theri rolled her eyes and popped a bit of tsala fruit in his mouth. He saw another faint shadow in her eyes and quirked an eyebrow at her inquiringly. She looked away but he squeezed her hand. [Master Yoda told me how my people were exiled. And why,] she Sent reluctantly. [I knew they'd been exiled, but I didn't know the exact details of how it happened. I just can't believe it was all from fear and envy. I can't believe the Jedi were that small-minded. And for all I know it could happen all over again with me.]

Kee squeezed her hand again and looked into her eyes steadily. [It won't. I won't let it happen again. Not with you.]

Theri looked away. [You may not have a choice. And I'm not Sowelu Inda. I'm no leader.]

Kee gave her another steady, level look and she sighed and picked up his hand to kiss it. [I know. Trust in the Force.]

"Theri?"

Theri looked around, startled, saw Serala and Shosin-ka looking at her with smiles. She nodded at them.

"Ben says you threw Khali into a wall this morning?" Serala asked, admiration in her voice.

Theri squirmed and didn't dare to look up at Kee. "Well, yes. She tried to slam me against the wall, so I just tripped her and swung her into it. Head first."

Serala and Shosin-ka were both laughing now. "No wonder! She got to Law class late and sat in the back of the room brooding like a storm cloud the entire two hours!" Shosin said with her trilling laugh.

"You didn't tell me you'd actually fought," Kee's voice said quietly beside her.

Theri shrugged. "Not really a fight. She tried to slam me, I just turned the attack and threw her head-first into the wall."

Kee reached over and turned her toward him. He lifted her chin until she looked him squarely in the eye. "Threats and insults are one thing, physical violence another. If she tries this again, you are to tell me immediately. Understand?"

Theri scowled at him. "I can take care of myself, and certainly I can take care of her. "

Kee gave her a very hard, direct look. "I told you we've had trouble with her before. If she's actually using violence to intimidate people, it's time we did something about it. She's been trouble almost from the moment she got here."

[Then why don't you get rid of her?] Theri Sent, directing the thought only to him.

[Because with her ways, she'd be an easy target for the Dark,] Kee Sent in reply.

[So why not have someone adjust her thinking?] Theri asked, exasperated.

Kee tapped her gently on the nose with one finger in admonishment. [Because it's not ethical. As you'll be learning at your Ethics and Philosophy class in half an hour.]

[Sounds kind of stupid to me,] Theri Sent indignantly. [If you don't want her making trouble, plant a few impulsion-loops and subliminals in her mind and fix the problem. Otherwise, the problem goes on and gets bigger.]

[Probably what Sidious had in mind for you,] Kee Sent calmly.

Theri snorted. [He couldn't have gotten past my shields.]

Kee gave her a very hard look at this. [Don't count on that, beloved.]

Theri scowled up at him. He smiled faintly at her and squeezed her hand again. [I can take care of myself, y'know. I'm not some stupid baby. I managed to keep my Master and myself alive for six years with Sidious and Maul chasing us.]

[I know, dearheart. But except for when Maul found you on Tatooine, you were never actually in his presence. And you've never seen Sidious. You have no idea what they could do to you. You'd hear a mention of Maul on the streets and bug out. If I have my way, you'll never be in such danger ever again.] He reached over to caress her cheek briefly. [I know. I'm overprotective. But in this case, it's justified.]

Theri humphed softly in annoyance. He kissed her hand.

"Time to go," Ben said, reaching over to tickle Theri's ribs. "Can you two untwine from each other?"

Theri snorted at him, saw the others were smiling at her and Kee, and looked away, blushing.

Kee punched in the code at his apartment door, one hand rubbing his neck tiredly. A long day done at last. The breeze of night filled the hallway from the balcony by the lifts, flower scents and the slight acrid scent of thruster exhaust from the endless stream of passing ships. His shoulders were knotted and giving him a headache. He'd spent the day staring at intelligence reports and data...Enough. Tomorrow he'd spend the morning working out with Ben and the children. Let the information sink in and see what came up from it.

Theri was curled up in one of the chairs in the main room, a textreader in her lap, fast asleep. Kee smiled. Her first day as a Jedi trainee, and she had conked out trying to study. He gently took the textreader from her lap and turned it off, putting it in her backpack next to the chair. He leaned down and kissed her softly, and she woke up at the touch of his mind on hers.

[Have you eaten anything since lunch?] he Sent with a grin as she sat up blearily.

Theri stared off into space for a moment, trying to remember. "Ben gave me some sort of alga thing when I got home," she said, rubbing her face with one hand, still half-asleep.

"Good enough. To bed with you, young lady," he said, pulling her to her feet. "You've got to do it all again tomorrow."

"I don't see how I'm ever going to get past the concept of my own self," Theri said, hugging her knees as she sat once again in Yoda's rooms. "Isn't it sort of like the base programming of a computer? Nothing beyond it but the wires and circuits?"

Yoda hummed a little, closing his eyes and leaning back in his pillows. "And what are wires and circuits? The body of a computer, they are! Like this crude matter here!" He reached over with his walking stick and poked her arm. "Can erase programming on computer, yes? Computer still work, power still on, just no operating system."

Theri shook her head at the analogy, trying to comprehend it. "This is my mind we're talking about here."

Yoda's eyes popped open to peer at her with a grin. "Feel fear in you, thinking of this."

"Who wouldn't be?" Theri asked, squirming a little.

"Inda!" Yoda answered, thumping his stick on the floor in front of her. "This main goal and practice of Mystics! Must learn!"

Theri put her chin on her knee, her eyes distant. "I know, Master Yoda. I'm just trying to figure out how to do it."

"Do already! With Qui-Gon," Yoda said. "Get past body with Qui-Gon, go into the Force. What thinking when rolling in blankets with Qui-Gon, eh?"

Theri smiled slightly. "I'm usually not thinking much at all at that point."

"Exactly!" Yoda said with another thump of his stick on the floor. "Not thinking! Doing! Feeling! Concept of self goes away, nothing but the Force."

"But I don't dissolve completely, I don't disappear," Theri said. "So I must not be going completely into the Force. I'm still here."

Yoda shrugged slightly. "Many possibilities. Who dreams when asleep, eh? Not thinking mind. Subconcious holding back from the Force, self-preservation instinct. Lifebond with Qui-Gon, maybe. Feelings and senses sending to brain, keeping subconcious focussed on body. "

"My master told me that they used to do the questings with sensory-deprivation suits," Theri said slowly. "Before they had the caves in the mountain at our Temple. I wonder if that was why."

Yoda sat back again, closing his eyes. "Maybe. Possibility."

Theri sighed hugely and flopped onto her back on the pillows behind her, putting her arm over her eyes. "Sometimes I think I know what I'm doing, sometimes I have no idea what to do at all."

Yoda humphed. "You, me, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, all think this. Only do best we can, teaching silly Little One to trust in the Force."

Theri stopped cold suddenly, feeling something catch in her mind at Yoda's words. "Ben," she said then, slowly. "And Kee. We--oh, man, there's something to this, I just know it--" She squinched her eyes shut in concentration, trying to remember. "Before I lifemated with Kee, Ben and I--well, you know. We--rolled in the blankets, as you like to put it." She blushed a little but kept talking. "Thretketh, we're like that, anything with the right plumbing---Anyway, when Ben and I were--together--Kee was mindlinked with us. We didn't see the spiral! Kee was anchoring us both to keep me from burning out Ben's mind, and he was the center. We were with him, circling around him, and at the end of it we were all one soul. But we didn't see the spiral. At least, not like Kee and I have..."

Yoda shrugged a little, settled back on his pillows. "Differences, there were. What?"

Theri sat up. "We were on Tatooine. It was Ben and Kee was anchoring us. We weren't--" She stopped. "That's it. We weren't touching the Force. I was too frenzied to remember to reach for the Force. When I went into the Force with Kee, we'd been touching it all along. So I can only do it when I'm touching the Force and in the frenzy. But Kee has been trying to teach me to control the lust, he's been trying to teach me to be aware of what I'm doing so I won't blank it all out."

Yoda looked up at her sideways.

Theri looked at him blankly for a moment. "That's not it, is it? I'm going down the wrong way, aren't I?"

Yoda shrugged silently.

Theri flung herself back onto the pillows behind her and cursed in Thretkethan. "Well, you did say it wasn't the right way to do things from the start of this, so I guess I should have listened better."

Yoda chuckled.

Theri ran her hands through her hair, scrubbed her face with her hands. "Okay, then, how?"

Yoda closed his eyes and sighed. "Need to go past fears. Fears of losing self. How to go past fear, eh?"

"You do whatever it is you're afraid of," Theri said automatically. "But I don't know how."

Yoda hummed to himself for a moment, then his eyes popped open and he laughed heartily. He held out a hand toward her. "Give bag!"

Theri looked around, saw only her backpack beside her. "My pack?"

Yoda climbed out of his nest of pillows and scurried over to her backpack, began to unzip it, laughing all the while. He began tossing out her Soritsu-ji uniform and her textreaders with happy abandon. Theri could only watch as he emptied the bag in only a moment. Another moment, and he had managed to work himself into the backpack and zip the zipper halfway closed around himself, chuckling heartily. "Now! Pick up and put on back! Carry!"

Theri stared at him for a moment. "Carry you? In my pack? Sure, Ethics and Philosophy is a bit mind-boggling, but I don't need you to take the test for me..."

Yoda's walking stick whapped her on the side of the head. "Carry!" And he pulled the walking stick into the bag with him and zipped up the pack almost closed from the inside.

Theri got to her feet, hardly believing this. But-- "Well, you're the Master."

"Yes! Great Jedi Master! You carry! Do what I say!" came the gravelly voice from inside the backpack.

Theri tugged the pack up by the straps, praying the bag wouldn't come apart at the seams. She tried to be as careful as she could as she got the bag on her shoulders and pulled the waist strap from the storage pocket on the back, fastening it tight around her. The little Jedi Master was small, but he was heavy. She didn't know how long she could carry this weight...

"Now!" came Yoda's voice from just behind her head. "We will see!"

And Theri felt something grab hold of her mind in a talon of steel, piercing through her shields in an instant, and the world went gray.

Kee raked the sweat-soaked strands of his hair off his neck and scubbed the sweat out of his eyes with a towel, smiling at Torin as the younger man jumped to his feet from the bench beside the lightsaber cube and waited impatiently for the doorway to open in the force-shield wall. Torin grinned in almost manic glee, bouncing on his toes, exuding such eagerness that Kee laughed at him. Torin looked down at his lightsaber, checking the charge indicator as he stepped through the force-shield opening, the two remotes already floating in the cube in front of him.

That was when Kee stopped suddenly, clutched at his chest, stumbled backwards, and fell to the floor.

Ben saw him fall and yelled, moving before he even knew what he was doing, leaping over the benches to reach his Master's side. Serala and Shosin-ka were right behind him, and then the other trainees and Jedi in the vicinity were rushing over too. Torin, in the cube, saw what was happening and moved with Jedi quickness to snatch the hovering remotes out of the air barehanded, hitting the emergency cut-offs and calling for the computer to open the force-shield. A moment later he was helping Ben lift Master Kee up from the floor. Ben and Torin held Master Kee propped against their shoulders while Ben checked his pulse.

"It's not a heart attack," Ben said quickly, his hand on Kee's throat feeling the steady, regular heart beat. Please don't let it be a heart attack, Ben prayed silently to the Force. "He's breathing...somebody go get a medic!"

Kee heard the barely-controlled fear in his apprentice's voice, felt the sudden jagged spikes of panic in Ben's mind. He could hear everything, mind and voice both, could feel Ben's hand on his throat, the floor underneath him. Some sort of white haze swam before his eyes, preventing sight. He wanted to reach out to Ben, touch his mind, reassure him, calm the fears suddenly all around him. Theri. Where was Theri? He couldn't hear her anymore....[Beloved?] Kee managed to Send, but his mindvoice was weak as water. [Beloved? Where are you?]

"Master," Ben whimpered in his ear. "Please don't die!"

Then time seemed to slow down for Kee, as the white daze before his sight seeped into his mind and soul, and he was floating in an endless timeless white silent void.

Ben sat watching the medical readouts on the wall beside his Master's bed in the Temple's infirmary, the steady blip of the heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, brainwave activity. All normal except for the brainwave activity, and that was going haywire.

The little room was dim save for the lights of the readouts. It was night on Coruscant now, outside the window Ben could see the lights of the buildings and the passing ships' running lights. Master Kee lay as he had since that morning, unconcious but physically unharmed. It hadn't been a heart attack or a stroke or anything else. The only thing wrong was the abnormal wild fluctuations in brainwave activity. Master Kee hadn't wakened even once since that morning, but apparently he was going through continuous nightmares, judging from the amount of REM activity.

And Theri and Master Yoda had disappeared. And one of the small scout ships had disappeared right out of the hangar of the Temple, right under everyone's noses.

Ben put a hand up to rub his eyes wearily. He'd been sitting here all day, worrying himself sick. He got up, moved to stand beside his Master and took his hand. [Master? Are you there?]

There was no answer, not even the familiar calm presence Ben had felt for over ten years. His Master's body might have been a soulless shell, like trying to mindtouch a corpse. Ben shuddered. All he could sense was a white daze like video static...

Master Windu came into the room silently, nodded to Ben and came to stand on Kee's other side, looking down at his old partner for a long moment.

[He looks so...small,] Ben Sent to Master Windu. [Not like himself at all.]

Windu looked over at Ben for a moment, reached over to put a hand on his shoulder in comfort.

[Has there been any word yet?] Ben Sent.

[No. CorCom logged the scout ship leaving orbit and going into hyperspace. And that's the last word we have. No messages, no transmissions. The only thing we have is Theri's Soritsu-ji uniform and her textreaders on the floor in Yoda's room. And no one saw her or Yoda leaving.] Windu shook his head and looked down again at Kee's silent form.

Ben drew in a shuddering breath and let it out again in a long sigh. Then he straightened up in sudden hope.

[R2! He might have seen her!] Ben Sent, his mindvoice bright with hope. He turned and almost dived out the door of the little infirmary room in his eagerness.

Outside in the hallway, Torin looked up as Ben snatched open the door, his eyes full of sudden fear. He tightened his arm around Serala's waist and Shosin-ka drew in a whistling gasp.

"It's all right, he's the same as he was," Ben said quickly, holding up his hands. His friends all relaxed and slumped back again.

A few yards away, Khali stood leaning against the wall. She tossed her long mane of red-blond hair over her shoulders and pushed away from the wall, absently straightening her brown and gray Jedi uniform tunic as she walked over to Ben slowly and held out a hand silently.

[I came as soon as I could,] Khali Sent to him. [Had exams in Xenoarchaeology, couldn't get out early.]

Ben peered at her narrowly. [Did you have anything to do with this?] he asked steadily. [Did you do anything to Theri?]

He hadn't narrowed the thought to her alone. Torin slipped his arm from around Serala and got to his feet, walked over to stand beside Ben almost casually, but his intent was obvious.

Khali looked genuinely surprised at this, but they could all tell it was an act. [The little bitch? Why would I do anything to her?]

Torin caught Ben as he lunged forward, held him back. [Damnit, Khali, this Temple is not your personal playground! And I don't belong to you! You want the truth about Theri, fine! She wouldn't care and neither do I! Yes! Theri and I had sex on Tatooine! She's a hell of a lot better at it than you'll ever be! Whenever she wants me, I'm hers, body mind and soul, no questions asked! You want to know why? Because she loves me, Ben Kenobi, as a human being. Not Ben Kenobi the pretty ornament she can stick in her jewelry box and flash around when it suits her! She loves me enough to let me be my own person! She'd never even think of trying to hold on to me! And you know what? That's the very reason I'll keep going back for more!]

Serala and Shosin-ka were on their feet now too, helping Torin to hold Ben back as he tried to lunge at Khali.

Khali stood looking at him for a long moment with no expression whatsoever on her face. Then she looked at Torin, Serala, and finally Shosin-ka, all of whom stared back at her with undisguised contempt. She turned around and walked away without another word to any of them.

Once she was out of sight, Ben slumped in his friends' arms and nearly passed out. "I think I overdid it with the Sending," he mumbled as Torin and Serala managed to get him sitting down between them on a nearby bench. "I'm gonna have one hell of a headache tomorrow..."

Master Windu had watched all this silently from a few yards away and came over to the little group, knelt in front of Ben. "Look at me, Ben," he said, "Are you seeing spots or flashes of light?" He turned Ben's face up to the light and Ben winced. "Your eyes look fine, no uneven pupils, so probably no neural damage. Can you feel any numb spots?"

"No, just starting to get that headache," Ben said. "But Master Windu, remember Theri saying that droids could see her even when she pulled her disappearing act? Check with R2 and the droids in the hangar, they might have seen her..."

Windu nodded. "Yes, that's right, she did say that droids could see her even when she's invisible to us. I'll get to work on it. Torin, can you and the girls get Ben back to his own room?"

Torin nodded. "Go on, Master Windu, we can take care of him."

"No," Ben said. "I'm staying up here with Master Kee."

Windu hesitated a moment, but Serala looked up at him and nodded. "We'll take care of him, sir."

The tall dark-skinned Jedi nodded to them once and turned to go.

The grayness receded like the tide going out, sound and light and form rising up to engulf her like the surge of a wave. Theri took a deep shuddering breath and opened her eyes.

She was laying on her back, looking up through a viewport at absolute blackness. The surface beneath her gave a convulsive jump sideways and a series of loud bangs and hisses sounded faintly from somewhere behind her. Then silence.

Gradually she realized there were tiny blinking lights over her head, small sounds and shiftings around her. Gelfoam beneath her. Her Jedi uniform tunic was twisted around her. One hand was dangling over the edge of the surface she was laying on.

[Beloved?] she Sent blearily, automatically.

And sat up all at once, realizing she couldn't feel Kee in her mind anymore. She couldn't hear him! [Kee? Where are you?] she Sent. There was no answer, no snuggling warm caress of thought. [Kee?] she Sent again, Sending as far as she could, straining, reaching. Nothing.

She curled up on herself, trembling and crying and terrified, her mind groping around in the empty darkness that only a few moments since had resonated with the quiet loving hum of his mind in hers. Blind panic stole every thought, she just lay there for hours, staring into the nothingness, eyes blinded with tears.

Finally, she fell into a troubled half-asleep doze, exhausted with crying and panic.

When she awoke again, nothing had changed. She still couldn't feel Kee anywhere. She sat up again slowly and looked around finally.

A ship. A small ship. A shuttle or courier ship, most likely. There were three blast couches arranged around the main cabin beside computer consoles. An open door in front of her led to the cockpit. She slid off the blast couch and walked forward to the cockpit.

Outside the viewports there was the same absolute blankness. Black darkness. No stars, no light at all.

She slumped down gingerly into the pilot's chair, staring at the few blinking lights on the consoles and controls in front of her. She had no idea how to fly this ship. She didn't even know how to figure out where she was.

"Computer?" she asked, hoping there might be a droid-brain that could run the ship. But nothing answered her.

She poked at the controls with one finger carefully, moving the steering yoke an inch forward. The nose of the ship dipped in front of her a few feet, then bobbed back up again when she let the yoke return to it's former position. She still couldn't see anything outside of the viewports.

She got up and left the cockpit. There was another door in the back of the main cabin, leading to the access panels for the engines and componentry. There were a few cases of parts and tools. The dust around a small airlock in the floor had been disturbed in random patterns. The lockwheel turned easily in her hand, and she opened it carefully. No hiss of escaping atmosphere, so there must be pressure and air beyond it. She poked her head down the hatchway. Escape pods. There were three still in place. One was gone. The force-shielded chutes beneath the pods opened to still more blackness.

She re-locked the airlock and went back into the main cabin, sinking again into the gelfoam of the blast couch she had awakened on, her mind blank with fear and despair.

Kee's presence was gone from her mind. She was alone on a small ship in some sort of blackness that had no stars in it. She couldn't fly the ship. She couldn't figure out where she was. She had nothing.

Then she shook herself. This was silly. Moping about wasn't going to get her anywhere, it wasn't going to solve the problem. She reached for the Force and felt the fear recede. At least she had the Force. The silent wave of calmness and joy folded about her like Kee's cloak.

The thought of Kee broke her again. She doubled over and the tears were streaming down her face in an instant. It felt like her guts had been ripped out. Now she knew how that bantha had felt that time...

She forced herself upright again and began concentrating on her breathing. If she wanted to get out of here, she'd have to do it herself. There was no sense in crying and wasting time.

She turned to the computer consoles and started trying to figure out where she was and how to get home.

Serala sat holding Ben against her shoulder as he hid his face against her, trying to avoid even the dim light from the medical readouts beside Master Kee's bed. He had definitely overstrained his weak telepathic powers the day before, and now had a migraine headache of ungodly proportions. But he refused to leave his Master's room and refused even the neural regenerators and painkillers that would have made short work of his headache. The neural regenerators and drugs would have knocked him out cold for over a day, and he would not allow that. He'd be here for his Master no matter what, until the danger was over.

But there was no change. Master Kee had not awakened.

Ben groaned in pain against Serala's shoulder. It felt like every nerve had been dipped in plasma fire and then left exposed to be scoured by a sandstorm. If his head didn't explode soon he thought it might be a good idea to put his lightsaber in his ear and get it over with. When he could think at all, that is.

Serala sighed and tucked her arms a little more fimly about him. She looked over at Master Kee's motionless form and wondered if she'd ever see him laughing and talking again. He'd been so happy with Theri at lunch the other day. And now all this. It just didn't make any sense.

The door opened quietly, and Torin poked his head inside. Serala looked up at him and nodded silently. Torin came in and sat down beside them, looking up at Master Kee with the most somber expression on his face Serala had ever seen.

[Did you get it?] Serala Sent on a thin thread to Torin.

Torin nodded. [It pays to have friends in odd places who owe you favors.]

Serala sat up a little straighter, put up a hand to hold Ben's head against her shoulder gently. Torin saw her idea and reached up as if to put a hand on his friend's shoulder. Serala saw the drug patch in his hand.

Ben went limp in Serala's arms. She and Torin sighed simultaneously in relief.

[He's going to kill us, you know,] Serala Sent as Torin put up a hand and Lifted Ben from her shoulder with a grunt of effort at the weight. He levitated Ben over to the unused second bed against the wall while Serala unfolded the blanket.

[Let him. He'll have had at least twelve hours sleep. And I have five more of those patches. We can keep him under until day after tomorrow sometime. And he can't refuse the neural regen unit if he's not awake.] Torin put action to words by opening the door a crack and sticking out his hand. Shosin-ka, standing just outside the door keeping watch for medic droids, slipped a regen unit out of the folds of her tunic and hurriedly put it into Torin's hand. Torin tossed it to Serala, who pulled the little device open and fitted it behind Ben's ear. Tiny green lights began cycling as the regen unit adjusted itself and began stimulating the neural cells of Ben's brain.

[He'll be all right now,] Torin Sent. [Twelve hours of sleep and he won't know what hit him. An ore freighter could land on his nose right now and he wouldn't wake up.]

[What will you tell Master Windu?] Serala Sent as they went over to Master Kee to take the limp unresisting hands.

[Who says he's gonna ask?] Torin Sent. [The art of misdirection is not dead, m'dear.] Torin's brief grin faded all too soon as he looked down at Master Kee.

They were both silent for a few long moments, watching Master Kee.

[He's as much my master as he is Ben's,] Torin Sent finally, quietly. [You ever notice that? All the masters share the work, sure, but Master Windu and Master Kee more than any of them.]

Serala nodded. [Much as I love Master Mundi, Master Kee always seemed like a father to us all.]

Torin clutched her hand suddenly. [Don't say that! Don't say stuff in the past tense! He's not dead yet!]

Serala nodded again, but Torin saw her swallow, trying to hold back tears. They squeezed Master Kee's hands once more in farewell, and left before they both started crying.

Theri sat back in the blast couch, pounding both fists on the edge of the computer console in frustration. Nothing. She couldn't even get the damned thing to show her a status readout! Someone had locked out the entire thing!

She scrubbed her eyes with her hands wearily and relaxed in the gelfoam.

Yoda. She remembered now. She had been with Yoda in his rooms at the Temple. They had been talking about going into the Force. He'd emptied out her backpack and gotten inside it, then demanded she carry him on her back. Then he'd grabbed hold of her mind right through her shields like a hawk latching onto a fish underwater. The power in the ancient Jedi Master's Sending had overwhelmed the light shields she'd kept up in the Temple. She hadn't been expecting trouble and hadn't had her full shields up...Yoda had taken over her mind and had her put up her full shields, vanishing from sight and sound. Then he'd run her out of his quarters like she was a droid on remote control. Straight to the hangar, up the ramp of the nearest scout ship. He'd made her steal the ship. Her hands had been on the controls, but it had been Yoda's mind directing her hands. He'd had her plot a course through hyperspace. The ship had made the jump, coming out of hyperspace inside a nebula...

So. She was inside a nebula. That would explain why she could see nothing out the viewports. The dust of the nebula was blocking out the light of the stars.

And this nebula was near the edge of the Rim. Almost into the rifts. A very, very long way away from Coruscant. The ship had taken almost ten hours in hyperspace to get here. And her telepathic range was measurable in single digits of astronomical units, not in lightyears. No wonder she couldn't hear Kee anymore.

Kee. What must be happening to him now? She put her hands over her face and swallowed down the tears.

This was it then. The only thing she had was the Force.

And then it hit her. Yoda meant for her to take her questing. Here and now. She was isolated from everyone and everything she knew, while at the same time hidden from visual sighting and sensor scanning. If she turned off all the lights she'd be in complete darkness and silence. The only way to get past the fear was to do the thing you were most afraid of. If she did it, if she made it into the Force, every Jedi would feel it. Yoda had taken the missing escape pod and was more than likely on his way back to the Temple by now. He knew where she was. When he felt her go into the Force, he'd send someone out to get her. Or maybe, just to retrieve the empty ship...

It didn't matter. One way or another, that was the only way out of this situation. She either made it into the Force, or she'd die here in the cold and dark. There was no food and no water on the little scout ship.

It was the perfect situation for her questing. She couldn't have asked for better if she'd planned it this way.

And Kee would feel it when she made it to the Force too. At least, one way or another, he'd know what had happened to her. And when her soul dissolved into the Force, they'd be together again, if only for that split second before there was nothing left of her to realize it. At this moment she'd gladly go insane just to feel the touch of his mind again.

She got up slowly from the blast couch and took a blanket from one of the storage compartments along the wall. She tossed it onto the blast couch underneath the viewport, then went to the cockpit. She found the power switches for the onboard lights and flipped them all off.

Complete darkness.

She walked carefully back to the blast couch, took her boots off, settled herself on the blast couch, pulled the blanket up to her chin.

This was it, then.

[Body, mind and soul, with you always beyond time, Beloved] she Sent into the void outside the ship, flinging the thoughts as far as she could.

She took a deep breath and directed her mind inward along the pathway to the core of her soul.

Shosin-ka ran on light feet down the corridors of the Infirmary level, her soul singing with the Force, moving silently as only a Kaivanin could do, twisting easily out of the way of medidroids and human nurses alike, a flickering purple and white wraith. She skidded around the last corner and ran up to Master Kee's room with a loud whistling trill.

The door opened a crack, and Torin peeked out.

"Good news!" Shosin said, pushing at the door. Torin let her inside with a finger to his lips, signalling for silence.

Shosin nodded and slipped inside. She ran her fingers through her disheveled hair, straightening the beads and feathers. She walked silently over to peer down at Ben's sleeping face. Torin had taken off the regen unit a couple hours ago, and now Ben slept only in the grip of the tranquilizers Torin had given him. Shosin-ka put a hand softly on his cheek for a moment, then turned back to Torin.

[Good news! They've found Master Yoda!]

Torin blinked at her. It was the first news they'd had in over two days. [Where? How? Why?]

Shosin went and took one of Master Kee's hands, looking down into the pale face. The longer Master Kee stayed in this state, the paler he seemed to get, the shallower his breathing became. His heartbeat was starting to slow down too. [Where? An escape pod from the scout ship. How? He was picked up by a Trade Federation ice-hauler ship and they called for a courier ship to come get him. He's on his way to Droma even as we speak. Why? I think that will have to wait until he's back at the Temple.]

[Did he have Theri with him?] Torin Sent.

[No. Apparently not.] Shosin-ka's expressive narrow face showed only sadness at this. [CorCom told me that the ice-haulers had picked Master Yoda up in the Chikubsa system, way out on the Rim, almost into the rifts. Those little scout ship pods only have an escape engine and directional thrusters, so he must have come from that system. I looked it up, there's nothing out in that part of the Rim but Chikubsa and a big nebula.]

[Wonder what the big deal was, then?] Torin Sent.

[That will have to wait on Master Yoda's telling, I think,] Shosin-ka Sent, putting one hand on Master Kee's cheek briefly.

Outside the door of Master Kee's infirmary room, a figure in brown and gray slipped out of the shadows of a nearby side hallway and moved swiftly to stand by the door. Khali's face was the picture of concentration as she put one hand out toward the wall, touching the trickle of the Force that was all she'd ever been able to feel. Mindvoices. Torin and Shosin-ka. She thinned her mindshields, letting the ever-present babble and chatter of other minds into her own, biting her lip at the noise. There. Now she could hear....

[Good news! They've found Master Yoda!]

[Where? How? Why?]

[Where? An escape pod from the scout ship. How? He was picked up by a Trade Federation ice-hauler ship and they called for a courier ship to come get him. He's on his way to Droma even as we speak. Why? I think that will have to wait until he's back at the Temple.]

[Did he have Theri with him?]

[No. Apparently not. CorCom told me that the ice-haulers had picked Master Yoda up in the Chikubsa system, way out on the Rim, almost into the rifts. Those little scout ship pods only have an escape engine and directional thrusters, so he must have come from that system. I looked it up, there's nothing out in that part of the Rim but Chikubsa and a big nebula.]

[Wonder what the big deal was, then?]

[That will have to wait on Master Yoda's telling, I think,]

Khali straightened up, dropped her hand and built her shields back up again. Yes! Just what she needed!

She whirled away and moved quickly down the side corridor she'd appeared from toward the lifts.

Khali swung down the black metal steps easily, her dark brown Jedi cloak rippling out of the way of her feet. The hood hid her face. She kept herself calm and allowed nothing to show on her face. She'd watched the Masters out in public often enough to know they deliberately put on that mask of detachment and calmness. She'd taught herself to imitate it. Fake it til you make it, her mother always said. Appropriate words from a prostitute.

The nightclub was a wash of misty darkness with small pools of light. She'd suggested this place because she came here often and no one would suspect anything amiss. Here, at least, she could sometimes forget Khali Condra the Jedi Trainee and just be herself. Lose herself in dancing half the night with Ben. She sighed against the sudden stab of jealousy and rage. Well, the little bitch wouldn't have him long.

Part of the darkness detached itself from a nearby shadow, and it seemed as if the glowing yellow eyes and tattooed face appeared out of thin air to hover before her. The black cloak rustled, and Khali saw the double lightsaber strapped to the left leg. She looked up into the yellow, cat-like eyes and forgot to breathe for a moment.

Maul smiled slightly and held out a black-gloved hand to her. She took his hand and he led her to the dance floor.

Dawn broke in rain and lightning and thunder over the Great Temple. Fifty miles eastward, a small, sleek black ship lifted off from a docking platform and nosed upwards into cloudless sunny skies, racing ahead of the gathering storm clouds. Within the small black ship, Maul smiled his snake's smile as he glanced over at the girl sleeping in the navigator's seat beside him. Khali didn't awake as Coruscant fell far behind and far below the racing black ship.

Within the belly of the nebula, there was silence and absolute darkness.

The life of Theri bel Kaitryn was a distant star now, the surface world of light and form and movement falling away behind her. She could see it now separate from her self, that life. Here were the years at home on Thretketh, her brothers and sisters, her Apa, her Ama, the ocean and the boats and the strain of being different. That first moment she'd seen her Master, the frail old man in the tattered brown robes, dazed and half-drowned, being carried by her brother Dodiya from her Apa's fishing boat. She could see it now, as it was. Threads of lives and objects and time, braiding, weaving, twining together. The threads of these things that made up the lives that touched hers, her Apa, her Master, Kee, Ben, Yoda. Even Khali and Maul and R2-D2. A web of connections that stretched to every particle of energy and matter in the universe. Every connection could not exist without every other connection and thread. The entire universe had to exist in this exact configuration to produce each thread and connection, just as it was. And every moment, every millisecond, across the entire universe, a galaxy's worth of new threads and connections arising, while an exactly equal number faded out of existence.

The balance of it all, the order, the complexity. She could truly feel now her Master's words, and the words of the Book of the Force. "Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change." She could feel the processes now, the endless cycling of life and death, movement and rest, energy and matter. "What the Light speaketh is life. What the Dark Side speaketh is death. But the Force speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time." Yes. She saw that now. More importantly, Theri felt it. Felt it in her guts, in her heart. The Force was that energy behind all other energies. The Light and Dark were merely the two directions of it, the increasing and the waning. Neither was better than the other. Neither would ever truly overcome the other. They were in balance, in harmony. When one seemed to be overcoming the other, look for the energy of the other to appear elsewhere, perhaps hidden away, but always in balance. "Good and evil are united in the flame," as it said in the Book of the Force. "The Force begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness, in the same word and in the same act." Yes. Every act, every moment, every movement, served not the Dark or the Light, but the Force itself. Every moment of time was the movement of that transcendant energy in space. It was motion itself.

She was a point of light now, tiny, sparkling, fluid, falling down through the darkness of her soul. Just a tiny little spark. Pieces of her self falling away. Her focus sharpened almost by the moment, the wind of the Force in her soul carried her like a boat under full sail before a hurricane wind. But it was so dark!

Then light like ground mist began to rise around her, sourceless light, gray and faint at first, like the glowing dust around a forming star. She plunged through it like a ship going into hyperspace, and in an instant all was light and spin and whirling.

She was no longer aware of herself now. The memories of the body were forgotten, the joys and horrors and tug and pull of the body laying barely alive in the little Jedi scout ship. It didn't matter anymore. It was no longer important to her.

The spiral of the Force opened out around her like a galaxy, motes and points of light, streamers of color and rainbow afterimages flickering and pulsing like quasars. She was a glittering sparkle that raced around the Rim of that galaxy of light and color, skimming along heedlessly, recklessly. She was joy, she was light, she was terror and agony and delight and ecstasy. She was the moment of her lifemating with Kee, she was the bone-deep dread of the moment she'd ripped out the heart of a nameless gang assassin on Korolis. She was the horror of the moment of her Master's death. She was Maul's triumphant laugh as the screams began. She was Ben's crumbling hope as he sat by Kee's bedside. She was Kee's pride and love for Ben. She was the Master clansman on Thretketh, gleefully ripping his toloro knife through the belly of that pregnant woman. She was the baby itself, the one uncomprehended eternal moment of terror before blackness replaced the warm liquid darkness.

The spiral caught her, drawing her inward. The last bits of her personality burst from the sparkle of her soul and were outraced in an instant.

The liquid streak of light wove itself into the flow of the spiral as a trickle of water would into a stream, and a moment later the stream into the white nimbus of energy entering the event horizon at the center of the whirling dance of the Force.

Maul jerked his head up from the sensor readouts, the first fingers of warning scraping across his mind. Beside him, Khali sat up suddenly, fear in her eyes. Before them, the tiny dead world Chikubsa curved serenely onward in it's flight.

Maul didn't question the warning, he just moved without thinking, his hand slapping at the force-shield activator--

--a moment too late.

Just beyond Chikubsa's heliopause, the huge dust cloud of the nebula suddenly brightened from within to the intensity of a supernova, and a shell of plasma fire burst outward with a massive shockwave that contracted the dust spirals into the collapsing mass in an instant. The plasma shell swept toward them like the wall of a hurricane, travelling at nearly lightspeed. They had only a moment to realize that the black ship's shields were not going to be enough.

On Coruscant, Qui-Gon Jinn's eyes suddenly popped open and he jerked upright in the bed, screaming out Theri's name in the most terrifiying voice Ben had ever heard. He leapt up from the bed against the wall and was grabbing his Master's reaching hands before he could even think, Torin and Serala beside him instantly, holding Master Kee upright as he reached blindly with trembling hands for his lifemate's soul.

[Not without me! Don't you dare leave without me!] Kee Sent, wild with terror, flinging the Sending with all his soul into the void.

A massive shudder began in the Force, they all felt it building like the surge of a tsunami wave, vibrating through their souls and minds, shuddering up from the depths of their souls in irresistable, inexorable, elemental fury. Ben and Torin and Serala all clutched at Master Kee, burying their faces against his shoulders even as they held him up, all of them crying out in pain as the Force overwhelmed them and swept their souls aside in an instant of shared communion. Unheeded, outside in the hallway, Shosin-ka sank to her knees with a whistling gasp, grabbing at her head and crying out shrilly with the pain.

While all through the Great Temple and all through the galaxy, wherever they were, fighting or talking or simply living, every Jedi and Sith alive did the same.

Yoda, sitting in his nest of pillows in his rooms, caught his breath and closed his eyes against the surge in the Force, letting the wave go through his soul without resistance.

"Hmph. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try," he mumbled to himself in satisfaction.

Above Coruscant at the midpoint between the tiny moon and the planet, the Jedi scout ship appeared silently, tumbling in an uncontrolled cartwheeling tumble, powerless.

Ben waited with the medics and Master Windu at the striped yellow and black line as the battered little scout ship settled to the floor of the hangar by remote control. The rampway hissed as it cracked open and the ramp extended slowly. Ben couldn't stand it anymore. He leaped up into the ship before the ramp touched the concrete of the hangar floor.

Theri lay on the blast couch, still covered in the blanket she'd pulled over herself, her face blue with cold and lack of oxygen. Ben scooped her up in his arms, willing her to be alive, willing the warmth of his body into her. The medics were beside him in a moment, and he put Theri gently onto the hovering stretcher as the medics bent over her with their sensors.

"She's alive! Barely!" one of them said immediately.

Ben didn't allow himself to collapse yet. "Any neural damage?"

A long moment passed before the medics looked up at him. "Nothing that can't be fixed with a few hours under the regen."

Ben felt like he was about to pass out again, this time with relief. "Get her to Master Kee! Now!"

He and Windu raced beside the medics pushing Theri's stretcher back to the lifts.

Ben burst into Master Kee's room, and Torin, Serala and Shosin-ka looked up from Master Kee's dazed eyes and trembling hands in pleading hope.

Ben turned back for a moment, picked Theri up again from the stretcher, and whirled back through the doorway. Torin and Serala moved instantly from their places at Master Kee's side as Ben settled Theri's limp form onto the bed beside his Master.

"Master?" Ben said, taking the blindly reaching hands and putting them down on Theri's head. "She's here. Theri's here. She's alive!"

The terrible haunted look in Kee's eyes gradually faded and intelligence returned slowly as his hands felt the life and warmth beneath them.

Please, Ben prayed to the Force, please. He flung his arms around Serala and Torin and clutched them tight, wishing with all his soul.

[Beloved?] Kee Sent, his mindvoice weak with shock and terror.

Theri's motionless form took one long, shuddering breath. Then another. Then another. [Kee?] came the whispered Sending at last.

[You--you're alive...] Kee Sent, closing his eyes and collapsing back against the bed again, tears beginning to slide down his face.

Theri's hand reached for his just as his reached for hers. [You said not to leave without you,] Theri Sent, still in a strengthless whisper. [How could I leave without you?]

And then the medics and medidroids were crowding into the room, and all was chaos and askings and noise. Ben pulled Torin and Serala and Shosin-ka outside into the hallway with him, so they could all calm down. The danger was over now. They could relax. Life could go on.

"Don't be angry at him, love," Theri said softly the next morning. "He was right."

Ben stood in the bright patch of sunlight streaming in the window of the infirmary room, his arms crossed on his chest, scowling out at the passing ships. "The little frog left you inside a ship inside a nebula with no way to get home, Master Kee left here dying without you, Maul somehow finds out about it and almost captures you, and you say not to be angry?"

"That's Master Frog to you, impudent wretch," Kee said in a mock-growl behind him.

Ben stopped and smiled in the sudden joy brighter than the sunlight on his face. They were alive. That's all that truly mattered. He turned around to look at them again, and his anger at Master Yoda faded. But not his anguish.

Theri sat on the edge of Kee's bed, his arm around her waist, her bare feet dangling over the side of the bed. She was wearing her old Thretkethan tunic-dress, and the black fabric seemed to emphasize how pale she still was. Kee was nearly back to his old self, though still weak from the nearly three days he'd spent in the coma. They would be kept in the Infirmary for observation the rest of the day, then allowed to go back to their apartment to finish recovering.

"Master Yoda was right," Theri said patiently. "I know you don't understand it. The only way for me to get past that fear was to do the very thing I was afraid of. It's the way Mystics do things. Hell, Ben, you've done it yourself. Remember learning how to swim? What could be more terrifying to a desert rat like you than being underwater? But you did it."

Ben sighed and looked away, faintly uneasy. Another indication that Theri was different now. She kept coming out with stuff that he knew she didn't know. He'd never told her about trying to learn how to swim. Yet she knew it as if she'd been there. "Swimming is one thing, stuck out in a dead ship in the middle of a nebula at the edge of the rifts is another! Maul almost had you! We still don't know how he knew where you were!"

"Yes we do," Torin's voice said as he popped his head in the door. He grinned as Master Kee and Theri reached out to hug him simultaneously in enthusiastic greeting. Then Torin turned back to Ben, and his face became somber again. "We know how Maul knew where to go to find Theri. Khali told him."

Ben blinked at him, hardly believing what he heard. "Khali? But how did she know..?"

Torin shrugged with one shoulder. "The Temple comm archives show she made a call to an unlisted comm number last night. Then she left the Temple to go to that club you two liked to go to sometimes. There were a couple of security droids that recorded Maul and Khali leaving the club together, and very cozy lovey-dovey they looked too. Seems like he'd be just her type though. CorCom logged Maul's ship leaving orbit the next morning. And Khali's disappeared."

There was silence for a long moment as they all thought about this in amazement. Then Theri straightened up slowly and took a deep breath. "Yes. She was with Maul in the ship. I remember feeling that."

Shosin-ka's whistling trill of greeting sounded from outside the half-open door and she poked her head inside, smiling. "Hello hello! Must dash! Next class in ten minutes! But look what I found!" She held up a sheet of dark transparent siliplastic, and tossed it onto Master Kee's bed. "Check the time stamps. Don't do this trick again anytime soon, Theri, please? Remember we don't teach celestial engineering here!" And she popped back out the door and they heard her running down the hallway.

Kee and Theri gave each other startled looks as she handed him the sheet of siliplastic. He held it up to the light, peering at the two radio telescope images, then at the time stamps as Shosin-ka had suggested. Then his face went blank with surprise and he handed the siliplastic to Ben.

"What?" Theri asked.

"A new star. Where that nebula was. Chikubsa is now a binary system, and it

wasn't two days ago." Kee looked up into her eyes, stunned. "You created a new star from the dust of a nebula, beloved."

"He's right," Ben said in shock as he handed the siliplastic to Torin. "It's a double star now, and it wasn't day before yesterday...."

Torin whistled in amazement as he held the images up to the sunlight. "Damn right. Very clear image. Two stars. And the earlier image only shows one. Damn, girl, that's...that's just too intense..." He flipped the images back onto Master Kee's bed and sank down onto a chair, looking stunned. "What are the odds on that? The odds of a human being creating a star out of a dead nebula?"

[If you say they're astonomical, I'm going to run you through here and now,] Ben Sent quickly, his hand on his lightsaber.

They all burst out laughing. Then Theri shook her head. "No, Torin. It wasn't me. It was the Force. I had nothing to do with it."

"I wonder if Maul and Khali survived it," Ben said, his eyes distant.

Theri was quiet for a moment, asking the question of that turning spiral in her soul, but she got no clear answer.

There was silence then, as they all thought about that. Then Torin shook his head and got to his feet. "Well, I'd better get hopping up to my class, Master Windu said if I skipped another class he'd make me chase the remotes naked without my lightsaber." He gave them a quick grin as he headed out the door.

Ben grinned after his friend. "I'd better get going too, I've got a class to teach." He hugged Kee and kissed Theri on the forehead and turned to go.

Kee and Theri sat in silence for several moments. Alone at last. Kee pulled her down to snuggle beside him. [I'll be glad to get back to our own place. This bed is far too small for proper snuggling,] he Sent with a smile.

Theri smiled back, one hand playing with strands of his hair. [Do I feel any different to you? Mentally, that is?]

Kee shrugged a little. [Quieter. Drifting, unconnected. Like there's an ocean underneath your Sending, all that space and depth. Like the bottom dropped out of your soul.]

Theri closed her eyes and tightened her arm around him. [I feel like it did, love. Exactly that. And I dived right into it.]

[And came out the other side,] he reminded her. [You did it, beloved. You went into the Force completely and came back out again.]

Theri gave a convulsive shudder and clutched his hand. [Only because you told me not to leave without you. I heard you. The very moment there wasn't a me anymore, I heard you calling out to me not to go. ]

Kee was silent for a moment, running his hand through her hair. [I felt you dying. I felt you disintegrating, fading away. It felt like I was being pulled down a black hole and I couldn't do anything to stop it.]

Theri nodded. [That's not far off the mark, beloved. So here I am again. And I'm not sure what I've done or how to deal with it. Or what to do with it. I don't know what I am now. And none of it will make any sense to anyone else.]

[Of course it won't,] Kee Sent, smiling faintly. [No one else was there with you going through it. And even if there was someone else with you, their perception of what happened would be different because of how they interpret things. So it was your experience only. But the question is, what do you think of it all?]

Theri sighed. [I wonder what Sowelu Inda and his students would have made of all this,] she Sent. [And I see now how easy it is to go stark raving mad from this Way of mine. But I can see why I need to do it, too. It pulls me, beloved. Like being addicted to Dreamweaver or falling down that black hole. How can you be addicted to losing your mind?]

Kee smiled and hugged her against him. [It isn't just the Way. I've felt that way about being Jedi. There have been times when I thought I could never learn enough, that I'd implode if I didn't know everything there ever was to know about being a Jedi right then and there. But I've never yet gotten to the end of it. There's always more to learn. We never stop learning about ourselves, and since we're the Force itself, we never stop learning about the Force. It just goes on and on.]

Theri Sent her agreement. [There's no end of it, then?]

Kee shook his head. [Nothing to do with you and I, beloved, will ever end. Body, mind, soul and spirit, forever together beyond time, remember?]

She nodded against his chest and giggled a little. [You're right, this damned bed is far too small.]

Kee chuckled and ruffled her hair. [Later. We'll have our own bed tonight. Seems some things don't ever change.]

[And aren't you glad?] she Sent with a grin.

Theri was back to full strength the next morning and was up at dawn, ready to go back to her classes as if nothing had happened.

"Why are you going back to classes?" Ben asked as he watched her stuffing her textreaders and a clean uniform into her backpack.

"Because I'm still the same person I was, Ben," she said, reaching up to caress his cheek briefly. "I'm just--expanded. No obstacles in my soul anymore." She shook her head for a moment. "No, that's not right either. Damn, Ben, I can't explain it! I'm the same person, I'm still Theri bel Kaitryn. I'm just more than I was, but it doesn't get in the way of being who I am." She shrugged and looked down at her hands for a moment, then back up at him. "It can't *be* explained, Ben. It can only be felt and experienced. I'm still the same person I was, I still love you and Kee, I still need to get up to Ratashi level in Soritsu-ji and you still need to teach me the lightsaber. I still need to learn, even if I can find the answers simply by thinking about it for a minute. Asking the Force for the answers all the time is too easy. The only real way to live is to live, not just ask for answers."

He nodded as he slid his lightsaber onto his belt, straightened his tunic. They looked at each other for a moment, then walked forward into each other's arms and held each other tight.

[Will Master be all right here by himself?] Ben Sent as she sighed against his neck and kissed him.

She nodded. [He said he wouldn't go anywhere today, just sleep and eat. He should be able to get out and about tomorrow. Master Windu said he'd come by later and bring him lunch.]

They let each other go reluctantly, he took her hand, and they headed out for their classes silently. Behind them, R2-D2 whistled softly and rolled quietly toward Kee's bedroom to keep watch over the sleeping Jedi Master.

Theri grinned slightly as she came up to Master Yoda's door as the great bell sounded. R2 beeped and hummed to himself as they came up to the doorway. The little chirps the droid made sounded almost mournful, fearful. Theri reached out and patted the droid's domed head, and R2 swivelled his dome to focus on her. "Don't worry, R2. I'm not mad at Master Yoda."

R2 whistled inquiringly.

Theri laughed. "No, I'm not mad at him, truly. Would you be mad at a human directing you about by remote control?"

R2 beeped and whistled for a long moment.

"I know you saw me. That was very quick thinking of you to record me leaving with Master Yoda."

R2 rocked from side to side for a moment. If a droid could be hopping up and down with excitement, R2 was, whistling and chirping like a cage of addled birds.

Theri laughed again. "Yes, I can understand you. Funny, isn't it?"

R2 rocked in place, then stopped silent, then beeped an explanation.

"Go on, then. And don't worry about coming to get me for lunch. I know where to go now."

The little droid whistled a farewell and headed for the lifts.

Theri dug out her transponder button and touched it to the door sensor. The door slid open silently and she went inside.

The snake didn't scare her anymore, she noticed. She simply walked by underneath it and didn't give it hardly a glance. She walked through the bead curtains and looked over toward Yoda's nest of pillows. But he wasn't there.

She froze and let the spiral in her soul take her body, and was moving without thought, dropping and rolling in a Soritsu-ji tumble to the side just as something darkly metallic whizzed past and thunked into the wood panelling of the wall behind her. She dropped her backpack, vanished into her shields, and dived again to the opposite side, rolled to her feet and leapt over the small form standing in the shadows by the stained glass windows.

"Tag. You're it," she said, unshielding.

Yoda startled and laughed heartily at this. "It! Oooh-ho! It!"

Theri leaped straight up as the walking stick lashed out sideways at her ankles, somersaulted over the little Jedi Master, touched down in front of him and cartwheeled to the side before the walking stick could whack her on the head.

"Oooh-ho! It! Yes, yes!"

Theri let her mind drift, letting the Force move her body, letting her body be the vessel for the Force. She was across the room again in an instant, tugging the triskele-shaped weapon out of the wall and whirling around to fling it toward Yoda, who merely reached up a hand and caught it. But in that moment of distraction, Theri Lifted a pillow from the pile in Yoda's nest and flung it as well. So even as Yoda was reaching up to catch the triskele-knife, he was flattened by the pillow.

Theri smiled at the laughing Jedi Master, watching the old one climb back to his feet and hobble toward his nest. She retrieved her backpack, pulling her soul back from the spiral of the Force turning it's slow majestic dance, went over to her usual pillow and sat down calmly.

"Strong with the Force now, you are," Yoda said.

Theri shrugged slightly. "Perhaps."

Yoda looked up at her, his eyes widening, his ears lifting. "How feel you now?"

Theri took a deep breath, let her mind stop thinking, feeling the inexorable, unstoppable movement in her soul. "I feel like I have a galaxy in my head, with a black hole at the center. I open my mouth and words come out, but they're not my words. I let my mind go blank and my body does what it needs to do. All I have to do is be in the path of something I want, and it happens. All I have to do is ask myself things and I know the answers. " She stopped, looked down at her hands and slumped. "Then I hear myself saying stuff like this and I don't know myself anymore."

The shifting patterns of blue-green light traced across the floor around them as they sat in silence for a full minute. Then Yoda reached over to a small table beside his nest and picked up a small handheld holoprojector, put it carefully on the floor between them and pushed the button on the side of it.

A beam of light burst from the little holoprojector, unfolded, and resolved into the image of a young man in a Jedi field combat uniform. He was a striking figure, slim but broad-shouldered and muscular, with straight black hair falling only to his shoulders. The face was thin and narrow, with a quick charming grin and the most intense look in the eyes that Theri had ever seen. A lightsaber hung on the left hip and a blaster pistol on the right.

"Sorry for the late message, old man. We've been cut off from the city for over a week, and the bastards have jammed communications over the whole planet. We're doing all right, though. Troga and Jyp and I are all fine, the worst we've suffered is Jyp's complaining about his allergies acting up. We should be able to make our try for the palace here in a couple of days. We've got power and food and water. Now if we could only get Jyp some hythorazin for his allergies, we'd all be happy." The man grinned roguishly for a moment, then continued. "But we may not be able to get back home for a while once we take the palace. Troga had a vision yesterday, and he thinks the Jelkardans will destroy our ship during the assault we're planning. But like you like to say, always in motion is the future." The quick grin again, and then the grin faded into somberness. "I've been thinking again, while we were marching here to the camp. I can't get those ideas out of my head. How can we know we're in the Light if we don't have the Dark to compare it to? It's as much a part of the Force as the Light. The Force doesn't go in just one direction. It's not an endless arrow in time. It's a circle, a process. "

Theri's mouth dropped open and she leaned forward to peer more closely at the man in the hologram.

A shrug and another quick grin, and he continued. "You're the only one I can tell these things to. I'm afraid everyone else would think I was crazy. Everyone's always so caught up in chasing the Dark, so convinced that the Dark is the worst thing in the universe. But I can't think that way. Everything has a purpose in this universe. Nothing is ever by accident. Even the Dark."

The man straightened up, looked over one shoulder, and turned back. "I've got to wrap this up, Troga's asking for the disk so he can send it off. We've only got a few minutes with the counterjammer before the satellites figure out the modulations and block it again. So I'll see you soon. Take care of yourself, old man." And with another grin and a hand lifted in farewell, the hologram faded out.

Theri sat staring at the place the hologram had been for several seconds, her mind whirling. "Inda?" she asked in a whisper.

Yoda sighed. "Yes. On Voravia. Sent there as military advisor for Voravian royal family during war between Voravia and Jelkardis. Long time before Mystics came to be."

Theri sat back, closing her eyes, feeling the endless curve of the spiral in her soul, the movement and the chime of rightness resonating through it. This was real, this had happened. Across more than five hundred years of time, the last Mystic had seen the first. Full circle. And suddenly the cold detached isolation she had felt since coming back from the Force seemed to break apart, and she closed her eyes and swallowed down the urge to burst out crying. Sowelu Inda had been a real person who had felt the pull of the Way just as she did. He had been a human being and a Jedi. Suddenly he wasn't some distant heroic figure who lifted a hand and made mountains walk. He was just Inda, a soldier and a Jedi, trying to do his best to help people. "How old was he there, in the holo?"

Yoda shrugged. "Young. Obi-Wan's age."

Twenty-eight or so, Theri thought. My age. She knew he had died at seventy-four. Or rather, he hadn't died. He had quietly arranged matters at his Temple for his departure, then sat down to meditate, and had gone into the Force and disappeared. He had deliberately chosen his time and place, had gotten things arranged for his successor to take over, then had simply gone into the Force and not come back. Theri didn't consider that dying now. It was simply a matter of a change of address.

Yoda picked up the little holoprojector and held it out to her. She took it gingerly from his hand, looking down at the little bronze-colored circle of metal and crystal.

"Want you to know of him, Inda would. So keep. Now. Brought teachings, you have?"

Theri nodded and tugged the zipper open on her backpack, reaching for the textreader cards her Master had given her to bring back to the Jedi.

Full circle.

Part 4