AndooBandoo

Breathe in. Breathe Out. Let your mind empty ofall that is, until only the force remains.
Padma sat,cross-legged, levitating over a tranquil sea. Nothing disturbed its glassy surface, so that the colors of the sky were reflected perfectly; hues of flaming gold, blue, and pink. She felt the webs of life energy that surrounded her, the cycles of birth and death that were constantly ebbing and flowing.

Let it flow around you and through you. Become one with all life in the galaxy. Feel the will of
the Force within you. She could hear the words her master had spoken to her so many times over the years coming to her here, as they always did, in the tranquility of her mind.
Remember, there is no emotion; there is peace.

“I am at peace” she heard herself think, then hesitated. “I have to be.” It was true she thought, that peace had eluded her for a long time now. It had been months since she had actually heard the voice of her master, back when there had been some semblance of order and control in her life, before…it had happened. She was still trying to piece it together in her mind. She and her fellow padawan, Ekimo Giki, both trained by Master Denia, had left to complete a mission for the jedi council that would have seen them become jedi knights-their training was complete.

The mission had taken them to the outer rim to track down information on potential Hutt ties to the separatists. Upon returning to the core, they had received a transmission from Jedi Master Kenobi warning all jedi to go into hiding-they had been betrayed. Since then, she and Ekimo had laid low and searched the surrounding systems for any sign of other jedi; for any sign, really, of Master Denia.

She would give anything for her master to be here now. She had always known what to do.
“Padma!”

A voice punctured the seal of her mediation, and her eyes opened. She sat atop a high mountain, a piercing wind sending snow drifting steadily over her robes and tunic. Ekimo had returned from her trip to the village below, and the small Ewok was running quickly-more quickly than would seem natural for a creature with her short legs- to the place where Padma sat perched.

“What is it?” she called back in Ewokese.

“I was able to find a being to fix the transmitter!”

The small transmitter they carried with them had an encrypted channel available only to other jedi, and it was their main hope for finding a trace of anyone who could help them understand what was going on. It had recently been damaged in an unfortunate run in with some unfriendly Rodians however, and it had been all they could do to try to find someone with the knowledge to repair it on the rural planets they clung to.

＂There’s more!” Ekimo gasped as she reached Padma. “I received a message.”

“What??” Padma’s breath caught in her chest. “When?”

“It came shortly after re-opening our link to the encrypted network. It was a short-range relay directing any jedi to a location near the planet Brentaal. The being transmitting the message said they were organizing a rendezvous!”

Padma’s mind raced. “It might be a trap” she stated evenly.

“I thought so as well. Master Kenobi did say to be wary of any future attempts at contact.

But it feels…” -she paused momentarily-“it feels right, I believe.”

Padma thought hard. She trusted Ekimo with her life. After all, the two of them were as close to sisters as it was possible for a jedi to be. For two padawans to be trained by a single master simultaneously was very rare within the jedi order, and she knew of no one else who had experienced anything similar. The result had been a shared bond between Ekimo and herself that was different-stronger, she thought-than that of any other jedi.

“Brentaal-where is that?” she asked.

“In the Bormea sector, close enough for us to pay for a ride.”
The Ewok had a light in her eyes as she spoke, and the note of excitement in her voice did not escape Padma. It was hope, she realized, that was motivating her friend to take this risk. Hope, but perhaps the will of the force also, she thought as she reached out with her feelings.

＂Then we should go” she concluded.

Ekimo nodded sagely, the light still shining in her small eyes. “We will need to be cautious. We must conceal our identities until we are certain of our path.”

“I agree. Otherwise, there’s no telling what kind of mess you’ll get us into.” She shot the Ewok a mischievous grin.

＂You mean pull you out of” Ekimo responded, as she turned back to their camp.

Padma looked out into the whirling snow. Master Denia,if you’re out there. We’re coming.

The cold bit furiously at Ekimo as she walked. The storm had been rising over the last few hours and now the wind was howling and tugging at her cloak while the planet’s too distant sun sank beneath the horizon.

“If this snow gets much worse, l can’t make any promises!” yelled a hunched male human from up ahead.

Ekimo and Padma glanced at one another briefly. They had just spent nearly all their remaining credits to charter a ship off planet, and from the tone of the message she received earlier on their transmitter, they needed to go now if they were to have any hope of finding other jedi. The human leading them owned the ship, and had agreed to take them the same night only because they had offered him a premium in cash. An hour later, they found themselves stumbling after him along a steep, winding path up a cliffside overlooking the small village. At the top, they hoped, there sat a landing pad and an old sky-jumper with just enough life left in it to take them to the Bormea sector a dozen parsecs away.

Above the roar of the wind, the old human called back to them “we get bad storms out here sometimes, call ’em razor storms, cause the moisture in the atmosphere freezes solid and starts blowin’ around so fast it could skin a wookie! We don’t wanna be out if it gets like that!”

Ekimo pulled her hood closer around her face. Her soft white and brown fur shielded her from the worst of the storm, but Ewoks weren’t from a terribly cold planet and she found herself wishing she was a wookie. “Much warmer fur” she muttered quietly to herself.

“How much further to the top?” Padma called out next to her, her voice faint over the howl of the storm.

The old pilot turned, but before he had time to respond Ekimo felt a ripple of concern pass through her. A crackle of atmospheric lightning shook the mountain over their heads with the sound of an ion blast. The man screamed as a huge chunk of rock and ice split from the mountainside above and came plunging toward them.

Instantly Ekimo leapt in a high ark and landed beside him in a crouch, her hands lifted toward the falling boulders. She sensed rather than saw Padma next to her doing the same. Together, they reached upwards with the force until they felt the crushing weight of the rocks plummeting down towards them. Ekimo filled her lungs with the freezing air and then exhaled fully, her mind finding focus.

She remembered her master, Tara Denia, firing training projectiles while Ekimo and Padma attempted to slow their trajectories and stop them in the air. It had been hard for her, more so than for Padma, but that fact always comforted rather than frustrated her. She and Padma balanced one another, and one was always there to protect the other. Padma was a natural when it came to connecting with the force. It came with more difficulty to Ekimo, but she had always far exceeded Padma in her skill with a lightsaber, and her ability to propel herself over and around and beneath obstacles.

The two of them were as complimentary as they were equal, and it had always been like that, since her earliest memories.She had been taken to the jedi temple as an infant after she had been stolen from her home on the forest moon of Endor by galactic poachers selling to the Hutts.Padma had arrived the same day, deposited by her aristocratic parents from Naboo. The after growing together as younglings in the jedi order, the council had made the surprising decision to assign both of them as padawan learners to master Denia. The three of them had been together ever since, until recently of course. Until now.

Now.

Time seemed to have slowed as Ekimo returned to the present moment. The weight of the falling boulders met her and Padma’s combined wills at the same moment. Acting as one, they allowed the full force of boulders to descend-then, rather than resisting, they shifted the path of the crushing stones in one fluid motion so that they seemed to flow away from the three of them as if carried by a river. The whole affair lasted less than five standard seconds, and their guide’s face passed from terror to bewilderment to awe.

“How in the outer rim-” he started.

“There’s no time, we have to get out of here now!” Padma shouted.

They found the ship vibrating in the wind, the force of the storm almost tearing it from its docking mechanism. They boarded with the wind screaming at their heels.

“Strap in, this one is gonna get bumpy!”

After exiting the atmosphere, Ekimo took a moment to breathe. Something had happened back there that she only now had time to think about.

＂Padma-” she began.

＂I felt it too.” Padma replied, a look of concern in her eyes.

There had been a ripple in the force back there on the mountain. It went out from them as they tapped into the force to stop the boulders. It had felt like shouting into an empty cave, the echo traveling further and further. And it worried Ekimo.

“It feels as if we made our presence known to something that it would have been better to remain hidden from” She said softly.

＂We have to be more careful” Padma replied. “I don’t know what that was, but something about it was wrong. For now, let’s try to rest. We both could use it.”

Ekimo shifted in her seat, finding as comfortable position as was possible in the small space.

＂I have a bad feeling about this” she thought to herself, and then drifted uneasily into sleep.