Bear's dad

Her journals are private fragments; notes on people, memory, family, politics, loss, and the small moments that survive around major events. Through them, the larger story of Langardia is seen from inside the household.

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Vala Tariss' journals, compilation I.

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As Weather

Kell says the Force is not a river. He says it is weather. Unpredictable. Cyclical. Unconcerned with observers. I find this explanation unsatisfying and accurate at the same time. He too, is unconcerned with observers. This is part of why people follow him.

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Passing Through

I have learned something about him. I do not believe he is guiding events. I believe he is standing where events eventually pass through.

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Proximity

Kell did not ask. I did not offer. It simply became true that presence was shared more often than absence. There is no proper word for this phase of long companionship that is neither beginning nor commitment nor formal naming. We simply stopped denying our proximity.

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Motion

I asked him once, years ago, if motion meant progress.

He said:

“Sometimes it simply means nothing is allowed to remain still.”

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The Gardens

The gardens are overgrown again. No one has trimmed the southern hedges this season. I prefer it this way. Kell walked through the wild grass without noticing its disorder. He did not speak for an entire hour. When he finally did, he said only:

“They will come eventually.”

He did not specify who.

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Cold Tea

Kell did not sleep. He believes I do not notice. I found him seated before dawn on the western terrace with tea already cold beside him. The mist had not yet lifted from the lower valleys. I sat. He said nothing. Neither did I. After some time he reached for my hand without looking. I watched him hold it. We remained there until the sun rose.

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Mountains

Kell asked today whether I regretted remaining. Not in accusation. Never that. Merely sadness. The sort that invites itself when he forgets briefly that he is loved. I told him truthfully:

I regret only moments. Never paths.

There are sorrows I would not choose again. Yet I would choose him again. Entirely. Immediately. Even knowing. Especially knowing. He closed his eyes at this. Such fatigue in him lately. He thinks I do not recognize fear if he hides it behind gentleness. My beloved. Even mountains tremble.

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Windows

He forgets himself in windows. I placed a blanket over his shoulders once without warning. He did not react. Only said:

“You are awake.”

I answered:

But I cannot resist sharing some of it. Some scenes, I have lived, bawling as I thought them, weeping as I wrote them.

-------------

The fleets had pulled into Corellian orbit earlier that day. It had been noon fleet-time but the capital city of Coronet was already well into twilight. Vala felt a moment of shared contemplative solitude float about the recycled air of the shuttle. The mood was heavier than she had expected.

Alfrid's voice broke the silence as he leaned towards Kell:

"We are running late my Lord, the commemorations are planned to begin in fifteen minutes. Do you want me to announce a delay?" ­—"We will be right on time. There, see?"

Alfrid lifted his eyes to where his master was pointing. "See the round building over there? That is the theatre. We'll be landing on the plaza momentarily".

Alfrid nodded, then recomposed himself, a gesture made funny by virtue of being strapped to a shuttle seat. The old man was carrying a small box that he seemed to cling onto with a care she had rarely seen in her husband's obsequious retainer. The curiosity about what the box contained came, then left Vala's mind in seemingly the same movement. She looked at the lights of the city, flickering in front of the ever deeper blue canvas upon which the Corellian night would be painted.

To Vala, the feeding frenzy and hubbub associated with attending such events always felt like a slight inconvenience but a duty to perform that should not be neglected. Acting regal, smiling softly, waving if appropriate. Sharing a few word with the media. Tonight however—because it was truly night now, within her just as much as without—it had been a complete blur. She had retreated within herself.

She entered the State Box of the Corellian Theatre and as she sat, she noticed Kell and Alfrid's absence. She had forgotten he had agreed to opening the commemoration with a short intervention. She felt guilty for not seeing him slip away. She sat next to Mara while Eirin sat on the other side. The lights dimmed almost immediately after their group had taken their seats. So we were a bit late after all, she thought.

The Master of Ceremonies, a round little man dwarfed by the stage from where she sat, welcomed the attendance to this night of remembrance, glossing over the program, using it as a hook without making it exhaustive. He paused and then spoke again, more slowly this time. "...and now, it is my greatest honor, to welcome within these halls, Lord Ljun, Master of the Order of the Knights of Langardia, who have fought dire battles in the skies above us, to protect all of us down here. Under the applause, the little man stepped out of the spotlight as another little man stepped in.

Kell looks so small and vulnerable from up here, she thought. He wasn't wearing the ceremonial vest he was wearing when they entered the theatre, she noticed. Only his plain black undershirt and black pants. This made him look simple and even smaller, lost out there on the stage now dark, save for the light of the single spotlight focusing the tens of thousands of eyes of the attendees onto him.

Vala noticed that he had brought a little brown object onto the stage which absorbed his attention. She didn't recognise it at first. "Actually..." he spoke as the applause subdued. His amplified voice startled her. “Actually, I’d like to dedicate this song to all the fallen. To those who fought for us, of course, whether New Republic, Langardian, or otherwise. But also, and perhaps more particularly, to those who could not fight, and were never meant to. Civilian death is not only tragic. It will always remain unconscionable.”

Song? She had been taken aback and still was stuck on that word. Since when does Kell sing? It is then, as the first chord was plucked, allowing the first delicate notes to escape from the heart of this tiny box, that she knew what it was. It had been under her very eyes, every day of every year for centuries. That box was the ancient wooden harp that Kell kept in sober but almost reverent display in his library. She felt displaced by the most unsuspecting object there was. It tore something deep within her, a place that she didn't know existed.

The first word he sang sideswiped her, so utterly that it obliterated any thought she was having in the moment. She felt her mouth opening slightly, in a gentle, devastating awe. His words, she knew, carried his solemness but engulfed in a warm half-sung half-spoken plaint. His voice, clear and much lighter than she would have ever imagined, was laced with a primal and immemorial quality. "I didn't know my beloved could sing" she thought, forced to recognize that despite having shared most of her years in his company, he still carried unknown regions of his own.

When suddenly, quite unexpectedly his voice rose into a register she could never have expected from him, she broke, pierced by the crystal shards of a grief she could never fully fathom. She bawled, instantly. Erin was the first to notice. She reached for Vala's hand and hold her tight. The lament continued, echoing in the halls of the theatre as if Kell had to wrench the words from his very soul. Vala squeezed harder and Erin responded in kind, her hand betraying the distress Vala's discomposure had induced within her.

The elegy moved into a new movement for which the harp, tender yet unwavering seemed committed to accompany each and every soul witnessing the moment into musical hills of sorrow and desolation. Vala struggled to see through the torrent of silent tears that had invaded her eyes. Her diminished perception made Kell feel ever more so distant. It was then that Mara noticed it too. She turned towards her mother, and put a hand on her knee.

As the last note and his voice trailed off into the silence, Vala blinked and she felt as if it were the last time. As the moment lingered, she felt dissolved from within. She heard the first clap and allowed herself to open her eyes, relief growing in her as the applause began to fill the theatre. Mara leaned closer, her voice covered by the clamor.

“What was he singing about?”

Vala tried to answer and found, absurdly, that a small broken laugh came first, cutting through the tears.

“Kell, I have to tell you.”

Kell smiled to himself.

“When you sang, I was moved in unexpected ways.”

Kell remained silent. He opened the lid of the box that contained his harp and stared at it.

Luke respected the moment for a while, then allowed himself a comment.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s ancient,” Kell corrected.

Again, silence grew between them.

“I’ve never heard that language before,” Luke finally said.

“No,” Kell answered. “You wouldn’t have.”

“Where is it from?”

“It is from the world I was born on,” Kell conceded.

Luke looked at him with softness.

“What happened to it?”

Kell closed the lid and looked at Luke.

She didn't sleep well, she had lost almost all appetite, she didn't crave her usual activities, she had trouble starting anything. Still, she tried to hide her discomfort. She couldn't evaluate how well that worked anymore, if at all.

She walked down the main corridor of the residence's main wing. She started feeling like she walked in circles in her own home. She stopped in front of the library's door. Her stomach turned. She opened the door, it slid open and there it was waiting for her, sitting on the display that she once hardly noticed. In that moment, it felt like the room had been built around that ancient, damned harp.

In an act of defiance and transgression, she seized it and walked away like a common thief.

Kell was tinkering with some electronic equipment she didn't recognize or care for. Somehow he felt her resolve preceding her. Because he looked in her direction before she got into view. He saw it immediately, she was holding it with one hand, like a prosecutor wields incriminating evidence. His face put on the mask of disapprobation at first. She slowed down, and held the harp more delicately, in both hands as she approached. His face switched to concern and surprise rather than judgement.

He didn't ask the obvious. She made the request instead.

"Play for me, please."

He carefully accepted the harp as she handed it to him. Once his fingers recognized the harp's texture and features, he began carefully considering her and her request. All right, he said, discerning the importance of it.

"Please, sing me the song again". She said. He wanted to ask which, then thought better of it.

As he began to play, she seemed to fade a little, her gaze locked on his playing hand. As he began to sing, he saw her tighten and fight an inner wave of sorrow. She wept, then bawled. He stopped playing, put the harp on his work bench, and walked across the room to her. He cupped her head in his hand and pressed her gently against his chest. She cried harder, silently. "what's troubling you, my love?" he asked. She didn't answer. She clenched into his jacket to try to make the tears stop. He gave her all the time she needed. She didn't need too long, but it needed to happen. When the wave receded and composure resurfaced, she asked: "What is this song about?"

Kell took a deep long breath that made Vala's head rise and sink as it still lay there pressed against him. "It's a song about" he started. "It's a song about the relentlessness of time, about how all things come to an end, flowers, animals, people and graves themselves". She shivered and sobbed. He let it pass before continuing: "it also says that what matters most on this journey is those you travel with".

She slowly let him go and wiped her tears and eyes with her palms, struggling to return to composure. As she was drying her face against her wrist, she noticed the harp laying on the table behind Kell.

"Can I ask you something?" "Always" he answered, noticing that the emotional distance between them had suddenly widened. He did not like it, but he did not betray those feelings. "Who gave it to you?" she asked as she pointed to it, as if it was an instrument of discord.

Kell bent his head slightly, closed his eyes and plainly said: "My mother gave it to me the day the Jedi took me. It belonged to my father." Vala felt terrible, she bawled once more, this time, only a short burst, she found footing on which to stand. He was forthcoming. Somehow she felt that the only reason why he never shared was because she had never asked. She took a few short, uneven breaths, trying to regain control over herself.

She wiped her tears again, this time against her sleeve. "You... remember your parents?" she asked. "My mother mostly." he answered. Discerning her distress, he didn't pause long. "My father" he began saying, obviously rummaging through deeply burrowed memory fragments. "My father, I only have a couple mental images left of him. A silhouette, a smile. He died when I was four." Vala moved around to him and leaned against the table, careful not to disturb the harp. "You weren't in the order already by then?" she asked, intrigued. He shrugged. "I was recruited late. My parents resisted the idea of giving me up to 'the sorcerers' but when my father passed, everything changed. Mother tried to hold on as long as she could but in the end, when the Jedi came back a couple years later..."

"Oh Kell. I'm so sorry, I'm being horrible and selfish and." "Never" he interrupted. She took another set of short breaths while he looked at her, soft in expression, impassible yet tender eyed.

She swallowed a lump in her throat.

"What's troubling you, really?" he asked.

"She closed her eyes, probing her own mind for the right words. There were few words available, and none truly felt adequate.

While she spoke, she dedicated herself to maintaining whatever safe ground she had managed to reach within.

"I feel so... You are... I don't know how to say this." He waited, knowing that any word uttered now, even the slightest of encouragements could throw her off. "I guess I had forgotten how much you've endured. No—how long—you've endured."

"Many lifetimes." he ventured.

"We've been together for three hundred and seventy years, most of my life, but only a fraction of yours. When after all this time you revealed something of you that you had kept sealed deep within, I couldn't help but feel you had kept it sealed away from me specifically. I felt wronged, inadequate, blindsided. Yet I knew deep down that my assumptions were unfounded and that I had no right to any of these emotions." He took her in his arms and she found herself with her ear pressed against his heart again. She closed her eyes but she didn't cry.

She had more to say but it didn't matter as much anymore. They had reached a silent resolution point and she felt the weight of that which had been left unsaid subsiding.

She lifted her face towards him "Did you ever go back? To your mother I mean?" she asked.

"There was nowhere to go back to". he replied, defeated but smiling softly.

"Tell me what happened".

"Mandalorians raided the planet, turned it into a lifeless wasteland"

"Mand—" she paused. This made no sense to her.

He recognized the incongruity and addressed it. "The Mandalorians of the Old Republic were not the same people as the Mandalorians we now know."

She shook her head. "Another impossible burden you carry."

But I cannot resist sharing some of it. Some scenes, I have lived, bawling as I thought them, weeping as I wrote them.

-------------

The fleets had pulled into Corellian orbit earlier that day. It had been noon fleet-time but the capital city of Coronet was already well into twilight. Vala felt a moment of shared contemplative solitude float about the recycled air of the shuttle. The mood was heavier than she had expected.

Alfrid's voice broke the silence as he leaned towards Kell:

"We are running late my Lord, the commemorations are planned to begin in fifteen minutes. Do you want me to announce a delay?" ­—"We will be right on time. There, see?"

Alfrid lifted his eyes to where his master was pointing. "See the round building over there? That is the theatre. We'll be landing on the plaza momentarily".

Alfrid nodded, then recomposed himself, a gesture made funny by virtue of being strapped to a shuttle seat. The old man was carrying a small box that he seemed to cling onto with a care she had rarely seen in her husband's obsequious retainer. The curiosity about what the box contained came, then left Vala's mind in seemingly the same movement. She looked at the lights of the city, flickering in front of the ever deeper blue canvas upon which the Corellian night would be painted.

To Vala, the feeding frenzy and hubbub associated with attending such events always felt like a slight inconvenience but a duty to perform that should not be neglected. Acting regal, smiling softly, waving if appropriate. Sharing a few word with the media. Tonight however—because it was truly night now, within her just as much as without—it had been a complete blur. She had retreated within herself.

She entered the State Box of the Corellian Theatre and as she sat, she noticed Kell and Alfrid's absence. She had forgotten he had agreed to opening the commemoration with a short intervention. She felt guilty for not seeing him slip away. She sat next to Mara while Eirin sat on the other side. The lights dimmed almost immediately after their group had taken their seats. So we were a bit late after all, she thought.

The Master of Ceremonies, a round little man dwarfed by the stage from where she sat, welcomed the attendance to this night of remembrance, glossing over the program, using it as a hook without making it exhaustive. He paused and then spoke again, more slowly this time. "...and now, it is my greatest honor, to welcome within these halls, Lord Ljun, Master of the Order of the Knights of Langardia, who have fought dire battles in the skies above us, to protect all of us down here. Under the applause, the little man stepped out of the spotlight as another little man stepped in.

Kell looks so small and vulnerable from up here, she thought. He wasn't wearing the ceremonial vest he was wearing when they entered the theatre, she noticed. Only his plain black undershirt and black pants. This made him look simple and even smaller, lost out there on the stage now dark, save for the light of the single spotlight focusing the tens of thousands of eyes of the attendees onto him.

Vala noticed that he had brought a little brown object onto the stage which absorbed his attention. She didn't recognise it at first. "Actually..." he spoke as the applause subdued. His amplified voice startled her. “Actually, I’d like to dedicate this song to all the fallen. To those who fought for us, of course, whether New Republic, Langardian, or otherwise. But also, and perhaps more particularly, to those who could not fight, and were never meant to. Civilian death is not only tragic. It will always remain unconscionable.”

Song? She had been taken aback and still was stuck on that word. Since when does Kell sing? It is then, as the first chord was plucked, allowing the first delicate notes to escape from the heart of this tiny box, that she knew what it was. It had been under her very eyes, every day of every year for centuries. That box was the ancient wooden harp that Kell kept in sober but almost reverent display in his library. She felt displaced by the most unsuspecting object there was. It tore something deep within her, a place that she didn't know existed.

The first word he sang sideswiped her, so utterly that it obliterated any thought she was having in the moment. She felt her mouth opening slightly, in a gentle, devastating awe. His words, she knew, carried his solemness but engulfed in a warm half-sung half-spoken plaint. His voice, clear and much lighter than she would have ever imagined, was laced with a primal and immemorial quality. "I didn't know my beloved could sing" she thought, forced to recognize that despite having shared most of her years in his company, he still carried unknown regions of his own.

When suddenly, quite unexpectedly his voice rose into a register she could never have expected from him, she broke, pierced by the crystal shards of a grief she could never fully fathom. She bawled, instantly. Erin was the first to notice. She reached for Vala's hand and hold her tight. The lament continued, echoing in the halls of the theatre as if Kell had to wrench the words from his very soul. Vala squeezed harder and Erin responded in kind, her hand betraying the distress Vala's discomposure had induced within her.

The elegy moved into a new movement for which the harp, tender yet unwavering seemed committed to accompany each and every soul witnessing the moment into musical hills of sorrow and desolation. Vala struggled to see through the torrent of silent tears that had invaded her eyes. Her diminished perception made Kell feel ever more so distant. It was then that Mara noticed it too. She turned towards her mother, and put a hand on her knee.

As the last note and his voice trailed off into the silence, Vala blinked and she felt as if it were the last time. As the moment lingered, she felt dissolved from within. She heard the first clap and allowed herself to open her eyes, relief growing in her as the applause began to fill the theatre. Mara leaned closer, her voice covered by the clamor.

“What was he singing about?”

Vala tried to answer and found, absurdly, that a small broken laugh came first, cutting through the tears.

“Kell, I have to tell you.”

Kell smiled to himself.

“When you sang, I was moved in unexpected ways.”

Kell remained silent. He opened the lid of the box that contained his harp and stared at it.

Luke respected the moment for a while, then allowed himself a comment.

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s ancient,” Kell corrected.

Again, silence grew between them.

“I’ve never heard that language before,” Luke finally said.

“No,” Kell answered. “You wouldn’t have.”

“Where is it from?”

“It is from the world I was born on,” Kell conceded.

Luke looked at him with softness.

“What happened to it?”

Kell closed the lid and looked at Luke.