#trasumanar

‘Skywalker’ comes later, an attempt to make something of the cruelty they’ve named her with—Shmi Sky-touched, meaning Shmi Madwoman, Shmi the broken thing; Shmi with the dreams of fire and light that leave her coughing blood, howling like a sandstorm into the night. More trouble than she’s worth.

That is a death sentence for a slave, more trouble than she’s worth. Shmi is young then, and strong, quiet, capable—but she is trouble too. A pretty desert rat, with blood in her teeth and dreams. Trouble, meaning, there is something in her not a slave, that cannot be owned. It makes her a target. It makes her a risk. It makes her mad.

Shmi dreams of a Jawa attack on the power grid for days before it happens (Actually, she dreams of bright birds, shot down by arrows that pierce their breasts, and then dissolve them like acid, into so much greyed sludge. But the attack is what it means, and she saves energy in spare power cells for when it comes. 

She enjoys watching those who spat on her crawl back on their bellies, begging Shmi Sky-touched for aid. And she is generous; she saves them from the dark. They never forget this.) 

Shmi dreams of krayt dragons eating their young in the sand until they are bloated and fetid with blood; the plague comes. (Shmi does not fall ill, though she lives with the dead and dying, slaves who cannot afford the cure. But then, Shmi has never been sick.) Shmi dreams of a dead bantha, maggots writhing in its belly; her master dies, and his kin descend to claim what is theirs. (Shmi is a slave, and so Shmi passes into new ownership. But she is still not owned, cannot be.)

Her new mistress has a temper. Her new mistress tries to beat her once—but when she raises a hand, her skin bubbles and warps, peeling off in blackened strips, syrupy blood sluicing away. Her new mistress screams. She curses Shmi in Huttese, in words Shmi can only guess (witch madwoman sky-touched) and must be dragged away, before she loses the arm entirely. 

That night, Shmi dreams of a creature who is also a light, and fire, and death, and nothing. A precipice, for the galaxy to throw itself off of. The whole of the sky. It engulfs her, moves through her, and it is terrible. It is like looking at a god.

no one else may touch you, the god says. It has gentle eyes, set in a face like a nebula. (This, somehow, does not repulse her.)

what are you, she asks the god as it kisses her with a mouth that is not a mouth, and touches her with hands that are not hands, until she is full of purposeful light, heavy with it.

everything, the god replies, sighing. everything.

I have been deliberately leaving the prologue of my ~pretentious Force metafic~ until last, because I can’t decide how the Force feels about Shmi

Either she is incidental to the story, a womb and nothing more (the way that jedi prior to anakin skywalker are hands, or swords, but mere conductors, objects and vectors, means of getting to Anakin Skywalker, chosen one chosen one whispered in his ear from the first moment he could hear it whispering, fatherless but mothered, enclosed in sheltering arms—)

Or she is everything, she is chosen, she is the theotokos, the mother of god, and the Force sings in her (through her, loving her) the way it will no one else, because she is Shmi Skywalker, she survives, she survives, they would carve her up and chew her and spit her out, but her son is something else, born of something else, and she knows it. Maybe that’s important, that she knows. That she does not meet death quietly, she goes free, and wedded, individual. Of her own making.

I mean, three generations of those Force-beloved children will wear and fight over and bear the name a slave-girl barely out of her second decade picked—they are called skywalker, because she looked up, and thought that expanse of blueblueblue can never be owned, that can never be enslaved, and said, yes, I am a skywalker, you cannot wholly own me either