inactive

“I need more! More than just this!”

Cereyn Saerai looked up from her game of Dejarik she was supposed to be playing with Val, but was instead left waiting as she fumed.

“More than what? Elaborate.” Saerai sighed in her thick, brogue accent. “I’m not a mind reader, you know this.”

“More than indentured servitude.” Val growled, pacing the length of Saerai’s quarters, avoiding stepping on vines trailing from hanging pots. She whirled to face the general, hands gesturing wildly. “Don’t try and tell me you never wanted more than… than this cloistered life. I know you,” she walked forward as something stabbed sharp through her chest. “You raised me as your daughter- I know you.”

Saerai’s pale green gaze tugged back up to Val’s face at her urgent tone. “While I don’t enjoy all the perils of my occupation,” she muttered, leaning over the game board and moving Val’s piece against her own - she was winning, of course. “I enjoy fulfillment. While I see that you do not.”

Val sighed in exasperation. “I’m sworn in for life. I’m a Jedi Knight!” She laughed a bit, but she felt a cold stone in her stomach at the words. “But I feel nothing for this! Not for the council, or the other Knights, or the Order itself!” Her voice was rising and brazen, her anger mounting. “This is empty work. There is nothing I want from this. I can’t even help people! All I do is push a war that slaughters and entraps millions!”

Dropping in front of the Dejarik board, she moodily pushed her Kintan strider against Saerai’s Molator, watching the two beasts battle it out. The Molator disintegrated, Saerai making a frustrated noise as she realized that Val had won. Val didn’t share in her enthusiasm for the game, looking up at the Caorann glumly. “When you grew up, did you want to be a Jedi?”

Saerai snorted so hard Val thought she had choked, the Master laughing her strangely comfortable bray. “Stars, no. No.” She slapped her thigh with another laugh. “I wanted to be a pit fighter, Val. You should have seen me.” The general reclined on her cushion, leaning on her elbow to look up at her plants. “I could take down Caorann the size of small cruisers with hardly a sweep of my leg. I was revered, Val. Until one day, I managed to make a fruit I wanted fly.” Her voice, for a fleeting moment, seemed angry and bitter.

The general paused, touching one trailing branch. “Then the Knights whisked me away into the mountains and taught me until I got some sense knocked into my thick skull. Then I came here, and I met Ram, and I got you.” Saerai sat up, leaning on the board with a wry smile. “So, I dare say that things worked out.”

Val couldn’t find one of her own, and her master saw it.