A few padawans were scattered throughout the training room, dancing around small, orbital robots that spun in crazy circles around their heads and torsos. A few even dodged between the children’s legs, zapping at various body parts with tiny, bright lasers. Among the group of children - various colors and shapes, species that covered the spectrum of life in this galaxy - were set up barks of laughter when a friend was pinned by a droid, and yelps of surprise and mild pain by those being hit.
There were padawans of various ages, as well as species, but the eldest stood a good few inches taller than most, and certainly was the eldest by at least a year, if not more. That’s what happened when your species happened to be Firrerreo, though. Short Firrerreos weren’t the norm.
He was dressed in rather simple robes..or...simple compared to those trappings he had worn in the past. Make that about a thousand or so years ago, give or take. This Firrerreo was, by and large, the oldest of all these padawans, certainly, if not the tallest.
Some of the younger padawans had drifted over to his corner of the room, abandoning their own exercises to watch this padawan, Harmonolith, progress through a few saber moves. His Mistress had taught him much of what he knew, though being stuck in a Force Rift had made it impossible to practice.
He still remembered her body, still, motionless, her almost surprised expression, and the flickering red blade of the Sith who had felled her.
And there was nothing Harmonolith could’ve done. He’d been stuck- stuck! - in a Rift of his own making, trapped for...years! Only to be grabbed by a small padawan and pulled into this new Temple, with new Jedi. His own life, like his old robes and Mistress, were long dead and gone.
This fierce energy, this hidden rupture of feeling, coursed through the saber in his hands. His robes swished to-and-fro as his feet danced along the tile. Dead..dead...dead!
Dead and gone!
He didn’t know these padawans, the ones who watched him with silent wonder. He didn’t know this Temple, though he’d wandered it for years, drifting through it like a ghost, unable to do more than watch the world move on around him.
Every slash of his saber pulsed with a fresh outpouring of silent grief and frustration. He could never go back..he can’t ever go back...!
His saber slices through one of the droids, ending its short-lived existence with a fizz and electronic shriek.
“You aren’t allowed to kill them,” a padawan piped up in the silence that followed. Harmonolith sheathed his saber, glancing toward the padawan.
“..I know,” he sighed heavily, running a hand down his face. Wonderful. Something else to tell his superiors about. Not that they didn’t talk to him enough anyway, prodding him for the odd detail about his past life, or about these past centuries! They’d all blended together, memories lumping into memories, everything springing up new and then growing old and withering and dying and starting all over in an endless cycle.
One day all of these padawans would die.
His one friend here, his one, true friend, Raelyn, would also die. Raelyn, who had pulled him to freedom. Raelyn, who was so bubbly and curious and wanted to grow up to be some mishmash of Jedi Knight and budding scientist...
Harmon dragged his feet out of the training room, saber swinging lightly against his belt.
What would his Mistress want of him? To turn these people aside? To turn off his heart, allowing himself to become cold and unattached to the offers of belonging and friendship, here?
He wasn’t sure.
He really just..wanted to go home.
“Would you forgive me, Mistress,” he mumbled softly, rubbing at his golden eyes as he walked, “if this was a home to me? Would you forgive me for making a new home, here?”
The air rang with a deafening silence. No consoling thought or word sounded in the quiet that blanketed the grand Temple hallway.
Like all other things, his Mistress had faded to a terrible silence.
And if everything only ever came to silence, then what was the point in even asking?
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Raelyn belongs to @supesofherown