I’ve taken my insomnia meds but I am going to try to formulate Thoughts anyway. Wish me luck I’ve written so much today I am so tired
Mirialan Jedi women have an incredibly tight-knit social group, especially those who choose to wear a headscarf or something to cover their hair. It’s a way of keeping their culture, keeping a part of them. For some of them, it’s simply and honoring of ancestry and tradition. And for some who maybe didn’t have the kindest landings at the Temple, maybe their parents tried to keep them for as long as they could and didn’t want to let them go, but they were taken anyway, it’s an act of resistance. A rebellion. A way of saying “you cannot take this from me. You cannot take my history and my people from me.”
Henna and hair oiling and Dow to make tea and the best way to fold dolma is passed from master to padawan, from master to padawan the same way on Mirial it is passed from mother or aunt or grandma to daughter or niece or granddaughter. Mirialan Jedi lineages can practically be traced through how they design their henna or make their tea.
They get together when they can. A chance to let down their hair, literally, to build their community, practice their language, teach tradition and history. You cannot hear the accent or the depth of history just from reading books. You must see and experience it. There’s a train of three women working on each other’s hair, and a Master is teaching her padawan henna. The padawan is practicing on a young Jedi Knight, her master’s former padawan. A lineage being strengthened, being formed. A fending of roots. People are laughing, and three women are bickering as they work in the kitchen. Someone tells a joke, and someone laughs. A knight lays their head in her former master’s lap and relishes in the safety and comfort she’s always known their.
As the war drags on, all the empty spots at the meetings grow more and more visible. More and more painful until the edges are practically razors; sharp cutting things no one dares touch. And after the Order? After the tragedy of Clones being turned? The temple sits, full of bodies. A tomb. The tea kettle on the stove that never got turned off is scorched. It smells burned, ashy. There isn’t a trace of mint anymore. A bottle of hair oil got knocked over. It’s stained the floor. No one is left to scrub at it anymore. The pillows they sat at are tossed around, kicked up and forgotten in the chaos. One has a blaster hold in it. There’s no one left to fix it. The lineage lines are broken. There’s no one left to give a richness to the history. No henna patterns to pass on. No one left to argue over wether it should be three or four sugar cubes in the bottom of a tea pot when making mint tea.
