[ @otherxworlds continued from here ]
Cal had always struggled with his psychometry. It was a rare ability, which meant that their understanding of it was limited. The only other user of the ability Cal had known had been Master Quinlan Vos and he'd only had a few meetings with the man. He hadn't talked about it with anyone since the Order had fallen and he'd taken to wearing gloves to keep from using the ability without meaning to.
"It depends. Someone or something has to have made an impression on a place or object. If the impression is faint, I have to really focus, and even then chances are I won't feel anything." That was his saving grace, he supposed. Otherwise he'd have gone crazy a long time ago. "The stronger the feelings, the stronger the echo. I don't even need to try to experience those echoes. They just...happen."
Cal had been terrified the first time it had happened. He'd had a full-blown seizure. Luckily the Jedi Masters at the temple had known enough to recognise it for what it was.
"So it's worse when violence or the dark side is involved. I don't just...see things. I feel things, too. Emotions. When I'm sensing an echo, it's like the emotions are mine, and they can be intense. I feel the pain, the fear, the hate, like it's my own. Not feelings a Jedi should have."
@forcewoven
She listens with keen interest to his description of how his ability functions.
In some ways, it is not so different from her own—echoes, impressions and feelings that aren't her own, the way that it simply happens sometimes without conscious thought.
In other ways, however, they so radically differ that it might be comical, especially in considering the specific divergence of those abilities: his tied to contact with objects and hers tied specifically to contact with the living.
And yet, before she can comment upon that particular point of discussion, he says something else that draws her attention far more.
"Who told you this? All of those feelings are natural. They're part of life. Part of the Force itself... The only caution you should show... is in how you react to them."
"Perhaps the person who told you such a thing was simply afraid of how they might react to those feelings? Because all I hear in such words is exactly that: fear."
