Black Kashyyykian dirt dug into her toenails. History lived here. Way back, the Sith space weapon had rained pure hell on this planet. Now, that steady glow of orange was replaced by fields of flowers and rays of heavenly light, sprucing up the area postcard-style. Jade the Jedi Exile was in good spirits when she began today’s Community Service Assignment. Her task: water all the blue flowers by sundown. In a field of native Kashyyykian undergrowth plus 10,000 red-lavender-blue-gold-white flower plots. Blue flowers in the center. This meant Jade mad-dashing between orchidferns and needle blossoms, hopscotching over hungry roots and exotic roses to bucket-water all the flowers all while shoeless.
She imagined this was some demented game the Wookiees played. Apparently, they expected her to use secret-Jedi-force-powers to hover around as bumblebees do, not squashing plants or petals, only tending to the super special blue flowers. Winged Jade. Bee Jade. Laughing Jade. Laughed at Jade. Surely a mechanized agricultural technology existed to mass-plant flowers, lightsabers, candy canes, whatever. Except this was a punishment. It should be hard. She wiped the sweat off her neck and got to work.
The Sith strike on the planet from space meant hitting a great range of territory. A lot of this territory still lay unassessed and unappraised, the damage undefined, at least by the living. “Ow Ow Ow, –” stumbled Jade, holding her heel. Two Wookiees on a fence doubled over in laughter watching her. Jade was debating the complex Jedi morality of sticking her tongue out at them when she nearly tripped in a hole. “The hell?”
She knelt to steady herself. It was then the girl who always had something to say was at a loss for words. Jade had stepped into the hollowed-out gut of a long-dead body. The calcified form lay six inches down, the brittle soil wrapping the body crumbling away. Jade stared into the abyss, into the hollowed eyes and sealed lips that reminded her of some sleeping ceramic emperor.
Bursting back five feet but unable to peel her eyes away. At last, the former Jedi raised her hand in a helpless schoolgirl way, crying out to all nearby. But drawn to the body like a kid to a friend’s dead bug collection, she inched forward, took a stick, and poked into it. The texture was stiff and crunchy. She bit the inside of her cheek and silently cursed. After the longest ten seconds, she plucked a handful of blue flowers and placed them on the dead Wookiee’s caved-in chest.
She imagined this was some demented game the Wookiees played. Apparently, they expected her to use secret-Jedi-force-powers to hover around as bumblebees do, not squashing plants or petals, only tending to the super special blue flowers. Winged Jade. Bee Jade. Laughing Jade. Laughed at Jade. Surely a mechanized agricultural technology existed to mass-plant flowers, lightsabers, candy canes, whatever. Except this was a punishment. It should be hard. She wiped the sweat off her neck and got to work.
The Sith strike on the planet from space meant hitting a great range of territory. A lot of this territory still lay unassessed and unappraised, the damage undefined, at least by the living. “Ow Ow Ow, –” stumbled Jade, holding her heel. Two Wookiees on a fence doubled over in laughter watching her. Jade was debating the complex Jedi morality of sticking her tongue out at them when she nearly tripped in a hole. “The hell?”
She knelt to steady herself. It was then the girl who always had something to say was at a loss for words. Jade had stepped into the hollowed-out gut of a long-dead body. The calcified form lay six inches down, the brittle soil wrapping the body crumbling away. Jade stared into the abyss, into the hollowed eyes and sealed lips that reminded her of some sleeping ceramic emperor.
Bursting back five feet but unable to peel her eyes away. At last, the former Jedi raised her hand in a helpless schoolgirl way, crying out to all nearby. But drawn to the body like a kid to a friend’s dead bug collection, she inched forward, took a stick, and poked into it. The texture was stiff and crunchy. She bit the inside of her cheek and silently cursed. After the longest ten seconds, she plucked a handful of blue flowers and placed them on the dead Wookiee’s caved-in chest.
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