Circle of healing

VI.

You go there, you're gone forever
I go there I'll lose my way
If we stay here we're not together
Anywhere is
-- Roma Ryan --

***

The temple had sunk into an impenetrable darkness. Only the big hall in the inner recesses of the temple was lit by the strange light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
The circle of priestesses was still kept close, but the women looked exhausted, their faces appeared pale and overfatigued.
From time to time a novice brought a carafe with water and let her gaze wander curiously and a little enviously over the women who knelt in the consecrated circle. The ritual was forbidden to the novices who had not been initiated into the mysteries of the temple - it held too many dangers. The oldest and most mysterious ritual on the whole planet of Naboo.
Naara shivered reverently as she watched the priestesses sink into trance.
The last cycle of the ritual had started.

***

Hesitant, warm touches on cool skin. Soft, like angel’s wings. Tender, yet hardly perceptible. Too light to be pushing, yet not perceptible enough to quell the yearning for more.
Padmé didn’t perceive her surroundings anymore. Though she was still moving forward, she couldn’t tell how long she had been walking, or why she was walking or why she didn’t stop.
Caught in the pictures that displayed themselves in front of her inner eye, trapped in the feelings, the impulses that wandered through her mind and didn’t give her any rest. She yearned to find the source of those feelings but couldn’t find it.
Soft, yet strong. Seizing possession, yet never demanding.
Desperation surged inside of her. How was she supposed to take this uncertainty?
Padmé closed her eyes to reality and walked on blind. Her movements became stoic and ever so slightly jerky. Her body was giving up while her mind still fought.
Warm touches on nearly frozen cheeks. Exuding safety and peace.
She didn’t see the crevice that was running through the ice and which rapidly ripped the snow covered surface. The howling of the wind drowned the soft sighs of the bursting ice that raced up to her.

***

Why didn’t she get out of the way? Didn’t she see?
Obi-Wan stared horrified at the crevasse that was building in the ice, and which headed for the queen with deadly precision.
"Your Majesty!" His scream was seized by the wind and didn’t reach her.
This couldn’t happen. They had survived the icy desert without any further aid and now she would fall victim to a crevasse in the ice? Only because he wasn’t fast enough again?
This mustn’t happen. He wouldn’t let her fall.
Kenobi mobilised all the powers that were left in his weakened body and fell into a dead run towards the queen. His thoughts were racing. She had to get away from there or the crevasse would swallow her any minute now. Didn’t she see? Didn’t she want to see? Why had he taken part in a ritual that didn’t allow him to use the force? It would have been so easy to push her out of the way, away from the danger.
Trying to run fast in the deep snow was more difficult than he had expected. After a few meters he was already out of breath, his sides ached and his legs felt like lead.
How could his body dare betray him now?

***

The touches became softer. More enticing. So much more gentle.
"Open your eyes, child of my soul."
Padmé started painfully. She had been concentrating on the feelings so much that the sudden sound of the voice was like a splash of cold water. Where did this voice come from? What had she . . .
"Open your eyes, child of my soul."
No, she didn’t recognise this voice. Yet it was as if it had its origins in her very soul.
Hesitantly she followed the plea.
What she saw filled her with vague fear, but the fear was nearly drowned by the fascination she felt.
In front of her an aurora of blue, glowing light had formed. Snow and ice lost their cold and started glowing warmly from a strange, inner light. The cloud cover broke up and revealed a bright blue burning sky. A light that could destroy the world as she knew it. The power it radiated was inconceivable and could not be put into words.
The constricting fear she had felt just moments ago was washed away when realisation softly dawned on the queen. This was nothing she had to be afraid of.
The aurora was old.
Ancient.
Older than Naboo.
Maybe older than the universe. It held a power that was bigger than anything she would ever be able to grasp with her mind, but Padmé didn’t mind. A smile stole forth on her lips.
"Child of my soul." The voice was everywhere now.

***

"Amidala!" Obi-Wan’s desperate cry was once again drowned by the raging of the storm.
He, too, had seen how the blue glowing had started to close around the queen. For a short moment their link had flared up with an unknown force and he had felt her fascination and her fear.
He had nearly reached her now. Only a few steps separated him from her fragile figure which nearly drowned in his robe. All thoughts of cold and pain were forgotten in that moment - Obi-Wan lost himself in the picture in front of him.
The queen stood strong and sure in front of the rapidly closing aurora.
He was close to her - so close that he could see the soft glowing of the blue light on her cheeks. It filled her and consumed her, soon her whole body was glowing in this light.
Fear clamped its iron fist around Obi-Wan’s heart. She had to get away from here. The light would hurt her, didn’t she see? Was her own life of such little importance to her?
"Amidala," he pleaded softly.
The storm had died down and even though he was still a few steps away from her, he could hear her calm breathing. The silence was frightening.
"Your Majesty," he tried again when she didn’t react. "You need to get away from here. You will get hurt otherwise."
An ethereal smile was on her lips when she turned to face him. "Are you afraid, Jedi Kenobi?"

***

While he still pondered the meaning of her words for him, the crevasse broke up and the ice under him subsided with an ugly crunching noise. It all happened so sudden that Obi-Wan staggered and nearly would have fallen. He came back to a relative safe standstill with wildly flailing arms.
"Amidala!"
Every thought of his own safety was forgotten. Further tremors rocked the ice under him. The silence was pierced by the soft moans and sighs of the bursting ice.
‘No! No!’
The crevasse between him and the queen became broader. Deeper. If he didn’t do something quickly, jumping would be an impossible task.
His eyes locked with hers. "Your Majesty, please!"
Why was he still pleading with her? Only a few heartbeats separated her from two dangers. The blue aurora and the crevasse.
‘Do something!’
The fear of failure nearly rooted him to the spot. At the same time he felt immense anger rising inside himself. He wouldn’t make it anymore. He wouldn’t be able to jump in time. She would die, just like . . .
‘No!’
Rage, anger and despair collided so intensely that for a few moments they gave him the power he needed to make a headlong dive over the crevasse that was nearly insuperable by now. But while still in mid dive, he felt the doubts returning - with the result of him losing some of what had given him the much needed power.
He crashed hard on the splintered ice and found it hard to suck back in the breath that had been pushed out of his lungs. Obi-Wan tasted blood, and his knees and wrists exploded in burning pain that made him wish for a faint. The world around him was dominated by the blue light.
"Amidala!"
What had supposed to become a yell ended in a wretched croak. His eyes widened, horror-stricken, and he desperately tried to get back on his feet to help her. The aurora circled the queen nearly completely by now, without the queen moving even a single step outside the dangerous area. The ethereal smile on her face gave her a nearly celestial beauty.
How could she stay so calm, facing such a danger?
With a scream Obi-Wan dashed for the aurora and was - barely having touched it - thrown back by such an enormous force that it surprised him that his body didn’t just break in two. Without a halt, without even the slightest control over his body, which consisted only of white hot agony and hurt in so many places that he couldn't even name the different locations anymore, he fell.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had fallen before in his life. He had lost his hold and had crashed. But nothing compared to this.
The fall itself was relatively long. He fell in a clear stomach-turning line that was only broken by a small ledge of jagged ice. Boundless panic washed over him. This couldn’t happen. He mustn’t be here while the queen’s life was in danger.
With the power of uncounted hours of Jedi-training he reached for the next higher ledge. His hands, though only barely warmer than the ice, caused the surface to melt slightly. His fingers slipped and he fell again. This time the fall was short. The ledge where his feet had been standing, was now taken over by his hands. Due to the abrupt fall the fingernails of his right hand were ripped off with a surprisingly organic sound and a new wave of burning pain shot through him - so strong that he nearly would have let go.
A look upwards revealed to him that the glowing - if at all possible - had grown more intense. Over the hammering of his own heart he barely heard the further bursting of the ice anymore. A vague feeling of deja vu flickered in the back of his mind. Hadn’t he been hanging helplessly over a precipice before?
And how, how had he managed to come out of it?
He didn’t hear the voice when it called for him the first time. It came to his ear only slowly.
"Let go."
Obi-Wan clenched his eyes shut and shook his head. Had he really heard what he just believed to have heard? This muscles in his arms already started to shake from the unusual strain.
"You need to let go."
The voice smoothed his thoughts that were rolling like whispering mercury and brought them into a complete whole once more. Warm, soft and velvetlike it reminded him of hot mead that brought a most agreeable heaviness with it.
"Let go, Jedi Kenobi."
The words died down to a whisper and instinctively he raised his eyes back to where the queen was fighting for her life. Fighting?
But she didn’t fight!
She never had!
The glowing became unbearable. The last thing Obi-Wan saw from the depth of the crevasse was the light closing around the queen completely.
"NO!"
His scream shrilled unheard through the deep gorges in the eternal ice.

***

 

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