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A Vision and A Plea Of Change From A Lost Love... Wednesday, 28-Jun-2000 07:53:40
The Jedi Master known as Rayloth Zafner sits in the cabin of the Crimson Force. He sits quietly and listens to the steady hum of the Hyperdrive engins as they huttle him and the ship through that demention known as Hyperspace. He sits in the middle of the small cabin on the deck, nothing seperating him from the cool deckplates but a pair of dark green pants. His legs are folded, his feet and chest bare, and his eyes closed. He lets out a claming breath, the first part of his journey complete. He had persuaded Master Skywalker to come back with him, to help reunite the Jedi...teach them...help them to put an end to the Evil that has gripped the galaxy. Yet, something plagues he back of his conscience. Creeping into his thoughts just enough to make itself known and then retreating to the shadows of the Unkown. When it had first started, he'd tried to contact his wife, the Jedi Mistress Moraya Silvershadow-Zafner; but to no avail. He'd only gotten her life-long friend, Eva Moonshadow. She hadn't said much, but it wasn't what she had said that bothered him...it was what she hadn't said that hit him right in the heart. ~"Where is she, Ev?"~ he had asked her. ~"I'm not sure, Rayloth. She said she needed to take care of something, and that she'd return in several days. She took the Rogue and I haven't seen her since. She sent a holo just before you saying she was okay and would return shortly."~ Rayloth had not beleived this. He had then tried to contact the Rogue only to get no reply of any kind. That hadn't bother him much, the old YT-1300 had always had problems with it's sensor aray. So he'd left it at that, trusting that if his wife, his soul-mate, were going into danger that she'd tell him....or he'd know. Yet, the constant nagging is still there. Coming forth to just barely be seen then skipping back into the recesses of his mind. So, now he sat in the cabin, his legs folded, the ship powered down to minumum running power. He is running his mind through the first stages of Jedi Meditation, in hopes that he might bring this nagging shadow of his mind into the light. ~*~What are you trying to tell me?~*~ And with that, Rayloth Zafner is thrown into a Vision of the Future. His mind's eye is shown, not a single, continuing vision, but a slideshow of events and faces that are in no particular order he can see. Voices accompany these images and faces--some familliar, some unknown, and some striking an uneasy feeling of conection. The first he recognizes right away. It is a younger version of his wife, Moraya. No...wait...not Moraya, their daughter Shendrian, all grown up. She stands outside their home, petting one of the Managi in their pen. She then turns to him, smiling she says, "You have taught me well, Father. I owe you more than you will ever know." That Vision fades and is replaced by another face...a youn man's face, one with long black hair and a vicious scar down the right side of his face...he knows not the face, but the eyes. They are the eyes of a woman he onced loved, a woman who had been taken from this world too soon. Padme? His first wife Amidala Padme of Naaboo. Then that would make this man... "That is right, father," says the young man with the scar, "It is I, the son you abandoned. I am coming Father. I am coming to take away the prize who replaced me. I will have my revenge..." Rayloth tries to speak, to ask one of the many questions his son's words have aroused. But it is too late, his face fades into a scene. It is a battle...a deadly duel between two Force Sensitive cambatants. Both are female, one wearing the traditional robes of the Jedi....blue and silver...and with hair the color of leaves in late fall. Hair he'd grown to love running his fingers through on late, sleepless nights. It is Moraya. Her opponent is someone he's never seen before, but bares a feeling of connection...a feeling like he's known her for quite a long time. Little does he know how true this is. He sees her, dueling with his wife, her hair streads of red and black, two braids flanking her temples. She bares a saber with a red blade but does not doan the Jedi robes. Instead she wears the clothes of a smuggler. Rayloth then hears his wife's voice. It drifts to him from a great distance... "Rayloth, I will always love you." The fight rages, Moraya's silver blade taking the offensive. Coming high in a tight arch, aimed to take off her opponent's head. "As I you, Moraya..." The streak-headed female's blade counters the attack and pushes it aside, then comes up and around in it's own cemi-circle, bringing it's point up over Moraya's left shoulder and then swiftly slashing in a downward diagnal. "No..don't ask, please don't ask. I follow my own path...as you follow yours. I ask that you do not come search for me." Rayloth watches, helpless as Moraya sidesteps and leans back to barely avoid being cut in half....only to be hit behind the knee with her opponent's foot, causeing her to fall to the ground, her saber flying wide and out of her hand. "I also ask that, no matter what happens to me, you take care of our daughter....raise her, train her and Ryken. Show them the ways of the Force, teach them to be great Jedi, like you." Rayloth Zafner feels the cold hands of the Dark Side grip his heart as he watches Moraya's combatant slowly lift her blade hight and twist it in her grip to point the blade downward. She then lets out a cry of tryumph...a cry with an all-too-familliar voice...as she drives the red blade of energy down into Moraya's heart. "Rayloth...I love you...but lives change...people change, and I have to deal with the changes that come for me. In my own way...on my own. Please understand. May the Force be with you." Rayloth Zafner then feels--strangly--more at ease than one would figure as his wife's murderer looks up, fully exposing her face for the first time. Showing.... Moraya...no...not Moraya...she had become someone entirely different. And, out of love for her, he was going to let her deal with that change her own way... ...At least for now. Rayloth Zafner opens his eyes to the sound of the Prox Warning on the Hyperdrive; they'd be coming out in ten minutes. Which meant that he'd been in his trance for more than three hours. He opens his green-gray eyes and gets to his feet. "Lives do change, my love. But that does not mean that these changes are for the best." With that, the Jedi Master Rayloth Zafner heads for the cockpit of his ship... ...and to the begining of his New Path... Ray/Rayloth |