The jungle was steam and perfume that morning, dew sliding off the vines in long glassy threads. Mist hung in the courtyards like the breath of some great sleeping creature. Luke called it “good training weather.” The rest of us called it “sticky.”

  ? ? ?

  We met on the stone terrace just after dawn, when the jungle mist still clung to the temple steps like ghostly fabric. The terrace was cool underfoot, dew settling between the cracks in the ancient stone. Luke sat cross-legged in the center, robes damp from the morning air, his lightsaber laid beside him with the casual trust of someone who needed it no more than he needed a spare heartbeat.

  He waited until all of us had settled around him before speaking.

  “I want to start with an admission,” he said, smiling faintly. “The old Jedi would never have done this.”

  Half the group blinked. Kyle raised an eyebrow. Tionne hid a knowing grin behind her sleeve.

  Luke continued, unbothered. “We are rediscovering the Force together. Every one of us — Masters, students, wanderers, people who learned in caves or starships or from old journals half-chewed by mynocks.” A few students laughed. Luke’s smile warmed. “Much of what the Jedi once knew was lost, burned, stolen, or simply… forgotten. So when I ask you to try something strange, unusual, even uncomfortable, it’s not because I know the ancient technique and you don’t. It’s because we’re exploring this frontier together.”

  The tension in the air loosened. Shoulders relaxed. Even the younger students breathed easier.

  “So,” Luke said, clapping his hands softly, “today, you won’t search for the Force inside yourselves. Today, you’ll borrow someone else’s eyes.”

  He paired us off. I found myself opposite Dorsk 81 again — silent, steady, with that effortless calm that made even the noisy droids behave around him. He gave me a reassuring grin as we sat facing each other.

  “Hold hands,” Luke instructed. “Close your eyes. Don’t push. Don’t reach. Just be near each other, and let your awareness expand until you find where your presence ends and theirs begins.”

  At first all I felt was warmth — the physical reality of Dorsk’s fingers, slightly calloused from training, wrapped around mine. His pulse was slower than mine, strong and steady. I focused on our breathing, letting mine settle into the same rhythm as his.

  Then something shifted.

  A second heartbeat — not mine — echoed faintly in the back of my skull.

  A heaviness brushed against me, thick as soil soaked with rain. The Force didn’t feel like a shimmer, like it did when I reached for it. It felt like weight — pressure — gravity. It pressed around me in slow, deliberate currents, as if the universe itself were exhaling through mountains instead of air.

  My sense of direction tilted. The world around me tasted metallic, like cold iron. Each breath made my chest feel denser, grounded, as though I were sinking through layers of earth instead of sitting on sun-warmed stone. It was dizzying — not painful, just unfamiliar, as if I had borrowed a body that didn’t quite fit.

  And beneath it all was a hum. A deep vibration that pulsed in time with Dorsk’s calm certainty. His relationship with the Force wasn’t a song or a whisper.

  It was bedrock.

  “So that’s what it’s like for you?” he murmured, voice soft from somewhere very far and very close at once. “Songs and echoes?”

  I nodded, though the movement felt strange, as if my thoughts were moving through syrup.

  “And for you… it’s like planets,” I whispered. “Colliding. Settling. Shaping themselves.”

  He chuckled, warm and delighted. “Exactly.”

  Luke let the exercise linger just long enough for us to steady ourselves before gently calling us back. As we opened our eyes, the morning light looked different — as if it had passed through two minds instead of one.

  “Good,” Luke said, rising. “Every mind bends the Force in its own way. Learning those bends — feeling how others see, breathe, and understand — teaches us compassion.” He let the words settle before adding softly, “And compassion is the only thing that keeps power from becoming domination.”

  He looked at each of us, eyes warm, patient, open. “We’re building something new here. And to build it well, we need to understand each other — not just in words, but in the Force.”

  The breeze stirred the terrace, scattering dew into the morning air. For the first time, I felt not only my own senses, but faint, echoing traces of the minds around me — like colors reflected in a mirror I had never known existed.

  ? ? ?

  At midday, Tionne gathered a smaller group of us in one of the shaded atriums just off the main living level. Sunlight filtered through hanging vines, breaking into shards of green and gold across the floor. Bowls of water sat in a ring between us, each reflecting the shifting patterns of light like small, portable skies.

  “Close your eyes,” Tionne said, her voice quiet but resonant. “Let the Force move through your tongue, not your hands. Taste the water without drinking it. Let the world speak through the simplest thing in it.”

  Around me, students breathed in sync. One by one, they offered impressions:

  “Metal.”

  “Salt.”

  “Wind.”

  “Something like memory… like a smell you can’t place.”

  The answers drifted like soft notes of music. Then Tionne turned toward me.

  The moment I opened myself to the Force, everything went quiet—not silence, but an attentive hush.

  The first sensation was warmth, like stepping into a memory I had forgotten I still carried. Then came the sensation. Not through taste. Through all my senses.

  It rose in my mouth like the taste of air held too long in the lungs. Trepidation and hope tangled together, delicate and trembling. The feeling at the threshold of something changing—before the words are spoken but after the heart has decided.

  Algae behind glass, cool and green, as I pressed my small hand on its surface and felt the world soften around me for the first time.

  The discovery of my Mother’s glowing cube, humming faintly, carrying the weight of memories across years.

  The dread of coming home after the railing incident, the hall too quiet—followed by the fragile, shaking relief when my parents embraced me without a word.

  The sharp metallic taste of fear when I saw my Father’s bloodied hands on our last night on Coruscant, and the heavier, darker taste beneath it—his shame. His plea without speaking. The weight of understanding that forgiveness is both a gift and a burden.

  All of that swirled into the flavor of the water. Not taste, not quite—more like the feeling right before tears fall, when the heart braces and softens at the same time.

  And into the expectant silence, I breathed: “Like the moment before someone forgives you.”

  Tionne’s fingers froze over her instrument. “That’s… very specific.”

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  I kept my eyes closed. “I think it means it wants to be understood.”

  When I opened my eyes again, she was watching me with a mix of curiosity and something sadder, gentler. “Then treat it kindly,” she said.

  I reached out.

  My fingertip met the water’s surface with the faintest kiss of contact. The ripple that spread outward was perfect—so perfect it looked intentional, like the bowl itself held its breath to let the shape bloom. Circle upon circle, ripples spreading and reflecting off the bowl. Back and forth, blending with each other soft and unbroken, each one humming faintly in the Force.

  For a heartbeat I thought the entire bowl glowed—a pale, internal light that shimmered like moonlit glass. The jungle beyond the atrium stilled. Even the insects quieted, as if nature itself leaned in to witness a single, fragile truth unfold.

  Then the light faded. The water stilled. But the taste of forgiveness lingered like warmth, refusing to leave.

  ? ? ?

  That evening, I ate with a group of students my age—young enough to still squabble, old enough to know what silence could mean. They argued about what the Force was.

  “A current,” said one.

  “A will,” said another.

  “A story the universe tells itself,” offered a third.

  When they turned to me, I thought of Theta-9, of Father’s hands trembling with fury, and the storm that had sung to me.

  “I think it’s possibility,” I said. “The sound things make when they’re about to become something else.”

  They went quiet for a moment, then nodded.

  Meral grinned. “That’s poetic,” she said. “And yet so unhelpful. I told you you’ll fit right in.”

  ? ? ?

  Later, Tionne found me behind the pyramid, leaning against the still warm stones and sketching in my datapad—spirals of sound turned into shapes. She sat beside me on the temple steps, her instrument resting across her knees.

  “Do you still hear the hum all the time?” she asked.

  “Not just hum,” I said. “Sometimes it’s colors. Sometimes it’s touch, like silk tearing.”

  “That’s the world teaching you its language. Each sensation is one of its faces. The trick is not to choose between them, but to let them all speak.”

  She plucked a string. The note hung in the air like a drop of molten light.

  “What do you see when you hear this?”

  “A line of gold dust,” I said. “It curves upward, then disappears.”

  “I see a…motion that stills,” she smiled. “It curves, but in all directions at once. The Force prefers arcs to walls.”

  ? ? ?

  Morning at the Praxeum always smelled of rain and rust and breakfast. The jungle’s breath slid through the open arches, carrying the sour-sweet scent of crushed leaves. Distant thunder rumbled the way a giant might mutter in his sleep.

  We lived half like monks, half like orphans. Someone had always misplaced a boot, someone was always meditating upside-down, and every corridor echoed with a different experiment in telekinesis. The place was equal parts serenity and chaos.

  Kam Solusar had us in the east hall, drilling the basics of breathing and awareness. “The Force is in the small things,” he said, pacing between the mats, voice gravel-calm. “The twitch of a leaf, the vibration in your chest.”

  I was trying to catch both. The leaf part was fine—the breathing part always made me giggle. Kam sighed in that patient, I-was-once-a-Sith-you-know way and told us to visualize still water.

  Still water lasted about thirty seconds. Then thunder cracked, hard enough to rattle the ceiling panels, and the power flickered. Somebody yelped. Kam said something about maintaining focus, but half the class was already peeking toward the gardens, where the hydroponic domes glimmered like captive moons on the ridge.

  When class ended, I slipped out before anyone could stop me. The floor stones were warm under my feet; the air outside was thick, waiting. I liked the way storms built—the silence before they found their shape.

  ? ? ?

  The domes were supposed to be off-limits without an instructor. That rule existed mostly mainly because the younger kids had a habit of overwatering the fungi gardens and shorting the irrigation controls. The door hissed open with a sigh, and the first smell that hit me was damp soil—rich, electric, alive.

  Mira was there with two other apprentices, checking the nutrient gauges. At eleven she was three years younger, all elbows and confidence, the self-appointed queen of the seedlings.

  “Kae’rin, you’re going to get us in trouble,” she said without looking up.

  “Just listening,” I said. I crouched beside a planter, pressing my ear to the metal rim. Beneath the hum of the pumps I could hear the sky gathering itself.

  Outside, the wind began to climb the octave. The clouds rolled in, bruised violet. Then came the hard rain.

  ? ? ?

  Lightning split the skies like slash of a lightsaber and the thunder seemed to rattle the very floor. The vines inside danced like frightened animals, and the light from the grow-lamps turned the storm silver. A handful of students huddled near the control console, wide-eyed and whispering. The wind made a hollow flute of the vent shafts. I remember thinking the world was trying to talk, only we didn’t understand the language.

  That’s when the anchors groaned. The floor tilted half a hand’s width; soil spilled from the planters. Everyone screamed at once, and it was like a single note of terror, high and sharp enough to hurt.

  I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I wanted to answer the storm. Maybe I wanted to show Mira that sound didn’t have to mean fear. I just took a breath and started to hum.

  It was nothing—a child’s nonsense tune. But the air changed. The sound hit the glass and came back richer, heavier, like water finding its own level. The vines slowed their frantic whipping; the lights steadied. The dome’s frame stopped shuddering. Even the thunder hesitated, as if to listen.

  My voice climbed without my meaning it to. It wasn’t just air moving through me; it was everything.

  The rain,

  the glass,

  the frightened heartbeats around me

  —they all folded into the same rhythm.

  The fear melted until what was left was a kind of breathless stillness.

  Then Kam Solusar burst in, cloak soaked and eyes wide, looking ready to pull me out by the collar. He stopped, though. The storm outside was still raging, but inside, it was calm—quiet enough to hear the drip of water from the ceiling and the tiny, satisfied sigh of the soil.

  I remember Kam stepping close and touching my shoulder. His hand was shaking.

  “What did you do, Kae’rin?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I just said, “I listened.”

  He smiled then, half-terrified, half-proud, like he’d just seen lightning decide to sit down and talk politely.

  ? ? ?

  We walked back to the temple through knee-deep puddles, clothes clinging like wet hide. The air steamed. Behind us, the glass dome shone clean and unbroken, water sliding off its curve in silver threads.

  Inside the main hall the other apprentices stared. Somebody whispered, “She stopped the storm.” Kam gave me a sideways look that said don’t you dare say a word about it.

  He marched me straight to Luke Skywalker’s office—a room that smelled of tea and old datapads and the faint ozone of lightsaber maintenance. Luke was behind his desk, sleeves rolled to the elbows, fixing a holoprojector with the calm precision of a farmer repairing a fence.

  “Found her in the hydroponics,” Kam said. “Storm nearly tore the dome loose. It… didn’t.”

  Luke looked up, eyes as mild as morning. “Didn’t?”

  Kam rubbed the back of his neck. “She was humming. The air went still. The sensors flat-lined like there was no wind at all.”

  Luke’s gaze moved to me. “Is that true, Kae’rin?”

  I nodded, shoes squeaking on the floor. “I just wanted to hear the storm.”

  He gestured toward the spare chairs. “Then sit and tell me what you heard.”

  ? ? ?

  I told him while he poured three cups of tea: the rain like a thousand tiny drums, the glass singing, the fear note everyone made together, and how the song wanted to answer itself. He listened without interrupting, hands folded, head tilted the way you tilt to catch the faintest sound.

  When I finished, he said quietly, “You didn’t stop the storm. You joined it.”

  I brought my cup of tea closer. The steam smelled faintly of mint and iron.

  Kam exhaled. “You think the Force did that?”

  Luke smiled. “The Force doesn’t like being lonely. Sometimes it looks for someone to sing along.”

  We sat in silence. Luke thoughtful, Kam trying to come up with an answer, and myself too busy thinking of possibly the worst idea I’ve had all day.

  “You’re safe,” Luke said finally. “The dome’s intact, the plants are fine. But next time, take a friend with you. The Force may listen to you, Kae’rin—but it’s always safer to have someone listening for you, too.”

  I promised. I meant it, mostly.

  Before Kam ushered me out, Luke called softly, “One more thing—what were you humming?”

  I thought for a second. “I don’t know. It just felt right.”

  He nodded, half-smiling, already distant in thought as he turned his attention back to the disemboweled holoprojector.

  “Keep that feeling. It’s rarer than power.”

  I turned toward the door, then paused, going along with my idea.

  “Master Skywalker?”

  He looked up from his desk again, a magnifying glass on his face making one of his eyes enormous.

  “Yes?”

  I tried to keep a straight face but failed.

  “The tea, Master,” I said, grinning. “It was luke-warm.”

  He groaned, Kam choked on his tea, and I ran before they could decide if that deserved detention or applause.

  ? ? ?

  That night, thunder still rolled over Yavin’s jungles, but it sounded friendlier somehow. I sat by my window with my hands hugging the soft glow of the cube, listening to the world breathe. The lightning painted the sky in silver veins, and I tried to match its rhythm under my breath.

  Maybe the world was singing to me.

  Maybe I was singing back.

  Either way, the tune felt right.