Prelude to Eternity - Chapter 13

The pair met Malla early the next morning. Xepher was, surprisingly, the first to rise. He shook Xicanti - who feigned death at the sigh of his brother awake so early - and said, "I think we should take a look around so we know if we wanna stay here."

Xicanti yawned. "Why wouldn't we wanna stay here?" he mumbled. "It's real nice. An' besides, we don't got much of a choice. We stay till Han goes. Got it? Now lemme sleep."

Xepher sat back on his haunches and looked thoughtfully at his twin. "I didn't mean like that!" he said. "I think we should maybe see if we wanna live here. Forever. Well, maybe not for that long, but for a while. You know, instead of Coruscant. It's nice here, and lots cleaner."

That got Xicanti's attention in a hurry. "Stay?" he asked, leaping off of the pallet. Trax had to make like his name to avoid getting squashed by the sudden movement. "But we already have a place to live on Coruscant!"

"An okay place," Xepher countered. "This's a wonderful place. It's open and wild and free. We can go anywhere and do anything here. It's the best. How can a dirty old city-planet possibly compare to it?"

Xicanti had to admit that his brother had caught him there. "I don't know," he replied, frustrated. "But I do know I wouldn't wanna live here forever. Maybe for a few years it'd be good, just to try it out, but sure as sith not forever!"

Xeph rose, looking for all the world as though Xicanti had slapped him. "If that's the way you feel about it, then," he said dismissively, "you can just stay on that dirty planet till you die. Me, I'm gonna live here! Ya gonna at least come an' take a look around with me?"

Xicanti shrugged. "Guess so," he replied. "We'd better stay in the Dome 'till everyone else's up, though."

Xeph agreed, and the two were soon on their way to the lift, Trax in tow. When they were about half way there, Xicanti glanced over the side of the railing. "Hey, we don't need a lift!" he exclaimed, bashing Xepher's arm to gain his attention. "Either of us could climb this with our eyes closed!" The young thief vaulted himself off of the walkway, climbing down the vines every bit as quickly as little Trax.

Xepher shook his head. "You might be able to," he called, "but I'm sortta outta practice. I ain't climbed a wall or anything in months!"

"It's easy!" Xicanti called up to him. "Just try it out. Climbing ain't somethin' you forget easily."

Xepher shrugged. "Okay," he replied dubiously, "but if I break my neck and die, it'll be on your shoulders!"

Xicanti just grinned as Xepher climbed clumsily down. "You didn't do that very well," he commented as Xepher touched ground, "but you'll get better again after a while."

Xeph scowled. "I was real good at it before, so I can be real good at it again!" he snapped. "You just wait an' see - I'll be scalin' walls smooth as your ass 'fore you can even blink!"

"And how'd you know if my ass is smooth?"

"I don't. I'm just guessin'!"

"You'd better be!"

Having begun the morning with a fine argument, the brothers began their exploration of the Dome. Xicanti found himself becoming more and more aware of the area as they walked. It wasn't so much with sight and smell as with a gut feeling. :It feels... interesting,: he told Trax. :Much nicer than Coruscant ever felt!: :That's because so much of it's wild and free,: the little monkey responded. :Here, there've gotta be thousands of miles that have never really been explored. It's big and sandy and filled with hope. Coruscant's a bunch of metal with a tiny bit of living rock underneath. There's no soul to it anymore. Tatooine's filled with as much soul as you could ever want from a planet!:

Their walk through the Dome complimented Trax's information perfectly. The place was filled with as much soul as anyone could have desired. The massive trees looked down upon the lush, plant-covered ground as though they ruled the place; the birds and animals seemed really and truly free, as though they could leave any time they wanted to. Xicanti felt a pang of sadness as he reflected that they could not. Tatooine proper was much harsher than anything their beautiful little bodies would be able to withstand.

It was Xepher who first saw the Wookiee Lady. "Look over there!" he whispered to Xicanti. "The big tall furry one! That must be Malla!"

Xicanti shot him a withering look. "Really?" he asked sarcastically. "What gave it away?"

Xeph glared at his brother. "You don't have to get cocky! I was just makin' a simple observation."

"Yeah, Xicanti, you shouldn't jump down your poor brother's throat every time he states something obvious!" chirped a disembodied voice.

The voice turned out to be that of Lowbacca, Wookiee Prince of Tatooine, who had been especially quite while approaching. "Lowie!" Xepher gasped. "You scared the shit outta me!"

Lowie grinned. "Sorry!" he replied sheepishly. "I thought you'd a heard me comin' before now." He looked into the nearby clearing. "That's my Mom over there. You'll like her. She's really friendly, 'cept when Dad runs off and doesn't tell her where he's going. Then she gets really pissed at him, but most of the time she's great. Wanna meet her?"

Xicanti nodded. Lowie grinned again and ushered them into the clearing. Malla stopped with her work once she noticed her son and his friends. "Hello, Lowie!" she said pleasantly. "Are these Mara Jade's twin brothers? Your father told me a bit about them last night, and I've been wanting to meet them in person." She smiled at the twins. "I'm Malla, Chewie's wife and Lowie and Sirrah's mother."

"She says that she's Malla, my Dad's wife and the mother of me and my sister!" Lowie reported. To Malla, he said, "The one on the right's Xicanti, and the one on the left's Xepher. He can be okay, but he's usually slow on things."

Xeph scowled. "I'm not slow!" he protested. "Am I, Xicanti?"

Xicanti shrugged. "Sometimes you are, and sometimes you aren't." He turned to Malla. "It varies depending on the day of the week. He's always changin' his personality too. You get used to it after a while." He shrugged apologetically.

Xepher scowled again. "You're an asshole, Xic. I don't have multiple personality disorder!"

"I know ya don't. I was just tryin' to embarrass you."

Malla smiled. "That one's a lot like Mara!" she commented. "I think I'll like him, despite that point against him. The other one seems to be very fond of protecting his interests."

"She says you're a lot like Mara," Lowie told Xicanti. "And that she thinks she'll like you, even though she's not that fond of her. She also says that Xeph seems really fond of protecting his own interests."

Xicanti smiled, not understanding why Lowie felt it necessary to repeat everything his mother said. "Oh, he is!" he replied, giving Xeph a small shove. "But why d'ya keep repeatin' whatever she says?"

Lowie frowned. "So you can understand, of course!" he replied. "I don't expect you to know Wookiee."

Xicanti scratched his head. "Wookiee?" he asked. "But she's talkin' Basic!"

Malla looked at him thoughtfully. "So I talk in Wookiee," she mused, "and you hear Basic? This is very odd indeed!"

"Odd? It's more than odd!" Xicanti exclaimed. "I don't know a word of Wookiee! I can't possibly know what you're sayin' without Lowie translating!"

"You couldn't, but you do." Malla leaned forward and peered into his eyes. "I think these could have something to do with it. They are very unusual, you know."

"W-what?" Xicanti looked all around him. "My eyes? But they're just eyes! Nothin' special about 'em at all!"

"Or so you think. Eyes are very important, you know, and everyone's eyes are different. We all see things in profoundly different ways, and we don't always see with our eyes alone. We also see with our ears, fingers, tongues... whatever we have that we can sense things with, we use to see. Perhaps you have been given the talent to see, with your ears, my language translated into your own. Your eyes stand as testament to this."

Xicanti found that, once it thought about it, this possibility made sense to him. Malla thinks a lot like Chewie, he thought to himself as he replied, "I guess it's possible. I just never looked at it that way before."

Malla nodded. "I saw that. Would you be opposed to Lowie still translating for Xepher? Or can he understand too?" She looked over at Xeph questioningly.

"I don't think he can," Lowie said in Basic. "Look at his face. He has no idea what's going on."

"Ya got that right!" Xeph muttered. "All I know is that Xicanti sees stuff. An' from that, I get the impression that I don't wanna know what it's all about."

"Oh, it's nothing like that. We're just talking about how Xicanti's somehow been given the ability to understand Wookiee just like it was Basic, even though he's never learned it." Lowie gave a little hop and turned to Xicanti excitedly. "Say, can you tell what I'm saying now?"

"Of course!" the other replied. "What's the-" Suddenly, he realized what Lowie was doing. "You're speaking in another language, right?"

Lowie nodded. "Yup. It's pre-Republican Varntoge. Dad taught me a bit of it, so I decided to see if you could tell what I was saying if I used it. Evidently, you could."

Malla nodded. "This is a valuable talent you've been given," she told the boy. "Leia will probably want to make you a spy once she finds out. Such an ability would give you a vast advantage over the enemy."

The Wookiee Lady's words surprised Xicanti. He had never considered the possibility of becoming something more than what he had been born; now, he was beginning to see that he could be. I have all the necessary talents to be a spy, he thought to himself. I can understand any language, I can scale walls without a crack in 'em, I can move more quietly than a panther, an' I can fight as well as anyone'd ever want me to!

"That'd be great to do someday," he said out loud, more to himself than to Malla. "I'll have to ask Leia 'bout it when we go back to Coruscant."

Malla smiled at him. "You would do well in such a profession," she told him. "Chewie has told me of your heritage, and you seem to already have everything you need to become such." She gave him a small bow from the waist. "May your way be bright and filled with hope."

Xicanti repeated the gesture. "As may yours," he replied.

The small group spent a week on Tatooine to give everyone a chance to see what they wanted to see. Xepher quickly became enamored with the place, and spent every waking moment exploring. "It's really amazing!" he told Xicanti. "I mean, there's so much open space! A little danger too, but mostly wonderful, blissful open space! Sure as hell, I'm livin' here when I get older!"

Cahra also enjoyed the planet. "It's... different than Coruscant," she speculated to Xicanti. "The place's barren, and it looks like it'd be inhospitable at first. But once you've been on it for a while, you see how much life there is! It's everywhere, even in the sand."

Xicanti, to the contrary, found that he could never really take any sort of great joy in the place. Though he came to love the gut feeling of it, yet the barren, windswept landscape turned him off. He much preferred the Terra-Dome, with its jungle atmosphere, to the sandy desert outside. "It's okay, I guess," the young thief told Lowie, "and the colors the sand makes are beautiful. It feels right on the inside, but on the outside it's all wrong. I know that doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't really to me either, when I stop to think about it. But I know what I mean inside. I just can't get it to come out."

Lowie had nodded. "I know what you mean a little," he replied. "It's a good place to live once you really get down to the core, but since what you have to live with is the outside, it's not as appealing."

"Exactly!"

The Falcon left Tatooine's atmosphere at noon. Jaina and Jacen N. had elected to stay with Malla and Sirrah for a longer visit, while Jacen, Icky, Chewie and Lowie had decided to continue on. "It'll be better than staying around here for another few months," Lowie said to Xicanti that morning. "I need to keep on training you, too, and it'd be hard to do that from far away!"

The Falcon's next destination was Yavin IV. Xicanti spent most of the journey in the cockpit, observing how Han and Chewie flew the starship. He caught on surprisingly quickly; Chewie quizzed him throughout the ride, and soon felt he was ready to actually fly the ship. Xicanti agreed wholeheartedly.

"You know," the Wookiee Lord speculated, "if it were anyone else, I'd say they were crazy to think they could fly after a few hours instruction in the controls. Since it's you, I'm more inclined to believe it. Malla told me about the languages thing, and you do seem to have an excellent memory." He glanced at Han expectantly. "Can we give him a try when we get out of light speed?"

Han shrugged. "I guess so," he replied. "But he gets your seat!"

As they had nearly reached the planet anyways, Chewie pulled the ship out of lightspeed to give Xicanti a chance to try her out. His heart pounding, the boy sat in Chewie's seat and took the controls. Carefully, he maneuvered the ship about, banking slowly. "That's it," Chewie said. "Keep her steady."

The young thief did just that. He twisted the ship around once more, heading directly towards Yavin. Once he was sure of the controls and his handle on them, he slowly sped up. "This's great!" he whispered in awe, noting with pleasure that Han and Chewie seemed to share his enthusiasm. Who'd ever have thought I'd be flyin' around in a starship? he asked himself. I've come a long way in the past few months, an' not just in distance. I've gone from a thief to a Grey Jed, an' it's only gotten better from there!

:I never doubted it'd happen eventually,: Odin's mind-voice came. :You've gone places, boy, but you've still got a lot farther to go.:

Chewie took over a few minutes later. "Well?" he asked. "How'd you like 'er?"

"She was magnificent!"

Han grinned. "She always is, kid!" he replied, maneuvering the Falcon so as to make entering the atmosphere easier. Xicanti watched him carefully, taking note of how it was done. Someday, I'm gonna do this sort of thing, he thought to himself. I wonder how hard it'd be to steal a ship? I sure as sith don't 'ave enough money to buy one!

Everything went smoothly throughout Han's preparation. "Something's gonna go wrong," Chewie murmured. "Everything's too smooth. The gods are giving us an omen."

"Awe, you just shut you mouth!" Han grumbled to his copilot. "If the gods actually do exist - an' I'm not sayin' they do - you just cursed the whole landing. Something's bound to go wrong now!"

Han had no way of knowing how right he was. The moment the smuggler had finished his tirade, a wave of something hit the ship. Several startled cries came from the lounge, along with a couple of crashes. "We've hit something!" Han cried, grasping the controls to steer the ship away.

"I don't think so," Chewie replied, his voice surprisingly calm. "There wasn't anything out there before. It's something bigger than that. Something in the Force itself." He looked to Xicanti. "Can you feel it?"

Realizing that he could, in fact, feel a disturbance, the boy nodded. "I don't know what it is, though," he told the Wookiee Lord. "No one's gotten around to teaching me this sortta stuff yet."

Another wave racked the ship. Icky came running in from the back, Odin right behind him. "What happening Dadda?" he cried as he ran into his father's leg. "It shaking! All over!"

Han shook his head. "We don't know Anakin. Chewie, hold 'im for a sec while I try and see if it's a mechanical problem."

Chewie picked Icky up and held him close to his chest. The small boy clung on to the huge Wookiee as though he were the only thing left in the Universe.

:It's magic.:

Xicanti glanced down at Odin. :Whadaya mean?:

:Someone's cast a spell. We're feeling the effects of it now.:

:When'll it be over?:

:Once it's got what it came for.:

Xicanti felt a feeling of helplessness wash over him. Something's gonna happen, he predicted, and it'll happen soon.

He did not have to wait long for something to find its way to the Falcon. Almost immediately, a great wave of light materialized in front of the starship. Icky screamed as he buried his head in Chewie's fur. The light traveled towards the ship, gaining momentum as it came. It hit the ship hard, bringing darkness with it.

The last thing Xicanti heard before the darkness swallowed him completely was Icky's crying, coupled with Chewie's moans of protest.

Copyright 1998, Jadis Darkmore