Breeze-driven clouds of gold and warm pink, pierced by pinprick rays of murky blue moonlight. A hushed undertone of muddy, guilty brown.
Callista sweeps the floor in her new house, given to her by Kho. So much dust tracked in and kicked up in the process of moving everything in. So much work to be done. With her eyes focused on the task at hand, it is her mind instead that wanders.
She’d let her mask slip today. Whether it was slipping on or off, she isn’t sure. Sometimes she wondered what was really her and what was the person she’d been molded to be. Where does Callista Selkin end and Myree Tremene begin? Are they both the same? They both feel equally real. The innocent joy, the outgoing friendliness, the helpful, idealistic Jedi. The timid, quiet servant, the liar, the object, the murderer.
Sometimes the lines are so blurred between the two versions of herself.
“I know which one I prefer.”
Callista’s eyes flash, the colors of the world stain frightful yellow and hateful orange-red, and she snaps her head around to stare at Him. The Headmaster sits at her new kitchen table, hands folded in front of him and with that same smug, superior, slimy smile he always wore in life. “Hello again, my dear Myree.”
Her hands tighten around the broomstick and her pupils narrow. Her knuckles turn white, and in her grasp, the shaft of the broom abruptly splinters and shatters into dozens of fragments. She gasps and flings her hands up and away to protect her face, then trembles and grimaces in pain as she looks down at the slivers of wood piercing her palms and fingers.
The Headmaster maintains his smile. “Oh goodness, but you’ve made such a mess. Although congratulations are in order, I suppose, for finally succeeding at that…oh, what was it she called it…‘Breach’?”
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Callista hurries around to the kitchen sink and runs the water over her shaking hands, slowly tugging out the splinters and shards one by one. The bottom of the basin turns red.
Not even turning to look, the Headmaster chuckles and examines his hands. “You’ve been telling your friends about me…I’m touched, Myree. But shouldn’t you be telling them about yourself, instead? I think that’s much more relevant.”
“Tell them what?” she snaps at last, the final slivers removed from her palms but the bleeding continues. The Force’s healing refuses to come, her efforts too clouded with anger, her mind unable to calm. “That I killed you? They already know. They forgive me for that!”
“Oh, Myree…you told them a partial truth about that…but no, that’s not what I mean,” the Headmaster shakes his head, clicking his tongue disappointedly. “But maybe that just means you’re still playing the game? Perhaps you’re more masterful than I realized…or perhaps you just believe you have the edge. You haven’t forgotten my lessons now, have you?”
“What are you talking about?” Callista glares daggers over her shoulder at the pudgy Lannik, grabbing a towel and pressing her hands into it. “Playing what game?”
Turning around, she gets exactly the answer she dreads as she sees the Headmaster suddenly on the other side of the table, a Shah-tezh demesne board laid out and set in starting position. He gestures welcomingly to the chair opposite him. Begrudgingly, Callista sits.
“Why do you trust her, Myree? When she would invite you to be ‘nothing,’ like she is?” He questions her, gentle in tone but probing and gnawing in intent. He slides a piece on the demesne. “‘Nothing’ is how you started. I worked so very hard, and put so very many resources into correcting that for you, Myree, to put that Jedi parentage to some use. With just a little more time and obedience, I would have made such an incredible Vizier out of the Pawn you were, or an Infiltrator. You were something by the end! You took control, became your own Imperator for just a little while!”
“I don’t need a reason to trust her,” Callista growls, making a move of her own. “I don’t need to explain myself to you!”
“And what if she is using you, Myree?” the Headmaster retorts, his turns on the board effortless and smooth in response to Callista’s every move. “What if she is using you exactly as I used you? Exactly as her master used her? Have you questioned at all why she wants so desperately to find this ‘Artemis?’ Even considered that perhaps her intentions are not for closure, but for collusion? To free her master and toss you aside like an unwanted toy once you’ve fulfilled your purpose?”
Callista’s grey hazel eyes stare through the haze of anger and fear and doubt, not daring to lift from the game board to the Headmaster himself as she shakily makes an uncertain play. He simply laughs, countering swiftly and decisively and taking three of her pieces. “Of course you have; otherwise, I wouldn’t be saying it, would I, Myree?”
He vanishes in a blink of Callista’s eyes, as does the game board, leaving her with bloody hands dripping onto the stone table.
