In the dream she was kneeling upon a hill, the scent of smoke choking and thick in the air. Nivoe could speak, though - she could think. Across from her, between them a small obsidian table, was her mother. In the distance, the Veles colony was on fire, illuminating the horizon like the galaxy’s largest bonfire.
Mother was calm, as ever. She could, in fact, be charitably described as frustratingly unflappable, enough so that Nivoe was doubtful for a moment that this was actually a dream. Typical as ever - rarely did she deign to grace either of her daughters with a smile, projecting perfect patience with all the grandeur of an asteroid slowly drifting through an atmosphere on its way down to the surface. Terrible and majestic at once, neither of them often wished to court her displeasure.
She was the wisest person Nivoe knew, however, all the more striking for her lack of connection to the Force. A connection both she and her sister Koyee shared in common. But what she lacked in this, she made up for in faith, the portrait of a proper Mirialan woman. All her mother’s lessons were suitably described in anecdotes, poetry and analogy, all the better to perfectly infuriate a younger version of herself, and to inspire her sister with. Nivoe looked up into the stars above them, still clear and visible despite the flaming horizon - she felt terribly sad once again for Koyee.
Sad and afraid in about equal measure.
Anyway. She looked back down, eager to get this over with, to wake up again. Mother was staring at her patiently, waiting for the first move. The same dream as usual, Nivoe knew in the back of her head, the place where she could think but not affect anything at all, that her words were already predetermined.
“Mother,” she asked, as she always did. Only the place was different - and the burning colony was a new, disconcerting touch. “Why did they fight for so long?”
Her voice was younger, somehow - a difference perhaps only perceptible to herself, not that anyone else was in her head to listen. Words she had spoken in the past, memory and dream co-mingling.
Mother sighed, shutting her eyes - hers was a face resplendent with perfect shapes, markings that spoke volumes without a single word uttered. Diamonds covered her cheeks, triangles in rigid, alternating patterns along her brow. Nivoe knew what was coming, yet she leaned forward in anticipation anyway.
“Imagine a river,” Mother began. “Where does the river spring from?”
Rivers were not common on Mirial, which had confounded her at the time - but she was educated well enough, and Koyee reported back stories of verdant places.
“A lake. A mountain?” she ventured, withering under a flat stare before attempting, “An ocean?”
“Rivers stem from a source, girl. As with all of us, from the same source. And all peoples form their own rivers, unique and winding, with forks and off-shoots. A great, coursing river that is the foundation of all life. You ask about why people fight, why they bleed and die - it is because their river has led them to this.”
Nivoe was confused, but silent. The explanation was not done.
Her mother looked towards the burning colony, serene. “And all wind back, eventually, to that singular river again, when the Force dictates it time to curve back. To rejoin. Each river is unique, as are all people, and each path they take. They fight because that is the fork they chose to paddle along, and they have chose it so consistently, so adamantly, that to consider another branch would be to betray themselves. The branch, then, becomes the river - and there is no returning, after a certain time, save to that first origin point. You cannot paddle upstream.”
“And… even this will lead back eventually?” Nivoe ventured, hesitant.
“All return to the Force,” she replied evenly.
They were discussing, in a round-about way, the war. The other war, the one that came before - the one Koyee, at the time, had been fighting in. Koyee had left to become a Jedi so long ago that Nivoe had to remind herself what she looked like with the help of datapads. But she kept in contact, enthused and optimistic for the most part. The wars were ongoing by then, and at that point the Jedi were still watching and pondering what to do. Another of their brethren had come to take her, and one day it would be Nivoe’s turn.
Quickly the tone of her sister’s messages became bleak. The suffering she heard of and witnessed personally, the injustices, the ravaging of entire worlds as the Mandalorians sounded their barbaric howl unendingly. Nivoe had asked about this to her mother as well, and had received a similarly cryptic response. Such was the way of people, of rivers and the Force. Fate writ in deeds.
But her mother’s tone began to change, slowly, in lockstep with her errant daughter’s messages. A bad feeling, perhaps - never had she used a power or conjured a miracle, yet she had an uncanny insight just the same. Koyee gradually became excited - optimistic, even, once again. The tide was turning. She had joined a new faction within the order, one that was not afraid. Nivoe had wondered at that time, too, why Mother was not more happy.
“The Jedi, too, have found their branch,” she said abruptly, within the dream. “Yet not all follow it.”
Had she ever actually said this, or was this a trick of artistic license from an older Nivoe’s mind?
It did not matter. Nivoe continued her studies, learning the ways she could manipulate the Force, perform minor feats and deeds. She was very good with words, precocious and eager to learn while her sister fought on strange planets against savage men. She received her first markings, and pride had filled her near to bursting. Mother continued to watch from the sidelines, as she did now, in this dreamscape, silently judging.
When victory for the Republic came, Nivoe was excited to see Koyee again, to hear of all that had happened, and to console her however she might. She’d spent the years studying war, studying people and their ways, wondering why so frequently they came to blows, shaking her idealistic head back and forth in chastising sorrow. To get her dear sister away from that, to put her back on the path of peace and understanding, seemed a matter of the highest import.
But she never came back. Revan and his people vanished. Mother had not the words to explain it, and spent great amounts of time contemplating what might come next. Nivoe waited, fitful, watching their family datapad for updates. She taught herself patience and calm, took pleasure in simple things, and wondered when a Jedi would come to take her away as well.
But no Jedi ever came. None of the Mirialans who joined with Revan returned, and those from the Republic who did show up, a rarity, they brought no tidings. It was a mystery.
In the dream, these visions were starker, more compact - like snapshots of a malfunctioning hologram, showing off random bursts of an important missive. All the while, the colony burned, all the while did Mother sit there. Why here? Why Viscara?
She still didn’t know. One day, she came home and found her things packed. She was to leave - no Jedi would be coming for her, but someone else might. Warships, curved and elegant weapons of destruction, were soon to appear in their skies. The Mirialan people would submit - they would have no choice but to cooperate. Those who had joined with Revan were strong now, strong in strange and disturbing ways, and they would ensure the compliance of their people.
But Nivoe would have nothing to do with that. Koyee had sent a new message, finally, and in it she told Nivoe she could not wait to see her again. That everything would be different soon.
Mother believed it. Enough so to send her last daughter away immediately, where she could maintain some semblance of innocence and idealism. Away from home, and away from family. Eventually she had come here - inevitable, like water rushing down a stream.
“Then why is it burning?” she found herself asking, abruptly in command of herself. Soon the dream would end, this reminiscence already fading back into memory. “What can I do?”
But it wasn’t Mother anymore.
“Don’t be silly, Nivoe,” Koyee said, her markings obscured by midnight robes. She was grinning. “There’s only so much one can do.”