Sylia sat on the pier with her eyes closed, listening to the life around her. Birds crowed, hounds barked, fish splashed. A breeze blew across the hillside, and she could hear it moving between the blades of grass. She could begin to hear a great deal more as well.
She felt her heart beating strongly in her chest, and the feel of her throbbing pulse at her fingertips. She could feel the cool air stimulating her bare lekku as it blew against them. This always gave her a rush, and she enjoyed it, but she needed to look past it. She let the feeling wash over her and pass, and she could feel other things on the wind. Insects buzzing, rotents foraging, pollen floating. She could feel the shellfish crawling about the bottom of the lake, and little amphibians hopping around it’s bank.
She could feel the lake itself as it fed out into the swamplands and from there, Viscara was a wide array of numerous life forms. So much more peaceful than what she felt coming nearby from Veles right now, and she kept her focus on that distant peace.
The force flows through all things. She could feel it connecting all things on Viscara. She breathed steadily as she meditated. In through her nose, and out through her mouth, air flowed all around her, between her and everything else on the planet. She slowly started to focus in on a couple of those life forms populating the bustling environment. She could feel them relatively nearby as they themselves trained in the ways of the force. There was the most familiar one, she knew as Sandra. She reveled in the presence of the woman who was her best friend and who brought her much happiness. Memories flashed through her minds eye of moments shared…hugs, talks, meals, and more. There were very strong feelings associated with this presence she felt in the force, but she did not dwell in them as comfortable as they were. She drew her mind’s eye to the presence nearby her, and she felt his hand touch her again.
Suddenly there were violent flashes of much older memories, Men surrounding her, lauging, grabbing, pinning. Her cries permeated the vision and she reflexively pulled away from the forms in her mind’s eye and just as suddenly as it started, it was over. She was back on the peaceful pier of the lake south of Veles, and she huffed a breath.
This is what she knew would happen. It happens every time a man touches her. But I don’t want it to happen with John… she thought to herself. He’s not like the rest of them…he doesn’t even understand what all that stuff means.
Sylia steeled herself and closed her eyes again, beginning to concentrate once more. Feeling the life of the planet as she did before, and then focusing her mind’s eye on the beacon that was her best friend, and then to the presence next to her.
Again the violent visions came, and again she flinched out of the trance. Again and again she tried over the next few hours. Again and again, she was startled out of the meditations. But still, she sat there, trying to get through to his presence, to allow herself to feel him in the force.
She gritted her teeth as she continued her effort. Steeling herself harder and harder, to force herself to sit through the violent visions. She trembled as the visions came again, but not so much visions as memories. Each laugh, each grab, each violation she suffered in her former life that came back to her, all men that had no care for her, and only wanted one thing. One particularly horrifying memory of a gamorrean struck her and she nearly burst into tears. But she forced herself to delve into the memory. She was determined to look this memory down its throat and destroy its hold over her. Not because she wanted power or to be strong, but so that she could do such a simple thing as hug a friend…
A friend who did not even understand the thing that all those other men had abused her for. And in that was the difference that made the difference between him and other men. She knew because he did not understand it, he would not hurt her for the sake of doing it. More than any other man on the planet, he was one she might actually be able to trust.
And finally, the memory passed, and another memory came, and another, and another. But none any longer held any bite to her. Her mind saw the gamorrean again, and she stared back at it.
“You are nothing to me now,” she whispered to the memoy.