A loud crash of thunder ripped through the sky.
Rain poured down in torrents against the young padawan, blowing her two braids against her face.
The familiar lightsabers clashed in the near distance as Verrac and Acaadi once again faced off in their timeless duel.
More thunder broke the cliffs and was joined by the zap-hum of the blades as they swung and blocked and countered each other.
Tara almost moved to join them, and she raised a hand as her mouth opened to call out…but she hesitated.
Something was not right here.
She knew this scene.
This is not happening…it has already happened…
“Has it?” Acaadi looked to her and spoke, as if sensing her thoughts.
And then there was a flash of movement between combatants, Verrac arched his back as he cried out in pain, Acaadi’s red lightsaber having made a quick slash down from behind, her master’s brown robe shredded and being carried away by the wind, and as the horrible image holds still in front of her, a single strand of severed blonde hair falls into her hand.
Tara looked to the strand, trying to focus through her muddled senses.
Then Acaadi was speaking to her again…
“…so caught up on the past that you miss what is right in front of you, effete.”
Then suddenly she was on a beach, and the strand of hair blown from her hand, she reaches to catch it as it drifts in front of her current master, the blonde girl who was her own age, charged with making her fit to be called a jedi again. Eyes red and bloodshot, cheeks stained, cradling something…or someone in her lap.
Again, Tara reached out, calling for her master, but her voice would not work. All she heard was that zap-buzzing again, a red glow tainting the young teacher’s skin.
It seemed to be coming from below…from her lap.
Tara tried to focus on the object she cradled there, but she should not see it. It was obscured, hidden. And then the sound of the saber grew louder, the red glow brighter, but darker at the same time, until what rested in her teacher’s lap suddenly erupted with Acaadi’s saber through it.
But was it Acaadi’s?
A scream penetrated her ears and then all was enveloped by shadow. All except for the saber, which floated in front of her. As if it was staring at her, taunting her.
Or trying at least. She felt no anger or despair, only a desire to understand as she looked on the saber. Slowly, she reached for it with her left hand, but as she lifted her arm, the limb was gone, leaving her stump cut off right above the elbow.
Then she heard Acaadi’s voice again. “You could not save Zhetta, what makes you think you can save her.”
His maniacal laugh filled her ears as she flinched and pulled away, shutting her eyes to the darkness.
But was it his laugh?
Or was it…
Tara’s eyes fluttered open suddenly. She gasped for breath and panted as she lay in bed. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling as her chest heaved in sudden activity. There was a little squeak at the foot of her bed from the little squall curled up there. Sound filtered through her door as Silvia or Dominic sounded like one of them were listening to a morning broadcast.
The young jedi lay in the bed, letting the images from the dream play out in her mind again as she stared upwards. She knew the imagery. The battle from the cliff the night she was thrown and her last master fell to the dark side. The hair and the lightsaber from Princess Sania’s prediction. The arm she had lost trying to save her former master’s first apprentice.
There was an ache and she reached over to rub at her stump to quell the phantom pain.
But who’s lightsaber was that?
The way it was taunting her, she knew it was not Acaadi’s, and there was something about that laugh at the end. It seemed familiar, but she could not put her finger on it.
Tara gave a small sigh, then reached over to her dresser to grab her dream-journal, and began to note down what images she could recall that were already fleeting.