Damasa and Nomi

On the night Rogue Ronto's entire crew spends on Damasa Kovani's island, Nomi Amersu can't sleep. Eventually she decides to give up trying and slips away from the place where she's curled up, heading toward the beach. She remembers seeing a pretty flowering bush earlier in the day, near the water's edge; maybe resting beside it for a while will help to settle her body and mind.

Between Nomi's sleeping spot and the bush are the embers of a campfire, started by Rhen earlier in the evening to cook up the day's catch of fish. Someone is crouching beside it, stirring the coals with a stick. As Nomi draws closer she sees that it's Damasa.

Damasa doesn't look up from the campfire, though Nomi can tell she's aware of Nomi's presence. The rhythmic scraping of the stick against the ashes doesn't stop. "It's okay that you don't like me," Damasa says, in a calm and conversational tone. "If I were you, I wouldn't like me either."

Had Nomi known there was someone there she would have tried to conceal her presence. She is tired, she just wants to sit and listen to the waves lap the shore and smell flowers. It's not often she doesn't feel like talking, but this is one of those moments. But, looking on the brighter side, at least being too tired to do much means she is also too tired to feel angry anymore. Nomi rubs the bridge of her nose and sighs. She stops, her face concealed in the dark, outside of the meager light of the dying fire and she responds. "I don't know that I dislike you. I don't know you. But it's true that I am angry with you and I understand that can outwardly feel like a general dislike, especially as that is the only interaction we have had - my yelling at you."

Nomi can feel her knees locking in her fatigue and she sits down on the beach, burying her hands in the sand until she reaches the more solid, damp layer beneath. "I recognize my capacity for feeling emotions can be both a weakness and a strength, so please no lectures, I don't have the energy for it."

Nomi picks up a handful of sand and let's it slip back to the ground through her fingers. "I've been mad at you since I heard Firith's memory of the last time you saw Lilikai. And maybe she would have fallen whether you said something or not, but what you did... You were her friend, Damasa. She looked up to you, whether you were seeing eye to eye just then or not. And I get that you were feeling betrayed, but friends don't just drop horrible prophecies about how your friend is going to eventually turn into the one thing in the whole world they most abhor and never want to be and then disappear never to be seen again, not a single word of possible redemption, not a crack for hope and light to penetrate the dark cloud of doom you've just closed around her. I didn't know it, but in context, in hindsight, the things she said, did and even had me do: She was ever thinking about this sword you'd poised over her neck and by the time it happened, I think she'd all but decided it was a forgone conclusion. What you did was cruel. And that is why it seems that I don't like you."

Nomi squints her eyes against the dark and her voice becomes softer in tone. She hasn't raised her voice at all and still appears more tired and resigned than angry. "But I guess that may not be how you remember it, is it? What do you remember of that day?"

"Why would I lecture you about feeling emotions? Some Jedi do that to you before?" The edge in Damasa's voice suggests there's a particular Jedi she's accusing of this. "Emotions just are. You can't stop them showing up any more than you can stop the sun rising or the tide coming in. What matters is what you do with them."

She leans forward, both palms flat in the sand to steady herself, and blows across the flickering coals. The flames leap back to life, casting her face in orange light and deep shadows. Sitting back on her heels, she extends one hand toward the jungle. Dry leaves and thin branches swirl in as if carried by the breeze and feed themselves into the fire. "I think the thing Firith's weird intrusive memory box failed to capture," she says, conversationally, "is how hard I tried. For years, I tried. Checked all the boxes the Jedi Order wanted me to check, because if my friends thought it mattered - well, then I owed it to them to give the Order a fair shot, didn't I? So when it turned out they'd been stringing me along - humoring me without actually believing what I said..." Damasa looks up to meet Nomi's gaze for the first time since the conversation began. "Tell me I'm crazy and ignore me if you want to. I'm used to it. I promise I don't mind. But don't spend years acting like you buy into the things I'm saying and then admit you thought it was bullshit all along as soon as the going gets tough.

"I'm not proud of how I said what I said. I knew I'd have to tell her someday. I hadn't figured out how. And when I got angry, it just fell out. I wanted to hurt her, in that moment, like I she hurt me. But I didn't mean for it to be the end.

"We'd fought before, about other things. She always came back and we figured it out. That time she didn't. Then my mentor died and, well, after that I knew my time with the Order was finally up. I guess we weren't meant to get the chance."

Nomi slips off her boots, which she hadn't bothered to tie earlier and slips her toes into the cool sand. She doesn't bother to answer the question about the Jedi teaching. It was likely rhetorical anyway.

She crosses her arms over each other and rests them on her knees, leaning her chin on them and watching the Force user's casual show of power and ability.

"You truly believe that, don't you? That Firith and Lilikai thought that you were full of it? That they were pretending to be your friends and go on grand adventures and risk their lives doing things that you thought mattered because they were stringing you along for some unknown reason that made that valuable to them? What did they have to gain from pretending to act like they believed you?" She shakes her head. "Lilikai never doubted you. She wanted to, but I don't think she did. She hoped the predictions you made would not come to pass and was always disappointed when I found out one of them had. When you fell out she just wasn't sure anymore that the way that you were going about fighting the future was how she wanted to. They both worked hard to stop the future you saw coming or at least make it less bad when it arrived. Why else would Firith have, obviously, spent so much time making this thing that he tasked us with bringing to you?  Do you even hear yourself? "She always came back" as in she was always the one making up with you? What about your effort in the relationship? And didn't get the chance? You know best of all what it is to make your own chances." Nomi is starting to get angry now despite her tiredness and she lets out an exasperated noise and leans back, slapping her knees. She looks off into the trees, purposely reining herself in and regaining control.

"You are the most doshing frustrating person to talk to. It's all..." She makes a gesture like a dog chasing it's own tail round and round. "I don't want to argue with you about what you did or didn't do or what you will or won't do about it. Obviously we are not going to see eye to eye on this and I was wrong for ever thinking that you would have some insight to give me on how to help Lilikai rise out the poodoo she has fallen into. I'm just going to have to figure it out myself. And mark you, I may not have foresight, but I am going to figure it out. No matter what anyone says." She stands, "Oh, and by the way? I'm proud to be her daughter." She bites off the further insult and stoops to grab her boots so she can stalk off to her original destination. This planet is horrible.

"Hey. Wait." Damasa holds a hand up and stares Nomi in the eyes. It's hard to say whether Nomi's blunt assessment of the situation has landed at all - Damasa has absorbed all of it with the frustratingly calm demeanor that only comes from Jedi training, giving nothing away about what's actually going on under the surface. "Your sister sounded like she was giving up on her. Said she wouldn't have Lilikai as a master anymore - that they both had made their choices, basically. But you haven't yet. Why?"

Nomi looks sad. "Somi is convinced Lilikai is gone. Or rather, that she never had Lilikai in the first place. She feels the love Lilikai had for us was selfish or manipulative. Maybe the sting is worse because her fall is related to the Force. I don't... Have the same sentiments." Nomi stands there, looking at Damasa in the dark, her fingers holding the top of her work boots. She owes this woman nothing, but her love of Lilikai keeps her taking.

"I think Lilikai's love is genuine and I think she was doing her best to make both of us competent at surviving for the time she knew was coming. Despite knowing what the invasion of the Temple meant, she jumped into the fray to allow me, us, the chance we needed to escape. She thought she was protecting us, and she does still. And yes, she made choices, but that doesn't mean she can't make different ones going ahead. Despite the apparent inevitability of her change, despite how she is acting now, I refuse to believe that she is dark at her core." Nomi shrugs "We all have darkness inside of us. It's what we do with it that makes the difference. I plan to remind her that she is good and she can act that way." A pause. "Because I love her. And when you love someone you don't just give up on them."

"Shit. You really think that. You don't just think the Jedi should want you to think she can be saved. You actually intend to do it." Damasa doesn't sound shocked or surprised, exactly - it's more like she's finally found a piece she was missing from a puzzle and fitted it neatly into place.

In the flickering firelight it's hard to make out subtle shifts in Damasa's facial expressions, but something changes in her posture in a way that makes Nomi feel like she ought to pay attention. When she speaks again, her voice is low and insistent, charged with a certainty that raises goosebumps on the back of Nomi's neck. Nomi has heard Efnir Kis make predictions about the future before, of course, and many times has later found them to be correct - but they didn't feel like this. Here, face to face, without layers of time and the artifact and Firith's likely-fallible memory to mediate her, it's easy to understand how anyone who heard Damasa make a prophecy could have been just as easily swayed to believe every word of it.

"And right now, if you try to save her, it will doom you both. You have to be able to see what she sees. To know what she knows. It is the only way."

Damasa reaches out to touch Nomi before Nomi has time to pull away. Long gnarled fingers anchor on either side of her face, just below the roots of her lekku. Something like a lightning bolt strikes Nomi where Damasa's fingertips make contact, coursing through her head and through her body all the way down to her toes in the sand. The searing pain that comes along with it lasts only for a moment and is replaced by an abrupt and growing awareness of the life on the island around her. Now Nomi can not only see Damasa in front of her but sense her - the breath in her lungs, the blood in her veins, the white-hot core of power at the center of her being. Nomi's awareness expands out across the island to encompass the flower bush, the stand of fruit trees just beyond it, Efnir sleeping farther down the beach, Rhen and Sekar Mirah dozing lightly beside the catamaran, a hive of biting insects in a hole between two rocks at the peak of the central mountain. Then farther still, into the lagoon and past the reef, taking in seaweed and fish and Green Coral and all the other Sindonese in their cities beneath the waves...She senses all of these things as strands in a great unified web of life, covering all of Sura Sindo and reaching far beyond it, connecting everything and everyone that has ever lived or will live. For just a few heartbeats Nomi feels herself connected to the energy at the heart of all things and knows it for exactly what it is. It can only be the Force.

The sense of connection ebbs, but doesn't vanish - Nomi doubts she could maintain this level of "plugged in" indefinitely while still holding on to her sense of self, but she can tell it's still there, tugging at the edges of her consciousness. Damasa is lying on her side in the sand. Unsteadily, she sits up, crossing her legs under her and turning her head to one side to spit out a mouthful of something thick and dark (blood?). Nomi can feel Damasa's eyes on her again in the dark, waiting to see what she'll do or say.

"Of course I..." Nomi starts to respond caustically, but then Damasa does her thing and Nomi stops talking, attention sucked into what is happening with the older Iktotchi. Upon Damasa's declaration of doom, Nomi is again about to respond with the fact that she's not Force sensitive and can't do that, but she'll be damned if Damasa's prediction with stop her, but is stopped by the Iktochi's grasp on the back of her head. Damasa grabs Nomi at the point where her brain is most near the surface of her body and Nomi's mouth opens in a scream but no sound comes out as first she is paralyzed by the intensity of painful sensation and then overwhelmed into silence by the sudden inflow of sensory data. Nomi is a dichotomy of feeling and emotion, just as the Force is both dark and light. She feels awe and anger, happiness and terror, an overwhelming sense of love and an intense sensation of betrayal at her lack of choice in the matter. Nomi wants to lose herself in the Force and the sensation of life is all around her and that ultimately she lives to love, nurture and help and at the same time the vastness of what she has just gained access to in which she is just a tiny, insignificant speck is terrifying and she has no idea how to control it.

Nomi stumbles back from Damasa as the Iktotchan sits up, loses her footing in the sand and tumbles onto her back side. "What have you done?" she practically wails in frustration. For 15 years, since her sister started showing her own sensitivity and the girls found that Nomi had none of it, Nomi has lived with the idea that there must be some cosmic reason she does not have a feeling for the Force. She is not grounded enough; not sensible; is too volatile with her emotions; certainly could not be trusted to maintain the light side; loves too hard; hates too heavily; is jealous; and many other reasons she has come up with to explain her lack. All of these thoughts about why she shouldn't have the Force anyway pile upon her mind, fight what Damasa just did and tell Nomi it must be undone, even as she knows with a final certainty that it can not be. Tears streak down Nomi's face both in the wake of the pain and overwhelming beauty she experienced, but more like the ones she used to shed in private when used to rail against the universe for finding her unworthy. "What have you done?" she says again, more quietly as she tries to rub away the tears on her face, but they keep flowing.

"What I had to do." There's no cruelty or "gotcha" in Damasa's words - her tone is more thoughtful, bemused, as if her own actions have somehow surprised even herself. "I thought I knew a lot of things before I came out here - and I do. I can still see so much. But there's a lot I don't see, too, isn't there? The fact that it was all of you who Firith found, instead of Lilikai, instead of somebody else...it opens pathways that were closed. And it starts to make me wonder if..."

All at once she seems to register Nomi's reaction, and the emotional weight of what she's done to her. Damasa shifts uncomfortably in the sand, plainly at a loss as to what to do or say. She stays quiet for a long time, just sitting there, letting Nomi's tears flow as she adjusts to the new way of things. "I'm not going to say I'm sorry," she finally says. "I don't think you'd want me to say that even if I meant it. But I will say I wish this all could have been different."

Nomi snorts, wiping her sleeves over her face as her tears continue to flow, unbidden. "I wouldn't believe you even if you did mean it. And don't we all? Wish things could be different. Wishes mean nothing. Actions are all that we have." Nomi wipes her hands on her pants, trying to get the sand off of them so she can press her eyes and get her body back under her control. To no avail, the sand is sticky and she doesn't want to touch her face and eyes with sand on her fingers. She takes a shaky breath and lets it out again. Her emotions are better under her control, the sensations of the Force having faded to a dull roar which is more tolerable. "What is it... What did you start to wonder?" Nomi asks, a sense of fatality in her voice rather than curiosity.

Damasa rubs her temples. She looks exhausted - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, all of the above. Leaning forward again, she picks a decent-sized pebble out of the sand and flicks it toward the shore to plop into a tide pool (the Force at work here, obviously). "See that?" she says softly, jerking her head toward where she sent the pebble. Nomi's gaze follows the motion and she's surprised to discover that she can see in the dark like Vesper Syl'tine would, at least for the moment. Before the night takes away her vision again, she notices the ripples where the pebble disturbed the calm surface of the pool, spreading out to lap the edges and reflecting back on themselves to muddy the waters. "Can't tell what's at the bottom of the water now until you give the ripples a chance to settle. Seeing the future is like that. It's easy to forget, way out here, that other people are still making choices I don't know anything about. Skipping their own little rocks. Changing the conditions. And you guys? Are a big-ass boulder catapulted down from orbit at three-quarters lightspeed.

"You and your sister and Lilikai...that could have gone a lot of ways, back when she met you. Maybe in another galaxy you never meet at all. Or maybe you do, but after she trains you you don't stay in touch. It happens with plenty of masters and students." Damasa grimaces, not needing to say that it certainly happened to her. "But that's not what happened. You've still got that tie to her. Maybe your sister wants to cut it, but maybe you don't. And maybe that's something somebody can work with. Force knows it won't be me. But now? Maybe it can be you." She shrugs. "I don't know for sure. Always in motion, the future is." (The attempt she makes at imitating Master Yoda's voice is exceptionally unconvincing.)

Nomi gives her a begrudging small smile. "That's a lot of maybes. Actually, I have kind of always thought of myself as a boulder. I don't make little splashes... even if sometimes people didn't know what was causing the splash.  I am happy I have fallen in with others who share the same tendency and that it's not been too hard to keep us all together.  I guess that's the Force at work." She gestures around her. "Though, I don't think that I will ever come to the point where I am happy to leave my destiny in the hands of the Force. I like to forge my own way."

Nomi's tears have finally stopped, her body now just feeling dry. "You need to get rest. I'm going to go find some flowers to soothe this raw edge in my brain." Nomi stands and successfully brushes her hands on her pants, getting rid of most of the loose sand before she picks up her boots again. "I can't say that I am ever going to do better than not disliking you, Damasa. But at least I understand you a little bit better now." Nomi turns her back on the old Iktotchan and walks, a little unsteadily down the beach toward the flowering bush which was her original destination for the night. She keeps pausing to catch the feeling of this or that lifeform as it brushes against her new senses and to look at things which would be invisible to the non-Force sensitive she once was. She has to wipe a few more tears as she goes.