The Past...
She readjusted the crystals and sighed. Her patience was running thin, almost too thin for comfort. Perhaps, she thought, this was what the exercise of building your own lightsabre was for; to teach you patience. The crisp morning air of the planet brought with it a brilliant array of colors and smells as the ancient run arose over the cold foliage that surrounded her. In her consentration, she hadn't noticed that her camp fire had smoldered into nothing more than a few glowing embers desperately clinging to life.
Flicking the small switch on the hilt of her lightsabre, she tried again.
snap, crack, fizzle....
A dud, again.
Tavithi clenched her jaw this time and closed her eyes. She felt an urge swelling within her, an urge to simply throw the lightsabre as far away from herself as she could. But she refrained. She focused the positive energy around her into a small ball, and carefully suppressed her dark urges. That's it, she confirmed silently, this is a test of patience. Learn patience, and you learn how to arrange the crystals so your lightsabre works. She carefully removed the crystals from the hilt of the sabre and carefully fingered them into position once again. Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
"Tavithi...." the voice in the distance called.
She looked up from the sabre and signed, quickly but carefully slipping it into the inner pockets of her robes.
"Tavithi, what did I tell you.... you're never going to be a Jedi. The Jedi are a dieing breed. Is that how you want to end up? Dead?"
She shook her head and picked up a small bucket of water, extinguishing the smoldering embers of the fire that had so gracefully clung to life throughout the night. Strangely enough, as the embers faded into ashes, it reminded her of her own hopes and dreams desperately clinging to life and then fading away into ashes.
"Now, get to your chores!" her mother exclaimed.
"Yes, ma-ma."
The Present...
"Insightful and stunning, absolute brilliance!" Tavithi exclaimed and smiled. "I found the book to be exactly what a book should be, a tool that keeps you fully occupied. If you get bored of a book, what is the sence in reading it?"
The man across from her nodded his head and readjusted his specticals. "That is true, Ms. N'Sari, but tell me, why this book?"
The question seemed to catch her off guard. Of course, in a galaxy where books were published and written every day this book would seem lik enothing more than another stack of paper carefully bound together with a hard outer cover. Before she could answer him, her thoughts were interrupted.
"Paper books are so.... archaic, Ms. N'Sari. We have computers and droids for a reason. We have datapads and triquarters, and nanonodes, and polyphorms for a reason. They enhance the experience of simply reading a book into living the book. Now, if we turned this book into a holographic book capable of allowing it's reader to view and experience the book first hand in a holotheatre, we've got ourselves a best seller! It would be on the Coruscanti Best Sellers list in a matter of days."
Tavithi shook her head and snatched the book out of his hand. "You're missing the point, Xavier. The point is that you must imagine what is happening. Through imagination, you can experience the book through your own eyes. You can live the experience in your own mind."
"I don't like it," Xavier exclaimed and shook his head. "Not one bit."
She signed, nodded her head, and took back the archaic paper book. The book itself was not new, but a relic that she had discovered while parusing through the library shelves through countless datafiles. It had been stuffed back behind countless other books for an untold amount of time, completely forgotten by society in general. The book itself had drawn her in with it's tale of a young girl becoming one of the most powerful Jedi knights in the Galaxy after a ruthless Sith Lord and his apprentice tried to capture her and her brother in order to turn them to the dark side. The story itself sounded vaguely familiar to that of the Galactic Civil War, but historic interpretation software had determined that the pages of the book were in fact much older. The story had unlocked her own childhood fantasies of becoming a Jedi Master and saving the Galaxy from evil. Taking one last look at th ebook, she carefully slid it back onto the shelves.
All of that seemed like a distant childhood memory now...
She readjusted the crystals and sighed. Her patience was running thin, almost too thin for comfort. Perhaps, she thought, this was what the exercise of building your own lightsabre was for; to teach you patience. The crisp morning air of the planet brought with it a brilliant array of colors and smells as the ancient run arose over the cold foliage that surrounded her. In her consentration, she hadn't noticed that her camp fire had smoldered into nothing more than a few glowing embers desperately clinging to life.
Flicking the small switch on the hilt of her lightsabre, she tried again.
snap, crack, fizzle....
A dud, again.
Tavithi clenched her jaw this time and closed her eyes. She felt an urge swelling within her, an urge to simply throw the lightsabre as far away from herself as she could. But she refrained. She focused the positive energy around her into a small ball, and carefully suppressed her dark urges. That's it, she confirmed silently, this is a test of patience. Learn patience, and you learn how to arrange the crystals so your lightsabre works. She carefully removed the crystals from the hilt of the sabre and carefully fingered them into position once again. Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
"Tavithi...." the voice in the distance called.
She looked up from the sabre and signed, quickly but carefully slipping it into the inner pockets of her robes.
"Tavithi, what did I tell you.... you're never going to be a Jedi. The Jedi are a dieing breed. Is that how you want to end up? Dead?"
She shook her head and picked up a small bucket of water, extinguishing the smoldering embers of the fire that had so gracefully clung to life throughout the night. Strangely enough, as the embers faded into ashes, it reminded her of her own hopes and dreams desperately clinging to life and then fading away into ashes.
"Now, get to your chores!" her mother exclaimed.
"Yes, ma-ma."
The Present...
"Insightful and stunning, absolute brilliance!" Tavithi exclaimed and smiled. "I found the book to be exactly what a book should be, a tool that keeps you fully occupied. If you get bored of a book, what is the sence in reading it?"
The man across from her nodded his head and readjusted his specticals. "That is true, Ms. N'Sari, but tell me, why this book?"
The question seemed to catch her off guard. Of course, in a galaxy where books were published and written every day this book would seem lik enothing more than another stack of paper carefully bound together with a hard outer cover. Before she could answer him, her thoughts were interrupted.
"Paper books are so.... archaic, Ms. N'Sari. We have computers and droids for a reason. We have datapads and triquarters, and nanonodes, and polyphorms for a reason. They enhance the experience of simply reading a book into living the book. Now, if we turned this book into a holographic book capable of allowing it's reader to view and experience the book first hand in a holotheatre, we've got ourselves a best seller! It would be on the Coruscanti Best Sellers list in a matter of days."
Tavithi shook her head and snatched the book out of his hand. "You're missing the point, Xavier. The point is that you must imagine what is happening. Through imagination, you can experience the book through your own eyes. You can live the experience in your own mind."
"I don't like it," Xavier exclaimed and shook his head. "Not one bit."
She signed, nodded her head, and took back the archaic paper book. The book itself was not new, but a relic that she had discovered while parusing through the library shelves through countless datafiles. It had been stuffed back behind countless other books for an untold amount of time, completely forgotten by society in general. The book itself had drawn her in with it's tale of a young girl becoming one of the most powerful Jedi knights in the Galaxy after a ruthless Sith Lord and his apprentice tried to capture her and her brother in order to turn them to the dark side. The story itself sounded vaguely familiar to that of the Galactic Civil War, but historic interpretation software had determined that the pages of the book were in fact much older. The story had unlocked her own childhood fantasies of becoming a Jedi Master and saving the Galaxy from evil. Taking one last look at th ebook, she carefully slid it back onto the shelves.
All of that seemed like a distant childhood memory now...