TexasDreamer01

There was a tickle at her side, and Shmi smiled into vaporator she was fixing. A tiny trickle of a breeze fluttered a loose lock – it cooled the sweat collecting at her temple, easing a distraction she had only idly been aware of.

Anakin had been gone with the Jedi for 531 days. She didn’t know if he was eating, or had enough water, or how his lessons were going. Not really; only the faint press of ephemeral fingers against her skin, and the river-cool sweep of reassurance at the back of her mind.

She leaned into the pressure at the small of her back, pushing off her knees to inspect the vaporator. A few others – those wise enough from the strangeness that had seen – had given her solemn, knowing looks at the way Shmi seemed to interact with a nonentity that didn’t exist. That was alright; it was the Force, the same that gave her Anakin, and took him away, that had stayed by her side since she first yearned for a side to be occupied.

A few stories came to mind as she switched one hydrospanner for another of smaller gauge. Of a Chosen One, of course, that would walk twixt the stars and break every slave’s chains. Of those who would rally to this chain-breaker’s cause, but at great and terrible cost.

But there was a quieter story – one that spoke of a beloved, that would bear destiny upon their shoulders, whose dignity would be quiet and travailled. One who, Shmi recalled, feeling the warmth not her own suffuse her limbs with invigorating energy, would carry the love of the Great Mother, be wrapped in its protection until it came time to join the wild stars that danced in the night.

It would be 532 days, soon, with the setting of the suns. Shmi would keep her faith, binding her and surrounding her with a steady affection that was luminous and uneclipsed by a mortal form. For who better would know the return of a prodigal son than another mother?