It struck her a hammer's blow as she guided the little craft through the clouds of this mysterious planet. Reaching now to enable a complete sensor sweep, her initial thoughts were verified: not one building gave evidence of any kind of civilization, yet this place crawled with life. And the presence, the very essence of that teeming lifeforce impacted her through her connection with the All, nearly staggering her until with some effort she regained her self-control once more.

She smiled a wan little smile and blinked, now moving her hand to idly stroke M'wonBo'o's head. That fearsome companion whined like a newborn kit, and immediately responded by twining one of his face tendrils about her leg, as he had been wont to do of old.

"You shall find prime hunting here, my friend," she whispered as Chosen One continued its descent. She stared at the viewscreen, her heart leaping into her throat as she waited for the clouds to clear enough to reveal her destination to her. It took awhile, but finally a murky, misty image of seemingly nothing but plantlife ranging from tiny ground mosses to towering gnarltrees replaced the former blank white of cloud cover.

For a moment she closed her eyes before that primal image, visions of wondrous technology and luxurious suites scrabbling against her eyelids. But when those violet eyes opened again, the look in them was clear, the meaning behind that look something not quite resigned.

She turned to the two tuk'ata. "Perhaps I shall find something of myself here, my friends," she whispered, stroking each in turn. Her hand paused on G'hrr's sleek head. "I hope one day you may once more be at the side of my son, but only Khaandon alone knows if this is to be your destiny. In the meantime, I am pleased you have join with my own Blood-Hunt companion in coming here with me."

Here. To this place of mystery, and utter singularity in the galaxy. A place of gnarltree and nightbat and spotlight sloths and carnivorous fungi. To many in the known galaxy this place was nothing but a creeping horror, one filled with bog and mist and crawling things. But to one seeking surcease from that galaxy, seeking self, it was perfect. More than perfect. For by the very beauty and purity of its wilderness it quite simply demanded one reduce oneself to that almost naivete which is the foundation of one's very being.

It was here on Dagobah that she hoped to find unity between Jharmeen JhinDar, the Chosen Daughter of the Sith, and the Lady Q'utaro of the Warrior clan. Hoped to discover, reaffirm, and strengthen that single thread running through each of her persona, and in that finding strengthen herself.

Her former life was irretrievable. But while she breathed there was yet a life ahead of her... and she meant to find its meaning here.

She quieted her thoughts then, her hand laying atop M'wonBo'o's head, and returned her gaze to the viewscreen, watching as the boggy ground came nearer and nearer until a slight shimmy reported that they had at last touched down. Chosen One remained steady, then suddenly canted a bit to one side as the unfirm ground trembled and shifted beneath her weight. Then she finally settled, tilted fifteen degrees to the port, and began adding her own puffs of gas and vapor to the noisome mixture this planet's atmosphere already boasted.

--------------------

But at last it was done. Granted, it wasn't much to look at; that would come with time and small finishing touches. But ugly or not, her home was done.

And it had been constructed by her alone, without the use of the All. There was just something about this place which stayed her hand in that regard....

She smiled to see her little mud-wattle house, strengthened with a clay-and-swampgrass mixture and boasting gnarltree limbs as its structural framework. It was a far cry from the grandeur of those quarters in the Sith Temples she had become accustomed to, but strangely enough the one-room dwelling crafted by her own hands was somehow more...

Comforting.

Wiping her muddy hands on the tattered remnants of the Sith robe she was wearing, she ducked her head and entered the short doorway. The woven-grass curtain closed off the interior from the rest of the dwindling Dagobah twilight, blocking what dim light still existed in that wilderness and making her little house nearly as dark as night. She moved to the small fireplace she had fashioned -- and with great effort -- and managed to strike tinder and get a fire going. Soon the crackle of burning wood filled the house with its charm -- as well as with some smoke, for there was scarcely a twig of really dried wood to be found anywhere upon this entire planet. Wrinkling her nose against the acrid smell, she turned away from the fire then to view her finished home yet again.

It consisted of one room, with raw-branch beams laid overhead in turn supporting a roof made of smaller branches, each of those woven as best as she could get such unwieldy things to do so. Over the top, more mud and clay, and then a thick, and she hoped rain-sluicing, thatch of swamp grass. Four crooked walls, curving to meet each other, each boasting irregularly shaped open windows with woven grass shades to keep out the night. More woven grass mats on the floor... and across from the hearth, a ledge she had built up from load after load of clay and grass upon which she piled mosses and leaves and more grass when it dried. This was her bed.

And in the middle of the rough ceiling overhead, a hole to let out what smoke that might refuse to exit via her inexpertly designed chimney.

She sighed and moved over to the bed, sat down upon it. A far cry from the luxurious silks and satins and cushions she had had, it nevertheless held a soft magick all its own. The mosses felt like the richest of velvets, the grasses like the smoothest satins. She lay down amidst the green things, snuggling a bit as if to test their ability to maintain that illusion for any time longer than a first impression.

The bed never had a chance to pass that test... or perhaps, it did so with flying colors.

Jharmeen had scarcely laid down when her eyes seemed to close of their own accord. Not caring as to her muddy and torn and bruised condition, she was soon fast asleep, sleeping a sleep born of satisfied exhaustion.

Yet into that sleep there came nightmares of the betrayed....

Out in the crying, crawling Dagoban night, crouched in self-imposed sentry on either side of the tiny dwelling's door, the too-large tuk'ata lifted sleek, tendriled faces to the canopy over head and yowled to hear the cries and thrashings coming from inside the little home....

--------------------

She shivered, sitting up, flakes of dried mud and clay falling from her as she did so. For a moment she sat there in the darkness... then she slid from her rough bed, taking much of the grasses and mosses there to the floor with her, and moved to the clay fireplace. Her hands trembled with cold; while the overall temperature wasn't that bad in the swamps here on Dagobah, the extremely high humidity put a chill into her very blood that she found difficult to completely eradicate. Somehow she managed to strike a flame into life, and sagged down on the mud floor of her home in front of its tiny crackle.

Her chest tightened as she fought sudden tears, the crack in the hearth she had fixated upon growing wavery in her watery sight.

How could she live like this. Whatever made her think she could survive, either physically, mentally or emotionally. She was no Grand Master of mystical powers come seeking further knowledge and enlightenment; she was Jharmeen Q'utaro, come here out of lack of anyplace else to go, destined to live out the remainder of her days in haunting loneliness, pining for her husband and her son....

No.

She clenched her teeth, sniffling at that.

No. She would not give in. There was nothing to grieve for here; she had only to be patient, and the truth would be revealed to her. For as she saw matters, there were two reasons her love had fled: he simply had to, and wished not to place her in whatever danger he suddenly found himself in; or, indeed, he desired to flee from her, and her presence in his life.

In either case, running to find him would serve no useful purpose. If he loved her as she yet so strongly believed, and if circumstances allowed, he would return for her. And if not...

And if not.

She sighed and rose to her feet with that thought rampant in her mind. The little flame crackled, popped, and seemed to grow a smidgeon in height and strength.

If not then she indeed had been used, and would be used no longer.

Coming up to her feet now, she brushed her hands against the shreds of the once-royal Sith gown she yet wore. A rueful smile came to her lips as she considered herself.

I am yet something of the Lady Q'utaro, Chosen Daughter of the Sith! she cried out defiantly into the vastness of her memories. My path may have been altered by the realization of my destiny... but there is no need to grub in the mud like some little slimeskipper.

Holding her head high, she quickly left her little home, the two tuk'ata leaping to their feet at the sight of her. They came to her, wrapping their tendrils about her as if to reassure themselves that she was safe and sound; she laughed, disentangling herself and stroking them softly.

Then she headed off to where she had left the Fighter and entered it. Within she found the tiny but functional 'fresher; it was a blessing to have the sonics sluice the grime from her body, a relief of sorts to remove that robe of royalty and clean herself from head to toe.

Then she exited, thought a moment, and garbed herself in her practice Doba, which had mysteriously found its way here into Chosen One.... as had the Tooth of S'slan she found laying nearby.

She frowned, staring at them thoughtfully, before affixing the belt of the Sith flightsuit around her slim waist and attaching the Tooth to that in turn. Then she exited the ship, turning to use the All but once to shield it from any other than All-users, before setting out into the Dagoban swamps, there to find whatever it was she was looking for.

[ 02-16-2003 01:42 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

She couldn't help but be fascinated by this world, as pain-filled as was her heart. Indeed it possessed a wild and haunting beauty not many could understand; with a start of recognition, she suddenly realized just what it was from which that beauty originated.

It was life itself, life which thronged on this world nearly to the extent it did on the more technologically advanced one of Coruscant. Life whose heart beat with every pulsing vibration the footsteps of some unknown passing beast made upon its soils, life whose breath exulted with every puff of moisture-laden wind. Life so abundant she just wanted to leap up and reach out her arms and grasp it for the sheer joy of the connection...

Life which lay cooling in the jaws of M'wonBo'o, who whispered up to her from the cool green shadows to lay the body of a small mammal at her feet. He twined a face tendril about her leg, whined again, and backed off to where G'hrr was hovering anxiously in the background.

Graysith stared at the small body, it's fur reflecting a soft violet from the glow of the Glyph yet alive on her forehead.

Life offerred and given on this small scale, that life on that small scale could continue. Just as this same cycle continued upon the far, far grander scale that was the Universe.

She smiled wanly, then raised her eyes to her tuk'ata. M'wonBo'o whined like a puppy who has just fetched a stick for his mistress.

"Thank you, my friend," she said. Then as the sleek predators bounded off into the shadows to seek fare of their own, she went about the somewhat daunting task of transforming this creature from dead mammal to food. For that she needed utensils, and utensils she had not.

She sighed then, placing the animal in a pouch next to her Tooth, and went off in search of her claybank once again. Time to make a cooking pot, and maybe find some tubers or nuts or berries to augment her simple meal.

[ 02-16-2003 05:55 PM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

For while he was evil, he was a crafty evil... An evil that not only existed, but existed to infect and grow...

Graysith had long ago brought that evil into herself, thinking it would help her to conquere him, thinking she would be able to withstand his dark touch... But such evil is not just cast away into the wind, and now, that evil was his blanket, it was what now kept her from sensing his semi-dorment existence upon her... within her...

For when he had allowed his dark spirit to explode, he had bathed her in a shadowy spray, and remained quiet long enough for that spray to seep inward, imagine his delight when he found that a child existed within her womb, new the the universe, not yet holding full concious thought, not yet able to understand the universe...

Entaris was not stupid, no, he knew the strength of children born to this woman, knew that child could destroy him if he made a single wrong move... But entaris had again used the evil within Graysith as a stealthy blanket, disgusing himself as a simple part of the childs mother, untill finaly he had struck, with quick and soothing power, entering the childs being, and doing more then simply inhabbiting the body...

No more body snatchign would be done, no, for this child was young... And so entaris was actauly able to simply... Become The child...

His power was now within the childs very being, and unless something of great measure changed the threads of fate, he would be born again, with both the darkside, and the amazing powers born to all children this woman bore...

He was indeed a dark and infecting evil, and evil that knew no limits, no boundries... An evil that changed with the needs of the universe... Shifted so he could destroy those needs in an instant...

But shame, he was unaware of the outside world, his last sense being that they had landed on a quiet planet, before he had chosen to be reborn... But now his senses were limited, limited to that of an unborn child... Though his mind, his mind continued to grow and thrive...

And soon, soon entaris would be born again... Amazing to, for never had he been named to these people... Not once had his name been uttered outside of his trusted circle... So what meaning would it have to this woman, when she chose to name her son Entaris? was that not a fine name? indeed... It was the finest.

--------------------

The roasted meat was good, she admitted to herself as she scrubbed her Tooth clean. But I was so in the mood for soup....

She paused a moment, as once more her thoughts flashed back to sift through her memories, finding painful contrast between the heaped sideboards provided in the Temple with the simple meal of inexpertly butchered creature brought to her by her tuk'ata. Tears once more threatened in the corners of her eyes; she rubbed the back of one wet hand savagely against them, sniffling.

You know you can leave here, a little voice came into her mind. You have "Chosen One;" you don't have to stay here grubbing like some lowly creature trying to dig an existence out of swamp and mud and mist...

...but to go where? The rejoinder came immediately on the heels of that seductive whisper.

Back home, to Garos 4? To be imprisoned for the murder of her father, for she knew she would have to turn herself in to authorities there. Authorities who would notice the obvious: the Glyph upon her forehead, now an integral part of her very being, authorities who would undoubtedly not cease in probing and prodding by whatever means they could find until they knew the meaning of its mystery.

No doubt to then try to take hold of it -- or her -- themselves.

She shook her head, sighing.

Better they think she had died along with her father... if indeed word of her father's death ever came into their ears.

For indeed, in a way, she really had. All that truly remained was the entity called "Graysith," who could live unhindered only within the civilization of the Sith...

...and dared not.

She jerked her attention roughly back to reality at that, and carefully inspected the Tooth. Finally satisfied with the cleanliness of the only utensil she had, she sheathed it and stood up. For a long moment she merely stood there, watching the interplay of light as it faded yet still managed to bounce about within the mists which covered this lake in a cottony shroud.

Then she turned and retreated to her home, there to ponder the next mystery of life:

How in Hell's Seven Circles to create a cooking pot guaranteed to withstand its intended use....

--------------------

She was hungry, plain and simple. That little creature M'wonBo'o had caught for her hadn't gone very far in satiating her hunger, and now she found that, no matter how deceptively warm and peaceful it was inside her lonely little hut, she just couldn't sleep for the pangs of hunger which were growling in her belly.

She sat up, chewing her lip, then rose from her primitive bed and went over to the hearth. Drying there upon the clay were various and sundry tubers and fungi and leafy grassy things she had found growing, which she had plucked in the hope that they were edible and would provide her with something to supplement her meals. What they were, she hadn't a clue; if they were edible was an entirely different story. But a belly ache is a belly ache, whether induced from hunger or eating something one shouldn't; now she reached out a hand in one swift move and boldly took up a fleshy growth which had overlapping scales upon it. Pursing her lips, she broke off a scale, and raised it to her nose.

It smelled sweet and succulent, its very aroma setting her mouth to watering. The time for hesitation being long past, she tossed the scale into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. It had a pungently dusky taste, like a mushroom or a truffle. She cocked her head a bit to one side, waiting... and finding everything still seeming to be in good working order.

So she ate the growth in its entirety, including the stem.

Had she known, she would have avoided the latter. But she didn't know... and thus was utterly shocked when a powerful cramp siezed her midsection, doubling her over with a gasp of pain. She blinked, grabbing her stomach... and groaned in pain as another, stronger cramp welled up from somewhere deep inside her to send shards of blue-white pain shooting behind her eyes and stabbing into her head.

She fell to the floor, trying to curl up in a ball, soon losing all sense of self-control for the severity of cramps and seizures which wracked her slight frame. A cold sweat sprang out on every pore... her skin turned to ice, all the while the fires of hell raged behind her eyes in battle with the pain...

...and then a final, wrenching spasm shook her frame and she had a strange sensation of loss....

Her eyes widened, as she realized what had happened. A quick look verified that realization; her eyes widened in shared horror and pain and despair as she realized what might be the last child she ever would bear lay feebly twitching on the mud floor of a wattle hut on a planet of swamps, beyond help, beyond doctors or incubators or any assistance at all....

Frantic, she reached a trembling hand out to the tiny thing, so tiny it scarcely resembled anything human as yet. Yet it still jerked in her palm, life fighting to live.

It wouldn't live long, that was a given. Her head was bowing in despair when inspiration struck.

This is the last child of my love and I, and it shall not die! she thought viciously to herself. Oh that I were back in the Sith worlds... incubators are there which would save this tiny mote....

She drew up, realizing the only thing to keep this alive was herself... and her use of the All, for though the fact that this child was alive so far due to it's having the All beginning to sprout within it, she knew that would not last long without being within the warmth of its mother's womb, where blood and food and oxygen was provided for it. That beginning of the All to come into being within its tiny frame merely gave the wee little thing a fighting chance, a few seconds more in which to stave off death.

So she would help it.

She broke her own vow by calling upon her talents, the Glyph flaring on her brow as it used to do. Cupping the fetus in her hands, she reached deep within herself, and drew from her very essence that love she yet held for Recinis. Taking that love, she encased the little fetus within it, that it would find shelter within the warmth of that emotion. Then she drew open the curtain into the elseness, that mysterious place existing between one second and the next, and sent the love-enshrouded fetus into it. Once lovingly placed there, she further protected the tiny life with a chronotic shield, one barely the size of a melon, that nothing would stumble upon the last child between her and Recinis and threaten it in its highly vulnerable condition.

She closed that curtain like a mother drawing a blanket up to cover her babe for the night. Then she sat back, the after-effects now cascading upon her in a series of tremors and stomach spasms. But she gritted her teeth, enduring the pain, secure in the knowledge that her child was safe between the seconds, where time veritably came to a halt for it, and it would remain suspended, at a complete halt... not growing, just existing, just being there, and being surrounded by her love.

She had sent it just in time too, for even as she drew back she could feel the life essences within it had begun to abate. But that abatement paused, frozen in timelessness, and there the tiny mote would remain, locked in the place between seconds, ungrowing, simply halted, a tiny speck only weeks into life, and frozen along the track of that life in one minute corner of it held somehow in abeyance, until she alone would return to it, to pluck its non-state from that elseness and return it to the Sith worlds, there to finish it's full developmental term within the technological assurety of a Sith incubator....

...that it could be born as it should be born, and take it's place in the world of its ancestry.

As the stomach spasms began to finally dwindle she managed to get to her feet, and staggered to her bed where she plopped down with a groan. Still shaking a bit from this latest ordeal, she was just letting her lids droop that she could at last gain something of a restful sleep, when her eyes flew open as if of their own accord. Wordlessly, she stared at her ceiling, tears coming into her eyes yet again.

She didn't even know if the child was a boy or a girl....

[ 02-20-2003 01:11 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

She sat up on her bed with a slight groan, a hand going to her stomach as memory of what had happened flashed through her. For a brief moment she struggled with the thought of entering into that zone of timelessness into which she had sent the tiny embryo... then thought better of it. Every opening of the doorway into that dimensionless place would only bring something of reality to it, another second popping into life, if you will... and every second passed meant one more second closer to death her strangely unborn child yet was.

So she merely sat there, sighing to herself, considering and waiting for the searing pain of hurt and anguish to descend upon her altogether...

...to find that it did not. She blinked, now turning her thoughts to ponder this newest inconsistency... when it hit her square between the eyes.

The love she had for Recinis... she had taken it...all of it... and had used it to envelope that tiny mote, to protect it and give it succor in the long period of non-passing time it would have to endure... and in doing so had somehow diminished her own feelings for her husband and her son, Jharu.

That love was simply gone from her being, a better use now having been found for it.

She nodded to herself, swinging her legs from the bed, able at last to begin viewing the events she had passed getting to this particular moment in her life without the misdirecting curtain of emotional pain getting in her way. From this point on, the coolness of logic, and the warmth of love of life in general, would be her guides.

She smiled... marveling that she yet could. Then she rose from her bed and went out to face the new day, suddenly certain that the answers she was seeking would indeed be found here amidst the swamps and bogs of misty Dagobah, girded with the sudden knowledge that it would matter not if it would take that answer days to come to her...

...or the rest of her natural life.

--------------------

A thought struck her, and she got to her feet and went over to another gnarltree. There on its scratchy surface were yet other white spiders, all scuttling about, with one brave soul seeming to repeat the actions of its counterpart on the first tree at whose base she had been sitting.

Curious, she watched the antics of the spiders... and finally noticed something:

Those from the first tree always returned to the first tree, never climbing any other in their blind soirees off into the swamps. And the same was true of the spiders upon the second tree.

Now she began walking the pathway she had beaten through the wilderness, coming at last to the lake and taking her usual position upon the fallen gnarltree there. She gazed off over the silvery water, not really seeing it, thinking of those white spiders.

Then it struck her.

Each spider had its own understanding of its universe, its home tree. To each particular group, that tree was the only tree which existed. Beyond that was the excitement of unexplored horizontal terrains... but to their knowledge there was no other tree but their own.

Yet the swamps were full of such trees, each no doubt with their own quota of white spiders, each happily going about its own secret business within its own little universe until it managed to become brave enough to take the initial steps away from that universe... to never really explore the entirety of what was out there at all.

She blinked.

Had she done the same regarding the Sith?

A sudden chill raced through her body, not the chill of apprehension or cold, but of the type one experiences when balancing on the borderline of some great epiphany. Her hands steepled against her lips as she thought further.

Had she, she who thought she had learned so much, really been guilty of what Roan had accused her of: had her vision been that narrow minded, that tunnelled? Had she grown so accustomed to viewing the entire episode from one angle only that she was unable to see it from another side?

And perhaps... there were yet more sides, more elements to the picture? Was she wrong in retreating in such a panic from Lord Aelvedaar on the circumstantial evidence of Recinis being gone with Jharu, and mere words spoken by Roan?

There was a means of determining the truth, and that meant a return to Phrinnchatka.

But not yet.

Nodding her head to herself she got up from her seat on the log, and continued on through the Dagoban mists. Now that she knew not to eat the stems of the scaled fungus, she wanted to harvest more for her lunch, and she knew where a particular lush grove of them were sprouting.

She moved on through the swamps like a quiet ghost, trying to be one with them, ever alert to the life-cries which echoed and called all about her.

--------------------

She smiled a bit, her thoughts wandering back to one she had once heard tale of, an ancient Jedi master or some such, who went by the name of Yoda. She really didn't know much about him; her father had been more excited about proving his theories about the Sith, the true Sith race, than passing on information about jedi, which anyone could read in a history book if he so chose to do. Now she wished she had pursued the few idle questions that had popped into her head at the time: it might have been handy here in this place to know what it was exactly that the Master jedi did during his stay here.

But then, she mused, walking along and munching a fungi scale, perhaps that wasn't written. Perhaps no one ever really knew.

Her smile broadened a little at the sudden conviction that this planet more than likely held its secrets fiercely to itself, and that once those secrets had been taken from it, he who had mastered them was probably more than wont to do likewise.

Suddenly a sound came to her ears from somewhere in the shadowy mists ahead of her. It wasn't much of a sound, a sort of muffled crashing, interspersed with grunts and wet-sounding slaps. But it was a sound definitely out of place from the usual assortment of yowls and chitters she was accustomed to hearing; her interest perked, she slid the Tooth from its sheath and moved forward at a quicker pace, following it.

She came to a halt beside a grove of young gnarltrees, and with great care peeped around its perimeter.

There, rolling and scuffling in the moist vegetation were two strange creatures, all sleek body and sinuous movement and tooth and fang and claw. She held her breath, watching them scuffle, their claws seeking to rend, their teeth to clamp down and tear upon the flesh of each other. She watched them in detached logic, debating with herself the potential available to each based upon what physical features she could see, thus trying to predict an outcome...

...when out of absolutely nowhere M'wonBo'o bounded in and slapped them both into death with one fell swoop of his razor-clawed paw. His sleek head bent as he picked up the lifeless bodies; turning to go, he paused briefly and pinned her surprised gaze with his pupilless eyes. A small whine escaped from him. Then he bounded away into the mists, carrying off his meal.

Graysith blinked, then turned and continued along the path.

How fruitless had been her attempt at prediction. Which beast had been the stronger, which would win, who's power was the greater....

There was always something greater to strike one down. Not to mention the fact that, powerful though those two creatures had been, their physical prowess had stood them naught. Perhaps there were times when power was helpless, and other options would be the road best travelled.

Nodding, she quietly slid her Tooth back into its sheath. Then she continued wandering through the trees, simply enjoying the thronging life inherent to this place and the lessons it was teaching her, deeply content to be allowed the privilege to walk among it, so far, in peace.

[ 02-27-2003 10:41 AM: Message edited 1 time, lastly by Graysith ]

--------------------

Does it matter that such a concept would reflect a forward/backward timeflow? Graysith mulled as she wandered amidst the trees. Would not the sensation of an unending "now" be as eternal? Was this sudden recognition but a peep into that vast storehouse of power and knowledge finally accessed by the Sith in their last moments, whether those last moments were the mere minutes as Lord Aelvedaar would have had her to believe... or years?

She shook her head, backing up from the problem she had inflicted upon herself, remembering the spiders, trying to view the whole. And when she did, myriad tiny details seemed to click obligingly into place for her.

It was mere life. Being. The expression of the reproducing essence of the universe. Beyond it's self-replication, it was that portion of itself which brought purpose into the repetition of itself rather than representing a merely random copying of its parts. Life vs the non-living chemistry of it, although the two were exquisitely linked in a tarantelle of proportions so large it took a mage with years of study under his belt to come close to even managing the merest glimpse of this.

Lucky she was to have stumbled upon this tantalizing peek herself... and cursed. For where did it leave her; aye, where did it put the billions upon billions of entities which thrived throughout the universe, in particular those who so pridefully regarded themselves as being "sentient?"

She came to a halt then, the boggy soil oozing deliciously between her toes, as she thought. Gradually her features creased into a frown.

They were left with what the universe could give them in recompense for being able to reproduce itself through them: self-awareness of themselves, and the tiny bits of power for which they endlessly scrabbled. Cold joy when taken from the immensity of that to which they really belonged, but a joy more easily understood and accepted.

With a great start, she put herself into her own tiny position in the Grand Scheme of Things, seeing now that it was not merely the bringing of the Sith back to life which was her "destiny..." but rather the simple expression of the grandness of It All in but one direction that had laid her upon the road she had travelled.

It all suddenly seemed so small... so small.

Now she frowned, unable to help the emotional backlash the realization of own's own irrelevance brought with it.

She would not be reduced thus. No. Not after all she had borne... all she had given up. To be less than a pawn on a gameboard; intolerable!

Frowning she moved on through wilderness, coming at last to firmer ground. There she wandered like a ghost in the mist, her frown deepening as she went, as the more she pondered the more unacceptable the mere thoughts flowing through her mind became. On her forehead the Glyph, after being silenced for some length of time, burst into life and started ravening up the electromagnetic spectrum until its energies were electrifying the surrounding fogs and mists with their brilliance.

And thus it was the mages choose... and so many choose hermitage, unable to look at the minisculeness of what was once so grand and glorious about them.

Choose she would as well.

Her frown darkening, she wandered on, unseeing, the Glyph flaring with her thoughts, her feet being almost drawn in a particular direction until she suddenly and quite literally bumped into something. Her focus jerked outward, to find she had walked unseeing into the rough bark of an ancient, creaking gnarltree. It was a giant, and one of giants which formed a secretive little grove.

She peered into that grove, somehow disturbed by the darkness within it... yet somehow elated to have found it. Not letting her thoughts carry her any further, she stepped within the group of trees and came to a halt. A chill descended upon her, icing her veins; the atmosphere within that grove darkened perceptibly.

Not particularly frightened, she merely stood there, as if waiting for something....

--------------------

Her true emotions on the matter were revealed by the Glyph, which now flared like a supernova on her forehead. It blasted out its energies into the grove, arrowing in all directions through the dimness there, striking against the rough bark of the hulking gnarltrees... and yet was somehow muffled, as if it simply made no difference here at all and reflected the intensity of the tiniest of fireflies.

Then it came. She knew it before the actuality of the event. Her eyes narrowed to violet slits as from somewhere other four beings strode into view. They were not imagined, neither were they ghosts or solidified memories or products of wishful thinking or figments of her imagination. They were as real as the ground upon which she stood; their inexorable march to within mere meters of her was enough to make her draw in a breath.

They stopped before her, multi-colored eyes staring at her with unspeakable meaning, unguessable intent:

Lords Roan, Aelvedaar, Q'utaro... and Darth Wicked.

Once coming to a halt, they moved no more. They spoke no word... other than what their eyes were telling her. A wealth of memories and feelings and recognition burst upon her then, carried by the look in their eyes, and she actually staggered a brief step back before the onslaught. But even as she staggered, she knew precisely what was meant here, and what was being offered.

For it is for this that the motes within the universe scrabble. This, or--

She got a grip upon herself, straightened, and shot a meaningful look back into each pair of glowing eyes, lingeringly, one at a time. Paused while the universe revolved about its axis, considering.

Some would find succor in the mere offering... while others would reach for the stars, to put themselves against those flaring entities, screaming I am here! I am! I shall be! into their uncaring, nuclear faces. Some would be replete with the crumbs of miniscule contentment offered to one... others...

Not.

Her eyes darkened then as resolve thunked into her chest, spreading outward there from a tight little knot of growing darkness. Deep within her breast, the Beast raised its head in growing question and delight, moving aside a paw which had for so long hoarded a secreted little kernel... only to discover the kernel simply wasn't there. Instead a great fluttering of dustlike motes rushed upward, briefly dazzling and delightful to the eye, before they fizzled into obscurity somewhere within her psyche.

The Beast leaped to its feet, tossed back its head, and yowled in reply to the small, and effectively squelched, challenge.

Graysith smiled slowly.

"Not love," she uttered each word as though it carried the entire weight of planetary evolution upon its back. Perhaps it did. And it simply wasn't enough.

"I will take no profferred crumbs!"

With that she moved forward, rounding the foursome who merely stood there, turning as she did but not so quickly that she couldn't circle completely around them once. While the eyes with which each had looked upon her were lightened with the love each held for her... behind their backs each held a variety of weapons in his hands.

Her eyes slit more, a sneer curled her lips.

"Indeed...." she agreed then.

Then with a motion as quick as the explosion of tauri winds from a birthing star, she lashed out with her Claw.

The foursome dissolved into fluttering motes... to disperse within the darkness.

Her eyes grew even darker yet, as she considered just what it was she had discovered in this grove of darkness, what she had come to terms with...

...and the path she had chosen.

Now her eyes were black, and a smile even darker creased her lips. Her head held high, she strode from the grove, and headed back the way she had come, calling to the tuk'ata as she went. She bypassed completely the little path leading to her pitiful mud hut, for such a primitive dwelling suited her no longer.

She had found what she had come here to find.

The two tuk'ata leaping forth from the shadows at her command, she strode with purpose to where she had hidden Chosen One.

Moments later, she was in space, Dagobah dwindling in her wake.

--------------------

--------------------