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Her voice was clear through the Force, the words she knew as her code of life being repeated over and over as she prayed. Her mind was empty and so full, all at once.
Bela was meditating. She was finding peace, through it all.
She sat criss-crossed in a clearing away from the tents and stations of their battle headquarters in the deep jungles on the planet Felucia. It was the only place she would go to get away from planning their next moves in the war or the constant shenanigans of the clones.
It was peaceful being in one of the few open spaces in all the wilderness surrounding them.
Aayla respected her enough to ask her men to leave her alone for the time being, and her men respected her enough to oblige.
They were good men, the clones. But they were known to get rowdy following a successful charade. They had managed to push back the Separatist forces the length of several Republic command cruisers.
Their forces had been stationed on Felucia for nearly as long as the Clone War itself began. Jedi Master Bela Abagawa hadn't left the planet in a number of months.
Her first deployment to the jungle planet was at the beginning of the War, and it had lasted over a year until General Obi-Wan Kenobi had requested her assistance on the planet of Lysaria in the Core World region over a minor dispute that called for her swift use of diplomacy that couldn't be mimicked by a man as sarcastic as Master Kenobi or as chaotic as Anakin Skywalker. She had happily joined them and fellow General Mercilé Lyra, and she had witnessed firsthand the curious methods General Dahlil Starlight used with her own clone squad, the Bronze Squad.
Bela had the thought then, watching Dahlil and her men work together so smoothly and successfully as if they had learned all of each other's strategies and thought processes, so in-sync — that, one day, she might enjoy having a squad of her own.
But shortly after that, she was deployed back to Felucia with General Secura.
And that was where she remained nearly ten months later, in the deep, damp, dangerous forestland of the Separatist-occupied planet.
Even as she meditated, peaceful and without interruption, she could sense another presence through the Force and she knew who it was long before she could hear the woman's footsteps crackle atop the loose limbs and leaves of the dying trees surrounding them.
