The Beauty Found In Silence

The One Where We Met

The beauty found in silence is hard to see for some.

If you sit and listen hard enough, soundless solitude can drive a person to madness. Some people claim to hear the gentle thrum of the blood in their ears. Others claim they can hear an endless ringing like sirens, or that the white noise eventually turns into a violent scream within their eardrums.

For me, I hear silence. I don't hear the blood, the ringing bells, the scream in the ears; I hear peace. Gentle solitude. Tranquility. Rushing water.

Back home it was easy to find. Home was simple—consisting of mountainous terrains with flourishing greenery, deep blue waters with visible glowing lights after dusk, and waterfalls cascading from jutted cliffs stretching out from beneath a towering palace. The cities were loud and bustling with energy, but in the quieter spaces, in between the trees and flora, it could be found.

That beautiful, isolating silence.

It was incredibly dangerous to scale the steep mountain sides. More than once I nearly fell and got myself killed (maybe even got a concussion or two), but in the end, it was worth it. At the bottom of those mountains, the waterfalls finished their plummet and ended in loud, crashing waves that drowned out the sounds of the city.

Behind the waterfalls, though, was my own slice of heaven. Small caves could be found behind the most secluded of the falls, and within them was nothing but wet stone. Sitting inside those caves, the falls drowned out every sound imaginable.

After sitting there long enough, the sound was a background noise and became nothing more than white noise, and in those moments, I found my silence.

Alongside that falling water, all of my worries washed away from my conscience, and my mind was able to go blank. Sometimes I daydreamed behind closed eyes. Other times I sat and stared, but I never felt the weight on my shoulders.

I got good at scavenging, which wasn't for much on Naboo. After the siege on the palace and the fall of the Galactic Republic, anything with value could be found if you looked hard enough. Most of it was broken, though, so not a lot of it made me money.

Among the scraps and endless nights without sleep, I got good at piecing things back together. At first it started with little trinkets and small droids, and it eventually became piecing together blasters or on the rare occasion an engine or two.

It was a boring life, I'm not going to lie, but it was a busy one. It made it easier to thrive. I got lucky one day, though.

Deep within the forests of Naboo, a former military craft was in jaw-dropping shape. For a thing like this, I might've not even need to harvest it for scraps. I could've taken it and gotten off that planet. I didn't need to leave, I quite liked the planet, but hearing of all of the stories and adventures I overheard from travelers throughout the galaxy, I couldn't help but want to be apart of something bigger than just scrapping. So, I saw hope within that ship.

The door was shut tight, but it was easy to pry open after toying with the mechanisms wires. The ramp nearly decapitated me, and even if it did, the sight before dying would have made it worth it.

It was completely stocked and looked as if time had never touched the military craft. I might've cried if I wasn't so excited.

The control panel to the craft had a few of its lights out. As well as a few lights on, indicating needed repairs throughout. The heat exhaust vents needed cleaned, and the Girodyne sublight engines catalytic converter needed to be evaluated. Other than that, that thing could've been in the air in no time.

Somewhere beneath the metal floor, I had been able to pry it open and toy with the engine. The catalytic converter looked utterly depressing, but I had a spare in the backpack stocked with scavenged goods I had yet to sell. I was wiping off grease when I noticed the child.