As a child, she'd heard legends about the Jedi and their abilities and adventures. Her parents had always brushed the stories aside, saying that Jedi were nothing more than foolish idealists who thought they had the answers to everything and wanted everyone else to live their way. If she said anything or asked questions about the Jedi they would yell at her to keep her head out of the clouds, there was no time for such nonsense. Survival and the family business were all that mattered. So she avoided the topic altogether.
One day, when she was helping load cargo into the hold, she had reached out to grab a tether to strap three containers into place but it was too far away, just beyond her reach. She stretched and strained as much as she could fearing that if her parents saw her struggling they would lash out at her again, calling her useless as they always did. Suddenly the tether came to her! The loose end had risen from the floor and landed softly in her hand. She stared at it in awe, unable to believe what had just happened but the warmth that moved through her, the comfort, told her there was nothing to fear and she smiled.
Her father, however, saw what happened and before she could latch the tether to the crate, he slapped it from her hand, slammed her against the crate and dragged her out of the cargo hold while spewing vile admonitions.
She clutched at his arm trying to break his grip on her shirt and get her feet back under her. But he just continued to drag her down the central corridor of their ship screaming at her the whole way that she was a freak, an abomination, and that she was never again to use that power.
"Ever!" He bellowed as he threw her into a small storage closet and punched the door control. The door whooshed shut and the locking mechanism engaged. She caught her breath as quietly as she could as the sound of his footsteps receded back down the corridor.
She never used that power again. She never spoke of it to her parents and they pretended like nothing had happened. But she remembered; she remembered the warmth, the comfort, the feeling of the thing she could not name as it moved through her and brought the tether so gently into her hand. It was a part of her and she wanted to know more about it.
Nearly a year later she stood on an empty landing pad on Bracca where her parent's ship had been. They had left. They had left her behind and she knew they would not come back for her. She looked down at the bag of supplies she had dropped, several items spilled out onto the cracked surface of the makeshift pad: a few tools, some soap, and a meal pack. She reached out her hand and a hydrospanner glided gently up into her open palm. The warmth filled her up and she smiled.
Propaganda about the Jedi blared out across the holonet for years. The Empire insisted they were traitors and usurpers, a corrupt people and a corrupt institution that had tried to take control of the Senate by force. Leena wondered if that was why her parents were ashamed of her ability and if she should be ashamed of it too. But then she met the young, red haired man, so kind and gentle despite the harsh life of Bracca. If he was a Jedi, how could any of that be true?
She couldn't believe it to be true, she wouldn't. Right then and there, lying on the floor of the starry room in a forgotten crevasse of the old Venator as awkwardly out of place on the surface of that wet, dreary planet as a purrgil carcass slowly picked apart by vultures, she made a promise: She would never tell a soul what he was, whether or not he ever knew of her promise.
