A Mother's Touch

AN AWAKENING

 "Osha!"

"Master?!" Osha gasped herself awake, hearing the Stranger call her name. She sat up in his bed and anxiously looked about the cave. "Master?" She brushed the coverlet to the side and stared into the shadows. Her chest tightened with anger and fear. She should never have let him leave the planet without her!

Closing her eyes, she allowed her consciousness to submerge into the Thread. The ethereal strands lapped over her like the waves of the sea. She sensed her Master distantly. He was far away, not even within the system. His breathing was elevated. She sensed an underlying fear in him. Uncertainty. His senses were acutely heightened, attuned to the Force, and he was not alone.

She saw him in a dock yard crowded with thirty to forty assailants armed with lightsabers. While he was holding his own in the fight with a superior mastery, they were outflanking him like a pack of wild Morg Dogs. Their intention was to wear him down, injure him, and pounce for a kill. She heard a growl of pain from within the cortosis mask as the tip of a lightsaber grazed his hand.

"Osha!"

She leaped from the bed, summoning her lightsaber to her hand, and sprinted barefoot from the cave into the night. Only a few stars shone down from Bal'Deminc's skies, leaving her in perpetual darkness. By memory, she made her way down to the shoreline and across the rocks, which cut and nipped at the soles of her feet.

With no regard for her safety, she charged headlong into the embrace of the volatile night tide. Only a few meters into the water she felt the undertow tugging at her legs. The frothing white caps slammed against her, but she fought back pulling on the Thread to move herself through time and space to fight at his side.

She had learned from the women of the coven that water was the best medium. A ripple in a creek could be felt throughout the entirety of the body of water. So Osha continued into the surf until the waters were chest deep. She struggled to keep her feet in the seabed. The powerful current threatened to drag her out into the greater depths. But that's what she needed: resistance, something to fight against as her Master fought.

She closed her eyes as a dozen translucent figures rose from the surf, like pawns on a Dejarik board. Assuming a defensive stance, she kept her elbow high as the Stranger had taught her and launched herself at them. Sweeping the lightsaber through the midriff of the first fighter, she spun in the deep water and, with a one-handed strike, cut down another. Swinging the hilt in her palm to an underhand grip, she pirouetted, churning the water so violently that the seabed became visible for a few seconds, and stabbed into a third.

"Good, Osha. Strike them all down," the Stranger commanded. "Show them no mercy."

There was pride in his voice, but something else...genuine surprise. "Master, there are too many." She slashed recklessly as a dozen figures rose from the surf. The more she dropped, the more shot up from the water. Shoulders burning, Osha pivoted in the water. Her arms were failing, her technique growing desperate and reckless.

There were so many of them! Osha sensed a darkness in every heart. These were not Jedi. Their intention was to kill her Master...slowly if they could. She would not let that happen.

Reaching to the black skies above her, she called upon the Thread and pulled at it. With one hand and then the other, like a seamstress weaving a tapestry, she gathered it in her fingers. Then like the hunters of the coven, she cast it back out at the strange men like a snaring net.

The black, ethereal strands drifted into and through them, unnoticed until it was too late. Osha drew up the strands, ensnaring the mob of men to her will. The fighting abruptly ceased, as thirty pairs of eyes went black. Slack-jawed and drooling, the soldiers disengaged their lightsabers and stood swaying on the tarmac like puppets waiting for a master to pull their strings.

Osha swept her gaze across them from a hundred light years away. She hated them for their malicious intentions to harm her Master, and there was only one way to remedy that.

"Kill each other," Osha said to them. They were bound by the Thread and had to obey her. A menacing whisper reechoed the deadly suggestion into each blank mind. "Kill each other."

Thirty crimson lightsabers ignited and a savage, bloody battle ensued. Only this time, the combatants were not looking to her Master as the enemy. They were killing themselves or each other. To the last warrior, they hacked and slashed at each other, their black eyes and hearts given over to a different kind of darkness, one of Osha's choosing.