The Force Awakens

Chapter 17

Once there was a mystical order of Jedi Knights who served as the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy. Many were the heroes in their ranks. Heroes that went by the names of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker. But like the Republic they defended, the Jedi were betrayed from within. Their order was extinguished, and despite great effort to rekindle it decades later, the new flame would not hold. The Jedi remained all but extinct.

Once there was a girl who called herself Annie. Living alone for years, until she recognized the value of family and friends. With two of these friends, she piloted a starship to a remote world. She landed on an island surrounded by a blue-green sea. Stone stairs carved into the island's mountain led her to a clearing. Here waited the hermit she had come to find.

Once there was a man who was born with the name Luke Skywalker. It was not a name he had been called in a long, long time. He lived alone, inhabiting this peaceful island on this lost planet. He allowed me to stare at him before he removed his hood. His robes were simple, his hair was white. A beard separated him from his youth, just as the remoteness of this planet separated him from his past. But now he had been found.

Once there was a lightsaber that had passed from one hand to another. Its blade was bright, its color blue. The girl who possessed it now held it out to the man who had possessed it long before. He looked at me and then at the hilt in her hand, as if it were a memory he had tried to forget.

Once there was great knowledge of the Force, an energy field created by all living things that bound the galaxy together. The Force was what gave the Jedi their power. It had allowed them to accomplish great physical and mental feats and to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Yet when the Jedi were hunted down and destroyed, knowledge of the Force seemed to die with them. For many years afterward, individuals sensitive to the Force possessed neither the instruction nor the insight to properly call on it. Its true power remained dormant in their lives, a potential never tapped. Eventually, scarce evidence of its presence led few to believe that the Force had ever existed at all.

Yet within the girl and the man and the lightsaber held between, the Force stirred anew.