Star Wars: Edge of Hope

Chapter Thirty: The Most Sacred Word...

Mother.
Mother is the most sacred word in any language, any culture...any universe. It is cherished and revered because it means: Life, Unconditional Love, and most of all Endless HOPE. It's a word that defines strength and courage, to promise your entire life to someone you created. Someone that looks to you for guidance, security, and knowledge...someone who clings on your every word, runs you when hurt or scared. The choice of an entire universe of women given over to guardianship of those that would follow. Her hands are the ones that give you peace. The hands of a Mother are lined with truth, trust, and a tenderness which calms any hurt. No other being in the galaxy has the power that a mother does to the child she calls hers. It's a blending of souls, minds, and hearts...an unbreakable bond...a gift that carries pieces of the whole throughout time. Stars bleed comets as they collide sending burts of light through the night skies. The falling beacons travel for lifetimes carrying their light across the universe. They pepper the blackest oceans of space with the smallest sparks of flame, as they fly high and away from home, writing the stories of their origin in the heavens as they fall. So we will remember their names.

The Force.
It is a conduit, a connection that binds all living things to one another, it is created by Life. It creates Life, it flourishes in the Balance of all living things, between chaos and peace, between living and death, of Light and the Dark. We can feel it...and hear it...the Force is boundless, shapeless, and moves us towards our destinies. Shmi looked at Anakin, and she saw the ageless eyes the face of a child she'd know since his entire life. Whether destiny or fate, Anakin was brought into her life, he was given to her, for a reason. Looking at him now, she could see only the Light he'd brought into the world, and it was a miraculous sight. She saw neither the perfection or the desire for it. Anakin would always be that innocent little boy who only wished to help others. The way of the Force changed people and moved them towards their destiny was not the same as it's Will. But where only Anakin had heard its voice, now the Force was calling to them both, as one journey closes, a new journey was beginning. She was there to watch him take his first steps away from her. But she'd watched him in her dreams grow and change everyday since they said goodbye. She'd followed him wherever he went, whether in the Light, or along his journey through the Darkness. She was his ballast, the point of origin he plotted his course by, the smallest spark of Hope in his heart to survive it all. Shmi was the good which had survived all of the Fear, the Anger, the Hate when all else fell into the shadow around him. Shmi held onto him and shielded the tender heart buried inside the mask of the Darkside. She held onto his name...to his heart...to his memory....

"But why must you confront him?"

Because the only Force that can counteract the poison of the DarkSide....

"Because there is good in him. I've felt it."

And that is Love.

Shmi knew the Truth of Him. She'd always known there was always somewhere, hidden deep inside, a piece of his true self. The spark...Light she saw in him from the moment he'd opened his eyes...to the moment he closed. Oftentimes it is the bravest people, the strongest of us who become lost, and so they wait for someone to come along and find them. All they need is someone to remind them of who they are...

"I'll not leave you here. I've got to save you."

Remind them they are worth saving...even though they cannot see the way...Sometimes we are called on to save the ones we love when they cannot save themselves. She had been his beginning, and now she stood with him by her side remembering the journey begun only with ONE...

"You already have, Luke."

Now they were looking off toward a brighter future. One which would not be bound by the past, or the circumstances of the present they found themselves in, but continuing with TWO that are ONE. Anakin releases Shmi as she raises her hand to touch his face wiping away the tears as she'd done all his life.Then she walked away from him letting her hand fall away as she stood before Rey and Ben. The light heather blood of her dress billowing around her, her hands no longer hardened by the years of servitude, and her skin soft without a mar upon it. A life of long years spent in toil and bondage, then a fleeting few of filled with happiness and freedom...only to end in brutal tragedy. Those chapters had been erased, her she stood complete....and new.

Shmi: I am made whole by you. As you are by them, Anakin. Everyone of branch of our family as it grows stronger and farther away from where we began, brings new purpose to us through the Force. You are what has given my life meaning, the pain and sacrifices we have made purpose, and you have brought theirs meaning and joy. Now finally...

Anakin: We are complete.

The Skywalker Family, complete with all its varying branches and off shoots, stands together as the light surrounds them, penetrating their souls, and connecting them through a bond as timeless as the Force itself. Padme glances to Shmi, but as she does her smile fades from her face slowly holding her gaze as if they were speaking a language no one else knew or could hear. A ripple runs through the two mother's as begin to understand what the other is trying to say without speaking it aloud. They look at one another, Padme nods in understanding without words why it was Shmi that was her guide, the reason the Force chose her to bring back to her family. Padme's delicate feet pad on the rough aged wind cooled grey stones as she quietly makes her way over to Luke and pulls him aside from the group. She locks her arms around Luke's arm stretching to whisper in his ear. Luke nods and turns to walk out of the Temple taking one last look over towards his family, and mentors. But he knows as much as he wants to stay that he's needed elsewhere. He has somewhere important to be...she's waiting for him....he can feel it.

"It's a girl..."

"Leia..."