Binary Sunsets: The Shmi Skywalker Story

Four.

Ahna walked into the kitchen the quiet sound of the heavy metal door sliding shut behind her just as the tears began to creep towards the brim of her eyes. She couldn't do anything but look at her daughter. She sat her tiny legs dangling off the edge of the table kicking in the air while she hummed a lullabye to herself. Her hair was softly fluttering as the wind off the water came rolling through the open window. Ahna moved slowly taking each step at a time, Shmi was the only thing that filled her vision, this golden little girl haloed by sunlight, & completely innocent to the rest of the world or its intentions. Ahna stopped raising a hand to her mouth to stifle her own fears that were bubbling up from inside. She had always known what Luca was & where he'd come from, but that was a life he'd left behind him. This was a fresh start for them, this place....the serene quiet beauty of the shores as the water lapped at the canyon walls, this was where he belonged, with them. But standing there hearing the mumbled and distorted voice of the past filtering in through the broken sentences he'd managed. Ahna had begun to wonder if perhaps she'd let herself believe the past would stay where they'd put it. But when she'd looked at him, looked at his eyes when she'd marched through the doors ready to send their visitors back to whatever scum pit they'd crawled out from, she was ready to fight to protect what she loved. But when she rounded the corner she no longer saw Luca, she saw the broken, haphazard scrum rat space pirate she'd bumped into as he wandered through the stalls on Dantoonie. She'd known what he was....& she'd been right....that's who she saw staring intimately into the eyes of the other woman. A woman whose place she had taken a long time ago, but perhaps the ghost of her had always remained there in the shadows of Luca's memory. Waiting to step back into the light....
Ahna stood there behind her daughter letting the brilliant purple & organge haze take her mind elsewhere....

Dantooine, Serra Fenei Marketplace...Twenty Years in the past...

Ahna had been left to mind the stall while her father went back to the cart to gather more goods to stock the stall. Harvest had been good to them this season, unlike the few before, but there was a general unease as the sector was still struggling to cope with the turmoil that had been tearing it at the seams for the last five generations. Ahna would see them stumbling through the market from time to time. Other would line the walls outside the local pub waiting for a kinship to be rekindled & a mug of forgetfulness to be offered in kindness. She'd heard her father screaming in the night for years, but never thought much of it...everyone has bad dreams. She would wake in the middle of the nights to the yelping sounds of his sobs & the gentle cooing of her mother as she wrapped her father in her comforting embrace. Then she would listen as her mother softly sang to him in her soothing tone, & then everything would be quiet again. The frequency of this had always made her feel comforted & safe, but after her mother had died the previous year. The screaming was all she could hear anymore. The broken voice of a broken man calling out to a ghost for comfort that would never come again. So one night she'd walked to the locked bedroom door placed her hand softly against it as he writhed in the bed, a man on fire...a man haunted. Ahna tried to pull the melody up from where she'd buried it, but she couldn't remember it. She had settled herself down on the floor leaned against the cold metal door & cried herself to sleep. But then something jolted her, it felt like a shiver running down her spine, the cold faded as she woke up & the screams flooded back into reality. She'd sat there pressing her hand against the door feeling like a failure & then...just when she'd dropped her head down pushing it against the cold metal. She felt herself begin to hum, soft at first and slowly, then a bit louder & the words flowing through her mind like they'd been written there so she'd always remember. She would never tell anyone, but she could almost feel...almost hear her mother's voice whispering through her lips as she began to sing. The nightmares stopped after that night, she would wait for her father to go to sleep, then she would take up her post every night & sing so he could sleep.
It was this song she'd been quietly humming when Luca Tsiuri had caught it and followed its sound over to where she'd been straightening up things. At first, she could remember him just standing there in front of her, his face & the wiley smile he had as he looked at her, she couldn't help but smile back. But if was his eyes that had kept her looking up as Luca wandered around the stall. But when she turned away still quietly humming she could hear him softly humming along to the same tune with her. But when she'd turned back around he was gone. She looked but couldn't make him out in the blur of bodies traveling back & forth. Then she caught him looking over his shoulder back at her smiling, it wasn't until she looked down that she realized he'd stolen one of the woven sashes she'd made. She had never felt so foolish. She asked one of the neighboring vendors to keep an eye on the stall while she stepped away for just a moment. Then she raced after him, she lost track of him again, but then she could hear the recall of a familiar tune. She followed it through the sea of humanity, past the more aggressive harkers, until she saw him leaned up against the tall temple wall on the southside of the city. Her sash already decoratively tied around his waist fluttering in the wind as the tune floated to her in his altoic voice.