deercountry | Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls...

"Neither," she said, giving the tree a final, loving pat. "It's a kind of complicated story but...the trees were a gift. From the divine powers of Deerington. Has anyone told you about Deerington? The place where a lot of us were...before."

That was the best way she could explain it. Ariadne had never been able to parse out much of the magical goings-on in the place. She'd left that to people who were much smarter and much more experienced. Survival had been first on her mind. The survival of her friends first and foremost. Herself a distant second.

"I was gifted with the orchard," she continued. "It was on the roof of a building that was over seven stories high!"

In her defense, that was really very high for Valerian standards.

"When I arrived here, I found the trees just waiting for me."

He shook his head. "No one's mentioned Deerington to me yet. But I was someone else before, too, with people from all over time and space, so that doesn't really surprise me. Sometimes we got random gifts, too. I got an album of pictures of my friends and family."

His gift sounded better than hers. Ariadne was well aware of what photographs were. They actually did have them in Valeria. But none of her family members had ever posed for one, so she was quite certain that no photographs of them could possibly exist. Anyway, seeing them would probably make her sad.

Maybe it made Ezra sad too. She scrutinized his face a moment, trying to decide if he needed a hug.

Probably not. But she'd hold the option in reserve.

Meanwhile, she gestured over to the pear tree. "That's Sophia," she said. "She was my first gift from Deerington." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I don't mean to say that I have favorites or anything. But Sophia is very special to me."

To be fair, not everyone had posed for the pictures he took, either. He could be sneaky.

"You named the trees," Ezra replies, like he's not sure what to think of that. "Or - did they tell you their names somehow?" he asks, serious, but a little cautious.

She nearly laughed and reminded him that trees couldn't talk. But at the last moment, she remembered: Fern could talk to trees. Not in the same way that you would talk to a person. But in a way that...somehow made sense.

To him.

She'd asked him to check in on her trees. They were worried. Worried about her. About her loneliness, about her solitude.

Maybe she should have asked him if trees had names. Then again, he had used the names she'd picked so...probably not?

"I came up with them," she said, folding her hands behind her back. "Since I talk to the so much, I figured it was only fair to call them by names."

Ezra nods.

"I promise I'm not making fun," he tries to figure out how to explain.

"Stop me if someone's told you this already but, Jedi - or any Force sensitive from my galaxy, really - there are some skills most any of us can learn. But are some that individuals have a particular, um, affinity for? I connect pretty easily to animals. They don't usually use actual words to communicate back, but images. Impressions. Feelings."

She tilted her head to one side, smiling slightly as Ezra explained his affinity with animals. "I haven't heard that before," she admitted. But it made a certain kind of sense. Animals were living things, after all.

Why shouldn't the Force be connected with them as well?

Ariadne moved along the perimeter of the orchard, glancing back at Ezra, hoping that he liked her trees. "So what's your Omen, then? Some sort of incredible animal?"

"She's, uh, a cat," Ezra admits, a little sheepishly. "White loth cat." He makes a gesture to demonstrate the size, which is a little bigger than most house cats, but not by much.

He shakes his head. "It makes sense. There was a cat like that back on my homeworld that turned up a few times, when I needed to be pointed in the right direction."

Then he glances around. "Introduce me to the rest of the grove? And what's your Omen?"

Ariadne thought she could sense some embarrassment. But she smiled warmly. Cats might be domestic animals, but they were much more clever than most humanoids realized. She actually had quite a lot of respect for cats. Felt some kindship, even. The way they could leap from branch to branch. Just like she did as a little girl.

Walking forward, she started pointing around to the different trees. "Well, the plum tree over there is named 'Toby.' And the cinnamon tree is 'Araceli.' That one over there? That's an orange tree. I named it 'Morgan.' The lemon tree is 'Dagmar.' Mostly because lemons are sour fruits and I once knew a courtier named Dagmar who was also kind of sour."

She had the grace to look a little embarrassed about that.

It was...kind of cruel.

Ezra snickers.

"I'm sure a perfect Jedi would say something pithy about revenge here. But it's not exactly like they're here to have their feelings hurt, are they?"

"I'd change the name, if she were here," Ariadne replied, walking over to give her lemon tree a reassuring pat. She wanted it to know that she loved it just as much as all of the others. "But the odds of me ever seeing anyone from home feel...small."

Not impossible. She couldn't rule it out. And even if she had all the information, she wouldn't.

It just...wasn't something she was going to count on.

"You're lucky, you know," she said, walking back over to him. "There are people from your world here. And whether you like them or dislike the or don't even know them, at least they understand you in a way that no one else could."

"I know I'm lucky," Ezra says, earnestly

"Both here and Temba - where I was for a while before, there were people from my galaxy. Some of them very easy to love. There were even a few Jedi. But I made some good friends with people from other places, and I'll miss them too."

Lucky. But also kind of unlucky. The downside of having a big group of friends--from home or the multiverse--meant that you had many more people to lose when the multiverse...did its multiverse-y thing.

Ariadne, though, wasn't really made to be a pessimist. It fit her funny. Like a gown that had been made for someone else.

"I'd love to hear about them," she said. "If...if it's not too painful or anything."

"The people from my galaxy, or from other places, or?" he checks.

"The thing that hurts the most are the people I know a version of them, but they don't know me. And what's really weird is Kyle, who's from Earth, does remember meeting me in Temba. I think maybe Obi-wan and Luke are from...earlier point in time?"

He slowly nods. "Obi-wan is definitely from earlier. He doesn't look much younger from the last time I saw him, but he feels different."

"He seems like an old man to me," she said. "But that might be because he always seems a little cranky." Probably Anakin's fault. At least, most of the time.

Although there was still that nagging bias, rooted in the back of her mind, that refused to accept his 'no attachments' rule.

It just didn't make sense. As hard as she tried to make sense out of it.

Ariadne shook her head. "That was unkind of me. I shouldn't have said it."

"Well. He can be a little stiff," Ezra admits, but with obvious affection.

"'Something of a relic they don't understand' I think is what...Ben. I'm just gonna call the older versions of Obi-wan I've met Ben. Anyway, he said that about himself, once."

"Well, I certainly don't understand him," she admitted, sucking in some cold air, between her teeth. "And I'm sure he doesn't understand me. So we're the same, in that sense."

Which was a funny thing to admit. To be opposites and yet the same.

Perhaps that's what the Force was really meant to be. She didn't know. She'd asked him for lessons but then...

Well. Then Anakin happened. And Ariadne wasn't sure she could face either of them right now.

"Can I ask?" Ezra tries hesitantly.

"Is it just him being confusing when he's deflecting or talking in circles - which is - that's a thing. Something he did?"

Ariadne shrugged, walking over to the cherry tree. This one was named Sara. In the spring, the cherry blossoms covered the ground like the snow did now. It was the most fragrant of the trees. She loved to sit under it and think. Usually happy memories. The small bits of freedom she tasted in her early life in Valeria.

Maybe Sophia was her favorite-favorite.

But Sara always knew how to make her happy.

"I think it's when he insists that Jedi aren't supposed to form attachments that I get confused. That...doesn't seem like any way to live." A pause. "Also, he does talk in circles a lot. All the time." She smiled a little. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who gets that treatment!"

He makes a so-so gesture with his hand. "I managed to figure out how to cut through a lot of that with Ben. But Anakin wasn't there. And Ben-"

He sighs unhappily. "He had lost basically everything. For better or for worse, Obi-wan and I won't have quite the same relationship here. Which to me, at least, is most of what is meant by lack of attachments. I could try to cling to the relationship some part of me wants. I could try to force it by telling Obi-wan certain things. Or-"

He makes a fist and then releases it, gesturing out. "I can let that go and try to love him as he is."

"But how can you love someone without being attached to them?"

It wasn't a challenge. Ariadne wasn't confrontational and the last thing she needed was to be 'right' all the time. It was...well, it was a genuine question. Because it didn't make sense to her.

Like saying that two plus two somehow equaled three.

Everyone knew it equaled four. But Obi-Wan was always telling her otherwise and it just...boggled the mind.

"Ok. Let's back up. What does being attached to someone mean to you?"

If there's one thing Ezra's learned in the last half year or so, was that even when everyone seems to be magically - maybe literally magically - speaking the same language, that doesn't mean everything translates.

Edited (wrong word) 2022-01-10 02:19 (UTC)

It was a reasonable question, she supposed. And he was right. Precision of language was important in a conversation like this.

But she needed to take it back a step even further:

"My people...Alastrians. We're pack animals. Nomadic. We don't have a home and most places we go, we're either chased out or just killed. Mostly because people don't understand us. There are all kinds of terrible stories about what we are. They say we're demons. That we're portents of evil. And where we go, death follows."

A pause.

"Which isn't true."

Just to be clear.

"But," she continued slowly, "because of that, our culture believes that the key to survival is attachment. In the pack. We call them the 'three kinds of love.'"

"So...because you're, uh, different, you're forced to be outsiders and rely heavily on your own people. You're tight-knit. Am I getting that right? What's the three kind of love?"

She held up her index finger. "The first is the love between parents and their children. The need to protect them. To sacrifice anything to keep them safe, to ensure their survival. What you'd hope most parents of most species would do for their offspring."

Even though she knew that wasn't always true. Which made her genuinely sad.

Ariadne ticked a second finger. "The second is the love between brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews. Members of a pack. Family. And the close friends that become family."

Like Dean and Sam for her. Which was something that Anakin didn't understand, since he was hung up on the third love.

"And then the kind of love, which I guess most people think of when they think of love: Romantic love, sexual love. The love between mates."

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