"No two leaves are alike,
and yet there is not antagonism
between them or between
the branches in which they grow."
—M. K. Gandhi

"Do toyid go vlakan dan nie cea! (I cannot believe you did that.)" I screamed, running in a general direction to get away.

Nysa was laughing so hard she could barely keep up, and her legs were far longer than mine. "Ish ohk cei vorcuban! (He was so confused!)" She doubled over in another bout of laughter.

"Nysa!" We heard Niern scream. "Arrai! Do ktan dan nie cea y! (I know you did this!)"

I tried to stifle my laughter as best I could. "Gan fic ar fiyet tohso ka Cankr. (We have to get back to the Temple.)" I said urgently.

Nysa ran up next to me, covering her mouth to avoid howling and revealing ourselves. She did not trust herself to speak.

"Vyeak jirut! (Quiet down!)" I ordered in an attempted whisper.

"Do ohk voylan ootay mukla u'a. Ohk cea y ersal'ehan ro gatad? (Guys, I am covered in tar. Was this really necessary?)" Niern's voice rose through the quiet streets of the city center.

It was then that Nysa lost it. Her high laugh pierced the air, revealing our location to our victim, now hunter. I had much trouble containing myself, but I managed to do it better than Nysa.

"Do ktan eti! (I knew it!)" Niern called, finding us quickly.

His unamused face, covered in tar and Quichi feather made us double over, pain erupting in my side from the intense laughing.

"Ohsid loo, ohsid loo, (Okay, okay,)" Niern put up his hands in surrender. "Dan fiyet san. (You got me.)"

"Vorkino banhsli! (Damn right!)" I yelled.

We died for a few more long moments before another figure emerged, trying, and failing, to suppress and amused smirk. "I am switching to Basic because I have no idea how to ask anything about this in Ryl."

"Arrai and Nysa 5, Niern 3." I called, high-fiving Nysa. "And, for the record, I speak Ryl as well as I speak Basic."

Nysa, still recovering from a fit of giggles, turned her attention to me. "You said it was similar to Huttese, right?"

I nodded. While I never spoke my native language, I had jumped very easily into this year's language studies. "Rules are similar. Also the accent." I shrugged. "It's not my fault you used your 'we can make Yovan feel less alienated if I only stick with GLS' excuse."

Chinelo looked offended. "And it is a legitimate argument!"

I rolled my eyes. "And what about how Yovan learns how to read all the alphabets and our lips for all the languages we've studied? Where is your excuse now?"

He rolled his eyes. When Yovan appeared beside him, I was suddenly thankful for his deafness. He signed a greeting, obviously oblivious to the previous conversation. Noticing Niern's current state, he signed, "Why Niern cover tar feather?"

Nysa bit her lip to keep from snorting.

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

Despite all the mayhem we normally caused, we knew to behave during biannual testing. In groups of three, we battled against other teams. Being allowed to choose our own teams that year, Nysa, Niern, and I had immediately grouped together, not wanting to be separated. Sadly, that freed up Lorna and Chinelo for the same team. Chinelo was the greatest lightsaber combatant of our generation, and Lorna was the most stealthy. I feared their team up, not even worrying about whoever was their third participant.

We had no idea what our testing would entail, but our opponents' abilities were enough to set us on edge.

With only a week to prepare, we had done everything we could to set up one-on-ones.

"Arrai," Nysa said, leaning over a table. Ever since the team division, each team tended to sit by themselves. "You are our best shot for beating Chinelo."

A lot of times, it was easy to forget that Nysa and Chinelo were related. They didn't look similar: Nysa's hair was almost blonde to match her lighter skin tone, while Chinelo's dark features were complimented by the many shades of silver that accented his tips. Still, the siblings tended to wear the same facial expressions while formulating battle strategies.

I shook my head adamantly. "You are." The seriousness in my voice seemed to startle her.

"Not at all!" Nysa retaliated. "You can beat me in under thirty seconds!"

Niern cocked his head to one side, his eyes scanning the table wildly, like he was engraving suggestions into the surface. "She does have a point, though. Arrai is amazing at Dark Side usage, but you trump everyone Light Side. What if we're not allowed to choose?"

They had a staring contest. Nysa blinked first. "Fine. If it's Light Side only, I'll take Chine, but Dark Side or Neutral, that's on Arrai."

We agreed to that.

"I've got Lorna." Niern stated. He was good at recognizing enemy tactics and manipulating them. "But Cressida will be an issue. None of us have any long range specialties."

Over the last year, Cressida had debuted her engineering genius as she created a machine that threw darts made out of Kyber energy. She had yet to give anyone her secrets, and none of us had tried to replicate her work.

I shrugged. "I have suggested throwing daggers for years, yet you all always undermine me."

Niern gave me the look. It was the look that he, and only he, had the ability to create. It was a mixture of disappointment, annoyance, brilliance, and complete understanding. The rest of us tried to copy him many times, but each person's impersonation was even worse than the last. "And, if you'll recall, I've agreed with you. You can aim better than Cressida, but I don't know how quickly you'd be able to learn to balance daggers made of Kyber crystals."

He had an excellent point, but I was usually smarter and more capable than I let myself seem. "Give me ten hours. Standard. Not Nequian."

The hours in Nequek were almost a full five minutes behind that of Coruscant's, but there were more hours in a day on Nequek.

They looked at each other, no doubt having a silent conversation about the valuable time I could be wasting.

Niern and Nysa rarely shared a silent conversation, but, when they did, it was the only reminder I had to remember that they were no longer in a platonic relationship with each other. While they did not let their feelings get in the way of their friendship with me or our training, it did feel exclusive in the way they could share one look and reach an agreement.

"Ten hours." Nysa agreed. "Tomorrow. Or tonight. I am going to attempt some sleep."

I looked at her wide-eyed. "Why would you do that? Remember the last time you slept? You wouldn't come out of your room for days!"

She shrugged. "It might be nice to be rested up for a change."

Niern eyed her disbelievingly, but also admirably. "Be careful." Then, as if I wasn't there, he smirked wickedly. "And you know, if you get too scared, I'm always here to help."

As he nuzzled closer to her ear seductively, I took that as my cue to leave. I wasn't upset, but I made a dramatic effort of sliding back my chair, picking up my tray, and loudly adding it to the stack of dirty dishes.

On my way out, I nearly walked straight into the only person I could not sense on the entire planet.

"Hello, Padawan Skywalker," she greeted coldly.

"Master Thraina!" I jumped, immediately straightening up. "Wh—What brings you to the mess hall?" My attempt at small talk was obviously unwelcome.

"Come with me." She ordered.

Every great once in a while, Master Thraina would invite me to her garden, but she had never demanded my presence. I tried to catch a feel of her silvery aura, but she was somehow concealing herself from me.

As we neared a speeder at the bottom of the Temple stairs, she finally began explaining. "I usually do not like asking for assistance, but I must ask yours." With a graceful, animal-like elegance, she jumped into the speeder, switching it on in one smooth motion.

"Where are we going?" I asked, though I was in the speeder faster than I could begin questioning the strangeness of the whole ordeal.

"To a cave," she answered, taking off, like that vague answer explained everything. There were millions of caves on Nequek.

I knew that if she had wanted to tell me where we were going, she would have.

True to her word, we ended up at a cave, about average in size. They were large enough to fit a human for several miles. I sensed that the particular cave ran for more miles underground than I could feel.

"What are we doing here?" I asked, realizing that the sun was quickly setting. We must have been near the Dark Side of the planet.

Master Thraina sat in the center of the cave in a meditative position. I followed suit. "Recite to me the Dark Jedi catacysm."

A bit startled, I tensed as I began: "'There is Darkness, and there is Light, but there is only the Force. It is divided, but we make it whole. It is separated, but we bring it together. It is segregated, but we make it equal. The Force is one with me, and I with it.'"

The Grandmaster took a long time responding. When she did, she asked in a low voice, "What does that mean to you?"

For a moment, I meant her eyes like I had all those years ago. Now, I noticed specks of white in her irises, like someone had flung paint, not caring where it splattered. I felt that, if I stared at her so directly, I would somehow obtain the intense hopelessness of her devoid eyes.

"It means," I began. "That the Force, though it may be used indirectly as either the Dark or the Light Side of the Force, may also be used as a whole. That's what the Dark Jedi are: we keep the balance that the Jedi and Sith so heedlessly destroy."

I knew I was right, but I could tell that I was also very wrong. "Perhaps I should keep up with what they teach you in classrooms." She sighed heavily, like she could be momentarily relieved of the weight of the worlds. "For one, the Dark Jedi will never be able to maintain peace."

My brow raised in alarm. "But Master—"

She cut me off with a wave of her hand. "Before we were split into different sects of the Force, the Je'daii policed the galaxy as peaceful, effective Force-users."

I knew the story. I had been told it many times. "Then the Sith wanted the secrets to immortality and to unlock the history of the world. The Jedi rose to stop them."

"Thus breaking apart the Darkness and the Light." She folded her hands and pulled them away from each other, like she was ripping apart the Force all over again. "The Sith took the name of their predominant race, and the Jedi took a shortened name of their predecessors."

"Master," I interrupted impatiently. "I know how the Dark Jedi formed. I know how—"

"The galaxy lived in a rift for over fifteen millennia." She continued as if I were not there. "I cannot imagine such a chaotic time. Tell me what you know of how the rift was temporarily sealed."

I hesitated. "Well, you and Master Shy-Lee negotiated a treaty between the Republic and the Empire, the Jedi and the Sith. You came across a strange place that is really vaguely described, but you two somehow learned to harness both sides of the Force like the Je'daii had."

Thraina nodded. It was hard to speak to her of the ancient history she had been a part of. I felt awkward that I was telling her, the one who had lived it, of my personal view on what had happened.

"I know it was almost forty years later when the Eternal Empire attacked. I know that, sometime during those long twelve years, Master Shy-Lee died." I stopped. "I don't know much else."

Another silent minute passed. "I came here to warn you." She said at last. "I also came to apologize. You have a great and terrible future ahead of you, Arrainne Skywalker. I sense that I was only the warm up."

I looked into the terrifying beauty that was the eyes of this mentor. In them, I saw the reflection of myself. I saw my blue orbs glowing with color against them.

I had always noticed similarities between Master Thraina and I, but I had never connected them. Even the way we spoke in the syllables we accented, the same thickness of our hair, the curvature of our noses, the slim, natural athleticness of our bodies. But I had also been able to feel and identify with Master Thraina. I could sometimes feel the sadness radiating like smoke from a fire. I could feel the emptiness of the void inside her.

It was as if someone had plucked one of us from our own dimension and set us ten thousands years apart.

For a moment, I had the odd image of my future self would one day be sitting where Master Thraina was then, looking at a promising Padawan and speaking to them of Dark Jedi philosophy.

I had told the masters sever times that I was far more comfortable with a weapon in my hand than in my head, though I was never quite sure how true that was.

"I have always told you how much you remind me of my Lee," Master Thraina said. "And I realize how similar you are to myself. The Force works in mysterious ways, delivering to me a young girl like the child I could never have."

I looked at her curiously. "Why not?" I knew that people could be physically unable to bear children, as I guessed Master Thraina was, but there were hundreds of ways people could adopt.

"There was never time for a child when you have to protect the galaxy and beyond." Thraina said sadly. "Besides," her eyes crinkled in the barest traces of a smirk. "Shy always wanted a boy, and names are a nightmare to agree on."