Work Text:
Our story starts in a desert.
No, not that one. Not that one either. Stop guessing.
In that desert, there is a girl, and-- no, not that girl, let me tell the story .
Our story starts in a desert. In that desert, there is a girl, and that girl’s name would have marked her as a member of a tribe enslaved and brutalized and killed by an infinitely cruel, infinitely awe-inspiring empire that became all the world known to them, in the language of that empire, a language no one speaks and fewer still know, in that desert on no maps where there is a girl.
In the language of her people, her name means luck , or close enough to it.
Both names are true.
In that desert on no maps on a planet on no charts there is a girl named luck and in that desert on no maps on a planet on no charts there is a god.
The god is the less important of the two, maybe.
The god is a fearsome and terrible being, but so is he a forgotten god, and he has both less and more power than you think. Remember that.
The god is Bendu, The Blind One, The One in The Middle, and he is not the girl’s god and she is not afraid of him.
He is a god, but what is a god to a non-believer? She is a girl of faith, but not his faith, her piety expressed through blasters and blades and those things, defense an act of worship. He was the god her father, but not his people, and they may have adopted each other but they did not adopt each other’s faiths.
He is a god and she is a girl and she does not believe in him and yet she comes to him and they mean nothing to each other.
“You helped my father to see,” she says to him.
“Your father died blind,” he says.
“And you are still blind,” she says, for it is true. The Bendu’s eyes are white as a lily at dawn, useless to him. “You helped him, now help me.”
“And why should I?”
“Because he walks the middle path. He found Light, and then Dark, and is neither, and both. In one hand he held a Jedi holocron while the other grasped that of the Sith,” she says, not knowing if her words speak true.
“Your brother has died,” The Bendu tells her, sensing to lie and giving none in return. “None may walk the World Between Worlds and live.”
“I do not care,” she says to him, because this, too, is true: if he is well and truly dead, then bodies are important to his people, and burials too, and she wishes to bury him in the soil of his home.
“Well, he is not here,” The Bendu says, and that is both truth and lie: her brother is not on that planet, but parts of him were, as were parts of the girl and their father and their mother, because that is not a planet you ever truly leave.
The girl is angry, now, but she bites her tongue and tastes blood and spits it out, again and again and again, until the sand is red beneath her feet.
“Interesting,” the Bendu says. “Unorthodox. Your blood means nothing to me or to him.”
“Blood means little,” the girl says.
“Blood means much,” The Bendu says. “Go past the unknown, and you will find an answer. I can help you no further.”
The girl whose name means luck left that planet and never returned.