Work Text:
☼☼
A small, bright room.
From the windows, sunslight slants across, hitting a whitewash wall in several square patches.
A stoneware pot is gently humming on the stove. Above, its steam is gathered in a shape of blown glass. Lengths of recycled wire suspend it from the ceiling.
A man is sweeping, rhythmically. He hums a little, in the tuneless way of someone often alone.
When the rough floor is swept, he leans the broom against a wall, then leans himself against the hut’s doorframe, brushing sand from his hands, from his robe.
‘Sweep, and the sand returns, and sweep and it returns. And that, I suppose, is what we call balance.’
He crosses the room to the stove. The painted-metal door swings closed behind him; rustle of the desert softens.
The squares of light shift across the wall while Obi-Wan works with knife, spoon, single pot, to prepare his meal. The stone workbench is no shorter or longer than it needs to be. Every curl of steam is captured; water drips into a still next to the stove. Scraps are gathered into a bowl; the wandering animals of the desert will be fed. Used utensils are cleaned with sand; some grains spill on to the floor.
Balance.
‘The best thing about womp-rat stew is that it keeps marvellously,’ Obi-Wan says, with a half smile, to no-one. ‘It will never taste worse than the day it is made.’
Once a nervous habit, he knows: the remarks. The nerves are settled, for the most part. The habit remains.
He takes a deep breath, inhales more than he meant to of the smell of the stew, laughs at himself.
‘And the worst thing about it is absolutely everything else.’
☾☾☾
Three moons rise, clustered.
Obi-Wan puts the small house to sleep. Tidies with the ease possible when everything has a place. Steps outside to close the spaceship-scrap-shutters against the chill. Pats the security droid like a friend, which it is. Looks across the sullen dunes.
The work of watching suits him. Watching is the opposite of flying. In the days when he had sat in the cockpit of a fighter craft, he had to use the Force to clamp down his fear, to squash the panic that said not fast enough not quick enough not skilled enough won’t be able to get there in time won’t be able to stop it…
He hopes he never has to be a warrior again. Allowing the prescience of the Force to guide his hands and his saber – it felt good and strong and right as he fought, but left him shaking and uncertain after: second-guessing, doubting. Left him desperate for sight of the right path, bereft of that battlefield clarity.
Here, under the three moons, at last he has time. His task is to wait and to watch. He can think as slow and careful as he likes. The Force need no longer be a shield, a muffler, a comrade-in-arms. It has become a silver river to him, a bright wash of life.
He feeds the nocturnal creatures of the desert. He breathes. He waits.