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I tell you this story to save your life. Lives, really.
Master Skywalker?
This is not a story that can be told more than once. Like a river breaking its banks - what is started cannot stop, and what is done cannot be undone. Please. Let me speak.
…
I tell you this story to save your life.
Once, long ago, there was a rabbit. It was not big. It was not small. It was as much a part of the landscape as the earth beneath and sky above. It fed on the spike grass of the sand and the sting fly of the winds, and all was right in the world, though the rabbit did not believe it so. He felt a great loss, greater than all the sand of the desert, for he could not see Ar-Amu, the mother of all, nor even her child, the trickster Ekkreth, more powerful than any Master and stronger than any chain.
Then Depur came. Master, in Basic, can be cruel or kind. In this tongue - in the old tongue, it is a crude translation for a cruel term. One who twists life, takes without earning and balances only checkbooks, never lands. This Depur came and scorched the spike plants, and told the rabbit it deserved better, only the fattest sting fly, only the softest grass.
The rabbit believed.
Then Depur choked out the sting fly, and told the rabbit it deserved better, only the most lethargy inducing mosses, the bugs most swollen with sloth.
The rabbit believed.
And one day, the rabbit heard the winds howl, and looked out onto the desert, and saw it empty. And Depur asked why the rabbit wept, and the rabbit said it believed Depur, but Depur had left it with nothing.
And Depur laughed, and said this is what the rabbit had wanted all along.
So the rabbit turned from Depur, and charged into the desert. And Depur let it, because he did not know the truth of dukkra.[1]
Three days and three nights without water, until the rabbit was nearly baked under the desert sun, and the sting fly came upon it. The sting fly drank from the rabbit, and the rabbit followed it back and fed from the nest, and found strength to move on.
Now nine days and nine nights the rabbit moved on, until it saw Spike plants in the distance. It drank from the leaves and Felt sated, and the plant pricked of its blood and felt refreshed, and the rabbit carried on.
And finally after nine by nine days and nine by nine nights, the rabbit curled up in the deep desert, from which none return. And it wept, for the desert had barely recovered enough to support the rabbit, which meant Ar Amu was forever gone from him.
The rabbit felt a pecking on its neck, and when it opened its eyes, saw a bird as red as blood on his back. And he knew it to be Ekkreth, the trickster, And fell to his knees.
Get up, said Ekkreth. You do not kneel to anyone.
I kneel, said the rabbit, for I have forgotten the desert and caused it pain.
Pain is the way of the desert, said Ekkreth. Without it the spike grass and the sting fly cannot feed on you as you feed on them. You learn nothing in a life without pain.
I have learned nothing in my life, said the rabbit, which prepared me for pain.
Then Ekkreth stared at the rabbit, with eyes as blue as the desert sky. And Ekkreth offered to tell the rabbit its name, written in its bones, where it cannot be seen until turmoil strips back the flesh. And Ekkreth came to the rabbit, and peeled back its skin, and written on its heart was Sky Walker.
And the rabbit wailed, for it had come so far only to know destiny was forever out of reach - for Sky Walker was a name of Ekkreth, and the rabbit was of no equal of the old trickster.
And the trickster jumped forward, and the rabbit moved from all fours prostrate to on its back legs, and realised that all along it had been moving beside Ekkreth as the land had fallen away, and they were dancing with the moons.
And it looked down, and saw blood and bone on the sand, and sting flies feeding on what remained.
And the rabbit understood.
And the rabbit began to walk.
11 Dukkra Ab Dukkra, the old slave saying. It is sometimes translated as freedom or death, but this is not true - both words are written and pronounced exactly the same, because to one who has grown up in chains, there is no difference between freedom and death. This is the secret of Dukkra, and I tell you this to save your life.[return to text]