Private Light Fingers

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"Yes, I guess it's like that," he replied.

It was a frustrating subject to teach. Back when he had done more, he had kept a range of objects to work with. He had once owned a set of metal spheres that seemed indistinguishable, but were filled with different cores.

Letting a young student just explore their surroundings with the Force was well worth the time. However right now, it was not something they had in abundance. He needed to just make a little progress.

"If I put the stone close to you and you hold your hand over it, do you think you could find the same sensation?"

 

[Serya Talith]

"Yes," came her instant response, the girl unwilling to drop his interest. Still, the nervous came bubbling up immediately after, a flash of doubt weakening her resolve.

She swallowed hard, then held out her hand for him to try.

If this really was a good thing, she wasn't willing to mess it up.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

He held his hand flat over the stone. He kept it there, just a few inches above it.

"When you can find it in the Force, you can draw the Force to it. Feel out those smooth edges and wrap the Force around them."

The stone leapt up, slapping against his palm. Jacen caught the stone.

"The Force is a hard thing to describe," he said. "So if you get frustrated it might just as well be me failing to explain properly. No wrong answers. Try it."

Jacen put the stone back down closer to her and took his hand away.

 

[Serya Talith]

Her head throbbed, twisting with mental strain as she tried to conceptualize and understand. ....What.

The jump from 'using your heritage to gleam info' to 'move the object into your hand with this thing called the force' was too large for her. She operated off of instincts, always had. While she liked to claim she was well educated, there had been years of neglect between her last lesson, and now. His terminology was not registering for her.

She raised her hand over it, trying anyway.

She squeezed her eyes closed, straining to get a sense of the rock without touching it. Even that skill was neglected by her, a faint imagine barely bubbling at the edge of her awareness before her attention cracked and it slipped away.

Breath puffed hard and fast through her lips, the rock not budging at all.

"Maybe this rock is broken."

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"I'll try and find one that works," he mused, pretending to look around for other rocks. "There should be one around here."

The act gave him an idea. They needed to take this back a step now. So far Serya was actually trying and that was all he could ask. She hadn't expressed any suspicion, which was something he was about to test.

"Think you could close your eyes for me? I want to put something under each of your hands and have you try and describe it without touching it or looking."

 

[Serya Talith]

Serya pursed her lips at him, overcome with the sudden urge to chuck the rock at him as he pretended to look.

"Haha."

She crossed her arms over herself, a mistrustful look leveled as he came up with an alternative. "....Sure?" She responded, still eager to earn her place with him. It was the confidence that eluded her.

She gave him a wary second look, then slowly held out both hands. Her eyes were the last thing to creep shut, her back rigid and lips pursed as she waited.

Her palms grew tingly, apprehension building as she waited for the lesson.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

Meanwhile, Jacen thought quickly. In turn, he was eager to try and earn some more of her trust. Both of them were seemingly looking at that gulf between them and expecting it to be impossible to cross.

"Erm...hold on a moment..." he muttered.

Pretending to look for rocks he had found one particularly square, jagged rock. When he picked it up he found that it was in fact a piece of an old brick. He placed it under her left hand and kept the original stone under her right.

"Turn your palms face down, but keep them at that height. You've got a different object under each hand. I want you to see if you can find any of the differences between them without looking or touching."

 

[Serya Talith]

The tension coiled in her gut the longer her eyes remained closed, pin pricks of fear blossoming as bursts of lights under her eyelids. It was not a normal thing for her to do— trust.
She let out a long puff of air as she felt him under her, her palms shaking ever so slightly as she turned them down.

“Um,” she murmured, lips sticking. She swallowed hard and forced her anxieties to quell, reaching out for the object below.
Vague images pulled up, stronger on her left than right. It was the connection to others that drew the brick to her minds eye, impressions of hands and wind and voices coming from an area below.

“This didn’t use to be here,” she murmured. “The left one,” she added quickly, her fingers twitching. “It’s ... not normal. Man-made.” She pulled into its memories, barely skimming the true intent of the lesson to look beyond them and sense was its past could not tell.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable. The untrained mind just needed direction.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"Oh-kay..." went Jacen. "I mean, very good."

He had forgotten to sound encouraging when she had done well. It wasn't quite what he had expected. It was actually quite impressive.

"It's called psychometry, you know? The ability to see the history of objects through the Force. It's very hard to do it without a touch. I might have expected you just to tell me that one object was round and the other square.

"Can you feel what they might be like to touch?"

 

[Serya Talith]

The name rang a faint bell, though she paid it no mind. Seeing memories was common place. Like breathing or reading someone’s mood by the twist of their face.

Didn’t everyone experience it too?

She opened her eyes, instinctually scanning his face for signs of why his tone caught.

“I just did what you told me to?” She stated with an edge.

His question was ignored, the shape of the thing hardly mattering when he spoke that way.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"You did. You did," he said. "It's just the way your connection with the Force works wasn't what I expected. That is fine."

"Psychometry is a rare talent. I came out here to show you could lift a stone with the Force. Maybe that was more because its where I usually start and because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do that," he said. Jacen stopped short of a chuckle. His tone carried just a hint of mirth at his own self analysis.

"The Force is everywhere. It has no limits. What would you do with it if you could achieve anything?" he asked.

 

[Serya Talith]

He was surprised by her. She wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or bad. She wanted to impress him. As wary as she had been at the start, she wanted to make this work.

She pulled back her hands, palms tingling as she eyed the piece of brick she had tapped into.

So she had been right. That was a good thing, right? She felt like a fish out of water, with nothing making sense.

“I... I’d get a home. Credits? Can you teach me how to make credits?” Came the naive question.

Anything was achievable with credits.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

Jacen took the question quite seriously.

"I know of people able to conjure lightning, shadows and fire with the Force. I've never known anyone to make credit chits. There are those who have been able to manipulate computers. Guess you could make some that way."

He scratched at the stubble up the side of his jaw as he thought through the question even further.

"Lots of jobs you can make using the Force. Bounty hunters and pilots...oh and healers," he said. Jacen fairly quickly tacked the last one on. He used the Force for violence, no matter which way he looked at it. There was no reason she had to be the same.

 

[Serya Talith]

The doors were opening for her as he spoke, opportunities she had never thought were reachable suddenly feeling much closer. He wouldn't be ready for the turn her mind took, but the problem's of a street rat really were quite narrow in focus. She leaned forward, attention intense and engaged. "What about those that hurt me? Can I make them stop? And the store clerks? I want them to respect me. And the hutts-- I want them dead. Teach me that. That's what I'll do."

A credit stealing, fear endorsing hutt killer. What power.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"Right let's just...take a step back from killing to get what you want okay?"

He lifted both hands and waved them downwards defensively. This was in fact the exact thing that he wanted to train her to avoid. There was darkness in that family line. He didn't know if that actually made a difference to where she was likely to turn.

"But stopping people who hurt others...that is definitely what the Force can be used for."

 

[Serya Talith]

"A-" Her protest caught in her throat, the girl staring at the instructor with visible confusion.

How do you stop someone without killing them? He couldn't be thinking about a jail, right? Everyone knew how corrupt those places were, that wasn't stopping. That was stalling until they bribed their way out. There was only one way to be sure someone didn't turn back up on the streets causing trouble.

Of course she had never done that way herself. She was just a girl, a teen-- remarkably powerless and incapable of doing more than pickpocketing and stone-reading.

Until now.

"Teach me that then," she concluded, voice still tight with discomfort. "Stopping people. I wanna use the force for that." Finally, an answer to his original question. And still, not a reassuring one at that. There were two sides to this coin. Which way would this blank slate turn?

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

"Well...on an effort to make sure we don't hurt too many people whilst stopping them we use lightsabers. Laser swords which can cut through durasteel like butter."

A moment of silence.

"That was an attempt at a...never mind. Right. Telekenisis. Or...picking up rocks. This time you can keep your eyes open but find that familiar sense of the rocks again. I want you to will them to jump into your hands as soon as you can make that connection, alright? "

 

[Serya Talith]

Serya pursed her lips, each thing he said feeling like a new reveal she wanted to dig into it. The urge unsettled her. She still meant what she said, she didn't want to be one of those people, the ones he came from, fighting all those wars. It was just every time he said something it sounded like it could help her. She wanted to dig in and peel back the layers to this mysterious magic he said she could better herself with.

But each reveal felt like a little too much when paired with the fact that she wouldn't acknowledge the force was real until this morning.

She crossed her arms for a moment, closed off as he brought them right back to the stupid moving of rocks. It wasn't what she wanted to hear about right now, but as they were still feeling each other out, she allowed the redirect with no protest from her.

"Fine," she agreed, holding out her hands. She let out a breath, her spinning thoughts constantly tugging on her attention as she tried to focus on the brick-- which was already her preferred of the two. "Up," she commanded.

And of course, it didn't move.

 

[Jacen Voidstalker]

Jacen would have stayed silent for longer. His patience had allowed him to rehabilitate several sith and fallen jedi. It had not, of course, ever been enough to get his own son to listen. That was another story.

However, he flare of frustration was enough that he decided to speak.

"It's one of those things that takes some time to come and then gets easier and easier."

He looked to a few stones to her left. They all lifted from the grass to form a small smiling face in the air. Just like how one would be made in a snowman in winter.

"Just focus on that connection. It's the Force you are commanding, not the rock."

 

[Serya Talith]

A flair of agitation mirrored in her gut, the dazzling display of floating rocks feeling more like a mock than a sign of help. The were cool enough to gape at, when had she ever seen such things before? Instead she reached out and dashed them, sending them scattering.

"I'm trying. You said I was suppose to be good at this," she accused, revealing a hint towards her sudden tone.

"What does it matter what color they are? Or what shape? What does that have to do with anything to getting them to move." The force rippled out around her, every rock in a five foot radius sudden jumping into the air around them... and floating there.