• About
  • About the Brooklyn Project
  • Allies
  • Bound to the Flame Chapters and Artwork
  • Definitions and Erin-isms
  • Erin’s Point-Based Guide for Evaluating Movie Adaptions
  • Novels
  • The Archives of Selay’uu

The Upstairs Archives

~ A random repository of how-to-write and geekery, with an occasional snippet of accidental wisdom.

The Upstairs Archives

Category Archives: Tales of a Wandering Bard

Stories in general all go here.

Careless

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

it's that time again lads, poetry

Rosalie of Against the Shadows wrote a poem that inspired me to write and just put out my thoughts. It was cathartic. I haven’t had that happen in a while.

I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. Hopefully my poem will do the explaining for me.

Careless

Dry coughs and chalk dust and cobwebs and house dust

mark out the space between nightfall and daybreak

Punctuated by study sessions of the night hours

And dreams of missed assignments and tests

Barely bothered to care.

The school is restless.

I haven’t had a moment’s peace in months

Between deadlines and crying children

Who were too old to cry in the first place

And the year is dying and it’s turning cold again

(my geranium is dead. I meant to bring it in)

Carols are here already as they try to ignore

The dead part of the year

October is an attempt to romanticize the brown

Before Christmas.

It’s that part of the semester again.

Advertisement

A Brief Diversion

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Story Dynamics, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

completed stories, doctor who, fanfiction, short stories, snowball fight!, winter

In honor of the first day of winter, I bring you this small offering. Enjoy!


“What are we investigating again, Miss?” Benton asked, stumbling awkwardly on his snowshoes.

“Nothing much, Sergeant,” Jo replied, trying to steady him. “Frankly, I think the Brigadier just wanted us out of headquarters.”

“We can be a bit of a rowdy lot,” Benton admitted, laughing wryly.

“Except the Doctor, of course,” Jo said. “He takes everything too seriously!”

“We’re opposite ends of the spectrum,” Benton agreed thoughtfully. Jo shoved him playfully.

“There, all the science is rubbing off on you!”

“No, it’s just something I heard the Doctor say,” Benton said placidly. Jo giggled.

“Wait a minute, Sergeant—I’ve got an idea!”

“Are you two going to dawdle all day?” the Doctor called from up ahead. Jo squished snow in between her gloves.

“Not really, Doctor!”

The snowball smacked the Doctor squarely in the back of the head. He whirled around, brushing snow out of his hair and looking a little bit annoyed. “Really, Jo!”

Benton’s snowball hit the Doctor in the face. The Doctor spluttered, spitting out dog- and leather-flavored snow. Jo broke into a fit of laughter. The Doctor drew himself up.

“I can see I have no choice,” he said, and hefted a large chunk of snow from the side of the road at them. Jo and Benton dived in different directions and the game was on. They slid and scrambled around in the snow, ducking out of cover to fire off volleys at each other.

There was a brief ceasefire as a UNIT truck pulled up on the road. “You three were supposed to report in a half hour ago!” exclaimed Captain Yates. Four well-aimed snowballs knocked him flat on his backside, the Doctor making good use of both his hands ambidextrously.

Howling bloody murder, Yates dived into the fray.

Another fifteen minutes later, the Brigadier drove up on a motorcycle. Alstair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart had seen quite a few strange things in his time, but never anything quite so strange as UNIT’s scientific adviser holding a sergeant in a headlock, with his assistant clinging to his back shoving snow down the back of his neck, and a captain yelling like a banshee and pelting all three of them with snowballs.

Years later, Lethbridge-Stewart would remember the look on the Doctor’s face as the one and only guilty expression he had ever surprised out of the Time Lord.

I Have Loved the Stars Too Fondly

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Story Dynamics, Tales from Selay'uu, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

a tale of two cities, a wrinkle in time, baroness emma orczy, c.s. forester, charles dickens, doctor who, horatio hornblower, j.r.r. tolkien, madeleine l'engle, original stories, short stories, star wars, the lord of the rings, the scarlet pimpernel

Call this a tribute to all my favorite characters–I was thinking back on all my favorites and I noticed that my very favorite characters all tried and failed at some point, but kept on trying. Their victories were by no means constant, and their successes were not always total.

So here is my tribute to Horatio Hornblower, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Martin the Warrior, the Doctor (though this sounds much more like Eight than like Eleven), Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Charles Wallace Murray, Meg Murray, Sydney Cotton, and all my other favorite characters.

Enjoy.


They all pity me. I can tell.

I’ve got all the scars and bruises and broken bones I earned by my trouble, I skirt the edge of madness, and sometimes I seem to be invisible.

Sometimes, they ask me why I’m like this.

“It couldn’t be helped,” I say.

After all, if I told them the full truth, they wouldn’t stop to listen.

Sometimes, when you reach out to touch the stars, you fall and fall hard. Not all your leaps of faith will be successes.

Of course, since they pity me, they’d never see the truth. The truth is this: I tried. I did my best and sometimes it just wasn’t enough. Reduced to this shell of a man as I am in their eyes, they would only see the futility of the struggle. Never its nobility.

The very core of the truth, condensed and concentrated, is that I do not regret one moment.

I do not grudge one bruise, one scar; not the shattered bones or the bleeding knuckles or broken skin. If I had my live to live all over, I’d do it all again. I’d risk it all. I’d step out without knowing if I had a safety net. I’d run farther and fight harder without knowing if I’d win or not. I would seize every chance, take every risk in hope.

I have lived more fully than any of them. The path of least resistance is not one that is by any means enviable. It’s safe, certainly—but it is not satisfying. Not to me, in any case.

I would not give up one second of this. I do not regret one moment of this.

Some things are worth failing for.

The Ones We Leave Behind Us

19 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Tales of a Wandering Bard

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

completed stories, doctor who, fanfiction, short stories

In honor of Father’s day: The Doctor goes to keep an old tryst. (Note: Cross-posted to Fanfiction and my Tumblr blog.) The author is not responsible for any excess of feels.

Enjoy.


The Doctor appeared on Susan’s doorstep five hours and forty years late, though when she invited him inside she expected it had been longer for him. He took off his hat, awkwardly, looking as if he wanted to roll the brim between his long, slender fingers. “You look lovely, Susan,” he said, stumbling awkwardly over the words. Susan half-smiled.

“Good to see you too, Grandfather.”

His tie was askew and his hair was wild, as if he’d taken a dive through the vortex before getting dressed and hadn’t found the time to tame it again. Carefully, Susan replaced the long, soft curls into something resembling order and took his hand. “Shall we?”

The TARDIS was different from how it had been; instead of gleaming white, the walls honeycombed with roundels, there was an ancient cathedral-like room, lined with books and candles and clocks. “You’ve redecorated,” Susan murmured, brushing her hand along the edge of the wood and brass console. The TARDIS chimed a faint greeting. The Doctor ducked his head, shyly.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “It seemed like time for a change.” He stood there, leaning against the door frame, a slight figure all but lost in the gloom, the shadows at the edges of the enormous space. Susan felt an ache in her chest that could not be explained by her recent cold. The Doctor walked briskly across the open space and leaned the elegant cane against the console, throwing levers and pressing knobs.

They materialized in a broom closet and joined the party as inconspicuously as they could. “We’re overdressed,” Susan said in an undertone. A half-smile pulled at the corners of the Doctor’s mouth.

“Just a little.” He held out a hand. “Would you care to dance, Mrs. Campbell?” She didn’t say anything–she just gave him a little, sad half-smile.

They had one misstep–the Doctor tripped over a floorboard during a complicated step and almost dropped her, but caught her at the last moment. “Sorry,” he whispered. “Out of practice.”

At one point, when the Doctor momentarily left her to get some punch for both of them, one of the older gentlemen attending came across to speak to Susan. “Pleasant-spoken young man,” he said. “Is he your father?”

“My grandfather, actually,” Susan corrected him. The older man paled.

“Good lord.”

When it was time to go home, the Doctor landed at the end of the street and walked Susan to her front door. She paused in the doorway.

“Thank you for tonight,” she said, quietly. The Doctor ducked his head abashedly.

“I tend to forget a lot of things in this life,” he said, softly. “I thought it was time to… give you some closure. I’m not getting any younger.” Susan smiled sadly.

“Come here.” His coat smelled faintly of old books, lavender and honey. She pressed her face gratefully against it.

“I missed you,” he confessed.

“I know.”

Of Obscure And Underrated Characters: Elwin Ransom

08 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Tales of a Wandering Bard, The Brooklyn Project, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

c.s. lewis, characters, earnest hemingway, elwin ransom, f. scott fitzgerald, out of the silent planet, perelandra, story dynamics, that hideous strength, the lost generation, the space trilogy

Okay, so not as obscure as some I could’ve picked, but it counts as obscure, since everyone seems to have forgotten that Lewis didn’t just write for children. *glares at stereotypes in general*

Disclaimer: I don’t think that all atheists write depressing things. As a Christian, however, I tend to find atheistic beliefs very depressing. I don’t intend to offend; this is simply how I read it.

Okay, so first for some background.

Dr. Elwin Ransom is the central or viewpoint character in C.S. Lewis’ novels Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, and an important character (though no longer a viewpoint character) in That Hideous Strength. He was also featured in the unfinished story The Dark Tower. These novels were written as part of a dare between Lewis and fellow Inkling J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis was supposed to write a science-fiction story, while Tolkien was going to try a time-travel novel. (Tolkien’s side of the dare is sadly incomplete.) From the three completed books and parts of The Dark Tower, you can gather some important information about the hero’s personal history.

  1. Dr. Elwin Ransom is a philologist. Basically, he studies languages, probably those of the British Isles especially, given that he understands that his name isn’t actually anything to do with the act of ransoming, but is a corruption of the Scandanavian “Ranulf’s Son” (Perelandra.)
  2. He fought in the First World War. I don’t recall where he was in action or if it was even mentioned which unit he was in, but he did see action.
  3. He teaches at a university (I don’t remember, but I think it was Cambridge.) I wish he was my teacher.

Ransom is a pretty likeable character to begin with. He feels frustration with himself and his somewhat-impulsive side, much like Horatio Hornblower (in the books, not so much the movies), but he is very generous all the same, even when it makes things awkward (ahh, awkwardness… Lewis took the chance to poke fun at it… I can’t even come close to telling you how hilarious it is. Seriously, read the book. X-D)

But the truly ironic thing about Ransom is that he’s one of the Lost Generation.

The Lost Generation is a term used to refer to the men who fought in the First World War and came home disillusioned, with war, with themselves, and with the values of the previous generation.

Lewis, along with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Earnest Hemingway (and Ransom!), was a member of the Lost Generation and fought in the First World War.

While some people lost their way, Lewis is a good example of how bad things can either press people to disillusionment or to hope.

Ransom’s character arc is very unique compared to many fantasy and science fiction heroes. Instead of being a high-fantasy hero or a wizard or an Asgardian or whatever, he’s a human with human doubts and human struggles. These books aren’t man against nature or man against his fellow man: they are man against himself, and have perhaps the most powerful conflict of any books I have ever read as a result (with the exception of The Lord of the Rings, which similarly deals with the protagonist fighting with himself.)

The only other characters I can think of at the moment who have the same struggle (in a visible and vital capacity; sorry, Obi-Wan, Lucas really shortchanged us all when he decided to give you less screen time!) are Horatio Hornblower (written by an atheist and therefore depressing) and the Doctor (who is a telepathic, possibly immortal, time-travelling alien, for goodness’ sake.)

The thing about Lewis, however, is that, while he powerfully conveys the agony that is doubt and interior struggle, he is also absolutely brilliant at writing that moment of clarity that ends all doubt and pours new life into the soul. When the reader reaches that moment of resolution, it is a cleansing and rejuvenating experience for him or her as well as for Ransom.

Reading C.S. Lewis is like doing spring-cleaning in your head. C.S. Lewis is a whole new level of metafiction.

Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength are essentially metafiction on the Bible. Seriously, do you need any more reasons why you should go and read them?!

(Afterword: Stick with That Hideous Strength, no matter how hard it gets. There’s discourse on the Arthurian legends, so it is so worth the time.)

Thanks for reading, and God Bless!

May LATE Club

12 Thursday May 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Story Dynamics, Tales from Selay'uu, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

doctor who, late club, places i write, selay'uu (sort of), this doctor who obsession is getting a little out of hand, writing

And here we are once more! Hello, everyone!

This month’s prompt is to tell about my favorite place to write.

Well, now that I’ve got everything in order, probably my bedroom. 😉

I just moved from one of the intended bedrooms to an improvised room in the basement. One wall is made entirely out of carefully-arranged bookshelves, and the doorway is a tension rod with a curtain. My clothes hang on a series of kitchen storage racks (which, instead of the typical silver, are a dark brown bronzy color) and my desk is one of those really dark-wood affairs right up next to the window, which I can keep open whenever it’s warm as long as I like–it gets cold down here otherwise. 😉

All in all, it looks like something out of the Eighth Doctor’s TARDIS, which is absolutely fantastic, it’s probably my favorite of all the TARDIS interiors. Don’t get me wrong, I love Nine and Ten’s TARDIS, with its organic look and the feel that it’s a real living ship and entirely alien, and I like Eleven’s later TARDIS interior too; it looks really really Gallifreyan! but I really like Eight’s TARDIS the best. Books everywhere! The ordered chaos, clutter, armchairs, and candles that make it feel really lived-in. It just feels right for the Eighth Doctor, who is always wondering if he’s losing his mind or something else, misplacing things, and has nearly eight hundred years of clutter that seriously needs tidying up. He’s so scattered, it’s somewhat sad, but it’s also reassuring–that sense that the Doctor can be so human.

Sorry about the rant. I might be–just a teeny bit–obsessed.

Anyway, here, have some pictures:

hello gorgeous

Concept art. It looks like a gentleman scientist’s mausoleum, doesn’t it? Something out of the eighteenth century. 😉

eighth doctor tardis

This is the best view I could find of Eight’s TARDIS interior, showing the console very well, I think.

eighth doctor tardis 2

And here’s a little bit of a shot showing the bookshelves–not very well. Hey, he cleaned up! When did he clean up?!

Interestingly, I just discovered that Eight’s console looks a lot like Eleven’s, though the rest of the interior is totally different:

eleventh doctor tardis

Here’s Eleven in his second TARDIS interior. Geronimo!

 

ANYWAYS. I also like to write and draw outdoors, but only when I’m not being bothered by big bad bugs. The patio is great for this–up until recently, there was moss all over the place. Then my little sister got into it. -_- Ruined the whole thing.

My mind palace is, inside, even more like Eight’s TARDIS, if that’s even possible, except that the decor is not just bronze but also owls and dragons as well. I tend to just write any old place there, so long as Anakin’s not around to bother me, but my favorites are the vault, the cathedral room, the gardens and the brook. Sometimes I even envision a replica of Eight’s TARDIS gardens because why not and also it annoys him. (One time I didn’t get anything done because Eight and I were chasing each other with dandelions and fake cabbages the whole time. For someone almost a thousand years old, he takes things way too seriously.)

Oh, and by the way…

i regret nothing x8

Erin out.

Creative Writing Progress Post 1: “Memory”

06 Friday May 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Story Dynamics, Tales of a Wandering Bard

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

creative writing class 2016, poetry, progress posts, writing

A quick introduction: This past semester, I took the Introduction to Creative Writing class. Most important thing learned: How to take feedback and balanced criticism. Other important thing learned: how fun crazy wild radical revisions can be.

So this turned out to be the poem I kept coming back to. The other one just seemed too complete to condense down into thirty lines. (And apologies for the free verse, because she said “don’t worry about iambic pentameter.”)

Enjoy!

Finals Version

Planting seeds in the garden with Grandma:
Poking small slippery seeds into the moist, dark earth.
“Won’t they be scared?” I asked. “Isn’t it dark down there?” Grandma smiled.
“That’s why they’ll reach for the sun,” she said.

The tiny seedlings are still reaching for the sun, though they’re not so small now.
Everything else is gone.

I pass quickly through the parlor: mouldering sheets cover the furniture like decaying cobwebs
Reduced to rags and shreds, neglected all alike by their makers.
Clematis, climbing, twines the railing to which I cling; support for them, merely precarious for me.
Up creaking stairs, a bedstead stands on its side, its ripped bolster spilling feathers
Like the love letters, once hoarded, now carried by the breeze, ink dripping and running, across the floor—
So brittle.
A bottle, fallen from the vanity, weeps crystal tears onto a bone-dry wood floor.
Maybe its perfume smelled sweet once, but now a smell of stale oil  too tired to be rancid
wafts my nose: a million wishes of high-school prom, “Footloose” playing in the background.
Splinters of glass from the fallen mirror reflect shattered shards of light, dimmed by dust and rust.

Why did I return?

Sunflowers lean in, peering through the glassless upstairs windows.
The sprawling roses we planted have climbed through the window and jammed up the sash; it will never be lowered.
Hollyhocks poke at the roses, but are no challenge to their supremacy.
The walls are a mass of roses; violets peep shyly from the corner
Moss crawls the dry floorboards like a rich green carpet, forgiving my passing feet with its softness.
Pansies smile from the kitchen, gossiping with laughing daffodils.
Lilacs shelter sun-beaten ferns with their shade.
Fingers of ivy pry apart the bricks and cement
and daisies push up through the floor, shifting wood and rubble aside like a curtain.
The house is a mass of wild flowers and its heady scent is a laugh of triumph:
The flowers will always remember the woman who planted them.

First Draft

Was this someone’s home, once?

Half-broken windows let in the wind
some panels neglected by Time for now;
soon enough Time will come to claim them
Entropy, her servant, going before.

Sheets that cover the furniture are reduced to rags and shreds like pale spider webs
neglected by their makers.
Up creaking stairs, a bedstead dreams
pillows tossed on the floor and ripped at the seams  spilling feathers
like yellowed letters from a mailbag.

A bottle weeps crystallized tears onto a long-since bone-dry floor.
Maybe they smelled sweet once, but now a faint smell of stale oil  too tired to be rancid
Reaches my nose.
Splinters of glass from a mirror reflect the light, dimmed and shaded by dust and rust.
Clinging to the railing as if it will hold me, I descend
As if in a dream.

Sprawling roses have climbed through the window and jammed up the sash; it will never be lowered.
Moss crawls the dry floorboards like a rich green carpet, forgiving my passing feet with its softness.
The walls are a mass of roses; violets peep from the corner
Pansies smile from the kitchen, gossiping with the laughing daffodils.
Lilacs shelter sun-beaten ferns with their shade.
Fingers of ivy pry apart the bricks and cement
and daisies push up through the floor, shifting wood and rubble aside like a curtain.
The house is a mass of wild flowers and its heady scent is a laugh of triumph.
The house is still home.

First Revision

My grandmother’s garden has moved into the house.
Sunflowers lean in, peering through the glassless upstairs windows.
I pass quickly through the parlor:
Sheets covering the furniture are reduced to rags and shreds like pale spider webs
neglected by their makers.
Up creaking stairs, a bedstread dreams
pillows tossed on the floor and ripped at the seams  spilling feathers
like yellowed letters from a mailbag.

A bottle weeps crystallized tears onto a long-since bone-dry floor.
Maybe they smelled sweet once, but now a faint smell of stale oil  too tired to be rancid
Reaches my nose.
Splinters of glass from a mirror reflect the light, dimmed and shaded by dust and rust.
Climbing clematis twines the banister, faint honeysuckle scent wafting through the entryway.
Clinging to the railing as if it will hold me like the clematis, I descend
As if in a dream.

Was this ever really just our house?
The sprawling roses we planted have climbed through the window and jammed up the sash; it will never be lowered.
Moss crawls the dry floorboards like a rich green carpet, forgiving my passing feet with its softness.
The walls are a mass of roses; violets peep shyly from the corner
Hollyhocks poke at the roses that cluster the window, but are no challenge to their supremacy.
Pansies smile from the kitchen, gossiping with laughing daffodils.
Lilacs shelter sun-beaten ferns with their shade.
Fingers of ivy pry apart the bricks and cement
and daisies push up through the floor, shifting wood and rubble aside like a curtain.
The house is a mass of wild flowers and its heady scent is a laugh of triumph:
Even if it is not mine, the house is still home.

LATE March Blog Chain

21 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Story Dynamics, Tales from Selay'uu, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

a swiftly tilting planet, a wind in the door, a wrinkle in time, blog chains, characters, doctor who, late, madeleine l'engle, selay'uu (sort of), writing

Go visit Rosalie’s blog, if you’re curious. Unfortunately, I’m in the middle of Dead Week and can’t help you much.

Well… a character who I’ve created who will probably never feature in a novel… Casceny! No, just kidding. The steampunk time-traveler heroine may or may not have a novel in the works. Eventually. So far, the time travelers in the Mind Palace are Charles Wallace Murray and Meg Murray (A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels), the Doctor (Doctor Who), and my own characters, Emrys Williams, Casceny, and a young Hispanic lady who is going by the alias of “Maria” at the moment until I can pick out a better name for her. Emrys is first in line and Maria is second (multi-cultural time travel academy, here we come!) But Casceny is still not eliminated from the running.

But she’ll be in the countdown anyway, since right now she’s more of an interest person and an agent of chaos in the mind palace at the moment.

More seriously, Kysherin. Kysherin is my evil muse. Generally a not-very-nice person. Pesters me to write, and then bothers me while I am writing. If I come up with a wonderous thing, she comes up with a way to corrupt it totally. All angst, posted here and elsewhere, is absolutely 100% her fault. (Okay, except for the sensory-overload type, which is me trying to cope with my overwhelming surroundings.)

There’s also Oliver, who is one of my all-time favorite characters, and who Writefury and I came up with. I probably shouldn’t even be talking about him yet, but I haven’t mentioned what he comes up in, so we’re good… you’ll all probably recognize him when he does, though. Technically he doesn’t count because he DOES exist in a project in what Rosalie terms the Erin!verse (which is a composite of all my ongoing projects at any given time.) But it’s not a novel. I just HAD to post about him, since he’s AWESOME, and let me just say, I can hardly wait. ;-D

And finally, there’s Chaos, who is barred from the mind palace for obvious reasons. Chaos is my artistic vent. She always wants to fight and start minor class wars. She’s a teenaged Marxist and anarchist and I sometimes doodle her getting into well-deserved trouble when I’m particularly hot under the collar about something (mostly politics). Favorite pastimes include random vandalism and Luddite-ing with copies of Das Kapital. Needless to say, I never plan on posting anything featuring her on this blog. If she were here, Chaos would claim that she was created as a caricature of Bernie Sanders, but she is a blatant liar and you should not trust anything she says. Ever. (Caricacturing Bernie Sanders would be giving me far too much credit, and I can’t draw Trump.)

The Average Plot of a Tinker Bell Movie

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Tales of a Wandering Bard

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

disney, humor, tinker bell movies

Act I: Someone or something new happens.

Someone enthuses about doing the thing

Act II: “NO YOU MAY NOT DO THE THING”

“because TRADITIONS”

***ANGST***

***weak, barely-believable conflict***

Act III: So you know that tradition/belief?

Well… turns out it was wrong

YAY

and we all live happily ever after, cheerfully destroying any continuity between movies and/or Peter Pan.

Repeat

06 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by erinkenobi2893 in Living Life with Passion, Tales of a Wandering Bard, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

completed stories, fanfiction, short stories, star wars

Wow, it’s been forever since I posted any Star Wars stuff on here. Here, have a flash fiction.

Summary: A brief meditation on how history repeats itself. Warning: Dark, with visions of the past and future. Enjoy!

Repeat

                “He is… the Chosen One. Train him.” Qui-Gon reached up, stroking Obi-Wan’s cheek. Obi-Wan felt his skin burn under the touch, bubbling, blistering, crackling, curling up and away. This could not have hurt more if Qui-Gon had had only recriminations to offer.

I failed.

For the first time in his life, Obi-Wan Kenobi understood Xanatos.

The death of a father—it hurt. It should scar.

There was no way to respond to this. There was nothing that could ever compare to this.

He understood Xanatos. He hated it. It burned like poison on his tongue. And he was just as guilty as Xanatos ever was, his hands stained with the blood of his father’s killer. No different from Xanatos.

He could not forgive Xanatos, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t forgive himself.

This was the moment when Obi-Wan Kenobi fell from grace.

I failed.

The charred remains fell away, and he looked forward, through the ashes of the veil.

Around him the Temple burned. Bodies were heaped, scattered in a macabre vignette, like wilted, twisted flowers. He looked into the venomous eyes of—someone—friend, student, brother—I have failed you, I have failed you—I loved you!—and knew that this was what he was. The one who would plunge the galaxy into the dark with all the best of intentions.

Logically he knew that this wasn’t quite true, but the passion overwhelmed him, swamped him, overturned and drowned him.

Train him.

And then, he was walking away, into shadow, guiding the small hands that might offer redemption—back to Tattoine, then, Master Kenobi?—and he knew what he had to do.

Yes, Master.

← Older posts

The Teenaged Superhero Society

Proud Member of the Teenaged Superhero Society

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 300 other subscribers
Follow The Upstairs Archives on WordPress.com

Categories

  • Artwork (19)
  • Living Life with Passion (204)
  • Story Dynamics (156)
  • Tales from Selay'uu (36)
  • Tales of a Wandering Bard (229)
    • Bound to the Flame (21)
    • Shifting Tides Series (20)
      • Battlefield of the Soul (5)
      • The Hero's Dream (15)
  • The Brooklyn Project (11)
  • The Music Writing Challenge (5)
  • Uncategorized (231)

Archives

  • March 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • The Upstairs Archives
    • Join 300 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Upstairs Archives
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...