“Come in and sit down,” Leia said,
Jul. 16th, 2016 02:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/29BJLXN:
“Come in and sit down,” Leia said, laughing, and for a moment she was the young Princess of Alderaan he remembered from a state visit, nearly his own age, following her mother Breha around in great seriousness while Kes trailed at his own mother Lita’s heels trying to look solemn and deserving of diplomatic recognition. So long ago, so very long ago.
Kes sat, and melancholy welled up, and he said, in Iberican, “On Alderaan the ister vines would be blooming now.”
Leia looked over sharply at him. “Do you track Xicul’s moon phases too?”
He shook his head slowly, sadly, refusing to be stung by it. “Only Alderaan,” he said. “I was born there, Poe was born there, Norasol still calculates our namedays by Alderaan’s moons.”
She had her datapad clutched tighter to her chest, and the lines beside her mouth were deeply graven. “I kept track of the calendar for a long time,” she said softly, after a silence. “Always did the translation in my head. It’s really winter now, it’s really spring now, it’s really summer now, regardless of where I was and what the weather was doing. But I let go of it.”
“If it weighs you down, let it go,” Kes said, echoing an old Norasol truism that he knew she’d gotten from a long-dead matriarch before her– she claimed this to be true of almost all her observations, but he had gotten quite good at telling the difference between old wisdom and a Norasol original, even if she sometimes didn’t know the difference. “But if it holds you up, hang onto it. It holds me up, Leia, so I hang onto it.”
She breathed in and let it out slowly. “I don’t have anything left to hold me up,” she said. “There’s only me.”
“Sometimes it’s heavy,” Kes said, “to be the last one, and to feel like I am obligated to remember, because there is no one else to remember it. And if I forget, they’re all gone forever.”
“Come in and sit down,” Leia said, laughing, and for a moment she was the young Princess of Alderaan he remembered from a state visit, nearly his own age, following her mother Breha around in great seriousness while Kes trailed at his own mother Lita’s heels trying to look solemn and deserving of diplomatic recognition. So long ago, so very long ago.
Kes sat, and melancholy welled up, and he said, in Iberican, “On Alderaan the ister vines would be blooming now.”
Leia looked over sharply at him. “Do you track Xicul’s moon phases too?”
He shook his head slowly, sadly, refusing to be stung by it. “Only Alderaan,” he said. “I was born there, Poe was born there, Norasol still calculates our namedays by Alderaan’s moons.”
She had her datapad clutched tighter to her chest, and the lines beside her mouth were deeply graven. “I kept track of the calendar for a long time,” she said softly, after a silence. “Always did the translation in my head. It’s really winter now, it’s really spring now, it’s really summer now, regardless of where I was and what the weather was doing. But I let go of it.”
“If it weighs you down, let it go,” Kes said, echoing an old Norasol truism that he knew she’d gotten from a long-dead matriarch before her– she claimed this to be true of almost all her observations, but he had gotten quite good at telling the difference between old wisdom and a Norasol original, even if she sometimes didn’t know the difference. “But if it holds you up, hang onto it. It holds me up, Leia, so I hang onto it.”
She breathed in and let it out slowly. “I don’t have anything left to hold me up,” she said. “There’s only me.”
“Sometimes it’s heavy,” Kes said, “to be the last one, and to feel like I am obligated to remember, because there is no one else to remember it. And if I forget, they’re all gone forever.”
