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ategory: Tiny Tales, Drabble, Vignette
Rating: PG-13 (adult themes)
Archive: Anywhere, please take and share, just keep the
header attached.
Disclaimer: Lucas is God, I am Scum. And suing scum
is an exercise in futility, I swear it. :-)
Summary: A tiny Rabe tale.
--------
HANDMAIDEN TALES: RABE
by DBKate
dbkate2@aol.com
-------
Always buried within her books is how her parents described Rabe
to their friends. Piles of datapad cartridges were strewn all
over the house, then hidden beneath the pallet when her family
started discarding them in despair.
Despair over their only daughter becoming too smart to find a
husband.
Rabe was a daughter of courtiers in the court of Naboo and
beautiful enough that her questing mind would only be a detriment
to her father's desperate desire to marry her off above her
station.
"Why not like the others, Rabe?" her father would moan. "Pull
your eyes out of those scrolls and look around you. The others
look kindly upon the young men at court, why not you?"
"Stand straight, don't slouch so," her mother commanded as the
datapad would be pulled away and soon Rabe had to hide that too,
finally taking refuge in a nearby wooded area, huddled at the
foot of an ancient junip tree, her cloak hood raised, her texts
clutched gratefully to her heart.
It was there that she met him.
A man youthful of face, old and wise in demeanor. She felt his
eyes on her before she saw him, a strange shadow spark of
prescience, and he'd bowed to her before removing his cloak hood
and revealing himself for what he was.
A Jedi knight, newly made, his hair still shorn in the style of
an apprentice.
He was polite and charming, interested in what she was reading.
Shyly, she showed it to him, and they talked then, long into the
evening, then again on the next day and the day after that,
discussing philosophy and physics, poetry and art.
By the fourth evening their eyes met, the datapad fell aside, and
they talked no more.
She was eighteen, he, perhaps twenty, perhaps thirty, it was hard
to tell. She didn't tell her parents; Jedi knights were not
considered suitable husbands for any woman, let alone the
daughter of a respected courtier.
The knight warned her that he couldn't stay, and while she understood
his words, her heart refused to listen. She gave her soul as
well as herself to the Jedi and he was gentle and kind,
passionate and tender, and Rabe's hopes grew.
But a month later, his mission was over and he took his leave of
Rabe as politely as he'd greeted her that first day in the woods.
Her breath caught somewhere within her chest as he uttered his
goodbyes and she struggled for days on end to take in enough air
to ease the terrible clutching ache that lingered in her heart
after he was gone.
She took to her bed and her mother sat beside her, silent and
knowing. Bathed Rabe's feverish forehead and cheeks, told
the rest of the family to leave her be, and whispered hope to
her night after night, until Rabe thought she might be ready to
believe that her life was not over.
Some months passed and Rabe returned to her faithful books,
letting them give her the only solace she could find. She
ignored everything else; the court, her family ...
Even the sickness to her stomach that began to plague her each
and every morning.
Irritably, she pushed her mother aside and claimed it was
nothing. The food of the court was too rich, the weather was too
hot -- it was nothing.
Finally, her mother asked her pointedly when her last cycle had
passed, and Rabe's life suddenly changed forever, for it was then
she realized that she was with child.
A child whose father was gone with the stars.
Twenty weeks later, Rabe's son was born, and she named him
Ishtial, or, "Forgotten One" in Naboo. He had his father's
coloring, but her eyes, and there was no scandal once it was
discovered who the father was.
"To bear a Jedi child is an honor," the older courtiers insisted.
"Soon, he will be brought to the great Temple and raised there.
Have no fear, his father will return for him. They always do."
Rabe began to pray this wasn't true and she held her infant son
close, night after night staring at the stars, unable to sleep.
But it was true -- the Jedi *did* return and bowing, he bundled
his son within his cloak then kissed Rabe's hand in thanks.
She stood stock still as they boarded, watched the transport ship
take off and dryed eyed, she turned away from the hangar and
never looked back.
That night, she threw her datapad in the refuse bin and presented
herself at court. She danced and drank with the young men there,
always smiling and laughing. She indulged in scandals, gossiped
and caroused, and never again did she mention the Jedi and her
child.
Not even to the new Queen who became her mistress after the old
king was removed from office.
Not even when two new knights arrived and delivered them from a
deadly invasion.
Not even when a young knight named Anakin Skywalker visited the
court one day and sat beside her mistress in the garden, asking
politely what the Queen happened to be reading that afternoon
beneath the shade of an ancient junip tree.
-------
finis
all comments always welcome!
dbkate2@aol.com
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