Melida/Daan: The Legend Of Ben

Melida/Daan: The Legend of Ben

Ben is among the oldest of all the young at 13.

At 13 he soothes the fevers of the littlest who have never had enough strength or food or love, he holds up buildings that should collapse and kill them all (yet he does not do so with his strength for he is scrawny like them, weak like them. He doesn’t even touch the wood) finds water sources that are impossible to see, shoots steady even when his hands shake (as if guided by something, as if he is not entirely himself but something other, something more).

He calls it the force, they call it Ben.

At 13 he becomes a legend.

Legends aren’t born, but made in the desperate tunnels full of dying children. They say he appeared one day from the sky, that when his elders left, he refused to. That he was not born on the bloody battlefields of hate, but that he stayed because he saw them, felt with them, heard their song. He stayed when the Jedi left.

The children see how he balanced Cersai and Nield (love and hate, peace and war, water and fire). They see how the three click into place, Melida and Daan and Other. They wonder if maybe there was always an empty spot between them, waiting to be filled. Wonder if that is how this war started. Wonder if between every Melida and every Daan there is a space for something Other.

No one remembers how the war started, only that it did. Maybe there used to be a third faction, maybe something other (something more, something Ben) and when it died or left there was nothing left to bridge the Melida and the Daan.

Ben is sure as the earth, light as the air (only because they cannot hear him cry at night). He is a contradiction. He says strange things and does the impossible. Sometimes he glows with something else (something more).

He is remembered as the one who stayed (no one will say where he went). He is remembered as the Other between all Melida and all Daan.

There is an empty seat in every house. An empty seat in the Trivumate, waiting to be filled. Outside historians call it the Absent Third Phenomena— they are not sure why it is (they do not want to dig deeper, dig into the bloody history, tear their secrets and traditions and culture from the rotting bodies of child soldiers. they do not want to know). In Melida/Daan there is a word that is untranslatable that describes it, A’Benui. It is sacred. It is told to every child too young to remember the sewers, told by every Young that was touched by Ben (his something other).

(The Melida-Daan don’t know this, but somewhere else in the galaxy Obi-Wan Kenobi leads his second army of child soldiers and wonders if he was meant for anything else. Wonders if they see the cracks and uncertainty and self loathing; the first ones hadn’t. He wonders if they would be ashamed of him now, fighting, bleeding, warring, killing even now. Wonders if he will ever know peace or if he will always be a false legend made from blood and tears and a need to believe.)

Watching the generational trauma be passed down through Dooku, Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ashoka, and Luke is so heartbreaking. Every dysfunction in one relationship can be traced by to the earlier one.

Life is so much sweeter when I choose to read fanfics about palpatine dying

Satine on her way to commit cultural genocide

Before Qui-Gon Jinn died, he used Ataru and had passed down his mastery to his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Ataru which relies on acrobatics, offense, quick movements, and unpredictability. Ataru which lacks defense, which Qui-Gon Jinn does using.

After Naboo, Obi-Wan Kenobi switches from the lightsaber form Ataru to Soresu.

Soresu is the Endurance form. It is an unpopular form amongst younglings because it is pure defense. They don’t understand how they can win using it. They’re right. You can’t win using Soresu, that’s not why it was made.

It is the form of survival, not winning. It is meant for the user to endure suffering, endless suffering and still stand. A Soresu master will never be struck down for lack of defense.

Obi-Wan Kenobi refuses to leave his Padawan masterless.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is the pinnacle of catholic guilt