Child of Light

Author: Lurker
Rating:  G
Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to George Lucas

 

Prologue: Unconventional Debutante

 

My Mother is coming for me today.  Not coming to visit, but coming for me. 

And I’m leaving with her, where I don’t know.  She’s mentioned a few things.

Her business, if I take a sheen to trading, or some academy I might be particularly suited for, but only if I want to.  She stressed that particularly. Or the Coruscant University, where I can study anything I want.  She seems particularly keen on not trying to run my life.  Which is only just, as she’s never been much of a player in it for the past fifteen years.

 

I don’t hate my mother.  Or resent her.  Or even wish that she was like other mothers.  The school therapist finds this odd.  A fifteen year old girl whose mother visits her once a year for her school dance recitals is not supposed to be calm and accepting.  But I figured out when I turned six that I wasn’t like other children.

Up till then, I didn’t feel all that strange.  Like all the other children I had a nanny, and I was one of the special ones because my nanny was a person and not a droid. Sophie is a wonderful, plump motherly type who’s never been able to have children of her own.  I still visit her ever Winter Solstice. 

I play chips with Pieter, her husband, and she serves up big mugs of hot chocolate.  I can’t get enough of the stuff.

I missed Sophie dreadfully when I went to primary school.  All of us girls missed our nannies terribly, alone in that sterile dormitory.  Kelpsis Girls Academy tried too hard to be core and modern.  Like the others I had a vague idea of a mother that visited the nursery infrequently, and if the memories were a bit vaguer and the visits a bit more infrequent than my peers, there were too many other things to occupy my thoughts.

But at the first term break, I caught on.  All the other students were headed home to families, most to those comforting nannies, to be spoiled for a week.  But I couldn’t return to Sophie.  She had taken another assignment and wouldn’t get a holiday until Solstice.  The school was perfectly prepared for this, and had a number of “exciting and enriching activities” prepared for the few of us that remained behind.

At first it was quite traumatic, but I adjusted quickly.  I had a mother who visited infrequently, but saw to it that all my needs were met. The Matrons at the school were kind, if not as motherly as Sophie.  All in all, Mother picked a pretty good planet to leave a child on.  The Danians are a very proper culture for humans, about the opposite of Correleians in terms of reputation, although underneath most humans are very similar.  Our sociology textbook explained that this was mostly due to influence of the Caldrim, the native species, who are a very rigid, formal and downright straight-laced. 

They tend to be great moralists, but they’ve learned over the centuries to ignore humans when we get too “barbaric.”  Other than that, no else really fancies the place.  There’s a small assortment of intergalactic culture in the main cities, and not much else.

So, like other children on Caldan, I was raised mostly by nannies and boarding schools.  My mother holos me on my birthday, and sends lovely presents.  I have an allowance that’s the envy of most of my friends, and a first-rate education.  I have as firm a grasp in the social graces as any Danian debutante, and the brains to go with it, thanks to my doubtful prospects of ever making a good match.  In fact, I scored particularly well in math and sciences, mostly because I was Master Roosren’s only pupil in several classes for the past two cycles.  And thanks to my mother’s careful attention to how I spent my holidays, I have a good grasp of other, much less Danian abilities.  Madame Fostern would be appalled if she knew how good of a blaster shot I am.

Graduation was yesterday.  My mother told me she would try to be there, but I wasn’t  really expecting her to make it.  Or particularly concerned when she met those expectations.  A year ago, perhaps, but the buried differences between me and my schoolmates have begun to surface.  Unlike Tannika and Shoshana and the rest, I won’t be attending an elite finishing school or preparing to be launched upon society.

Honestly, I’m really quite glad.  Mostly it’s due to Master Roosren.  He’s about mid-fifties, standard, and very distinguished, but he’s spent a lot more time off planet than most Danians. In addition to Intro to Quantum Mechanics and Astronavigation, he’s taught me a lot about the rest of the galaxy.  And I’m beginning to realize how different it is from Caldan. My mother is a Master Trader, not just a mother.  And she’s not married, which is the only thing on the minds of most of my friends. I don’t know what going to happen to me, but I think it’s going to be much more interesting than spending the rest of my life giving parties and managing droid-servants.

So I don’t hate my Mother.  In fact I’m rather looking forward to this as I sit in the lobby of the spaceport and squeeze Madame Tollusant’s hand as she gapes a Sullustan.  The poor thing was sent here to watch over me, which was really quite silly of Madame Fostern, as she jumps at anything alien.

A man walks towards us, and though he’s still a good 7 meters away I know he’s coming to us.  He walks with confidence, the self possession of an important well-traveled person, but he seems just a little anxious.  I’ve always been good at reading people, but this man seems almost…familiar.  I’m certain, though, that I’ve never seen him.

“Zia Jade?” He asks; I nod. “I’m Talon Kaarde, an associate of your mother’s.”

 

Chapter 1

 

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