Behind Enemy Lines (Day Three)

[Akirapryde]

She took her blades and slide them back in to their sheaf, "spoken like a true Corer" she said softly. "its a nickname those of us in the Outer Rime give those from the Core Worlds." She played with the water some more, "Its pronounced, Bak....lid.....Not Bak loid...." she looked up with a smile on her face, "Baklid...."

She shifted her attention back to the water, "and for us, it wasn't dueling." She didn't want to remember, but she couldn't help herself. Her childhood back on Bilrylbak. "For us, it was a dance. Sure we played, but this dance was taught to us by the sages. For generations, it has been passed down from mothers to daughters. Its called, Not One Cut."

[Jaden_Starchaser]

Jaden had the decency to look embarrassed at his mispronounciation. "Thank you for the correction, but I'm actually not from the core worlds. I'm from Naboo in the Mid Rim." He said in a light playful voice. "Born and kind of raised there. Until I went to the academy that is. What is Do Not Cut?"

[Akirapryde]

Trysta snickered a bit, "your accent and arrogance could fool someone in to thinking you are a Corer." But it was his last question that caused her to appear confused. "I just told you, Do Not Cut?" she genuinely appeared confused. "I don't understand what you mean."

Then it dawned on her, "Oh!" her snicker turned to full blown laughter, "you are such a Corer" she managed to say between laughing at his statement. "Its not Do Not Cut." She tried to control her laughter, "The Dance is called NOT ONE CUT." She bend over laughing hard. After a long moment of laughing, she slowed her laughter and uttered, "Tha thu mar sin amadan," as she shook her head.

She looked up, "its a dance taught to daughters of the Taighean Àrd, or High Houses. It dates back to the earliest time of my people's existence. Those who were chosen by the Goddess to lead our people in combat." She pointed to the metal symbol on her forehead. "those like me and my sister. The dance is first taught once we can walk. Basic foot placements and so on. Then we pick up the training sticks. The idea is to practice precision attacks. Each partner wheres a dress with glass orbs on it. Within each orb is a second orb. You are only allowed to break the outer orb."

She finally stood up, "We are taught to hit places critical for life," she said pointing to places on his body. "During our training with the sticks, a band will play the music. It actually looks like a dance. Well for us. Others see it differently. Once we are ready for swords, we slow down the beat and put on the Orb Dress and learn the dance all over again with dull swords. You see, by learning to be precise, you learn to make attacks without cutting. Or the name of the dance, Not One Cut," she said with a smile. "With that leave of control, we can cut, or not cut with greater ease than the Jedi."

"By the time my sister and I turned nine, we were dancing with real swords. That was when we were both accepted in to the Jedi and my parents had this sword made for me," she said tapping her weapon.

[Jaden_Starchaser]

Jaden sucked his lips in and just gave her a blank look at being the butt of her joke. "I don't have an accent..." he mumbled mostly to himself. He had no idea what she had said in what he assumed was her native tongue, but he could guess she had called him an idiot in a fashion. "So you two were doing this ancient dance during the games. You two must have know each other's moves in and out then. And you two were picked by your Goddess as warriors?"

[Akirapryde]

She smiled and shook her head. "The dance isn't about knowing moves. It's not like that. It's about feeling the rhythm of the combat." She stepped back as she drew her swords and separated them. She slowly began to move through the water.

"The dance teaches us that combat is a dance. And each battle has its own rhythm." Her movements were slow at first but slowly picked up, "it teaches us to find this rhythm and match our swords movement to it."

She moved at full combat speed through the clearing. Despite all the trees and bushes, she didn't even brush one of them as she danced through the foliage. "You can't master moves. You have to hear the beat in your heart."

She came to a stop and held her blades my her side. "The Crone gives my people daughters to lead our armies against those who would wage war against us. In my culture males are used for mating, cooking and manual labor." She put her swords away and walked up to him. She tapped him on the shoulder, "males are too fragile for war. Too emotional and insecure for leadership."

[Jaden_Starchaser]

Jaden nodded his head in understanding. "A matriarchal society. Now I've been doing some math while you were telling me about the history of those blades. You said the originals were given to Zilvra's family by Revan himself. You also said that Zilvra used them when she joined Darth Malgus's campaign against the Jedi where she fell during the sack of the Temple. Now that's a 3,000 year time difference give or take a couple of decades. So the question becomes were the originals family heirlooms...or does your people have an extraordinary longevity?" Jaden knew he was letting out his passion for history and lore out, but he was genuinely curious.

[Akirapryde]

She laughed at the question, "sometimes I forget." She motioned him to join her by a large muddy area. "My great grandmother passed away when she was one thousand five." Trysta said as she smoothed out the mud to make a smooth surface, "at her age, it was considered an exception even for my people. But my mother told me she held on to see the birth of my sister and I."

She took a branch and drew a flower, "we are all Daughters of the Triple Goddesses," she explained pointing at the flower. She took a line from the left of the flower and started to draw a spiral circle in on its self. "The Maiden is the beginning of all life. She is like me and all young daughters. She is rebellious and often acts out of passion and emotion. The Maiden loves to dance, she is the Goddess of young lovers. As all daughters pursue love in their early lives. "

Once that spiral was complete, she drew a line from the top of the flower directly above the flower, "the mother wakes up with the dawn. She brings her daughters under control and sets them to bed. She is the matriarch of our Houses and our people. She rules over us, warms our world and brings life to it."

Trysta looked up at him, "The mother is who all daughters become when we start to settle down. At this point in our lives, we learn or should have learned the importance of family, and our duties to our people. We start to take our places within our houses. Start to have our own children."

She drew a line from the right of the rose, "the Crone or Old Lady is who all mothers grow in to. She is a wise teacher. As she wakes with nightfall, she tells us stories of our past. Teaches us that we should learn from the mistakes of others. The Crone warns us that we were not the first of her children choose."

Trysts looks up again, "that there were two sons before the Mother gave birth to the Daughters of the Forest. They were called the Sons of the Plains. The Crone tells us that these two sons were rebellious like the Maiden. But unlike the Maiden, they didn't grow out of it. They fought with each other until the day came that they mother could not stand the fighting anymore."

Trysta leaned back on her heels and looked him in the eyes, "When the Daughters of the Forrest were very young, the Sons of the Plains crossed the great sea, from their cities of old. They came to our forests and brought war and suffering. This angered the Mother so much."

As the Crone would tell us, the Mother warned them to stop what they were doing. She shook their great cities, withered their crops, poisoned their waters. And the Sons of the Plains wouldn't listen. They continued to invade our lands, our forests. So the Mother choose to bring her sons to an end."

"She stepped down from heavens. It was told to us by the Crone that the mother was very angry with them. That she couldn't bare to see her children hurting each other anymore. Because of this, she walked among their cities. So angry was the Mother that she wanted to walk deep in to our forests. But the Crone protected her Granddaughters."

"As our legends go, the Crone stood in the way of the Mother's anger. She lit up the night sky allowing the Mothers wrath to fall where it was deserved and sparing her Granddaughters. The Sons of the Plains were no more and we, the Daughters of the Forests flourished."

"But we are reminded that the Crone is always watching over us. And she is always aware that lurking just out of sight is the Maiden. Waiting for her to sleep, so that the Maiden can take her place by the fire and dance the night away. That is until the mother wakes. We are told to be mindful of the wrath of our mother."

[Jaden_Starchaser]

Jaden was giving her his whole attention as she spoke about her people's past. To him it was living history. It fascinated him to no end. "I have so much more questions to ask you," he said. "Your song and dance earlier was to the Crone correct? Did it have special meaning? And why did you use that Force Illusion to replicate what I assume was your people? And your ancestor Zilvra. Why did she choose to fight with Darth Malgus?" He knew he was asking many questions and could be seen as annoying, but if he had one guilty pleasure besides tinkering it's history and lore. A friend of his from the Academy joked he'd be replacing the old Temple Historian after he was knighted.

[Akirapryde]

Trysta laughed at the wave of questions, "slow down," she said playfully. She moved from the drawing in the mud, "the meaning of the song and dance was telling the Old Lady, or the Crone, good night. In the song we, the young girls of the village promise to be good."

"The dance and song reflects the setting of the our first moon, called the Old Lady. She is the largest of our two moons. This moon raises around mid afternoon and sets around midnight. The Daughter is our second more. Much later our scientist discovered that the Daughter was actually a large asteroid captured by our worlds gravity well."

"When the Daughter shares the sky with the Crone and the Mother, our sun, it's orbit is much more stable. But during the late hours of the night when the Crone sets, the orbit becomes more sporadic. It often causes havoc on our large oceans and tides. But beyond that nothing else."

She found a set on a log once more, "before the age of reason, we related the Daughter as the natural behavior of rebellious young girls." She smiled, "this concept has survived the age of reason. Young rebellious girls are encouraged to go and have fun and live their lives. But it is expected that once they reach childbearing age, that they settle down and start to work towards bettering our society as a whole."

"So yes, the song and dance does have special meaning. The young girls all dance and sing. It represents that they are promising that they will be good and that it's okay for the Crone to go to sleep. That song is followed by a song about the girls of the village dancing, singing, chasing boys and generally being mischievous. Till the raise of the Mother, or our sun. The last song of that ritual is about the young girls being put to sleep and new mothers coming in to their own."

She took her stick and played in the mud with it. "The whole ceremony or ritual is called the Dance of the Seasons. It celebrates new births, Daughters reaching the age of childbearing, mothers reaching the age where they can no longer bare children. Or when they become Crones themselves. We also celebrate the lives of those whom we lost that year."

She continued to play in the mud, "I missed the Dance of the Seasons for my sister. So I used the Force to create the Illusion of that celebration. Each year before she died, we returned home for this celebration. That was till the year she died. I didn't return home that year. I couldn't face it without her. I still don't think I can face it now. That was the reason why I stopped it when I did."

Trysta laughed a bit at his question about Zilvra. "Zilvra fought for Darth Malgus because he asked her to. Nearly fifty daughters joined her when they left to join Darth Magus. Over two hundred joined Darth Raven when he came and sought our help."

"The Sith and my people have had a long relationship. Numerous times they tried to conquer us. Because the Force is weaker on our world, they were forced to fight on equal footing for us. It wasn't until the Sith Queen Jori Daragon that this cycle changed. She came to our world and enlisted our help to defeat their hated enemy, the Jedi."

"The elders of the time decided to reject her request. But many young daughters saw adventure in the offer. So nearly a hundred joined the Sith Queen on her crusade. By our cultures daughters are encouraged to seek such experiences and bring their lessons home with them."

She looked up at him, "you think us wrong for joining the fight against you? Let me tell you, many brave daughters fought with honor and courage against your Jedi ancestors. Most have up their lives for a cause they believed in. They are no less worthy of respect as your ancestors."

[Akirapryde]

Trysta sighed deeply, "hey I am sorry for that last bit," she said looking up. "Zilvra has always been a hero of mine. When I went to the Academy, the Masters there all told me that she was evil." There was passion in her eyes, "she wasn't evil. No she didn't side with the Jedi and I am not going to make some stupid comment about how the Jedi were evil in her eyes. It's not that simple. She choose to follow Darth Malgus because he came to our world and asked us for help. The elder Crones all rejected his request. But Zilvra and others didn't. In fact, it was the only time there were Dargonesti on both sides. It was Zilvra's own sister that claimed Zilvra's life."