To Find You (Lishi Alakir's Backstory)

I was born into a close knit tribe on the planet of Shili. My mother and father both served as scouts, their senses sharpened to sense any dangers or locate nearby prey. To keep us safe and fed. One morning they failed to return and our tribe fell, collateral damage in a hunt mysterious hunt for… well, I’ve been trying to figure that out my entire life. I don’t know what those Imperial troopers were searching for. Whatever it was, I hope they never found it.

I managed to get away, hiding in a thick grassy marsh until I could not sense the presence of any other beings around.

In time, I gathered enough courage to make my way back home, but it was nowhere to be found. Only ruin. Only the dead.

It was then that I noticed that someone was following me, just barely within the range of my notice. No… They intentionally stepped into my field of notice. I took a knife from the hand of a friend whom I’d been trying to will back to life, and I turned to run straight for whoever was there.

It was a man, a human. He looked old, with white hair and skin that crinkled around his eyes. His back curved round and his shoulders slumped a bit.

I ran at full speed toward him, blade extending from my hand. He was old and frail and I was angry and sad and I had him. I knew I had him.

But, somehow, I missed. He was somehow further to the left than I’d thought. I lunged again. I missed again. I readied myself to try again, but the knife was no longer in my hand.

I looked up at him, now scared and confused, and he smiled.

“My name is Lerokee,” he said. His voice was kind. He reached down and patted the top of my head between my stubby, fledgling montrals. “What is your name, child?”

From that moment he became my guardian and mentor.

He was an ancient human being, older than I’d first thought. His sight had left him long before I ever met him, and he could command the attention of a room with something as simple as a smile or a frown. He taught me not only how to survive, but how to be persuasive.

I spent years by his side as he went from planet to planet, finding people who needed help and then somehow find ways to assist them without raising blade or blaster. His peaceful way of resolving problems did not keep him from also teaching me combat. I grew from a gawky, clumsy child into a teenager with balance and the presence of mind to be ready if I words failed us and we did ever need to defend ourselves and those around us.

Overtime, I came to understand more about what happened the day we met. I recalled the way he found me and it made less and less sense.

So, I asked him as he sipped from his drink before taking rest one night, “Why were you on Shili that day?’

He smiled, his eyes milky and opalescent, “To find you. And I did. I’m only sorry I was too late to save the others.”

Imperial forces made it more and more difficult for us, and we found ourselves stuck for days on a planet after we’d accomplished his work.

Lerokee found passage off planet for both of us in the cargo bay of a smuggler ship that was set to leave at sunrise. The night before our departure, my sleep was shallow and full of awful dreams. A group of Imps hiding, waiting to attack our ship. They fire a blaster. It hits me in the chest and I die.

At dawn, I was groggy. Lerokee had a long cape that he let me wear to keep warm in the cold, dank air. I remember thinking how funny it looked, the hem around the hood caught tightly on my growing montrals as we snuck through darkened tunnels.

We finally made it to our rendezvous point. I felt motion nearby and saw a head peek out over a rock. Before I could yelp in panic, Lerokee was standing in front of me. A wound from a blaster hitting his lower abdomen. It had been meant for my chest. He slumped down to his knees, then fell onto his back.

I knelt over him, looking to his face. He smiled up towards me and reached out to touch my cheek.

I looked at the wound, longing for it to close up.

To my surprise, the skin began to knit itself back together. But, it wasn’t fast enough. His hand fell limp from my cheek and hit the ground.

I sobbed in anguish at my loss. Arms wrapped around me and pulled me briskly away from him, pulling me towards the ship.

Later in the cargo bay, I stared at the blood that stained the edge of his cape as I pulled it tightly around myself.

How did he know the blaster fire was coming? I asked myself.

And then I thought further.

How did he guide us so carefully through that network of tunnels?

My opportunity to dwell on this was short-lived. I was a child, but I was also responsible for earning my keep aboard a shipped captained by an amoral smuggler.

My training in diplomacy and peacemaking became hands on lessons in deceit and coercion. My silver tongue earned Imperial credits. The more formal combat techniques I had learned gave way to dirty tricks and making quick decisions under the pressure of a skirmish with thugs and bounty hunters. My eloquent, persuasive basic blended with the speech of criminals and the revolutionaries who begrudgingly hired them to do their dirty work.

All the while, inexplicable things quietly continued to happen. A guard too easy to convince to let me past. A blaster fired just a moment before I actually see my enemy. Lucky breaks, one after another, and all along I start to feel crazy for thinking I might have some subconscious control over it. And then I recalled again, my blind teacher who seemed to be able to sense someone nearby almost before I could.

I tried to push these thoughts away, but in the back of my mind played the memory of how his skin had began to knit together when I longed for him to heal. I tried not to wonder about why that was possible. I wasn’t sure I was comfortable with the answer when I found it. I didn’t trust myself. I reasoned it away as a dream, a delusion of a suffering child who had lost the person closest to her.

I felt the desire for vengeance rising inside, but even more so did I feel the need to honor my kind teacher by speaking out for what is right. By keeping secrets and using words to make things change when I can, and by using my fists when I can’t.

When I’m able to do that - maybe - my shame will disappear. In the interim, there is no delegation, no ambassador, no diplomat. He wouldn’t have chosen this position for me, but it’s the one I’m in; skirting the edge of the Empire’s grasp and taking every opportunity I can to inconvenience them, to knock them down a peg, and to eventually bring them to their knees.