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"For the first time in two decades, the Force surged through Obi-Wan Kenobi."
The morning was hot, dry and slightly windy as Ben Kenobi stood outside, breathing in the fresh air. He had been on Tatooine just short of 20 years now, and had learned a lot about the supposedly desolate planet that settlers and corporations avoided like a plague.
He had found its inhabitants to be good folk, even the violent Tusken Raiders he had crossed paths with a few times were simply looking out for themselves and for their tribes.
He had learned much of the Raiders, and the moisture farmers and the Jawas, along with the indigenous creatures of the wild sand dunes that he now called home -- the mighty banthas, skittering womp rats and the legendary krayt dragons, who occasionally brought hunters from the Core in search of a kill of the mighty reptilian predators.
When he had not been learning of the planet, he had written down all the things he could recollect of the Jedi way. He had written great manuscripts of lightsaber construction, healing trances, mind tricks, and the process by which a Knight took on a Padawan.
He bound the manuscripts and kept them in a great chest at the foot of his bed. Inside he also kept his only Jedi robe, and both his and Anakin’s lightsabers. On a normal day, he would make breakfast, take a walk through the valley perhaps, or get on with his writing. It was a simple life, but it was the life Ben Kenobi had chosen for himself.
Today, however, something was different. It was a feeling Kenobi hadn’t experienced in many years, the impending sense that something was going to happen.
Kenobi had felt the sensation ever since he awoke. His body felt alive with energy, despite being well into his 50s.
His mind had stayed crisp through the years, despite making contact so infrequently with any other sentient beings. In the early years, he had gone to the Toshii Station or Anchorhead to buy his supplies, but he had once nearly been spotted by Owen Lars in his landspeeder.
Being seen might have been worth it, for the fair-haired youth sitting in the passenger seat of Owen’s landspeeder could be none other than Luke. The boy had been about 11, and his light hair and smile at being in the middle of the bustling town, reminded Kenobi very much of the boy’s father.
That excitement had been different the kind he felt today, however. That had been a chance encounter, this was am exhilaration.
He wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, but as he began his daily walk through the valley, he felt the strongest urge to turn a different way.
He stopped and stared, his fine-tuned hearing picking up a faint sound coming from the southeast. It sounded like the whine of a landspeeder.
Kenobi began to move in that direction, but stopped again, still something nagged at him. He needed to be prepared, of that he was suddenly sure of. He retreated back into the house, back to his living quarters.
He carefully keyed in the combination to the chest, anyone else tampering with it would be doing things one-handed for a good many years to come. The cushioned hinges stretched and he moved his old cloak aside, pulling free his lightsaber, and attaching it firmly to his belt.
He set off now, not through the valley he had traversed daily for the past fifteen years, but out into the Jundland Wastes, a dangerous area of the region to travel alone for most beings.
He heard the landspeeder’s engine again, off in the distance, but louder now, then it stopped. He continued to walk briskly when the air was filled by the harsh banshee call of an attacking Tusken.
For the first time in two decades, the Force surged through Obi-Wan Kenobi. He moved forward quickly, answering the call to his destiny.
Thank you so much for reading my story. If you have any comments, feedback or just want to talk about Star Wars, I would love to hear from you. You can send me an email at: sportzed@sbcglobal.net
