Obi-Wan Kenobi (desertexile) wrote in noexits, @ 2022-08-08 09:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, star wars: obi-wan kenobi, → week 042 (pilot - the lonely city) |
THE LONELY CITY | DAY 1-2
While the other residents of Derleth stretched their limbs in their quaint mediocre-styled flats or their new bedrooms alongside familiar-looking strangers, Obi-Wan awoke on the cold ground. His shoulder ached from having lain slightly askew. The dampness from the concrete crept into his bones. The air had a dank odor of mildew and rubbish mixed with the occasional fire from a metal trash bin. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at an iron sky. No, not a sky. A bridge. Above which blurred a zooming highway of hover cars and neon lights. It wasn’t quite morning, but a golden glow shimmered in the distance between the brutalist buildings, prophesying the oncoming day.
He searched his cloak for his phone, but it was missing.
Not missing, he thought to himself. Taken.
And he was right. He had a faint memory of someone rummaging through his pockets in the middle of the night. Faint, but unambiguous. Why he hadn’t awoken, however, was an unsettling mystery that caused a muscle in his chest to tighten.
Did Derleth’s power really stretch so far as to tamper with his senses? With his reactions? His feelings?
Obi-Wan placed his palm on the ground and steadied himself to a sitting position. Nearby a group of dark-clad figures hovered over small fires in trash receptacles, rubbing their gloved hands together. Their actions appeared playacted, as though they were on a delayed repeat. But their stiff, robotic behavior was less concerning to Obi-Wan than that dull humming he felt beneath his fingertips. Something beneath the City, perhaps even the City itself, was stirring.
It felt like—
No. It couldn’t be that.
Later in the afternoon Obi-Wan felt that vibration again. It pierced through the ground and dispersed throughout his body like an invisible shock. It wasn’t weak. Nothing about this place was, although its appearance seemed to suggest otherwise. He felt it tremble in his bones, tingling his nerves and sinews. The Force. But the Force unlike how he knew it. True, it surrounded all living things. All living creatures. He’d felt it in Derleth when he first arrived. It was in the grass, the trees, the animals. It reverberated off the residents even though they were unaware of it. It was everywhere. But it wasn’t in Derleth itself. It wasn’t in the brick of the buildings or the cracks in the cement.
But here.
Here it was everywhere.
As though the City itself were alive.
But how could that be possible?
He recovered his phone on the second day. Someone had left it on a park bench. The locals passed it by without giving it a second thought. It was unusable except to its owner and it was as though they knew that. Or didn’t even see it. Like droids programmed to a repeating subroutine. And his communication device was not part of it. Obi-Wan read the recent messages on the network—the overall concern and anxiety about the meaning of this place and the peculiar behavior of its people—but he didn’t respond. Instead he followed that pulse-pounding sensation in the air. Was that emotion? Glee? Pleasure? Fear? He couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. Only that it was there. Only that it was coming from everything. All at once.
But perhaps he was still out of touch. Perhaps he was still in need of training. It had been a long time since he’d been the Jedi he once was. And while he was not without power, his strength was far from its peak. Perhaps his feelings were wrong. And yet—
And yet he knew they were not.