Obi-Wan and the Force

One of the first things Obi-Wan Kenobi remembered learning as a Jedi youngling was that the Force felt differently to everyone; that no sentient being experienced it in the same way. Qui-Gon said that, to him, the Force was light. It flared up in unexpected ways, his old Master had said, came in different colors and brightness, flashed into being just as quickly as it disappeared again. Qui-Gon also said that each lifeform he met shined in the Force. Some people's lights were bright and searing, while others were dim or tinted with color.

That was not how the Force appeared to Obi-Wan.

When he looked at people in the Force, he did not see light. Obi-Wan didn't actually see anything at all. Instead, he felt part of a world.

Qui-Gon had been the wind—quick and changeable. He was somehow both the immeasurable comfort of a waft of cool air on a hot day and the sharp knives of a freezing gale. He could be as gentle as a breeze or as unrelenting as a tornado.

Yoda was the forest. He was soft moss under foot and mushrooms growing in perfect circles. He was life sustaining itself on what the dead left behind, knowing that one day new life would rely on what remained of him. Most of all, though, Yoda was the quiet patience of growing things and the wisdom found in ancient trees.

Padmé was the water her planet was made of. Cool and deep; containing both life and death beneath her sparkling surface. She was capable of both sustaining and destroying; soothing and drowning. Hidden in her beauty was the determination that wore down the strongest of stones and the cleverness that found the only hole in the dam.

Anakin, as much as his padawan would hate it if he knew, was the desert he was born in. He could be the searing heat of the sun at midday, or the biting cold of the desert at night; the howling winds of a sandstorm or the endless punishment of a day with no wind at all. Sometimes, on occasion, when Anakin was being the Jedi he was meant to be, he was a sky that stretched on forever and the defiance of life in a place best suited for death.

That was how the Force felt to Obi-Wan.

But the first time he felt Sabé in the Force, he could almost imagine what it would be like to see the Force as Qui-Gon had.

Because Sabé was sunshine. Warm, bright, and cheerful, dancing mischievously across waves of water, gleefully forcing her way through thick leaves to dapple green light on forest floors, scalding the desert but leaving it bitterly cold and empty when gone. She trailed life, hope, and happiness in her wake.

As Obi-Wan grew to know her better, he learned that occasionally her sunlight could be covered by the heavy, damp grey of sadness or worry. But even then she found breaks in the cloud cover, ways to peep through and share some of her light. Her presence warmed even the coldest of places, brought some measure of clarity to even the darkest corners.

And, sometimes, Obi-Wan found himself thinking that a world without sunshine was not a world he wanted to live in; that, in fact, a world without a sun was not a world that could survive. But then he would force his thoughts down other paths.

It did not do to dwell on impossibilities.

A/N: Sorry to everyone who has me on alerts! If it helps, Galaxy's next chapter is in the editing phase and should be up within the next week?