Star Wars: Whisper on the Wind (Updated 3/12)

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

Title: Whisper on the Wind

Rating: PG

Rated for: Language, violence, and understated sexual content.

[CRITIQUE ENCOURAGED]

 

Author's Note: This is yet another novelization of an RP plot of mine that never got off the ground. I'm excited for the challenge of writing this for several different reasons. First, this is a challenge response.

 

Write a story from the perspective of someone blind. There can be nothing seen or described as a visual. You can only work from the other senses.

 

I'm also mixing this with the challenge of writing from the (third person limited) perspective of a child. The first few chapters are embellishments and explorations of things that originally occurred in the RP, so I have Andon and AJS to thank for their contributions there. But the rest of it is solely my brainchild!

 

Without further ado.

 

Star Wars: Whisper on the Wind

Prologue:

 

Rain washed the woman’s tired, worn body as they carried her inside. Soft droplets on her face broke the stifling humidity as she drifted in and out of consciousness. A final murmur from the medic was the last thing she heard before slipping into the sweet, infinite blackness of the Force.

 

“She’s not responding!”

“Give her another dose.”

“Stimulate her breathing!”

 

Dimly aware of the alarmed cries around her, the woman’s mind swum in an ethereal calm. The blackness faded in and out, carrying with it a distinct ringing in her ears that she tried desperately to place, an infinitely familiar song that she had heard from the farthest reaches of the galaxy in a time long forgotten.

 

Wake up…

 

Love, wake up…

 

“You need to wake up.”

 

At the sound of his voice, she opened her eyes eagerly, but it was not the expected face that greeted her. She blinked to clear the cobwebs in her mind, and cried out as she immediately felt the spasms of pain overwhelm her body.

 

“We need you to work with us,” the medic said firmly, but even as she struggled to meet his gaze, the pain won out and her eyes rolled back.

 

“Jaina,” Andon’s voice called out, again and again, but the black maw of the Force, relief from that excruciating pain, seized her. Her last conscious thought was a call to a higher destiny, a blessing for her child.

 

That you may have all the power of the blistering suns and all the wisdom of those who gaze on the stars; that you may bear a beauty greater than the majesty of the Force; that you may hear the inaudible melodies of the universe; that you may see where all sight fails.

 

 

 

As the newborn opened her eyes, the room was washed in a living white light.

Edited March 13, 2012 by Guest

[Amidala Skywalker]

Ooh, I'm excited to read this! I'm so glad you're posting!!

[Tiana Calthye]

Oh, it's nice to see you back! Good luck with this challenging story concept and it'll be great to see where it goes.

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

Thanks, gals. It's nice to see some initial interest in the story. I'll try really hard for weekly updates!

[DarthBrendo]

+1 for intriguing concept.

[jedi_master_gimpy]

I'm excited to see some of your work, JJS! I don't think hat I've read anything by you before. Not being familiar with RP, I have to ask... Is this supposed to connect to Jaina Solo, off of your name (Jaina Jade Skywalker)...? It sounds like you've set an interesting challenge for yourself, looking forward to reading more!

[Jaina Jade Skywalker]

Thanks Gimpy! It doesn't connect to Jaina Solo, but it does connect to the RP character with my name, who actually is playing a more minor role in this fic than some previous works of mine that featured her.

 

Again, critique is most welcomed, as I'm finding myself struggling to adequately portray in words the scenes that I have in my head. I also don't want these to come across as RP posts, since there's been a great deal more thought behind them, but since most of the writing that I've done is RP-style, it's difficult to not fall into patterns that I'm used to.

 

(P.S., this is answering another challenge of Tiana's: starting or ending a story (or chapter? I forget) with "Dreams are funny things.")

 

Chapter 1:

 

Dreams are funny things. In imagination, she can see everything. In her dreams, she can run without tripping, dance without stumbling, and even choose her own outfits. In her dreams, the Big People trust her like they trust the Happy Girls. In her own world, she has a datapad, and she traces pictures with her fingers on it every day and the girls are jealous of her because she is so good at it that Teacher makes everyone else See it all day and tells them to be like her.

 

In her dreams, she walks up to the edge of the cliffs by herself, with no one holding her hand, and can hear the water rushing by with her eyes. She’s allowed to go up as high as she wants in the trees because she can feel with her eyes exactly how to come back down. In her dreams, the sparkling little fairy inside her mind paints burning dots of hope in the Above and calls them stars. She laughs; lying in the damp grass and feeling her clothes soak in the water. Reaching up to the Above, she almost grasps how far away it is, how many other places there are to go—if she could just walk into the Above, she could find Home. Her fingers strain as she reaches, and reaches, desperate to hear…

 

CLANG!

 

The bell tolled abruptly, jolting Tirzah awake abruptly, breaking the beautiful mind-painting.

 

CLANG!

 

The girl did not bother to open her eyes, but hesitated before pushing the threadbare blankets away, clinging to the last thoughts of a world where she could be just like the Happy Girls. Sitting up slowly, she reached for the stale glass of water on her night table and drained it in several large gulps.

 

CLANG!

 

With a sigh that was half-exasperation and half-whine, Tirzah pulled back the covers, slithered out of bed, and peeled her eyes open to utter blackness. Pausing momentarily, she listened for the telltale thuds and chatter on the other side of the wall that marked the stirring of her peers. Her hands held in front of her, the girl stumbled across to the little desk where her school outfit was all laid out for her. Her nightgown landed unceremoniously on the floor as she changed sluggishly, rubbing at unseeing eyes. With a deep breath, Tirzah pulled her tiny black shoes on and turned to walk the calculated nine steps to the hallway door, tossing it open widely.

 

…just to have it slammed back in her face, knocking her backwards, as the laughter from the girls next door carried down the hall, their footsteps retreating. With a soft, hiccuping sob, she pushed the door open again, much slower this time, and followed the stampede towards the mess hall, nursing the welt that was forming on her shoulder from the force of the blow.

 

-----------------

 

“LINE UP FOR COUNTING! OY! LINE UP!”

 

The call rang out through the mess hall over the din of girls’ chatter. Ashley Jade looked up from her datapad to her superior, Gutta Haalb, a large Hapan woman clad in drab grey whose bovine bellow was rather reminiscent of a common Alderaanian nerf. Snickering to herself at the mental picture of Gutta’s head superimposed over the common field cattle, Ashley ducked her head to hide the smirk spreading on her face, and willed her mind to concentrate on the work before her. Her eyes darted back to the datapad containing the list of names—or rather, the list of no-names, Ash thought desolately. The rowdy, ragged, sallow-faced gaggle of girls was the refuse of the Hapes Cluster. Bastard daughters of wealthy politicians, of drunkards, of refugees, they were exiled to the Central Hapan Orphanage, their own private little slice of hell, for the simple crime of being born to parents who couldn’t afford them or didn’t want them. She scoffed at the careless irresponsibility of such parents as she surveyed the grimy faces and greedy eyes before her. These girls should have all had families: they should have been fed with home-cooked meals, nourished with motherly affection, and guided with wisdom from courageous and respectable fathers. Instead, they were receiving their three “square” meals a day from E-28D, the cafeteria droid, and earning all of their motherly affection from the back of Gutta’s favored hand.

 

Love does not often favor the prepared. The thought came unbidden to her mind as her eyes fell on one little girl in particular, the runt of the litter who cowered at the back of the line, standing a good three feet away from any of her peers. With downcast eyes, the tyke tugged at her fingers, matted hair concealing her face.

 

“See ‘ere, what’d I tell ya?” Gutta elbowed Ashley sharply, breaking her reverie as she thrust her chin towards the disorderly line. “Takes a firm hand to keep ‘em straight.”

 

Ash nodded to appease the woman, glancing quickly back down at her datapad and tapping the names of each of the girls to indicate confirmation of their presence at morning roll call. Finding one new name, she looked up, grimacing in distaste as Gutta spat on the ground next to her and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.

 

“What’s with the new girl?” Ash said stridently, holding out the datapad to the older woman.

 

“That little one there? Ay, that’s Tirzah Colless. Just got transferred back from her eleventh primary care home. Young couple thought they could handle a blind girl,” she snorted derisively, poking at the datapad to mark the girl’s name before handing it back.

 

“Blind?”

 

“Blinder than a cave-flitter. Born that way too, from the information we have on her, which isn’t much.”

 

Unsurprising, Ash thought cynically. “Do we know who her parents were?”

 

“Not a whisper about them. By the looks of it, mum and daddy took great care to cover their tails.”

 

The line of sixty schoolgirls filed out, following one of the teachers to their classroom, and Ash let her eyes linger on the little one who followed after at a distance, an odd look of serenity on her tiny, dirty, too-thin face.

 

“Don’t blame ‘em either,” Gutta added, “You’d ‘ave to be daft to willingly be saddled up with a blind child for the rest of your life.”

 

Deeming the old cow’s discriminatory remark unworthy of a reply, Ash shoved the datapad back in her hip holster. The girl would be at an obvious disadvantage the rest of her life. Even in the midst of the absurd Hapan culture of female superiority, blindness was a curse that would condemn her to burial in a sea of inadequacy and rejection. But wishing something could be changed for the girl wouldn’t bring in the outrageous amount of funds needed for prosthetic eyes or give her a real family. It was almost as though Ash could see into her future, almost as though she could sense the outcome, were Tirzah’s circumstances to be unchanged. As the hallway door began to swing shut, the small waif glanced over her shoulder. Her gaze met Ashley’s straight on, unwavering as the brilliantly white, sightless eyes seemed to strain for a glimpse of light. Something sparked in Ashley’s buried memories, some shred of familiarity, and she shook her head as though to clear the cobwebs away from the past that she never had.

 

“Although,” Gutta continued on, oblivious to the younger woman’s momentary haze, “even I ‘ave a bit of trouble knowing what to do with a blind girl who somehow knows where everything is.”

 

Ashley looked up sharply, her eyes widening. “What?”

 

Gutta shrugged, and Ash found herself increasingly irritated with the woman’s airs, which were nonchalant at best and apathetic at worst. “Girl seems to know everything. Where things or people are, or ‘ow the other little girls are feeling. Freaky, that one.”

 

“Strange,” she murmured, her out-of-focus gaze pointed in the direction of the door where Tirzah had exited the room. Abruptly remembering where she had seen those white eyes before, Ash felt her heart beginning to pound.

 

“I’ll be in my quarters filing paperwork,” she excused herself, stepping away from the pretentious nerf. I need to see something for myself…

 

"JUST be sure you're back at lunchtime," Gutta called after her. "There's an investigator comin' today and I am NOT putting up with 'is questions for more than a minute!"

[Andon]

I had cameo in the story and now one in this thread.

 

I N C E P T I O N

 

 

I get the stuff with Ashley is supposition to the plot, but I hope the majority of content will focus on Tirzah's perspective. If you're having a hard time writing for a blind character, perhaps you could come from a writing perspective that doesn't flow from the world with an absence of sight, but that of a world of sound, smell and touch that are the way of seeing without seeing. Unsight viewing, if you will. Which is the literary equivalent of pulling teeth since all words are used to paint a picture as a visual, but it's for a character that doesn't even understand what visuals are.

[jedi_master_gimpy]

It doesn't connect to Jaina Solo, but it does connect to the RP character with my name, who actually is playing a more minor role in this fic than some previous works of mine that featured her.

Cool! Based on your name, I am assuming that your RP character is still tied to the Skywalker line through Luke?

 

This continues to look like it will be a very unique SW story compared to so much of what I've seen in the past - it definitely intrigues me. This isn't a side of the Hapes Consortium we've seen before, that's for sure! At first I was thinking that an orphanage of girls didn't make sense in that type of matriarchal society. There's a reason that we see so many girls who are orphaned here, simply because they are often seen as less valuable and more of a drain on family assets without the contribution or honor a son will bring. In Hapes the opposite would be true, so I would expect many more young boys as orphans there. At the same time, I could see there being a smaller number of girls nonetheless, but either from refugees or drunkards (as you said - unable to care for anyone else or with different customs) or more so, children out of wedlock who cannot be allowed to usurp the officially recognized daughters.

 

You mentioned that you had trouble portraying in words what you have your head. I think my main question for you (which will hopefully help) is whether you wanted the reader to fully experience the events through Tirzah or to feel like we are more a fly on the wall but privy to her thoughts to some extent. There is a difference in the distance between us happening with the story or watching it, and either works but they will certainly read different. I think the first case really highlights having to rely on other sense, but the second may allow you to track details happening around Tirzah more clearly. I felt more like I was watching what Tirzah was doing rather than experiencing through her, I think due to some of the way things were portrayed, as Andon mentioned - focus on other senses.

 

For example, take this paragraph:

The girl did not bother to open her eyes, but hesitated before pushing the threadbare blankets away, clinging to the last thoughts of a world where she could be just like the Happy Girls. Sitting up slowly, she reached for the stale glass of water on her night table and drained it in several large gulps.

 

And trying to focus on the other senses:

The girl tried to recall the wonderful image of the world where she could be just like the Happy Girls back to mind, but it had fled with the harsh sound and awareness of the lumpy mattress digging into her shoulder. With a soft sigh she pushed back the scratchy blanket and slowly sat up. She reached across to her night table, fingers brushing air and then the rim of her cup. She grasped the smooth, cold glass firmly and drained the stale water in several large gulps.

 

I really like how you have Tirzah describe things she wants to see with her eyes in terms of her other senses, such as when she can "hear the water rushing by with her eyes" in her dreams. Those are great details that remind us of how differently she experiences the world - although I imagine you have to really put yourself in the correct mindset to set down and write it! Clearly she has the Force, and this, combined with her brilliantly white eyes and the intro, make me think that her blindness is rather special/different and tied to her identity.

 

It seemed like there was some inconsistency in how well Tirzah could function, I noticed. In the second part Gutta pointed out that she seemed to know where things or people are (something I've seen done with other blind people using the Force). However, before that you have Tirzah stumbling across the room with her hands in front, changing sluggishly, slammed by the door. This makes it seem like she does not know at all what is around her outside of the few things (9 steps to the door) she has picked up in her one night. Did Gutta hear that from the people Tirzah was staying with, and it's only when she has had time to adjust and her emotions aren't as high that she can sense where things are around her? Would a danger sense from the Force allow her to pull back at the door and still get hit, but not as hard as she would have otherwise? You can develop these answers over time, but make sure you are consistent and purposeful in which way you go.

 

I liked the second part of the chapter with Ashley, it was easy to jump in and identify with her. As a guess from that scene alone, I would put her somewhere between 14 and 19, perhaps having come up through the orphans herself, and/or is poor to be working there. However, the last name "Jade" makes me wonder, and would tie in with how she seems to recognize Tirzah!

 

You've got a good start by creating a problem (only semi understood in the Prologue) and then presenting a few characters I'm already interested in that hint at explaining some of what happened before. It sounds like it might take a little trial-and-effort with the challenge of writing a blind character, but I think you are off to a good start and have the makings of a unique story ahead!

Edited March 19, 2012 by Guest

[Amidala Skywalker]

Great start. I was glad that you switched to Ashley's perspective. Like Gimpy said, we can instantly relate to her as readers.

 

And did I ever tell you how much I like the name Tirzah for a SW character? That was a great choice.

 

I agree with everything Gimpy said (again, lol). It'll take some trial and error to get your POV and perspectives down right, but you're doing a great job so far!

[Ashley Jade Skywalker]

I liked the second part of the chapter with Ashley, it was easy to jump in and identify with her. As a guess from that scene alone, I would put her somewhere between 14 and 19, perhaps having come up through the orphans herself, and/or is poor to be working there. However, the last name "Jade" makes me wonder, and would tie in with how she seems to recognize Tirzah!

 

Ah. Not quite last name. But on the right tracks at least. But considering Court can prolly write my character better than I can, well, hey...