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Twinky was busy exploring the Hidden Temples of Nubt when she fell into a crack. A very small crack. An unexpected crack! She was graceful just like her sister Tippy but something grabbed her magic! She was annoyed. Bah. She scolded the Grabbing Thing.
The Grabbing Thing apologized but it was too late now. She was already falling. Tsk. Magic twisted and turned, Now being Before being Later, Here being There, Up, Down, All Around. Ick.
Twinky snapped her fingers and stopped falling.
Wherever the crack led to was different from the old place. Magic sang a different song, bigger and louder than at home. Twinky peered down at the messy, dusty, broken ruins of a city around her and wriggled with excitement. What a big mess. This was new! She was a Great Explorer, discovering things no elf had ever seen. There were two moons! And the sky was green!
She tried to show her Mama and Papas but the Elf Stream that let all the elves speak with each other was weak, like it was a long, long way away. She couldn’t hear the other elves.
Twinky wasn’t alarmed. Much. She was a very brave elf! She scolded the Grabbing Thing again as she went looking for the Elf Stream. The Grabbing Thing wasn’t helpful at all. Instead, it pointed to something in the ruins. It wanted Twinky’s help.
Grabbing good elves and throwing them into new magic was not a polite way of asking for help. Twinky wouldn’t be bullied! She was having an Old Bond with Master Harry and she would do what she wanted, when she wanted! She told the Grabbing Thing firmly that she would be doing no helping until she found the Elf Stream again.
This time the Grabbing Thing understood that it had done a wrong thing and tugged at Twinky in a different way. Ah. There it was. The Elf Stream was tucked away in a secret crinkly place under the noisy new magic where it couldn’t be drowned out. That made sense. The Elf Stream was all things, Past, Present, Everywhere, Nowhere, just like the noisy new magic. Except the Elf Stream was better because it was a different, less noisy song. Also, it did not grab graceful elves and make them clumsy. Twinky had to twist herself just right to fit back into the Elf Stream.
Whew! Mama and Papas wrapped her up in hugs. They welcomed her back. Where did she go?
She showed them the crack and the noisy new magic and the new ruins with the green sky and two moons.
“So rude,” Mama Winky said disapprovingly when the Grabbing Thing tried to pull on Twinky again like a baby wizard wanting treats. “Grabbing Thing is needing to learn patience.”
“Twinky should come home and help Master Harry, not do things for Grabbing Thing,” Papa Kreacher huffed.
“Twinky doesn’t want to come home yet. Twinky is exploring,” she declared.
“Twinky is too curious for her own good,” Sister Tippy said, amused. “She’s a powerful elf. She can keep herself safe.”
“The most powerful,” Papa Dobby said proudly.
Twinky squirmed happily while other elves chimed in with agreement, embarrassed but pleased at the love and hugs in the Elf Stream. She flopped half-in, half-out of the Elf Stream and the new magic to see what the Grabbing Thing wanted.
There were lots of no-majs in the ruins, all full of fight and fear and hate. They were almost all big no-majs though. Most of the little no-majs, thousands of them, were living in tunnels under the ruins or in the dead dead dying lands outside them. Twinky could feel two or three squibs scattered amidst the no-majs but there was only one wizard. He was a little wizard too, all dirty and skinny and living with the little no-majs.
The Grabbing Thing wanted Twinky to help the little wizard.
“Is you being an elf?” Twinky asked the Grabbing Thing suspiciously. “Is you being the Young Master’s elf?”
The Grabbing Thing laughed at Twinky. It was not helpful.
The Young Wizard had strong magics that reminded Twinky of Master Harry’s. He didn’t have family magics though, not the way Master Harry did. Instead, he had great big magics where there should be family magics. They was old, old magics. Older than anything wizards were having back home. Older even than some stars.
The Grabbing Thing told Twinky that the old, old magics were part of Grabbing Thing and the Grabbing Thing was part of the old, old magics. But the Young Wizard was too little for the old, old magics to help directly because it was being too big and the Young Wizard was being too small. So that was why the Grabbing Thing was grabbing Twinky, to help the Young Wizard.
“Still so rude,” Twinky huffed.
The Grabbing Thing apologized again even though it wasn’t really sorry.
Twinky wasn’t really upset anymore though. She liked adventures and this was an interesting new adventure. She put warming charms on the tunnels the little no-majs and Young Wizard Obi-Wan lived in so they wouldn’t be cold. She strengthened supports and mended weak spots in the walls so they wouldn’t fall down. She put wards on the entrances so the tunnels would be safe. And she put purifying magics on the food and water so they wouldn’t go bad or poison anyone.
In the Elf Stream, Zing suggested that Twinky put lookaway charms on the little no-maj clothes that only worked on big no-majs. Such a good idea!
All those magics were safe under the Statute of Secrecy because no no-majs of any size would notice them. Young Wizard Obi-Wan did, though. He stared at all the places Twinky used her magic and touched it with his own, confused.
Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s magic was lonely. Oh, it was so lonely.
“Young wizards needing friends,” Mama Winky said wisely. “Master Harry is having lots of friends when he is being Young Master Harry.”
“There is being lots of little no-majs and they is all being Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s friends,” Twinky protested.
There was something else wrong, then. Grabbing Thing tried to grab but Twinky batted it away. She would be making her own ideas, thank you very much!
Twinky hid away and watched Young Wizard Obi-Wan. He tried. He tried so hard. He was spending all his magic and working himself to the bone to protect the little no-majs. The little no-majs were fighting a war against their parents, she learned. The big no-majs were fighting each other but whenever they saw a little no-maj or Young Wizard Obi-Wan, they tried to kill them instead. It was very bad. So bad! The elves in the Elf Stream agreed that it was terrible, no good, very bad. All the little no-majs were hungry and sick. So was Young Wizard Obi-Wan.
She followed the older ones out of the tunnels when they snuck out to steal things from the big no-majs. Everybody had weapons called ‘blasters’ that threw red streaks that felt like heat and pain. The first time the big no-majs tried to kill some little no-majs, Young Wizard Obi-Wan tried to stop the red streaks. Young Wizard Obi-Wan didn’t quite know how to catch them but he managed to make a good shield to protect the little no-majs.
Twinky huffed angrily and added her magic to Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s shield. His eyes went very very big and his magic stuttered in surprise. Silly, distractible wizard. When more red streaks came, he was still stuttering so she made the heat and pain dissolve before they reached the little no-majs.
“How did you do that?” little Miss Razzy asked Young Wizard Obi-Wan as they ran away with the boxes they stole.
“It wasn’t me!” Young Wizard Obi-Wan said. “But… I think the Force helped me?”
“The Force? Does it do that?”
“I don’t think so. But what else could it be?”
“Is there maybe another Jedi around?”
Young Master Obi-Wan flinched as he hauled Miss Razzy over a wall. “If it was a Jedi they’d show themselves, wouldn’t they? Even if they didn’t approve of me? They’d help you.”
“The last one didn’t. You were the one who stayed.”
“I’m not enough.” Young Wizard Obi-Wan sounded sad and longing.
Twinky was very cross. Bad, bad no-majs, to be hurting childrens! She thought about turning all of them into froggies. It would serve them right. She sat in the tunnels and fumed while Young Wizard Obi-Wan helped his friends Miss Razzy and Mister Neely share the strange boring foods they took from the big no-majs.
After all the little no-majs were fed, Young Wizard Obi-Wan wandered away to in a tunnel all by himself. Twinky watched him try to make his magic do what hers did to make the red streaks lose the heat and pain. Young Wizard Obi-Wan hadn’t eaten in a long time, which was bad for magics and little wizards growing up to be big and strong wizards. Twinky popped away to find better foods for Young Wizard Obi-Wan. Grabbing Thing was actually helpful this time and showed her to a place where the big no-majs kept their food. It wasn’t good food but Twinky couldn’t find any good food anywhere else! Nowhere she looked. Even the noisy magic here couldn’t find any!
It was very frustrating. The Elf Stream was shocked.
“There isn’t even a Tesco?” Sister Tippy asked.
“No Tescos! Not even any chickens!”
That was because Twinky was on a new planet, Grabbing Thing explained, which made the Elf Stream explode with questions.
Twinky grumbled and changed some of the not good food into good tasting food like toast, bacon, and eggs. Even if it wasn’t as healthy for growing wizards, it wouldn’t look or taste like blocks of wood. She arranged it on a pretty plate she transfigured out of a rock and brought it back to Young Wizard Obi-Wan.
Young Wizard Obi-Wan was still sitting all by himself, trying to change his magic. Twinky squinted at him. His eyes were closed. He was working very hard.
Cleverly, she made elf lights in the dark tunnel and made an itty bitty breeze to blow the smell of the food into Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s nose.
Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s eyes opened wide. He stared at the food.
“Oh,” he said faintly. “I’ve started seeing things. Well, that’s not good.”
Tsk. “You is having good eyes,” Twinky said, showing herself. “Young Wizard is too skinny! Grabbing Thing is wanting you to eat and then they can be speaking to you. Twinky will translate.”
Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s eyes went big, big, big. “Uh. Hello,” he said.
Twinky gave him a fork.
“Thank you?” he said.
Mama Winky hummed in approval through the Elf Stream. “He is being very polite,” she said. Twinky agreed and told him so.
“I try,” Young Wizard Obi-Wan said. He looked very confused. “Who are you?”
“Is Twinky! Twinky is being a Great Explorer! She is exploring a big temple when Grabbing Thing grabbed her and pulled her into a crack.”
“I… see? I’m pleased to meet you. I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi. Uh. People call me Ben here.”
Twinky beamed at him. “Twinky is being happy to meet Young Wizard Obi-Wan Kenobi too! She will be helping like Grabbing Thing wanted. Even though Grabbing Thing is very rude.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Is not your fault. You is not controlling the Grabbing Thing.”
“No, I suppose I don’t,” Young Wizard Obi-Wan mumbled. “What’s the Grabbing Thing? And—I’m sorry, this is awkward, but—I’m afraid I don’t recognize your species. You were kidnapped? Do you need help?”
Twinky melted. Oh, he was so sweet. The Elf Stream agreed that Young Wizard Obi-Wan seemed like one of the best kind of wizards. He was just like Master Harry. Except Young Wizard Obi-Wan didn’t have Winky or Dobby or Itsy or Bitsy or Crow or Zing or….
…but he would have Twinky! “Twinky is a house elf and Twinky is not needing help. Twinky is doing the helping. And only Grabbing Thing knows what Grabbing Thing is. You should be eating,” Twinky said, nudging the plate closer to Young Wizard Obi-Wan. “You is too skinny.”
“Yes, you said. Is this food real?”
Twinky giggled. Nobody had ever asked Twinky if food was real before.
“I don’t recognize it but it looks delicious,” Young Wizard Obi-Wan said. His magic was already stretching out to the little no-majs, eager to share.
Twinky swatted his magic and gave Young Wizard Obi-Wan the look Mama Winky used when Master Harry was being silly and thinking no good thoughts. Twinky was not as good at the Look but it still worked. Young Wizard Obi-Wan shrank back and eyed her. “This food is for you,” she said sternly. “You is to be eating it all by yourself. You is skin and bones, like a little empty purse with nothing inside. Twinky made it for you!”
“But—”
At Mama Winky’s recommendation, she let her ears sag and her eyes grow big and wet. “You don’t be wanting to eat Twinky’s food?”
“It looks lovely, truly. I just want everybody to taste how wonderful your cooking is?”
Twinky let her eyes grow bigger and wetter before Young Wizard Obi-Wan finally decided to be a good little wizard. He sat down again. “Why not,” he mumbled despairingly. “I’m obviously having some sort of hallucinatory episode.”
As long as he ate while he thought he was going crazy! Twinky put up wards at the ends of the tunnel so no little no-majs could bother Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s supper. Then she sat down in the air and watched him poke at the food. He was so hungry he couldn’t feel hungry anymore. That was bad. Even worse, he felt guilty about eating.
Papa Dobby reminded Twinky that sometimes Master Harry would eat if he was distracted and forgot he was eating. She sighed heavily. Little wizards were so much work. “Where is the big ones that is taking care of Young Wizard Obi-Wan?” she asked.
His shoulders crept up around his ears and didn’t look at her. “I don’t know what you mean?”
“Is not good for little wizards to be taking care of themselves, oh no. Even with house elves to be watching over thems. Little wizards be needing big wizards to teach them wizard things and make sure they is being safe and healthy and not too skinny!”
She poked gently at Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s ribs to show him how skinny he was. Young Wizard Obi-Wan blinked at her, his magic sad sad sad again even though his face was calm.
“The adults of this planet have turned on their children, Miss Twinky,” he said. Miss Twinky! “Why would I deserve any better than them? And— I’m sorry, you keep calling me ‘Wizard.’ I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that word?”
“Wizard is what you is being,” she explained, while Grabbing Thing showed her how Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s grown-up Wizard Jinn had left him on the planet all by himself, even though Grabbing Thing had tried to make him stay. “You is using magic, so you is a wizard.”
“Mag— do you mean the Force?”
She frowned. “Wizards that be forcing magic is not a good thing. They is being Dark wizards. Is very bad! They is hurtings magic!” She peered at him suspiciously. “You is not being a bad wizard?”
Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s eyes grew very large. “No! No, I is not being a bad wizard! I mean, I’m not. I just meant—”
“He is having good grammar,” Papa Kreacher said approvingly.
Twinky patted Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s hand. “You is a good wizard, Twinky knows.”
“I’m not—” Young Wizard Obi-Wan sighed heavily and started again. “When you say magic, are you talking about the Force? The energy created by all living things, that surrounds us and binds us together?”
Twinky squinted at him.
With another little sigh, he focused on the food and raised his hand. His magic flexed. The food floated up in the air in a demonstration of wandless magic.
“Is this what you mean by magic?” he asked.
Twinky beamed at him. “Young Wizard Obi-Wan is being powerful wizard!” she cheered, and snapped her fingers. With a shiver, Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s clothes shed all their dirt, the holes and rips mending as they did. For good measure, she cleaned his dirty hands. At the same time, the bacon and eggs on the plate changed into a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.
Obi-Wan twitched violently. Then he went very still and stared. “That’s amazing,” he breathed, patting himself down before lifting up the sandwich to study it. “You’re amazing, Miss Twinky. I… didn't know the Force was able to do that?”
Twinky blushed and shook her head. “Young Wizard Obi-Wan is just needing a new big wizard to be teaching him. Twinky can help!” At an urgent nudge, she added grudgingly, “Grabbing Thing will also be helping. Grabbing Thing be having ideas already.”
Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s face did many strange things. He put the sandwich down and hugged himself, his shoulders rising even though his magic wanted, oh, so much. “Do you mean a Jedi Master? I’m afraid there aren’t any to be had here, Miss Twinky. And even if there were, I’m afraid no Jedi Master has ever really wanted me. I’m not what any of them want as a padawan. And I left the Order.”
“Twinky, who is not being a Miss Twinky, is not knowing what ‘Jedi’ and ‘Padawan’ is,” Twinky declared, ignoring how the Grabbing Thing stuffed the knowing into her head without asking. “Twinky doesn’t know about Orders either. Twinky only knows most important thing is what Young Wizard Obi-Wan be wanting.”
“I want to follow the will of the Force but I’m not good enough,” Young Wizard Obi-Wan said sadly, his magic awash in misery. “I wanted to help the Young but I can’t make the Elders stop fighting. I’ve been trying to help the Young with strategy and tactics, training them, but I can barely keep them alive. Too many of them have died already. I’m useless.”
Oh no. Twinky felt Master Harry sitting up and the Potter magic swelling with wrath and protection. Master Harry didn’t like it when childrens were hurt by grown-ups, especially now that there were little Potters. Mama Winky and Papa Dobby would have to calm Master Harry down and explain things while Twinky took care of Young Wizard Obi-Wan.
Twinky popped over to sit on Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s shoulder. She stroked his hair and floated the sandwich up to bump his mouth. It bumped him one, two, three, four times before he obediently opened his mouth.
“You is not useless,” she told him sternly while he chewed and swallowed. “You is a great wizard. Twinky can tell. You is having good heart and you is trying so hard. You is just needing help. Is not bad thing to need help. You is eating now and telling Twinky all about it. Then Twinky and Grabbing Thing will be helping you to fix everything. Yes?”
Young Wizard Obi-Wan leaned into her hand. “The Force says to trust you,” he whispered. After a minute of blinking back tears, he started talking.
Jon Antilles had just sent a data scrape of his last bounty’s systems when the Force exploded by his ear.
It was very loud.
Temporary blindness and deafness wasn’t entirely foreign to him. The Dark Woman had trained him specially for that. Too, with the breadth and depth of his connection to the Force, he had occasionally experienced the Force sensitive equivalent of a flashbomb as great changes happened across the galaxy. This one was a little worse than usual. He could simply count himself fortunate he wasn’t mid-fight.
He dropped his head in his hands, eyes squeezing shut against tears. The Force was ringing, but there was no sense of danger. He trusted it more than he trusted the defenses on his ship, which were themselves formidable and in keeping with his current cover as a bounty hunter.
“You is being so rude!” a high-pitched voice scolded where no voice should be. Jon had the impression it wasn’t directed at him. “You should be asking first before grabbing so hard! Twinky is not needing help to pop! Twinky is not a baby!”
Jon blinked hard and squinted up, his eyes overly dilated from the explosion in the Force. He had a bleary impression of enormous eyes and ears, and spindly legs in long black boots. They were floating a couple of meters over the co-pilot seat.
“Still is more polite to be asking first,” the voice said sulkily.
“Hello,” Jon said carefully, his voice rough from lack of use. He regretted for a moment that he wasn’t wearing his cloak and so couldn’t draw up his hood. The being that hovered in mid-air was difficult to look at, a half-there, half-not embodiment of the Force and Something Else that radiated determination, enthusiasm, and irritation.
It was distinctly Light, however, blazing to his senses, and Jon felt his shoulders lose their tension as it peered at him.
“Oh, you… you bad Grabbing Thing!” it squeaked. “You is blinding him! You stop this right now!”
And suddenly it was easier to see.
Jon blinked at the being now fully embodied in his ship. He didn’t recognize the species. Whatever it was, he had the errant thought that it was related in some fashion to Master Yaddle’s people. Except not green, of course. And skinnier. And from the brief glimpse of teeth, omnivorous rather than carnivorous. And the floating.
Without the glaring metaphysical brightness, the being was still obviously a Force entity of some sort. And since Jon couldn’t think of any reason why a Force being would abruptly embody itself in his cockpit, especially one so powerful, he asked uncertainly, “Do you need help?”
“Oh!” The being stared at him with enormous, marveling eyes. “You is being like Young Wizard Obi-Wan! You is both good wizards. Grabbing Thing is right. You is being Young Wizard Obi-Wan’s big teacher and helping save all the little no-maj childrens from the bad grown-ups who is killing them!”
It might have been the most surreal mission debrief Jon had ever experienced, but all things were possible in the Force. He listened carefully to the story of a padawan—“Twinky not be knowing that word,” said Twinky, firmly. “No matter what Grabbing Thing says,”— abandoned by his Jedi Master—"Bad, bad wizard," Twinky said darkly, and Jon could only agree—for following the will of the Force over the orders of the Council. Of a planet where generational civil war has resulted in parents slaughtering their children. Of an innocent house elf—"Who is being a Great Explorer!"—who was yanked from her wanderings on a different planet into the war zone of Melida/Daan.
He twitched at her confident declaration that he would be taking the abandoned padawan as his own. He had privately promised to himself he would never take one. His own apprenticeship under the Dark Woman had given him a strong antipathy towards perpetuating her teachings. But the Force rang with the rightness of the being’s assertion.
With a small sigh, he surrendered to the inevitable.
Once the somewhat confusing narrative was done, he queried his navigational systems and received the necessary details for the planet. “At best it will take me six days to get there,” he calculated. The Force was tugging at him with a sense of urgency. He checked his comm and then the navigation computer again. “Master Fay is closer. I can ask if she’s free. She’s a healer and the most powerful Jedi alive.”
Twinky pulled at her ears. “Oh yes, Young Wizard Obi-Wan is needing healing. He is too skinny. He is giving all his foods to little children even though he is also being little.”
“Master Fay can heal the children but she’ll be limited on the food front,” Jon said quietly, trying to figure out where he could access his normally untouched Temple account. “I’ll bring what supplies I can.”
The little being’s eyes widened. “The Master Fay knows how to heal without magic?”
“Yes. Normally she heals with the Force, though. Is that a problem?”
“The childrens is no-maj.”
He hesitated, unsure. “Do you mean they’re not Force-sensitive? They can’t use or feel the—” he tried not to grimace, “—the magic? That shouldn’t matter with Force-healing.”
“Wizards not be caring about the Statute?” Twinky asked fretfully. At Jon’s blink, she clarified, “The Statute of Secrecy? Wizards not be using magic in front of no-majs?”
He stared at her, his brow wrinkling in confusion.
She stared back at him. “Magic is not being a secret?”
“No? The Force is known throughout the galaxy, as are those who use it. Not everybody believes it exists, but—”
He broke off. Twinky’s eyes had narrowed. The Force hummed in ominous counterpoint.
“Good Wizard Antilly be excusing Twinky now,” she said, dangerously pleasant. “She be going to make froggies. So many froggies. All the froggies.”
And between one blink and the next, she was gone.
A pair of Young scouts peered over a crumbling parapet at one of the Melida supply depots. Unexpectedly, the usual guard was gone. Instead, a strange group of large, green-skinned animals were huddled together. They were croaking. On a planet where almost all native wildlife had been wiped out by warfare, they were a glaring anomaly.
“Maybe it’s a trick,” the older of the two whispered, suspicious.
“Maybe we could catch some,” the younger whispered back. “They look edible.”
Somewhere in the Coruscant Jedi Temple, Twinky paused in the middle of turning Bad Wizard Jinny's everything a permanent lurid green and pink. She screwed up her nose, and squinted. Grabbing Thing was laughing at something. She had the odd feeling she might have made a mistake.