"-and then I meditated at the Pool of Clarity in the highlands for a day," Barriss finished her accounting of her trip to Mirial.
"Wow, that's cool!" Ahsoka replied. Togruta didn't really have the same ritualistic religious traditions as the Mirialans, beyond the ceremonial akul hunt. Sometimes she had moments of envy when Barriss told her about her own traditions and walking through them. She sighed.
Barriss noticed, of course. "Ahsoka," she began, abortively reaching out. "The best part is sharing it with Master Unduli. Maybe you could ask Master Skywalker if he'd share his culture with you?"
"He's a Human," Ahsoka sighed. She flopped onto her back on the grass. "Humans don't have anything interesting."
"Wasn't he only brought to the Temple at nine?" Barris pointed out. "Besides, not all humans are boring. My Master and I met this group of traders when we were liberating Shkashtvi..."
Ahsoka didn't forget about the conversation, exactly, but Anakin was still a Human and wasn't wearing anything that had any non-Jedi sigils and had been raised by Master Obi-Wan, who dressed like looking like the most generic Jedi imaginable was a competition he intended to win. She'd also only been his padawan for a month or so. Wasn't he the one supposed to ask her if she was interested?
Then Ahsoka noticed her Master slipping away after a post-battle cleanup. A quick glance around revealed no-one was watching her. She followed him through the brush, silent like the apex predator she was. Anakin didn't spot her.
He stopped at a small clearing, the bristly bushes giving way to dry earth before rising again, and looked around before starting to draw some sort of pattern into the ground. The ground was the color of Ahsoka's skin and the patterning on her montrals let her blend into the interplay of light and shadow in the brushes. She went unseen.
Ahsoka watched in rapt attention as her master levitated a lizard in front of him as he knelt in the middle of the pattern. "Ranut-ma nayu," he said, snapping the lizard's neck with the Force.
The lizard and the pattern both vanished in a twist of the Force unlike anything Ahsoka had ever seen before. The Force did not flow, steady and smooth, but twisted upon itself like a knot in her stomach and resonated with the binds of a blood oath.
She must've gasped, for Anakin's head whipped around to her. He rose with a deep frown on his face and walked over, hand hovering near his lightsaber.
Ahsoka rose with her head bowed in shame. Not two months into her apprenticeship, and she'd already spied on him doing something he'd intentionally done out of sight. She scuffed the ground with her toes. "I'm sorry."
Anakin shushed her and jerked his head to the side. She obeyed the unspoken command and followed.
Perhaps a hundred meters away, when she couldn't feel the oddity in the Force anymore, Anakin stopped. "How much did you see?" he quietly asked.
"All of it," Ahsoka said in a voice just as quiet.
Anakin sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Okay. I ... do that occasionally. Please don't tell anyone. And, uh, if you walk into a place that feels like that in the Force, don't ever say a name, yours or anyone else's."
Ahsoka nodded and digested the information. Her master did Force rituals occasionally. "Is it your native Force tradition?"
"Yes," Anakin hesitantly said.
"Could you teach me?" Ahsoka immediately asked. Anakin's face was twisted into an odd expression, so she barreled on. "Master Plo brings all his padawans to Dorin to learn the ways of the Baran Do and Master Unduli is initiating Barriss into Mirialan traditions in addition to the Jedi ways and lots of masters share their cultures with their padawans and I'd really like to learn!"
Anakin stared at her. He closed his mouth and took a deep breath. "Okay. Uh. The thing is, this is a, a secret tradition, I guess you could say, so I can't- I have to ask Mom," he said, avoiding eye contact.
"Thank you, Master." Ahsoka bowed. Another thought struck her. "Does Master Obi-Wan know?"
"He knows nothing and I'd rather keep it that way." Anakin ducked his head and fidgeted. "You're, uh, not supposed to instruct your elders."
Ahsoka nodded gravely. Her multicultural communications classes had spoken of taboos; this was one of the cross-culturally common ones.
"Come, Snips; the men must be getting worried."
They buried the topic and spoke of more usual matters on the way to camp. Ahsoka, however, did not forget.
A few weeks later they were at the Temple and sparring in the afternoon light. Ahsoka knew she was smaller, hadn't quite grown into her body, and was inexperienced, but it still frustrated her that she hadn't managed to land a touch.
"Good," Anakin said after the twelfth attempt.
"I'm still losing," Ahsoka grumbled.
"But you're lasting much longer and protecting your head better," Anakin pointed out. He turned off his lightsaber. "Stretches and washing up, and then you can join me for tea."
"Sure," Ahsoka sighed. She turned off her own lightsaber and collapsed into a seated forward fold, toes poking up between her montrals. She heard Anakin chuckle.
They took their time with stretching before a quick wipedown. Ahsoka's muscles were pleasantly gooey by the time they were walking to Anakin's quarters.
"Why don't you settle down while I make the tea, Snips?" Anakin suggested.
"Okay." Ahsoka sat on the couch and stared at her master in rapt attention. He was working up to something, she was sure. It couldn't be her performance in the sparring, could it? He'd had no problems correcting her form in the salles.
He poured water over the tea leaves and brought the pot to the table. He sat, closed his eyes, recited something lengthy under his breath, and then lifted the strainer out of the teapot. "I spoke to Mom," he said as he poured them tea.
Ahsoka immediately sat up. "What did she say?"
Anakin set the teapot down and bit his lip. "That it is my decision as to who I – adopt, but I should tell you what you're signing up for."
"Okay," Ahsoka said. "What am I signing up for?"
"You have hopefully never heard about the Yashura." Anakin waited for her headshake. "It's- We're an ... oh Force, how do I explain it?" He ran a hand through his hair.
"You have your own Force traditions?" Ahsoka prompted.
"I guess it counts as an ethnoreligion? No converts, just passing it on from parent to child."
"So there are Force traditions and traditions for non-Force sensitives?"
"We're all Force sensitive, Snips. It's the – uh, we can discuss how this intersects with Jedi theology later, but Force sensitivity is the touch of the gods and the – I guess you could call it an initiation rite – has the child get touched by the gods."
Ahsoka nodded. She'd always been taught that Force sensitivity was innate, but maybe this initiation was why Anakin was so powerful in the Force. "Is the touch of the gods just Force sensitivity?"
"No." Anakin chewed on his lip. "It's ... sort of a double-edged knife. We get the powers and the ability to appeal to the gods, but on the other hand, the gods notice us."
"And that's a bad thing?"
"Yes."
Ahsoka squirmed in her seat and gulped down some tea in response to Anakin sipping his own. She set the empty cup down with a soft thunk.
"There are twelve gods," Anakin began, playing with his half-empty cup. "The head god is the Sky-walker. She forged the galaxy and placed the hyperlanes and the stars and the planets around them. But she doesn't care that others live in her creation, so she gleefully rearranges it all, snapping hyperlanes and tossing about stars, without any regard for the carnage she may leave behind."
"Is this why your surname is Skywalker?"
"Yeah. Yashura mostly have the surname of the god they're dedicated to."
"Mostly?"
"The big exception is the next god – the Chain-maker and Chain-breaker. She spends all day making chains and all night breaking them. Make sure you know whether the suns are up before offering her sacrifices. Anyway, her dedicants generally don't have her name, as they'd have to swap it twice a day."
"Is the swap separately for each planet or is it based on some reference planet?"
"For each planet, I guess?" Anakin shrugged. "Anyway, she also has a son, the Fate-binder. He rescues people from peril and delivers them to his mother so she may free or bind them to obligation, depending on which face she wears. Then there's the Hammer-swinger, who madly makes tools, weapons, and useless things no-one uses without a single pause, and the Sower, who tosses seeds from her basket and plants all the crops and the weeds."
A callous architect of the heavens, a son who'd deliver people to a two-faced mother, and a bunch of other obsessives. "If the gods are like that, why are you dedicated to them?"
"Because one of them, the Child-taker, will steal and eat children. She's less likely to do that if the child is part of another god's domain."
Ahsoka must've been unable to contain her shocked disgust, for Anakin laughed. "The remaining six are the Truth-seeker, who so needs knowledge that she'll suck people she comes across into empty husks," Anakin explained, "the Seer, who's so obsessed with the future he cannot see the present-"
"Isn't that what they warn us when it comes to visions?" Ahsoka asked.
Anakin bit his lip and thought. "Yeah," he said. "Though he's also what makes time tick forward as he reaches even further into the future." He frowned in thought for a moment more before shaking his head and continuing. "Anyway. There's the Life-holder, who enjoys hurting people and will keep them alive so she can hurt them more. Then there's the Deceiver, who cannot tell a truth and compulsively sets out to con people. The Path-finder is the outcast of the gods, and she is so gripped with wanderlust she cannot sleep two nights in the same bed or cross paths with anyone twice."
Ahsoka nodded. "And the final one?"
"That's the Soul-weigher," Anakin said. "He takes the souls of the dead and weighs them, then sends them to the Sky-walker so she may shred them and use them as mortar to rebuild her creation."
"Do people's lives affect what the Soul-weigher and Sky-walker do?"
"If they hate you, you go patch up the deep vacuum between the galaxies. If they like you, you become stardust." Anakin poured more tea for them. "So. That's the gods I live beneath. It's okay if you're no longer interested, but please don't tell anyone the details."
Ahsoka jerked back so fast a drop of tea escaped the cup and fell on her fingers. "Of course I'm still interested!" She set the cup down on the table with a thunk and wiped the droplets on her leggings. "Anything you're willing to share, I want to learn."
Anakin's eyes went wide. He blinked and ducked his head. "You, uh, won't need to learn much," he offered. "The initiation is a Force ritual that should grant you the knowledge."
"A Force ritual?" The words had probably been intended as a warning, but Ahsoka found herself intrigued. "When will we be doing it?"
Anakin looked at her. Ahsoka felt the weight of his gaze, the evaluation he was performing on her like he'd done so many times during her apprenticeship. "It is irreversible," he said.
Ahsoka crossed her arms in front of her. "So are lots of other things. Do I need to prove myself somehow before you'll do it?"
"No." Anakin smiled. "I just want you to be sure."
"I am."
"After dinner, then." Anakin picked his teacup back up and sipped. "Drink your tea, Snips."
Ahsoka sighed and picked up her cup. This would be a long wait.
After meditation practice and the most excruciatingly long dinner Ahsoka had ever sat through, followed by washing the dishes because of course they had to do that as well, they were out the door. Anakin had a box with one of the lizards he kept for food under his arm. Ahsoka had thought the lizards were bought just for her, an attempt to get a padawan with different dietary needs something to snack on, but then Anakin had eaten one alive in front of her. Now she thought the eating them might just be plausible deniability for having something to sacrifice to the gods easily accessible.
They entered the Room of a Thousand Fountains in silence. Anakin led them along the right wall until they came to a large rocky formation, then followed the edge of the rocks as they rose to be twice his height.
"Last chance to back out."
"I haven't changed my mind."
His expression softened. "Don't say anything, especially not anyone's name, okay?"
"I understand, Master," Ahsoka replied.
"Come."
With that, he slipped sideways through a crack in the rock Ahsoka hadn't even noticed. She scampered after him. The first meter was a tight fit, but after that, the passage opened up so she wasn't scraping her lekku on the walls anymore.
The rock was slightly mossy. It was surprisingly bright, too, considering that they were several meters from the narrow entry, but then the passage opened into a chamber of sorts, mostly covered by a small pool but with a patch of dry earth just large enough that the both them could sit next to each other and meditate. The water was lit by a small crack in the rocks above.
Anakin knelt to draw something on the ground. Ahsoka desperately wanted to ask him what it was, but he'd told her to remain silent for a reason. She fidgeted and tried to get a better look.
When he was done with the figure, he gestured for her to sit. She lowered herself to the center of the roughly circular shape and settled into a meditative posture.
Anakin smiled at her. Then he drew a deep breath and declared, "Narasham yit rakay-ma. Narasham yit ramat-ma. Shai ayi-ma, Yashura, Shatik-arattaka ayi. Ayitu-yi muritashut shkau." He levitated the lizard out of the box and snapped its neck with the Force.
For a frozen instant, it was as if nothing happened. Then the Force twisted like it had twisted the time Ahsoka had stumbled upon Anakin offering sacrifices, spinning into a whirlwind that dislocated something inside Ahsoka's mind and stuffed it full like a suitcase a size too small. She gasped as the world spun around her.
Then the onslaught was over. Anakin gave her a hand and pulled her to her feet. She let herself be led from the grotto back to the outside world.
"Are you all right?" Anakin quietly asked once the light wasn't filtered through cracks in the rock anymore.
"I ... guess?" Ahsoka rubbed her face. "It's like someone opened my head and poured things in."
"Including the language?"
"What- Oh," Ahsoka said when she realized he'd spoken to her in Yashura rather than Basic. She licked her lips. "I think so," she said, carefully tasting the words.
Anakin beamed. "Great! Come, let's go back and chat, oh padawan mine." His smile softened. "It's been a while since I had someone to talk with."
A mirroring smile rose to Ahsoka's lips. "Sure thing, Master."
She was still reeling from the sudden influx of information when she retired for the night. It felt like a sea change that had yet to settle in her connection to the Force.
A few days later, Barriss had returned to Coruscant. Ahsoka took the opportunity to spar with her for a bit before they head off to the refractory.
"So, is Master Skywalker as boring as the average human?" Barriss asked. "You did ask him, did you?"
"I did." A new instinct rose inside her, telling her to keep mum. "He initiated me into his own tradition," she said through the urge to shut up.
"What's it like?"
"It's a secret tradition, so I can't tell you."
Barriss took it in stride. "Oh. I guess that explains why it isn't common knowledge." They stopped in front of a turbolift. Barriss pressed the button. "But you enjoyed it?"
"Of course!" Ahsoka snapped before she realized Barriss wasn't a hostile interrogator. She took a deep breath before continuing. "It's ... nice. He doesn't really have anyone else to talk to about it."
"I'm glad it worked out." Barriss poked at her with the Force. "You feel different, too."
Ahsoka shrugged. She felt different, too, like she'd suddenly acquired the ability to see in the ultraviolet, and was still adjusting. "I'm not surprised."
The turbolift doors opened and they stepped in. "Which refractory should we go to?"
"The one below the meditation floor has bantha steak and I think harrla bean stew for you?"
"Sounds good." Barriss entered the floor number. "Master Luminara said that next time we're in the Temple she'd show me some more things, but I'd have to do a ritual of purification first. It's sort of a sand bath? Do you think there's a good spot in the Room of a Thousand Fountains?"
"I guess you want someplace private?" Ahsoka asked.
"Yes."
"Well, I think the spot behind the shuruva tree might work," Ahsoka suggested, then continued discussing sites with Barriss. She might not be able to share an equivalent amount of information, but she noticed that the undercurrent of envy she'd had was absent.