Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
rating: g (word count 420)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/36747517
Tuskens have no written language. Instead, their ancestors’ memories are passed from the old to the young, their history recounted each night under the indifferent gaze of the stars. In this way is a culture forsaken by the rest of the galaxy kept alive. There are generations in the heft of the Elder’s gaderffii and the tip of the Elder’s tongue.
“Feel how cold it is at night,” the Elder might say. “Tatooine has always been a planet of paradoxes: sea to desert, desert to ice.” On a longer night, when the Dune Sea is tilted away from all three of Tatooine’s suns, the Elder begins, “Let me tell you the tale of Rgur’okrt, he who tamed the krayt dragon with his mind.”
That is one story that is told in every tribe, though the name is as variable as the wind. Rgur’okrt and the dragon fought thirty days beneath the sand, and the whole tribe thought he was dead. But on the thirtieth day he found that he could sense the dragon’s thoughts, so he reached out and caused it to fall into a deep sleep, such that it would not wake to terrorize his people for the passing of two generations.
Then he burst from the sand, the granules spraying like droplets of water. The tribe rejoiced because he was alive. And from his robe fell out a fruit, and it broke, and spilled out milk. And Tuskens have drunk from black melons ever since.
The young do not always want to listen to these tales. “What does it matter?” they ask. “Why should we care about the history of a primitive people, of a hunted, dying race? Look around you. We choke on sand when the rest of the galaxy walks in the sky.”
So the Elder reminds them, “That is because we are not a people of sand. We are a people of water, of briny, irrepressible waves. Do you think mechanical wings are the only way to fly? Our ancestors crossed oceans on the backs of whales.”
Then the Elder tells the end of the story. All of the Tuskens’ stories end the same way.
As Rgur’okrt burst from the sand, so will the fish and the whales and the crabs. Water will fall from the sky, and water will swell from the sand. “The oceans will rise again one day,” the Elder says, and makes the children repeat the words, one after another. “The oceans will rise again one day, and we with them.”