Chapter Text
Shmi Skywalker had never met a Jedi before-or a Nubian for the matter. Yet her son, overflowing with the favor of The Spring, brought both with him to shelter from the sandstorm and gain refreshment at the table of the enslaved. The Jedi, a middle-aged man with eyes much older, and the girl, so very young with so much weight on her slender shoulders. Foreign names they had- Padme and Qui-Gon- and somewhere in her being, Shmi knew.
They would take her Anakin away with them, and Shmi would allow it. As painful as this was, there was peace in her being that came from the One she worshipped. Her Ani would not bleed his life in the mines, producing the oresh that made the Republic’s ships run fast and cheap. Instead, her son would go with these strangers and live on their strange planet, speak their strange tongues, and learn their strange ways. He would liberate the Children, but first he must learn from these outsiders.
Anakin was showing the girl the protocol droid he had built. Shmi marveled at how her boy, after all he had endured, could still open his heart so easily. Perhaps it was the Spring in his veins, whispering to him the bones of each being he met. Perhaps it was simply his own goodness.
And oh, how it broke her heart to let him go- in truth, send him away. Yet, she was like the woman in the Old Stories, who placed her child with the Jawa caravan so he might escape a tyrant under cover of a brown cloak. She was sending him away from slavery with faith that the Spring whispered the truth; he would come back free, and he would free the Children.
Shmi put up a token resistance to Anakin taking part in a podrace, yet she knew. She knew he would be won like a prize rather than a person, yet that his bondage in the Jedi Temple would teach him the tools he needed to return. She knew she would not see him again until her death.
So Shmi Skywalker encouraged her son to go and not look back. She would see him again, in the days when he would free their people.
She allowed them to take her son away. He was only nine years old, yet Shmi knew Anakin must leave if he were to liberate his people. The Jedi had a prophecy. Of a child born of a mother but with no father who would bring Balance to their Force.
Shmi knew nothing of their Chosen One or of their Force, but she did know the quiet trickle of the Spring and the promise of a homeland for its Children. Instead of the Balance of the Jedi, Shmi knew only of Deliverance.
The Jedi did not understand, of course, for they did not know the Holy Tongue. Nor did they know of the Spring and its quiet trickling Voice, The Voice reserved itself for its Children- those born of the lineage of the Ancestors and those who became one with the Children. They did not understand that Anakin had no father because slave women had no choice in whom they bed. Such men should never be called “father” by the results of their crimes. For what could Core Worlders know of slaves? What could they know of the Children, faithful followers of a distant Spring in a desert?
So, Anakin Skywalker, son of Shmi, was sent off in a Nubian Cruiser to be among the powerful who ignored the suffering of the Children if they didn’t profit from it. He would never forget the love of his mother, though his heart hardened to the chains of his Brethren. Year after year, he forgot more and more of his mother’s teachings. He embraced the doctrines of the Jedi and the rightness of the Republic over the prayers his fellow Children spoke into the Desert. After all, had not the Jedi taught him that the prayers of his youth were only the superstitions of ignorant slaves, who had no way to understand the true nature of the Force?
And so, Anakin came close to forgetting who he was — until the day came when he was compelled to choose between the Jedi and his people.