quixotism | [ rogue one ] gamini

You breathe in dust. It clogs up your throat and you cough, covering your mouth with your sleeve. Glancing at the wall, the bounty holograms flicker, sputtering dying images in the soft light. You pat your gun as the crowd murmurs and moves and you picture it, the falling tide you've never seen except on cheap holo-dramas. The metal is warm still. But it always is on Jedha.

The beaded curtain shakes, tinkling sounds that ring out for visitors. You glance up to see a Whills monk stroll in. Your eyebrow goes up. You rarely see them leave the temple. Sometimes they scour the city, black robes swishing and dragging dust and red dirt in the streets. The stick taps on the ground, one, two, tap as the man moves quietly, aware that he's dragged all the attention around him. A blind monk. It seems unusual but very little was unusual on Jedha these days.

He turns around. He's smiling and you are staring too because it's unreal in the shades of brown and red of Jedha's world. His eyes are clear sky-blue.

You're staring long after he leaves.

Sitting on the temple steps, you see him again, an innocuous staff leaning against his shoulder. He doesn't seem to move his head to the flutter of the streets but he turns his face towards you. You dryly remark that he has good instincts, to know when someone approaches.

He replies, equal dryness in his tone, it's a necessary habit for a blind man. That takes you aback only for a moment before you feel a rumble in your chest, a quiet volcano. Despite your better instincts, you find himself taking a seat next to him on the stairs.

You notice that he's still smiling. His cheeks are dirty, smudged with black soot from the temple walls. There are wrinkles on his brow and he shows too many teeth. It's awkward, childish and almost daring in its action. Tempted, you ask what he might be smiling about.

To which he says, "Stick around and see."

So you do.

You drag the last of the Whills and push his body onto the pyre. Chirrut stands there, a lit torch in his right hand. For a few moments, you both stand there, waiting. Nothing happens. The sky remains dark and empty, the little lights of the Empire twinkling far out of sight. You wonder where the Jedi are, why they have not come to help the Whills. The Force is not your concern and as such, you pay it no heed. Grief does not sing to you in this empty landscape. Certainly not in your line of work.

Nothing happens.

Then you grasp Chirrut's hand and guide it towards the pyre. It catches fire instantly. The sting of heat nearly makes your eyes water, but water is precious and your body knows this.

"He is one with the Force," Chirrut says abruptly. His casual exuberance, his nonchalant posture has shifted with the sands below their feet.

"He died," you say bluntly because who says that except Jedi?

With both hands tightly wrapped around his staff, he leans closer to the flames. You barely restrain the urge to pull him back. He doesn't seem angry at your words, merely contemplative. You had expected a snappier retort by now. Perhaps Chirrut is more shaken than he believes, with smoke rising up from the pyre and pieces of his world burning down.

"He is one with the Force," he repeats and you say nothing. Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.

Somewhere along the line (the lines Chirrut traces with his fingers, lifelines, creased and wrinkled on your skin), you realize you haven't taken a job. Your last kill was a man trying to steal Chirrut's bag. Temple commodities sell for a high price since the Empire killed off the Jedi. He shook his head at you, annoyed and you want to make fun of it, the way he childishly goes off at you while you listen.

Lines in the sand. Lines in the skin. Smoke plumes in the desert. Somewhere along the line, there is Chirrut and there is more than dust in your mouth. You've never felt more alive.

You've never felt more scared. Because Chirrut laughs at you and it's terrifying, that glint of humour, of joy that seemed to be snuffed out all around them. You keep looking up and remembering there is a sky above your head.

We are luminous beings, you and I, Chirrut speaks to him in the silence of the night, cotton scratching their backs. We'll find each other.

No we won't, you say but your throat clogs up. He's laughing at you because he knows what you're saying and what you don't say.

Jedha dies and you hear sirens in your blood. Jedha dies and Chirrut can't see it, but his hands shake. Or the ship shakes. It's hard to tell. Perhaps he's shaking too. You fold your big hand over Chirrut's and they tremble together. The fear dies in you as everything else around you does. You're both on a path now and the bounty hunter in you sees it clinically.

All is as the Force wills it, you murmur to yourself.

But Chirrut hears you and the flicker of a smile returns.

And your path is set.