Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [8]
“When I was very young—younger than you, little Solo—I came upon a ringed moon shadowmoth at the end of its metamorphosis, still within its cocoon,” she said distantly, a little sadly. “I had already some touch with the Force; I could feel the shadowmoth’s pain, its panic, its claustrophobia, its hopelessly desperate struggle to free itself. It was as though this particular shadowmoth knew I was beside it, and screamed out to me for help. How could I refuse? Shadowmoth cocoons are polychained silicates—very, very tough—and shadowmoths are so delicate, so beautiful: gentle creatures whose only purpose is to sing to the night sky. So I gave it what I think you mean by help: I used a small utility cutter to slice the cocoon, to help the shadowmoth get out.”
“Oh, you didn’t, did you? Please say you didn’t.” Jacen let his eyes drift closed, sorry already, for how he knew this story would end.
He’d had a shadowmoth in his collection for a short time; he remembered watching the larva grow, feeling its happy satisfaction through his empathic talent as it fed on stripped insulation and crumbled duracrete; he remembered the young shadowmoth that had emerged, spreading its dusky, beautifully striated wings against the crystalline polymer of its viewcage; he remembered the shadowmoth’s thrilling whistle of moonsong, when he had released it from its viewcage and it had soared away under the mingled glows of Coruscant’s four moons.
He remembered the desperate panic that had beat in waves against him through the Force, the night the shadowmoth had fought free of its cocoon. He remembered his ache to help the helpless creature—and he remembered why he hadn’t.
“You can’t help a shadowmoth by cutting its cocoon,” he said. “It needs the effort; the struggle to break the cocoon forces ichor into its wing veins. If you cut the cocoon—”
“The shadowmoth will be crippled,” Vergere finished for him solemnly. “Yes. It was a tragic creature—never to fly, never to join its fellows in their nightdance under the moons. Even its wingflutes were stunted, and so it was as mute as it was planetbound. During that long summer, we sometimes heard moonsong through the window of my bedchamber, and from my shadowmoth I would feel always only sadness and bitter envy, that it could never soar beneath the stars, that its voice could never rise in song. I cared for it as best I could—but the life of a shadowmoth is short, you know; they spend years and years as larvae, storing strength for one single summer of dance and song. I robbed that shadowmoth; I stole its destiny—because I helped it.”
“That wasn’t helping,” Jacen said. “That’s not what help means, either.”
“No? I saw a creature in agony, crying out its terror, and I undertook to ease its pain, and assuage its fear. If that is not what you mean by help, then my command of Basic is worse than I believed.”
“You didn’t understand what was happening.”
Vergere shrugged. “Neither did the shadowmoth. But tell me this, Jacen Solo: if I had understood what was happening—if I had known what the larva was, and what it must do, and what it must suffer, to become the glorious creature that it could become—what should I have done that you would call, in your Basic, help?”
Jacen thought for some time before answering. His Force empathy had enabled him to understand the exotic creatures in his collection with extraordinary depth and clarity; that understanding had left him with a profound respect for the intrinsic processes of nature. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “the best help you could offer would be to keep the cocoon safe. Hawk-bats hunt shadowmoth larvae, and they especially like newly cocooned pupae: that’s the stage where they have the most stored fat. So I guess the best help you could offer would be to keep watch over the larva, to protect it from predators—and leave it