Legend XCVI – Ahsoka's Vigil: the Bridgekeeper of the Blue Moon

More about Legend XCVI – Ahsoka's Vigil: the Bridgekeeper of the Blue Moon

On that night when the sky seemed lower than usual and the moon so close you felt you could breathe its cold, she appeared on the narrow bridge of steel and mist that hung between the clouds like a forgotten thought of the world. No one knew who had built the bridge, for it led not from place to place, but from decision to decision, and only those who wavered in their hearts could even see it. The Bridgekeeper stood there motionless, her feet firmly planted on the cold metal, her gaze raised to the vast blue moon, whose light painted her skin in strange patterns, lines and symbols older than any known writing. Her countenance was not human, yet not cruel either; rather, it held a serenity found only in beings who do not age and possess nothing to lose. It was said that she was not born, but came into being when the first journey between the worlds failed, and someone had to remain behind to watch over the transitions. Her horns, dark and curved, bore traces of stardust, and in her eyes reflected not the sky, but the paths of all those who had ever hesitated. The Bridge Keeper rarely spoke, for words were crude tools to her, yet when she did, her sentences sounded like memories long thought forgotten. Travelers who ventured onto the bridge immediately sensed that they were neither welcome nor unwanted, for the Keeper was not a guardian in the sense of prohibitions, but a scale upon which courage and fear themselves tipped. Some asked for guidance, others for forgiveness, still others for nothing, because they did not know what they sought, and it was precisely these who lingered the longest. The Bridge Keeper posed only one question, and she did not ask it aloud, but allowed it to arise within the traveler, where it weighed heavily like a stone in water. Those who answered without fleeing were allowed to proceed, but not always in the direction they had expected, for the bridge never ended where one would have thought it would. It is said that those who lied suddenly felt the ground beneath their feet thin, not out of anger, but out of necessity, for the bridge bore no untruths. Beneath it stretched not an abyss, but a sea of possibilities, and those who fell did not lose themselves, but became something else. The bridge keeper saw all this without emotion, for she knew that every decision demanded its price, and that even stillness was a choice. On some nights, when the blue moon hung particularly bright, one could see her tilt her head slightly, as if listening to a distant voice, perhaps the world itself that had once left her there. Then her red robe shimmered in the moonlight like dried blood, not as a sign of violence, but as a reminder of sacrifices necessary to make passage possible