So, obviously the crows and sparrows here aren’t like Earth’s crows and sparrows because this is Star Wars; I just didn’t want to go hunting down an appropriate name for them. I picture these ones something like an archaeoptryx.
Author’s Note
Brant watched the birds scrabble in the courtyard. It was midday, and the Academy preparers had just finished putting together the slop normally fed to the Acolytes. Typically the scraps and cuttings went into the incinerator, transported there by an astromech droid, but the droid was getting old, and it would leak and drop pieces of food across the courtyard as it rattled along, and the birds would come to fight over them.
Today, along with the usual sparrows, had come some great crows and a vulture. All the sparrows scattered when the crows came down to snatch up their meals, and the crows scattered before the vulture. Yet there were a few among the sparrows who didn’t take off when the bigger birds came, but instead chose to hop about just out of their reach. When the crows weren’t looking, they’d dart in to snatch at the food, cleverly backing out again once they tasted of it.
Yet there was one in particular who seemed to make it his mission to antagonize the crows before flying off. Whenever a crow settled, its lizard-like tail draped calmly over the balcony rail as it ate, the sparrow would dart to it and, nip, sink its tiny teeth into the crow’s gray, feather-bared tail.
Some of the crows would instantly turn on the sparrow, beating wings around its head or lunging with an open beak, but the littler bird was always quick to evade them. Others, though, merely gave it an irritated flick of the tail, sending it swooping off the rail to regain its balance, and there was one, bigger than the rest, who simply turned and looked at the little bird, and the sparrow danced from foot to foot, almost as if inviting it to play, or to come at it, but the crow would just stare, and off the sparrow would fly, intimidated.
Intimidated, but only by the look, and not the wing-beatings. Brant wondered.
It seemed to him the sparrow was testing the crows somehow. Nip. What are you made of? Nip. Are you game? Nip. Or food? Nip, nip. Not so scary after all, are you?
Brant watched for a while to see if the sparrow ever misstepped and bit the wrong crow, the one that would close with and kill it, but it never did. He could not tell if it was luck, or perhaps skill, that protected it. Eventually, he got bored of watching and went down to the beast pens instead.
Some of Lord Mindyh’s phalones were there, and Brant stopped to give a rub to the one he had met in his Ascension trial. A few new beasts were stabled here too, including an anooba, curled in the back of its cage and watching him placidly despite the uncomfortable way it was crouched, its long tail kinked against the corners of the cage.
A whiff of memory stirred, and Brant came over to eye the animal. Anoobas came from Tattooine: a pack animal that hunted on the open dunes. He recalled children’s stories, mothers’ warnings, to not go out at night in case you became the unlucky urchin feeling teeth sinking into your neck. Brant had, of course, disobeyed and snuck onto the dunes when his mother’s back was turned, yet he had never seen one himself. Until now.
As he came closer, he realized there was a tenseness to the beast after all, and the blue-eyed stare it gave him was too wide, too unwavering, to truly be calm. He had just about gotten close enough to the laser-wall to touch it, when suddenly the beast snapped. It was lying there one second, then there was a flash of teeth, a darkness of limbs and shine of claws slamming against the side of the cage, and then it was back in its corner, though its mouth was now open in a threatening smile, skin wrinkled all over its face to keep its lips pulled clear of its horny maw.
Brant stopped. Maybe it was the Force, but he had felt that impact on the wall as more than just the slight buzz and rumble through the floor as the laser-walls redirected power to compensate. He had felt the split second of blindness as the beast had whacked its head into the barrier: the split second change between an intention to kill, then the black fear of pain, replaced by actual pain as the predictable outcome befell the beast: its moment of aggression punished with a new ache in its head, right between the eyes where it had struck. Brant had felt that when standing before Daelin at the Academy, and the lords Xiextor and Rinascita. He also felt the beast as it snarled in its corner now and promised to do the same lunge again if he approached: only this time, the barrier would be coming down; the anooba was certain of it.
Or was it? Brant came to stand directly in front of the cage, with his hands on his hips, and stared the animal down. Slowly the beast’s jaws relaxed and it actually fell to sniffing in his direction, and Brant felt that, too. In some ways, it was similar to the sparrow’s nip. Who are you? Why do you not come to kill me?
Brant brushed the wall of the cage with a hand. Killing you isn’t the point, he told the anooba with a projection of Force, though he knew it likely didn’t understand him. A predator is beautiful, the same as a blade, but both must be honed. If you knew any better, you would not be attacking me.
The anooba snarled again, that familiar defiance rising, as a growl, in its throat. Brant smiled. Yes, he told it. You think the world of yourself, but you’re only a little guy. Maybe one day, I will train you, and you will see how much more you can be.
The anooba chuffled, flicked its tail, and sniffed at him again. Brant felt the sickly-sweet emotion of submission from it, confused between love and fear. Brant felt a little trill of love-feeling in himself in return, and he angrily turned away, shoving it down. Such was not becoming for a Sith, he thought.
He made it out as far as the end of the row of cages before he checked himself and examined that emotion. He thought of Kyra and Z’vyrn, the strange cat-calling bond they had formed over the past few days. And why not? Why were such things forbidden? If to be a Sith was freedom, nothing was forbidden: merely, perhaps, unadvised. The anoobas were pack hunters: each deadly enough alone, but working as one they could bring down even a mighty Tusken Raider from its bantha. Why couldn’t the Sith do the same?
He thought of Lord Belenand’s words, warning him that freedom was not free, of the thousands of years of Sith tradition dictating their creeds, so that each might gain from their transactions. The anooba scrabbled its claws at the laser-wall behind him, then began to whine as Brant backed away from it. The animal didn’t understand the strange barrier, its predicament, what it was to become and to be once it had taken its place, as Sithspawn, of some lord in the temple.
Brant shuddered, empathized, because he realized that neither did he.