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“Aideé Gardia, Seventh Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”
0 reviewsThis is fifteen random but chronological moments from the life of Aideé Gardia, who is, quite literally, the seventh handmaiden in the third training class of potential handmaidens chosen from amo...
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“Aideé Gardia, Seventh Handmaiden in the Third Class for Padmé Amidala”
01.) Storm: Her parents were killed in a climbing accident about a month after her fifth birthday – a storm came up out of nowhere and triggered an avalanche of mud and rock that carried them and her older sister away – but there is a tradition of service and guardianship in her family’s past (her mother’s line – the Barakis family – is rather famous for producing companions to Kings and Queens of Naboo, and her father’s line is equally well-known for its soldiers and protectors), and she has long been determined to do her family proud, and so, even though she has a baby brother to be thinking of, she knows her aunt and the rest of the Barakis clan will do well enough with Kason whether she specifically is there to look after him or not, and she leaps as the chance to submit an application to be considered for training as one of the new Queen’s handmaidens.
02.) Prefer: They would prefer to take girls without families, if they can (or at least girls whose contributions to the growth and well-being of their families will not be too sorely missed), owing to the danger inherent in the handmaiden position, but Aideé is patient and persistent and her credentials are very good, and so she isn’t too surprised to eventually be accepted into the third class of trainees.
03.) Tension: She is at the Palace for most of two days, while the others in her class gradually trickle in, waiting until they are all present so they can be taken out to the place where they will be trained, and normally she would use the time to familiarize herself more with the Palace, but there is a certain amount of tension in the air that precludes the notion of wandering about alone, and the handmaidens from the first (and only fully trained) class are all too busy to be bothered, so she spends her time instead trying to get to know her fellow trainees and recording messages and short little vids for her little brother, Kason, to reassure him that she is alright and happy with her new position as a handmaiden trainee.
04.) Similar: With her slim, somewhat petite build and dark hair and eyes, she looks enough like the Queen that she could easily make herself resemble her more closely, but there’s a girl in their training class who might actually be the Queen, who is so very like Amidala that the Queen’s own blood kin might easily enough mistake them for each other, even without cosmetics to make them seem more similar, and so she will be happy enough to rally the class behind this girl, this Dormé Tammesin, so that Dormé will better be able to serve Amidala by being the most convincing decoy she can possibly be.
05.) Admiration: She could easily come to love this Dormé – she is highly intelligent without in any way lacking in common sense, fiery, zealous, idealistic in a way that speaks of honor rather than naivete, funny and unafraid of showing her wit, and, most of all, filled with a passionate need to excel and to serve their sworn lady that fills Aideé with unabashed admiration for the young teenager – but she is, unfortunately, also wholly uninterested in any kind of romantic relationship and indeed oddly wary about friendships, as well, as if she’s unused to the idea of being able to depend on anyone but herself and dislikes the notion of trying to do so outside the context of alliances that obviously serve the Queen’s interests, and so Aideé is forced to the conclusion that Dormé has not been treated well by those in her life and has too profound a distrust of her own worthiness and the trustworthiness of others to make it worth her while to try to convince her otherwise, at least not until Dormé has had a chance to get more used to the idea of being able to safely lean on others in the class.
06.) Another: There’s another girl in her training class, Etté Zirach, who resembles a slightly taller and duskier-complexioned version of Amidala, and she is sweet and kind and wryly funny and quite confident of herself and her abilities without ever quite crossing the line from self-assured to arrogant, and Aideé decides that, given Dormé’s obvious disinterest in any kind of close relationship with anyone except the Queen and Sabé Dahn – the Queen’s primary decoy, who has taken an obvious interest in Dormé and has been behaving as something of a special mentor to her – Etté’s resemblance to the Queen, and Etté’s generous and confident nature, to embrace the challenge of making Etté into Dormé’s possible emergency replacement, a sort of relief decoy for the decoy, in case anything should (Great Goddess forfend!) ever happen to Dormé to keep her from being available to serve Amidala as a replacement decoy for Sabé: this is how it comes to pass that, when the time finally comes for them to leave (for Varykino and a villa summerhouse of the Naberrie family, as it turns out), she’s already managed to form a loose coalition around Dormé including herself and Etté and a pair of girls named Emmé and Betté who are already beginning to act like a formally bonded couple, and Aideé is extremely happy to note that four others seem likely to join them, though the final girl in their training group seems to think she should be the center of attention and certainly gives such an impression of self-centeredness that Aideé finds it highly unlikely that she’ll ever fully join them . . . not that she particularly wants her to do so, given the coldness and malice Aideé can sometimes sense and even occasionally catch a glimpse of, lurking at the back of the girl’s eyes.
07.) Disconcerting: Varykino is so serenely beautiful that the peacefulness of the place is actually (more than) a little disconcerting, in comparison to the aura of anxiety and nervous energy surrounding the Palace and permeating so much of the rest of the planet, though she must admit that she tranquility of the place could and would likely appeal to and even grow on her, under other, less dangerous circumstances.
08.) Chosen: As it turns out, this third class of handmaiden trainees was not only chosen mostly of orphans (fosterlings or adoptees with little to no surviving immediate family), but also of girls either raised in or closely befriended by noble households where they would have learned most all of the gentler arts that are associated with being a Queen’s chosen companion, and so their training is going to consist almost entirely of a crash course in physical defense, offense, and the use of fairly simple weapons (knives, blasters, some old-fashioned projectile weapons, etc.) as well as a series of tests meant to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses in other areas, so that the principal handmaidens will know best where to place them and with whom among the earlier two classes to pair them up, for more practical study and hands-on experience, when their vastly truncated training is at an end and they are recalled to the Palace to begin their active service, due to the increasing threat posed the Queen by the argumentative and greedy Trade Federation.
09.) Condition: With the exception of Dormé and, oddly enough, possibly also a wiry little girl with a heart-shaped face by the name of Ellessé Veganis, Aideé can tell that she is in the best overall condition and has had the greatest amount of training with both offensive and defensive weaponry and fighting tactics, and so she is careful to make herself over into a sort of secondary teacher and a source of reassurance, support, and gentle goading for the other girls, to try to minimize both their obvious discomfort and embarrassment over their lack of experience and physical strength and endurance and to encourage them to focus on learning as much as they can rather than agonizing over what they do not already know how to do or cannot yet do completely or all that well.
10.) Agreement: Put a blade of any kind in Dormé’s hands, and she becomes an object of grace and beauty in motion, a dance of pure and easily potentially deadly poetry, and Aideé’s heart and soul burn at the thought of the kind of awful family life Dormé must have had – to be so lovely and accomplished and so driven and yet to have so little faith in herself or in other people – so much so that all she can do is nod in grim agreement when Etté sadly and rather darkly notes, “Either her parents never should have had children, or else she should have been taken away from them, for her own safety and well-being, long since.”
11.) Threat: The girl with the deceptively sleepy, cruel eyes, Rosé Ganesa, is a threat not only to the unity of the class, behind Dormé, but to the health and well-being of the other girls: she is a user who takes what she wants from others, wooing individuals to her with flattery and soft words only to turn about and drop them when they are of no more immediate use to her and then viciously mocking them if they protest against this mean and thoughtless treatment, and, after finding a second girl reduced to a sobbing mess by Rosé’s malice, she makes up her mind to try to lodge a formal complaint, to see if they can’t get the conscienceless little bitch out of the training program before her selfish, casually cruel ways can get someone seriously hurt.
12.) Right: Captain Panaka insults her by telling her not to waste his time with juvenile gossip and catty complaints and neither Sabé nor Saché – the two of Amidala’s principal handmaidens most closely involved with the handmaiden training process – are available, but Yané comes out and listens to her with a quiet gravity and then solemnly informs her that Panaka had no right to speak to her in such a way and that Sabé and Saché both protested Rosé’s placement in the class but that, unfortunately, since the Queen technically gave control over the handmaiden selection to Panaka (to make the man feel as if he had more input, in matters of security for the Queen, so that he hopefully would not seek to interfere with the guardian function of the handmaidens themselves), there is nothing anyone can do about Rosé – or indeed about any of the other few unsuitable individuals Panaka unfortunately chose to admit to the first and second training classes – unless someone actually catches her doing something illegal or else patently immoral or in violation of her handmaiden oaths, and that Yané will meet with the other girls about Rosé, to seek to warn them about her, but that she recommends not making it obvious that they are watching her, so that they can perhaps lull Rosé into a false sense of security and so be more likely to catch her at something that will justify dismissing her from the program, no matter what Panaka might prefer.
13.) Sideways: Things so sideways with the Trade Federation so suddenly and so rapidly that they are yanked back out of Varykino after only a week, and it is with a feeling of lowering doom that she finds herself reentering the Palace only to be serenaded by the sound of shrill alarms.
14.) Broken: The wound itself is not so serious, but the blow to her ribs is – that bitch Essé has broken ribs, she can tell, and it hurts so much that she cannot keep herself from crying out in pain (spitting up blood as she does so), though a part of her would frankly rather die than yield the satisfaction of a scream – and, afterwards, though she tries as hard as she can to focus on what’s going on, she loses most of the time of the occupation to a feverish haze of unending pain and misery, too hurt and sick in her dark cell to be all that aware of anything but her own discomfort.
15.) Triumphant: She is given no time to recover from her wounds: when the doors to the makeshift cell are opened and friends come to get her out, she sees the telltale flash of reflected light from a laser scope, and she forces herself to move, placing herself between the woman in the crowd who looks the most like Queen Amidala (Dormé, as it happens, in her decoy dress) and that glare, perishing with a wildly triumphant smile on her lips as the shield of her body stops the blaster bolt from traveling any further than her own flesh.
01.) Storm: Her parents were killed in a climbing accident about a month after her fifth birthday – a storm came up out of nowhere and triggered an avalanche of mud and rock that carried them and her older sister away – but there is a tradition of service and guardianship in her family’s past (her mother’s line – the Barakis family – is rather famous for producing companions to Kings and Queens of Naboo, and her father’s line is equally well-known for its soldiers and protectors), and she has long been determined to do her family proud, and so, even though she has a baby brother to be thinking of, she knows her aunt and the rest of the Barakis clan will do well enough with Kason whether she specifically is there to look after him or not, and she leaps as the chance to submit an application to be considered for training as one of the new Queen’s handmaidens.
02.) Prefer: They would prefer to take girls without families, if they can (or at least girls whose contributions to the growth and well-being of their families will not be too sorely missed), owing to the danger inherent in the handmaiden position, but Aideé is patient and persistent and her credentials are very good, and so she isn’t too surprised to eventually be accepted into the third class of trainees.
03.) Tension: She is at the Palace for most of two days, while the others in her class gradually trickle in, waiting until they are all present so they can be taken out to the place where they will be trained, and normally she would use the time to familiarize herself more with the Palace, but there is a certain amount of tension in the air that precludes the notion of wandering about alone, and the handmaidens from the first (and only fully trained) class are all too busy to be bothered, so she spends her time instead trying to get to know her fellow trainees and recording messages and short little vids for her little brother, Kason, to reassure him that she is alright and happy with her new position as a handmaiden trainee.
04.) Similar: With her slim, somewhat petite build and dark hair and eyes, she looks enough like the Queen that she could easily make herself resemble her more closely, but there’s a girl in their training class who might actually be the Queen, who is so very like Amidala that the Queen’s own blood kin might easily enough mistake them for each other, even without cosmetics to make them seem more similar, and so she will be happy enough to rally the class behind this girl, this Dormé Tammesin, so that Dormé will better be able to serve Amidala by being the most convincing decoy she can possibly be.
05.) Admiration: She could easily come to love this Dormé – she is highly intelligent without in any way lacking in common sense, fiery, zealous, idealistic in a way that speaks of honor rather than naivete, funny and unafraid of showing her wit, and, most of all, filled with a passionate need to excel and to serve their sworn lady that fills Aideé with unabashed admiration for the young teenager – but she is, unfortunately, also wholly uninterested in any kind of romantic relationship and indeed oddly wary about friendships, as well, as if she’s unused to the idea of being able to depend on anyone but herself and dislikes the notion of trying to do so outside the context of alliances that obviously serve the Queen’s interests, and so Aideé is forced to the conclusion that Dormé has not been treated well by those in her life and has too profound a distrust of her own worthiness and the trustworthiness of others to make it worth her while to try to convince her otherwise, at least not until Dormé has had a chance to get more used to the idea of being able to safely lean on others in the class.
06.) Another: There’s another girl in her training class, Etté Zirach, who resembles a slightly taller and duskier-complexioned version of Amidala, and she is sweet and kind and wryly funny and quite confident of herself and her abilities without ever quite crossing the line from self-assured to arrogant, and Aideé decides that, given Dormé’s obvious disinterest in any kind of close relationship with anyone except the Queen and Sabé Dahn – the Queen’s primary decoy, who has taken an obvious interest in Dormé and has been behaving as something of a special mentor to her – Etté’s resemblance to the Queen, and Etté’s generous and confident nature, to embrace the challenge of making Etté into Dormé’s possible emergency replacement, a sort of relief decoy for the decoy, in case anything should (Great Goddess forfend!) ever happen to Dormé to keep her from being available to serve Amidala as a replacement decoy for Sabé: this is how it comes to pass that, when the time finally comes for them to leave (for Varykino and a villa summerhouse of the Naberrie family, as it turns out), she’s already managed to form a loose coalition around Dormé including herself and Etté and a pair of girls named Emmé and Betté who are already beginning to act like a formally bonded couple, and Aideé is extremely happy to note that four others seem likely to join them, though the final girl in their training group seems to think she should be the center of attention and certainly gives such an impression of self-centeredness that Aideé finds it highly unlikely that she’ll ever fully join them . . . not that she particularly wants her to do so, given the coldness and malice Aideé can sometimes sense and even occasionally catch a glimpse of, lurking at the back of the girl’s eyes.
07.) Disconcerting: Varykino is so serenely beautiful that the peacefulness of the place is actually (more than) a little disconcerting, in comparison to the aura of anxiety and nervous energy surrounding the Palace and permeating so much of the rest of the planet, though she must admit that she tranquility of the place could and would likely appeal to and even grow on her, under other, less dangerous circumstances.
08.) Chosen: As it turns out, this third class of handmaiden trainees was not only chosen mostly of orphans (fosterlings or adoptees with little to no surviving immediate family), but also of girls either raised in or closely befriended by noble households where they would have learned most all of the gentler arts that are associated with being a Queen’s chosen companion, and so their training is going to consist almost entirely of a crash course in physical defense, offense, and the use of fairly simple weapons (knives, blasters, some old-fashioned projectile weapons, etc.) as well as a series of tests meant to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses in other areas, so that the principal handmaidens will know best where to place them and with whom among the earlier two classes to pair them up, for more practical study and hands-on experience, when their vastly truncated training is at an end and they are recalled to the Palace to begin their active service, due to the increasing threat posed the Queen by the argumentative and greedy Trade Federation.
09.) Condition: With the exception of Dormé and, oddly enough, possibly also a wiry little girl with a heart-shaped face by the name of Ellessé Veganis, Aideé can tell that she is in the best overall condition and has had the greatest amount of training with both offensive and defensive weaponry and fighting tactics, and so she is careful to make herself over into a sort of secondary teacher and a source of reassurance, support, and gentle goading for the other girls, to try to minimize both their obvious discomfort and embarrassment over their lack of experience and physical strength and endurance and to encourage them to focus on learning as much as they can rather than agonizing over what they do not already know how to do or cannot yet do completely or all that well.
10.) Agreement: Put a blade of any kind in Dormé’s hands, and she becomes an object of grace and beauty in motion, a dance of pure and easily potentially deadly poetry, and Aideé’s heart and soul burn at the thought of the kind of awful family life Dormé must have had – to be so lovely and accomplished and so driven and yet to have so little faith in herself or in other people – so much so that all she can do is nod in grim agreement when Etté sadly and rather darkly notes, “Either her parents never should have had children, or else she should have been taken away from them, for her own safety and well-being, long since.”
11.) Threat: The girl with the deceptively sleepy, cruel eyes, Rosé Ganesa, is a threat not only to the unity of the class, behind Dormé, but to the health and well-being of the other girls: she is a user who takes what she wants from others, wooing individuals to her with flattery and soft words only to turn about and drop them when they are of no more immediate use to her and then viciously mocking them if they protest against this mean and thoughtless treatment, and, after finding a second girl reduced to a sobbing mess by Rosé’s malice, she makes up her mind to try to lodge a formal complaint, to see if they can’t get the conscienceless little bitch out of the training program before her selfish, casually cruel ways can get someone seriously hurt.
12.) Right: Captain Panaka insults her by telling her not to waste his time with juvenile gossip and catty complaints and neither Sabé nor Saché – the two of Amidala’s principal handmaidens most closely involved with the handmaiden training process – are available, but Yané comes out and listens to her with a quiet gravity and then solemnly informs her that Panaka had no right to speak to her in such a way and that Sabé and Saché both protested Rosé’s placement in the class but that, unfortunately, since the Queen technically gave control over the handmaiden selection to Panaka (to make the man feel as if he had more input, in matters of security for the Queen, so that he hopefully would not seek to interfere with the guardian function of the handmaidens themselves), there is nothing anyone can do about Rosé – or indeed about any of the other few unsuitable individuals Panaka unfortunately chose to admit to the first and second training classes – unless someone actually catches her doing something illegal or else patently immoral or in violation of her handmaiden oaths, and that Yané will meet with the other girls about Rosé, to seek to warn them about her, but that she recommends not making it obvious that they are watching her, so that they can perhaps lull Rosé into a false sense of security and so be more likely to catch her at something that will justify dismissing her from the program, no matter what Panaka might prefer.
13.) Sideways: Things so sideways with the Trade Federation so suddenly and so rapidly that they are yanked back out of Varykino after only a week, and it is with a feeling of lowering doom that she finds herself reentering the Palace only to be serenaded by the sound of shrill alarms.
14.) Broken: The wound itself is not so serious, but the blow to her ribs is – that bitch Essé has broken ribs, she can tell, and it hurts so much that she cannot keep herself from crying out in pain (spitting up blood as she does so), though a part of her would frankly rather die than yield the satisfaction of a scream – and, afterwards, though she tries as hard as she can to focus on what’s going on, she loses most of the time of the occupation to a feverish haze of unending pain and misery, too hurt and sick in her dark cell to be all that aware of anything but her own discomfort.
15.) Triumphant: She is given no time to recover from her wounds: when the doors to the makeshift cell are opened and friends come to get her out, she sees the telltale flash of reflected light from a laser scope, and she forces herself to move, placing herself between the woman in the crowd who looks the most like Queen Amidala (Dormé, as it happens, in her decoy dress) and that glare, perishing with a wildly triumphant smile on her lips as the shield of her body stops the blaster bolt from traveling any further than her own flesh.
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