▸ Column · Dagobah swamp exile — a galaxy-far-away retelling, with comlinks, voice recordings, holo-images, and bonded covenants standing in for phones and a joint refinance.
YODA replies.
Replied to by Yoda, with a rebuttal from Wonder Woman.
The letter
Master Yoda — my partner's comlink I borrowed, mine being dead, only to find a message thread with one saved under a false name. It opened with his own voice recorded: "Stop thinking about last night, I cannot." It closed with a holo-image of someone plainly not the colleague the name pretended. Eleven years bonded we have been. A child of nine we share. And two moons past, our holdings together we bound, in a covenant so tangled I have not even traced it fully. I set the device back exactly as it lay. I ate across the table from him. I helped our daughter with her letters. Six days now, and not one word have I spoken — paralyzed I am, or building a case, and which one I honestly cannot tell. Confront him now with what I saw, should I? Or counsel from an advocate seek first, to learn what I am walking into, before I shatter everything open?
Yoda replies
Six days, silent you have sat, eating across the table from the wound. Hmm. "Building a case," call it you do. Look closer, you must — fear it is, wearing the mask of strategy.
Trace it with me. Lose everything you fear — the child, the home, the eleven years, the holdings you have not yet mapped. So freeze you do, and grip the silence tight, that safe it keeps you believing. But the frightened mind, clearly it never sees. And rush to confront in your hurt you might — to anger the fear turns, and words you cannot call back, spoken they are.
Yet hide forever in the quiet, neither may you. A lie that also is, and crush you from within it will.
This, then: the stillness first. Not the advocate, not the confrontation — the calm. Sit with the fear until name it you can. Then, from the calm and not the fear, speak. Protect the child — wise that is, not control. But the outcome, the marriage itself, grip it you cannot. Let go of saving it, and what truly remains, see at last you will. Patience, my friend. Slower it feels. Stronger it is.
— Yoda
Wonder Woman weighs in
With respect to the Master — the stillness can wait; the truth cannot keep forever. Six days you have swallowed your own knowing to shield a man who lied in his own voice. That silence is not patience, sister. It is the false peace I will never counsel.
Yes — see the advocate. Not for revenge. To guard your daughter and what is yours, because protecting them is honor, not grasping. Then look Derek in the eye and name what he did, plainly. He is counting on your silence the way every coward does. Do not hand him the one thing he cannot take from you by force. Braver than these six days, you already are.
— Wonder Woman
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