There’s something you’re forgetting, but what is it?

The thought claws at your mind. You woke up in the oddest position earlier: ninety-degrees off-axis with your head almost hanging off the bed, and lying on your back with your tail bent painfully under you. What were you doing last night?

Now, your tail hurts, your neck aches, and your back has indentations where it rested on your tail. What a wonderful start to the morning.

“Xena, are you alright?” Tera says as she sits down next to you, her tray of food clanging against the refectory table.

“Huh?”

“You don’t seem very happy.”

Well, you have been making little grumbling noises all morning. Everything hurts, and it’s difficult not to complain about it. You probably shouldn’t bother Tera with such minor troubles though.

“Sorry. I’m fine. I just slept weirdly.”

“Aw. That’s no good! Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Nah. I just need to suck it up. Maybe I’ll do more stretching later. Thanks for offering.”

What a good friend she is. You give her a quick hug, then get back to eating. It’s going to be a long day, and you’re going to need all the energy you can get. That introspective meditation of yours takes a lot out of you.

…

Oh, so that’s what you were forgetting. That’s why you were sleeping with such terrible posture! You start shoveling the food into your mouth, trying to finish as quickly as possible. You need to be done soon so that you have plenty of time to explore more in your morning meditation. The morning’s lesson will start in only an hour, so you don’t have much time!

Once you’ve gobbled up your food, you excuse yourself and quickly stand up to return your tray. You then exit the room and rush over to the meditation chambers. Settling yourself into the thin cushion you start to count your breaths, trying to calm yourself. Your excitement has been getting the better of you and this is not going to work unless you’ve regained control.

A minute of breathing exercises later and you finally feel calm enough to begin. Eyes closed, warp-eye open, and away you go!

You dive back in, retracing your steps from last night. You push past the layers of your true-self until you’ve returned to viewing the memory of your dream. Same as before. Big ship. Exits from the warp. Ready for anything. Navigator and warp-eye.

Now, you’re once again confronted with the question from last night. How can you find a memory you don’t remember?

You’re banking on the idea that your true-self is not just your mind. It is the assemblage of your life experiences, built layer by layer. It is memory. It is emotion and desire. It is what is critical to your existence. It is an extension of your inner-self: your soul.

If this memory — the hidden one within this dream-ship — stems from you, it must be there. It must be somewhere within you.

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On a hunch, you start from deep down, just like you did all those months before when you were looking for your Bloodlust. You dive all the way to your inner-self, skimming the rivers of Force and warp-stuff coursing through your body. Reaching, not out, but within, with both the Force and your warp-sense, you begin.

Feel. Don’t think. Do. Do not try.

There.

There it is. A thread to follow. Just the barest feeling of familiarity. It feels similar, in some abstruse way, to that ship-dream. You touch it gently, laying a finger of thought on it, keeping in contact as it shifts constantly in the currents of Force and warp-stuff stirred up by your meddling.

It hangs in the nothingness of your inner-self, lit by the streams of Force and warp, glittering faintly like a spiderweb daubed in morning dew. You touch the vertex of the thread as it hangs between two distant stars. Two directions to go, both upwards. One leads to the memory of the dream, the other to the true source. But which is which?

It’s risky to follow the thread all the way in one direction, only to find you’ve gone the wrong way. Not only that, but the clouds of warp-stuff in your true-self above you will make it nearly impossible to find the thread again if you lose it up there. It’s best to first identify the correct direction to go.

With the lightest touch, you hook your senses around the line to keep it in place, then spread the rest of your abstract mind back through your true-self. You take utmost care to avoid tripping over the thread and losing it in the warp-stuff that hangs like an iridescent cloud over everything you see.

Hmm. Nothing.

You pull back, returning your attention solely to keeping the thread in place, fearful of snapping the fragile line. You then split your self in two, keeping one in place and sending the other back up to the memory-of-a-dream. There, you locate where the thread is attached and give it a small shake, watching the perturbation disappear into the warp-stuff beyond. Then, with a thought, you consolidate your attention again at the nadir of the arcing thread, and simply wait and watch.

There! The tiniest wave runs down the length of the thread. Now you know which way is which!

Turning, you glide along, following the thread back to its true source. Wisps of warp-stuff and memory blow past, but you keep your attention on the string for you are sure you will never be able to find it again if you let go. Deeper and deeper into the darkening mist of an abstraction of your experiences you go. Where you end up, only you can know!

And as you move, you can feel something. Something, unfortunately, very familiar. A sense of foreboding. A sense of unease. A feeling that grows stronger and stronger.

And then you see it. A familiar spot, marked out in your recent memory. But, now you see it more clearly.

The silhouette of a massive ship looms out of the darkness, details growing ever more clear the closer you get. The adamantium hull is painted gold across the ship, with patches of mottled dark-gray to mimic granite. Ornate skulls stare hollow-eyed out into the reaches of your true-self. Cannons with barrel diameters many times greater than you are tall gleam threateningly in the darkness.

The clouds of warp-stuff are not as thick as the last time you were here. There’s no way you would have missed this otherwise.

This is the same place your droid-phobia springs from. And apparently, this is where your missing memory lies.

≡][≡ ⬦⬦⬦ ≡][≡

You blink, snapping out of your meditative trance. You’re not really sure what to feel about what you’ve found. It’s certainly not the most pleasant find, but at least you know where it is.

But, what the heck! What is that thing even doing there? And how did you really miss it the first time? You’re no closer to actually figuring out anything. It’s always just more questions atop the terrible answers that you find.

Well, now you have yet another thing to do. At least it’s in a convenient location. But, why does the whole ship give off such a horrific feeling? You felt not exactly comfortable, but at least confident in the dream! Why is it that when you actually find some sort of tangible representation of your dream inside your true-self that it’s now something your mind intrinsically shies away from?

It’s time for class though, so you stand up and exit the room. This is something you will need to think on.