The Shadowed Cave has many names. Ayli had come across a few of them in the records which remained in the Jedi Temple. For an order of wise and peaceful monks, the Jedi were surprisingly adept a coming up with scathing epithets, and more than a few of them had included warnings to those who came after of the dangers the Shadowed Cave posed. 

“Is this really a good idea?” Ayli asked, stepping over the rocks and runoff which had all but completely swept away the path down to the shore where the cave’s entrance lay.

“That will depend on you,” Kelda said. As a Force Ghost the detritus on the path didn’t slow her in the slightest, but she maintained a leisurely pace to match Ayli’s careful steps.

“I feel like I should point out that I don’t exactly have a spotless history when it comes to dealing with areas where the Dark Side is particularly strong,” Ayli said, an agitated hum buzzing down her veins.

“That doesn’t mean you are especially vulnerable to its influence,” Kelda said. “If anything, you’ve proved the reverse.”

“How? I’ve spent months meditating and I still can’t quiet my mind at all when it drags me back to Paxis Mar.”

“You’re still blaming yourself for what happened there,” Kelda said.

“Not all of it, just the parts I’m responsible for.” That it had been her idea to pursue the the lost temple of the Children of the Storm made, in Ayli’s mind, her responsible for more or less all of what happened to some extent, but she knew sharing that wasn’t going to be a winning argument.

Kelda gave her a half frown, half smile which said she was all too aware of what Ayli’s thoughts on the matter were, but her response wasn’t the denial Ayli had anticipated.

“There’s a curious knot we can tie ourselves into there,” Kelda said. “And oddly it’s one that those who are more fully swallowed by the Dark Side manage to avoid.”

“Why do they always get the easy answers to things?” Ayli grumbled, slipping on a bit of loose stone as she did.

“Because easy answers ignore contradictions,” Kelda said. “Accepting them often requires blinding ourselves to where they fall short. They offer comfort at the cost of swallowing a lie which will never fully sustain us.”

“Sometimes we need those lies though don’t we? That things will work out. That we’ll be okay even when we know we won’t be?”

“Ah, but which is the lie there?” Kelda asked. “You’ve felt how the Force flows through us, and you’ve seen how the futures it shows us can change. Is it a lie to believe that there’s still hope us to see tomorrow, or is the lie that hope is dead and only darkness awaits us?”

“I don’t know,” Ayli said and was rewarded with a warm smile from Kelda.

“And that’s why I maintain that you are more resilient to the Dark Side’s influence than you imagine yourself to be.”

“Because I’m clueless?” Ayli asked, wondering how much of what Kelda said was Force Ghost wisdom and how much was simply tangled nonsense intended to lead her to figuring out the answers for herself.

“Because you can admit when you don’t know something,” Kelda said, apparently in a an ernest teaching mode. “When an active Jedi Knight, I fought a number of Force users who’d been lured into using the Dark Side. How many do you think believed they were in the wrong to do so?”

“I’m going to say very few of them.”

“That is because you are a very smart woman. Who is correct in this case. In fact you could only be more correct if you’d said ‘none of them’. Each and every sapient I ran across who was using the Dark Side, believed the reason for their anger was righteous, and their fears were justified. The excuses they had for treating other sapients as objects or obstacles? Of course those were unquestionable. Or if they did question them it was only the thinnest facade of introspection which only strengthened their certainty that they, and often they alone, were following the true path, and that the consequences of their choices were entirely acceptable, regardless of the suffering others endured as a result.”

“So being clueless really is a good thing then?” Ayli asked, knowing that wasn’t Kelda’s point.

“Being capable of admitting when we don’t know something is a good thing. A critical thing really as we’re most in peril from the things we don’t know that we don’t know, and being honest about as much of the unknown as possible can help us tread carefully when we’re out of our depth.”

Ayli chuffed out a short laugh, and pushed aside a stand of tall grasses to reveal the old path to the shore which remained mostly intact.

“It’s funny how that’s true in archeology too,” she said, “Except academics hate admitting where we don’t know things. We’re supposed to be open minded and always ready to evaluate new ideas but if I’ve seen fist fights break out at conferences when people presented conflicting talks on the same subject.”

“As sapients, we enjoy the rare gift of understanding the world around us. Our astoundingly frequent choice to ignore or misuse that gift I believe is the proof that we are also possessed of free will.”

“Is that the curious knot we can tie ourselves into? Being stupid to prove that we’re independently intelligent?” Ayli asked.

“Oh, that’s an amusing though, but not what I’d had in mind,” Kelda said. “No, the knot I was referring to related to the shame you feel over your actions on Praxis Mar.”

“It’s good that I feel bad about that?”

“No, and yes, and no,” Kelda said and offered Ayli a teasing smile. “How’s that for a Jedi answer for you?”

“Terrible. So exactly what some of the Padawan journal suggested I should expect.”

“As someone who wrote, and then destroyed, far more scathing journal entries than the ones you’ve read, allow me to assure you that those accounts are universally true. The Jedi Masters I knew could be unimaginably frustrating.”

“I’m not sure you’ve quite got it down yet then,” Ayli said. “I think you’re not supposed to admit that for one thing.”

“Probably not,” Kelda said with a shrug, “But I did give up being a Jedi.”

“So this is substandard teaching, got it,” Ayli said. 

“Well, I am a bit past my expiration date,” Kelda said to which Ayli simply groaned.

“That really was terrible.”

“Ravas would agree with you. She always hated my sense of humor.”

“I somehow doubt that,” Ayli said. “I’ve gotten peeks into her mind remember.”

“I’d say I’m jealous, or express my condolences, but mostly I’m curious how much of yourself you saw reflected there?”

“Quite a lot,” Ayli said. “I’m guessing that’s why she chose me.”

“And why you chose her,” Kelda said. “Sometimes we need those who understand us to shake us loose from the limits we’ve put on ourselves.”

“I think the both of us might have shaken off a few limits we probably should have kept,” Ayli said. “The moment we started working together, we did go just a little bit berserk after all.”

“And you both came back from it,” Kelda said. “For Nix and I.”

“I am so lucky to have found her,” Ayli said.

“And she you,” Kelda said. “The same with Ravas and I. Which, if I’d understood that even about five minutes earlier than I did would have spared all of us the long and painful path we’ve walked to get here.”

“I’m glad you were ignorant then,” Ayli said. “I’m not happy with what I did, but this feels like where I should be.”

“And that’s the far side of the knot,” Kelda said.

“Is there any chance you’ll just explain what you mean, or is it something I need to figure out for myself?” Ayli asked, as the Shadowed Cave grew closer.

“In the interest of putting you on a better path than the one Ravas and I walked, yes, yes I will,” Kelda said. 

She gestured for Ayli to take a seat on an ancient stump, while she herself floated onto a large rock beside the trail down to the shore.

“On Praxis Mar, you and Ravas were put in mortal danger and responded by drawing on your fear and rage. You struck out against your enemy and against someone you cared for. As sins go, that’s relatively light, but for you those memories are colored by the sense of how much you wished to destroy everything and how out of control you felt. You remember what you wanted to do as much as what you actually did and it feels so much worse because you feel like that is who you truly are. Is that roughly correct?”

“Roughly,” Ayli said, by which she meant ‘exactly’.

“Had you actually killed Nix, those feelings would have been the same, though you might have buried them more or embraced them more fully. In any case though, you would be left with the question of who you wanted to be in the wake of what you’d done and what you believed yourself capable of doing from there.”

“If I’d killed her, I don’t know I would have been able to do much more than destroy myself too,” Ayli said.

“That’s a comforting thought to cling to, imaging that past some moral event horizon we would self administer a severe enough punishment to make the universe just and whole again,” Kelda said. “In many cases though, the Dark Side amplifies the users anger to where they can believe any excuses they can dream up. Is there any reason Nix might have deserved it? Was it an unfortunate accident but ultimately necessary for you to achieve a more important aim? Those who are ‘lost’ to the Dark Side are lost because they refuse to acknowledge what they’ve done. They feel no shame, or remorse because they become so wrapped up in themselves that they can ignore what they’ve done and what they’ve become.”

“Which is why being able to feel shame and regret is a good sign,” Ayli said. “It means I’m not crawling inside my own head.”

“Shame can be its own refuge, if that’s as far as it goes,” Kelda said. “That’s the knot. On the one hand is denial, which cuts us off from our capacity to accept what we’ve done and move forward. On the other there’s shame, or sorrow, which locks us into a different spiral, where all we want is to dwell on what we’ve done. In neither case, ignoring our past, or dwelling in it, can we progress.”

“Accepting where I’m at now feels a little unfair though. If I just forget about it, it feels like I’ll be that much more likely to trip up again.”

“That’s the challenge we face,” Kelda said. “Accepting what we’ve done without getting lost in it, or forgetting it. Making amends, if we can, can help with that, but that’s not always possible.”

“I’ve heard Ravas mention that. I gather it’s hard to make amends for something done so long ago that no one living remembers it.”

“It’s something we’re working on,” Kelda said. “In your case things are a simpler, though I doubt they feel like that.”

“No, you’re right,” Ayli said. “I remember the brushes I had with her memory. For as bad as I feel, I know she’s got it a lot worse. She’s been really helpful in fact. Seeing her turn things around makes it a lot easier to believe I won’t lose it again either.”

“I think that’s something she’d like to hear,” Kelda said as they arrived at the entrance to the cave.

“So, was this the lesson I was supposed to learn in the cave?” Ayli asked, a part of her hoping she wouldn’t have to venture inside it.

“The cave has something else to show you,” Kelda said. “It holds what you bring in with you.”

“So all the awfulness. Great.”

“Exactly. You’ll find your worst self waiting in there for you,” Kelda handed a lightsaber over to Ayli. “Go on in there and take care her.”