Sketch of Arala Melnau timeline
Dec. 24th, 2023 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oh_what_can_it_mean102 BBY: Yan Dooku born ("Yan" as Dooku's first name is fanon, but I like it so I'm keeping it.)
92 BBY: Qui-Gon Jinn born in universe
59 BBY: Quinlan Vos born in universe
57 BBY: Obi-Wan Kenobi born in canon and in universe
55 BBY: Arala Melnau born in this fic-verse
44 BBY: Jedi Apprentice series starts in canon and in universe
32 BBY: TPM in canon and in ubuverse, Obi-Wan is 25, Anakin is 9, Qui-Gon is 60
32-30 BBY: events of ATLL
28 BBY: events of Faithful Friends. Obi-Wan is 29, Ara is 27, Anakin is 12, Qui-Gon is 64
---
Birth-age 1: A baby girl is born to Sphinxian peasant farmers in 55 BBY. At 5 months old or so, she's noticed as Force-sensitive by Adept Ben Lars (Obi-Wan's father in the ATLL 'verse) from the AgriCorps. The parents let him take her to the Jedi Temple. Sphinx has negative superstitions about Force-sensitive people, and while it's technically illegal to kill a Force-sensitive child, it still happens. When Adept Lars takes the baby girl away, the family bury the girl's True Name along with fiction of a dead infant. Adept Lars is forbidden from sharing the girl's true name, and he is told that her name is now Arala Melnau, which means "Witch in Exile."
To age 10: Arala Melnau is raised in the Jedi creche. They know that she has to spend at least a third of her time "in grav," meaning the 1.75 gravities that Sphinx has. The Jedi know that the Sphinxian humans are genetically engineered, but they don't know the extent of it, which includes denser muscles and bones and a faster metabolism. As a result, especially since Arala is rather small anyway, she's fed the proper amount for a standard-grav human girl, which isn't enough. She learns how to sit still in a meditative position so she's not accused of laziness. She learns to stop asking for more food at the commissary and in the creche so that she's not accused of gluttony. She meditates for real and asks the Force for strength. She saves her bread roll from mid-meal for the "afternoon dizzies." She eats as much as she can get away with at parties like First Lighting and Night Lights.
When she's 10 years old, she gets the afternoon dizzies when looking for a reference in the archive with Master Nu. (Master Nu had decided when Ara was 8 that she'd take one more padawan when she saw Ara meditating in the stacks and, when asked, said that she could feel the wisdom of the past in the Force and that the archives were her favorite place.) After stuff that's described in more or less detail in a future post, Nu learns that Ara is chronically malnourished. After a dinner at her place that goes badly (she eats too much because she doesn't know what enough is, but she makes it to the 'fresher in time), she takes Ara to the Halls of Healing and they figure out what nutrition Ara actually needs. Nu had intended to wait until Ara was 12 to choose her so she'd have more time with her crechemates, but she adopts her at age 10 and Ara still takes classes with her classmates.
Age 11 and after: Quinlan Vos, a lineage relative, wants to set some of his funny poems to music, so he approaches Ara, who at this point plays not just the flute but the violin and the guitar, and can come up with new melodies. The first song is "Inconsiderate Jerk," which is based on Quin's experience sharing a wall with Master Jinn, who has very loud sex into the wee hours of the morning. The song was originally called "Jizz Wailer," but Quin refuses to explain why it's such a clever pun in context, and Ara refuses to sing a chorus she doesn't understand, so they make some changes. They're music buddies from then on.
Shortly before age 12, Ara begins puberty. She starts to have fantasies and explore her body, but it's pretty innocent. Even the media she finds as a padawan archivist are rather vanilla.
(Ara at age 12 is about the time that Melida/Daan is taking place for Obi-Wan.)
Age 14: The Library Kidnapping. Nu and Melnau are helping open a lending library in the low-light levels of Coruscant, and slavers arrive to capture young children. The Force presses Ara to go with the captured younglings, so she leaves her comm, her lightsaber, and her outer cloak and tells her Master what's happening. Her master is not pleased but understands. She and the oldest of the younglings fight the slavers every time they go to "use" the younglings, so they get used the most, and they remove Ara's contraceptive implant, because "slaves beget more slaves." Details in a future entry, but 45 days later when they're finally rescued, Ara has an unwanted embryo that she has removed.
Age 16: Ara hasn't been able to touch herself or fantasize since the Library Kidnapping. She fears that this state of being is permanent, but it turns out not to be. At Sixth Night, she dances with Master Yoda with him on her shoulders, and his accidental pulling on her pigtails during a dance sends a spark through her, and she's mortified, but Yoda steers her to a quiet hallway where he calms her panic attack and sends her home to "practice self-care." And she does, for the first time since before TLK. She searches for stories with hair-pulling, which leads her to other kinks. She's now very much looking forward to turning 18 and getting her sexuality training (S-training, very important for Jedi)
Age 18-19: Ara learns from her S-training at the Temple and in the Teaching Dungeon that being piloted around the dance floor by Yoda was also an experience of subspace.
Sometime between age 18 and age 26: she's got enough accumulated journal entries about sex (a subject even her mind-healer is thoroughly sick of) that she tries to publish some of them as short stories. They have to go through the Council at first, then just the Shadows (to "file off the serial numbers" of real people). Eventually there are publishable short stories and they go to a magazine and become rather popular. The initial fees go to a bank account on Serenno (Master Yan insists), but the royalties go to the Fenris Rangers, an anti-slavery group that worked with the Jedi to find Ara and her fellow captives during TLK.
Age 26: Yoda and Obi-Wan have been quietly together for two years at this point. Also by this point, the embryo from TLK has been carried to term, found to be Force-sensitive, and sent to the Jedi Creche, and from the age of 6 (Ara is 24), he's old enough to use the archives, and he's seen Ara's name on his medical records in the Halls of Healing because he's a good reader. The child, who Ara calls Little Nightmare Fuel, is friends with Initiate Skywalker (aka the Baby Darksider), who is friends with Chancellor Palpatine (aka Darth Creep Van, all nicknames per Ara). The Chancellor tells Anakin who tells LNF who believes it that he "deserves" a "relationship" with his "mother" and Ara is re-traumatized every time. Master Nu suggests that Eller (Yoda and Windu's assistant) could use an assistant of her own, and that Ara could also do most of the Yoda transportation duties. While assisting Eller, Ara learns that Yoda and Obi-Wan are lovers, and says something like "right on, get it!" and Yoda says, "get it who can?" and Ara says, "both of you! Obi-Wan is quite a catch, and if you don't mind me saying so, so are you," and after much writing that still needs to be done, Ara gets into a sexual and D/s relationship with Yoda.
Most daydream scenes take place during the time when Ara is in service to Master Yoda, wants Obi-Wan but takes no for an answer, and enjoys herself with other partners (including but not limited to: Qinlan Vos, Kressa Carlin, Jitters, Master Drallig, Master Feemor).
I skipped the ATLL story about Dooku doing dark side stuff because I want Dooku to just be disillusioned with the Order, not a darksider.
---
This feels like too much exposition already, but I think that's enough background to start posting the snippets.
92 BBY: Qui-Gon Jinn born in universe
59 BBY: Quinlan Vos born in universe
57 BBY: Obi-Wan Kenobi born in canon and in universe
55 BBY: Arala Melnau born in this fic-verse
44 BBY: Jedi Apprentice series starts in canon and in universe
32 BBY: TPM in canon and in ubuverse, Obi-Wan is 25, Anakin is 9, Qui-Gon is 60
32-30 BBY: events of ATLL
28 BBY: events of Faithful Friends. Obi-Wan is 29, Ara is 27, Anakin is 12, Qui-Gon is 64
---
Birth-age 1: A baby girl is born to Sphinxian peasant farmers in 55 BBY. At 5 months old or so, she's noticed as Force-sensitive by Adept Ben Lars (Obi-Wan's father in the ATLL 'verse) from the AgriCorps. The parents let him take her to the Jedi Temple. Sphinx has negative superstitions about Force-sensitive people, and while it's technically illegal to kill a Force-sensitive child, it still happens. When Adept Lars takes the baby girl away, the family bury the girl's True Name along with fiction of a dead infant. Adept Lars is forbidden from sharing the girl's true name, and he is told that her name is now Arala Melnau, which means "Witch in Exile."
To age 10: Arala Melnau is raised in the Jedi creche. They know that she has to spend at least a third of her time "in grav," meaning the 1.75 gravities that Sphinx has. The Jedi know that the Sphinxian humans are genetically engineered, but they don't know the extent of it, which includes denser muscles and bones and a faster metabolism. As a result, especially since Arala is rather small anyway, she's fed the proper amount for a standard-grav human girl, which isn't enough. She learns how to sit still in a meditative position so she's not accused of laziness. She learns to stop asking for more food at the commissary and in the creche so that she's not accused of gluttony. She meditates for real and asks the Force for strength. She saves her bread roll from mid-meal for the "afternoon dizzies." She eats as much as she can get away with at parties like First Lighting and Night Lights.
When she's 10 years old, she gets the afternoon dizzies when looking for a reference in the archive with Master Nu. (Master Nu had decided when Ara was 8 that she'd take one more padawan when she saw Ara meditating in the stacks and, when asked, said that she could feel the wisdom of the past in the Force and that the archives were her favorite place.) After stuff that's described in more or less detail in a future post, Nu learns that Ara is chronically malnourished. After a dinner at her place that goes badly (she eats too much because she doesn't know what enough is, but she makes it to the 'fresher in time), she takes Ara to the Halls of Healing and they figure out what nutrition Ara actually needs. Nu had intended to wait until Ara was 12 to choose her so she'd have more time with her crechemates, but she adopts her at age 10 and Ara still takes classes with her classmates.
Age 11 and after: Quinlan Vos, a lineage relative, wants to set some of his funny poems to music, so he approaches Ara, who at this point plays not just the flute but the violin and the guitar, and can come up with new melodies. The first song is "Inconsiderate Jerk," which is based on Quin's experience sharing a wall with Master Jinn, who has very loud sex into the wee hours of the morning. The song was originally called "Jizz Wailer," but Quin refuses to explain why it's such a clever pun in context, and Ara refuses to sing a chorus she doesn't understand, so they make some changes. They're music buddies from then on.
Shortly before age 12, Ara begins puberty. She starts to have fantasies and explore her body, but it's pretty innocent. Even the media she finds as a padawan archivist are rather vanilla.
(Ara at age 12 is about the time that Melida/Daan is taking place for Obi-Wan.)
Age 14: The Library Kidnapping. Nu and Melnau are helping open a lending library in the low-light levels of Coruscant, and slavers arrive to capture young children. The Force presses Ara to go with the captured younglings, so she leaves her comm, her lightsaber, and her outer cloak and tells her Master what's happening. Her master is not pleased but understands. She and the oldest of the younglings fight the slavers every time they go to "use" the younglings, so they get used the most, and they remove Ara's contraceptive implant, because "slaves beget more slaves." Details in a future entry, but 45 days later when they're finally rescued, Ara has an unwanted embryo that she has removed.
Age 16: Ara hasn't been able to touch herself or fantasize since the Library Kidnapping. She fears that this state of being is permanent, but it turns out not to be. At Sixth Night, she dances with Master Yoda with him on her shoulders, and his accidental pulling on her pigtails during a dance sends a spark through her, and she's mortified, but Yoda steers her to a quiet hallway where he calms her panic attack and sends her home to "practice self-care." And she does, for the first time since before TLK. She searches for stories with hair-pulling, which leads her to other kinks. She's now very much looking forward to turning 18 and getting her sexuality training (S-training, very important for Jedi)
Age 18-19: Ara learns from her S-training at the Temple and in the Teaching Dungeon that being piloted around the dance floor by Yoda was also an experience of subspace.
Sometime between age 18 and age 26: she's got enough accumulated journal entries about sex (a subject even her mind-healer is thoroughly sick of) that she tries to publish some of them as short stories. They have to go through the Council at first, then just the Shadows (to "file off the serial numbers" of real people). Eventually there are publishable short stories and they go to a magazine and become rather popular. The initial fees go to a bank account on Serenno (Master Yan insists), but the royalties go to the Fenris Rangers, an anti-slavery group that worked with the Jedi to find Ara and her fellow captives during TLK.
Age 26: Yoda and Obi-Wan have been quietly together for two years at this point. Also by this point, the embryo from TLK has been carried to term, found to be Force-sensitive, and sent to the Jedi Creche, and from the age of 6 (Ara is 24), he's old enough to use the archives, and he's seen Ara's name on his medical records in the Halls of Healing because he's a good reader. The child, who Ara calls Little Nightmare Fuel, is friends with Initiate Skywalker (aka the Baby Darksider), who is friends with Chancellor Palpatine (aka Darth Creep Van, all nicknames per Ara). The Chancellor tells Anakin who tells LNF who believes it that he "deserves" a "relationship" with his "mother" and Ara is re-traumatized every time. Master Nu suggests that Eller (Yoda and Windu's assistant) could use an assistant of her own, and that Ara could also do most of the Yoda transportation duties. While assisting Eller, Ara learns that Yoda and Obi-Wan are lovers, and says something like "right on, get it!" and Yoda says, "get it who can?" and Ara says, "both of you! Obi-Wan is quite a catch, and if you don't mind me saying so, so are you," and after much writing that still needs to be done, Ara gets into a sexual and D/s relationship with Yoda.
Most daydream scenes take place during the time when Ara is in service to Master Yoda, wants Obi-Wan but takes no for an answer, and enjoys herself with other partners (including but not limited to: Qinlan Vos, Kressa Carlin, Jitters, Master Drallig, Master Feemor).
I skipped the ATLL story about Dooku doing dark side stuff because I want Dooku to just be disillusioned with the Order, not a darksider.
---
This feels like too much exposition already, but I think that's enough background to start posting the snippets.
