Ania is one year old.

Careful hands guide her along a steel rope, three feet off the ground. She still crawls when she's on the ground, but every time she pulls herself up someone swoops down and puts her on the tightrope. It's best to learn when you're young, people say.

Malak is two years old.

He pulls at the sword that is too big for him, and just barely manages to lift the hilt off the floor before he has to drop it again. He has been doing this for nearly an hour now, but is determined to keep going. If he can do it, he knows, he will get cuddles and sweets and people fawning over him until bedtime.

Revan is three years old.

She is huddled up in the cargo hold of a freighter, her mama wrapped around her, keeping her warm. She's never met her papa, but she knows he was a Jedi.

Mama reaches into her pocket and produces a small triangular object, which she hands to Revan.

"It's a holocron," she says. "Your papa gave it to me. You should be able to use it. I want you to try now, Revan. Whatever it tells you to do – do it as soon as it tells you, please."

Revan wants to say no, but she senses that this is important – Mama does not have her smiling face on, but her you-must-do-as-I-say face. She takes the holocron and starts to play with it. It doesn't seem to want to tell her anything until the ship takes off (mama curls up tighter around her as two men come into the cargo hold), by which time the entirety of her child's attention span is focused on the object. Suddenly, there is a voice inside her head, and she knows what to do. She whispers goodnight to her mama, and settles down. Her breathing slows, then stops. Her pulse becomes a whisper.

Her mama carefully places the holocron in Revan's pocket, and settles down to keep them warm.

When Revan wakes up, she is surrounded by old people and Mama is nowhere in sight. A lady – Master Vash, she calls herself – sits down next to Revan and tells her gently that Mama died while stowing away in the cargo hold, but has left a request for Revan to be raised by the Jedi.

Revan has no idea what any of this means, but Master Vash smells nice, so she nods and smiles. Master Vash smiles back.

Ania is four years old.

She and a Twi'lek girl called Kistra are playing chase through the streets of Metellos. They are quite a way from home, but not worried about getting back – Ania can always find her way, it seems.

They get home after dark, after the show ends. Ania walks most of the way back on her hands, because she can.

Ma and Dad aren't anywhere to be found. Myan, the Miraluka knife-thrower, says they went to the spaceport half an hour ago. He thought Ania was with them.

Ania doesn't cry. If you cry on Metellos you get chased by nasty people with stun batons, and they sell you into slavery.

Myan has a spare bed in his apartment. Ania goes home with him.

Malak is five years old.

He sits on a sturdy branch, the fire all around him, almost close enough to touch. His face is going black and his hands already are, but he doesn't care about that. He wants to know why they aren't doing something to stop the fire. It's heading for the town, after all.

Punchkin says that this is why the town has a barren area around it, and the fire won't kill the trees. Malak knows that Punchkin knows everything – Punchkin is nearly sixty – but he can't believe that. Fire kills trees, he sees it every day when they throw wood on the fire.

Punchkin pulls Malak closer to the trunk of the tree – the fire is getting nearer – and tells him a story.

"Once, before the Plague spread, there was a village. Like most of our settlements it was surrounded by forest, and the people feared the fires that would arise every few years. Whenever a fire began they would pray to the immortals for help, and the immortals sent them a child with the gift to stop the fires.

"At first, the child was able to effortlessly suppress the fires that arose. But as he grew older, the fires happened more frequently and the child found it increasingly harder to suppress them.. The people assumed this was because he was changing as he grew and thought nothing of it, believing that the ease with which he used to quell the fires would return in time. However, one year, his seventeenth, a fire began. The child went out to suppress it as usual, but found he could not; by the time it was discovered, the fire had already taken hold in the dry leaf mould that had built up on the forest floor over the past seventeen years.

"There had been no fires for thirteen years, and so there was more fuel than there had ever been for a fire before. The flames grew higher and higher, and the people saw to their amazement that the trees themselves were falling to the fire, unable to withstand the heat. This had never happened in any fires that had come before.

"The people retreated into their village in terror as the fire came closer, and blamed the child for not suppressing the flames properly. However, even in the village they were not safe, because a burning tree fell to the ground and allowed the fire to spread across the woodless area. The village burned that day, and though many of the villagers survived, the young child, their so-called gift from the immortals, did not. He was burned alive even as he tried to suppress the fires around him…"

Malak looks down at the fire in confusion. "So it's good for the forest to burn up?"

""Not exactly. As you can see, the fire's doing a lot of damage. But if we stop it, we have to keep on stopping it. And then, when we can't stop it any longer, what then?"

"Oh."

Malak thinks, as he follows Punchkin through the treetops back to the town, that old people are strange. He didn't understand that story at all.

Revan is six years old.

She is curled up in the courtyard of the Dantooine Enclave with a book when she notices him scrambling up the tree in the middle of the display. Intrigued, she goes up to him, and introduces herself with the simple phrase:

"You're not s'posed to do that."

He stops and blinks down at her. "Why not?"

"The Masters said not to."

"But it's easier to meditate up here," he protests.

Revan has never meditated anywhere except a meditation room. It has never even occurred to her that you might be able to meditate anywhere else. "Is it?"

"Yeah. Try it."

She grabs hold of the tree trunk and tries to haul herself up, but can't manage it. He watches her for a while, then says, "You keep missing footholds. That knob, look, you can use that, and that hole."

He guides her up the tree-trunk, and she ends up sitting next to him, peering down at the courtyard.

"See?" he says. She can get a good look at him now as he leans back against a branch, and it's no wonder he found it easier to climb than her; he's much bigger, and bald.

"I s'pose," Revan says doubtfully. There is a twig in her back and she feels like she's about to fall out of the tree. "What's your name?"

"Malak."

Ania is seven years old.

She steps off the ship into a sea of gizka, and stares in awe as two people run past her, scoop a couple of gizka up and stuff them into cages. A little way away, an already-full cage bursts and scatters more gizka out over the lawn.

"Wow," she says, turning to Isa. "Is it always like this?"

"No," Isa says. She looks worried. "No, it isn't."

That's disappointing, Ania thinks. She follows Isa until they find a small green man fighting off numerous gizka. He takes them to a small, gizka-free room, and he and Isa talk. Then Ania is sent off to get a bed.

The apprentice's block also contains lots of gizka, most of which are being petted by people about her age. Two of the apprentices, however, are sitting in a corner together and looking rather worried.

"Great idea, Revan!" a Miraluka boy crows.

"Wasn't my idea," the girl in the corner says, in a voice which suggests she is fed up of telling people this. She has black hair and is wearing blue-and-tan robes, making her immediately distinguishable from everyone else in their brown.

"Malak, then."

The boy shrugs in clear embarrassment. Ania decides that these two are the most interesting people in the room and makes her way over to them, skipping easily around the gizka. Revan watches her with interest.

"You're new, aren't you?" she says, when Ania is close enough. Ania nods and sticks out a hand.

"I'm Ania."

Ania, Malak and Revan are eight years old.

Something exploded a couple of hours ago, in the workshops. Nobody was hurt, of course, but it's the principle of the thing. You don't play with explosives.

"Wasn't my idea," Revan says patiently. She seems to say this more and more often, nowadays.

Master Vrook turns on Malak, who shakes his head mutely. He is trying too hard not to laugh to trust himself to speak. This is because Ania is pulling faces at Vrook from behind Vrook's back.

Vrook catches sight of Ania as she ducks behind him, and grabs her collar. She gives him her best huge, disarming grin and says:

"The Force made me do it?"

Malak finally bursts out laughing.

Ania, Malak and Revan are nine years old.

The great tree in the courtyard has three big branches forking from its trunk. Malak is lounging on one, half-asleep, eyes closed. Ania is doing a handstand on another, face red and sweat streaming up her face. Revan sits bolt upright on the third, hands folded over a book in her lap, apparently oblivious to the summer heat.

"It's simple," she insists. "You just… don't get angry."

"S'easy for you to say," Malak mutters. He has a temper, and is repeatedly told this. Revan barely knows what temper is.

Ania's arms finally give out and she falls back onto the trunk, then sprawls back up to her branch. She ends up lying face-down on it, and can't seem to be bothered to move. "I thought peace only came after war."

"Well, yeah," Revan says, as if it is obvious. "We had a war with Exar Kun, right? So now we're all at peace."

Ania and Malak digest this pearl of wisdom. It makes sense.

"What happens if we go to war again?" Ania wants to know. Revan looks exasperated.

"Then we won't be at peace, will we?"

Ania, Malak and Revan are ten years old.

This is where their story begins.