Roses Aren't Red by Saria Anasazi Phoenix
	Author's Note: The first story in the Trilogy of the Roses, based on revenge, betrayal and deceit within a family. Saria stood, face to the hot breeze of the night on the steps of a Jedi temple, her faded red cape pulled around her to conceal a sleeping child. The night was extremely dark, yet there was a warm light wind blowing through the skies and a dark presence running through the trees. From the forest surrounding her, two mysterious cloaked figures started to ascend the steps of the Jedi temple. Saria felt a rush of strong hatred towards these hooded figures, yet was too afraid to turn back and run inside. Instead, she held the child closely to her. Once the mysterious figures had reached the top of the stone steps, Saria could see their faces, both pale skinned, with amethyst-coloured eyes and hair. They where both familiar to Saria. The taller one was named Drake, and the other was called Anastasia, her twin sister. Saria knew what they had come for, they wanted the child and up until that moment she had been willing to give her to them. But something new to her entered her mind, a need to flee, a need to run away and never look back and without thinking that was exactly what she did. It was only a few seconds before Drake realized what was happening and took off after her. Before she had reached the temple doors, he had pulled out a long knife and grabbed Saria by the arms, pulling her back. "I think it's time to say goodbye, Saria." Anastasia took the child from out of Sarias' unyielding grip as Drake ran the blade of the knife over her throat, slitting it open. He let her body go as it fell through the air and slammed against the floor spilling blood across the temple steps. Neither Anastasia nor Drake seemed disturbed about Sarias' death; they simply looked down at her as if to say, "I told you so." The child in Anastasia's arms began to cry loudly as Drake took hold of her and wrapped her in his cloak. "I think I'll call my daughter... Raalasto." He grinned at Anastasia as they both turned around and began to descend the temple steps back in to the forest. For ten years Raalasto grew up in the care of her father Drake, and believed that Anastasia was her real mother, never knowing the true fate of Saria, slain at the hands of her own father. She was a happy child while she was young, always singing, dancing and daydreaming, but both her parents would have none of it. If they caught her singing and dancing they would punish her for it but even this did not banish the childhood fantasies from her heart. So as she turned 10 she was sent away to a strict military school for girls. Life there was not pleasant; her mentors where extremely tough and would only accept perfection. Over time that was all that Raalasto would accept, and she became something of a perfectionist, always striving for more than 110%. When she returned home six years later, she was greeted with open arms. For the first time in her life her father was proud of her, but it didn't last for long. It was her eighteenth birthday; Raalasto had been travelling on board the Random Logic, for just over two weeks. She had been working as an assistant to General Taylosta during her attempts to negotiate the freedom of a Great War heroine for her people, Shalolo. The negotiations where taking place on a small isolated planet, there where very few people living on the planet. The people who did live on the planet were are small group of Jedi masters and their apprentices who lived in a secluded Temple located in a thick overgrown forest. As fate should have its say in everything, that temple was the very same temple Raalasto was born in. Raalasto had persuaded one of her friends, Dezaria, to accompany her to the Jedi temple. The sun shone down on them as if it was smiling at them both. Underneath the sun, their white robes looked gold and the thick black seams showed hints of white and blue in them. They where standing just outside the Jedi temple when the doors swung open to reveal a woman in her late twenties with bright red hair and a cream coloured cloak wrapped around her. She looked at Raalasto with great curiosity. "You must be Raalasto, and Dezaria, I've been expecting you." She clasped hands with both of them, but her eyes lingered on Raalasto most of the time. "My name is Arista Rystalla, please come in." She stepped aside to allow them to enter, but as Raalasto entered the temple, she collapsed in the doorway. Raalasto found herself on the steps of the Jedi Temple during a midsummer night. The wind was warm and her majestic hair was being blown behind her like silken spider webs. She couldn't move, she was frozen to the spot where she could turn 360 degrees, but only on the same spot. Finding that she couldn't move, she took more notice of her surroundings. A few meters away from her there was a figure silhouetted against the moon. She shouted out to it but whoever it was could not hear her. She watched the figure with interest, and after a while she knew it was a woman, a woman wrapped in a fading red cloak holding a child. Her attention was distracted from the woman as she turned around to see a child crouching behind her. The child was unmistakably Arista Rystalla, only at a younger age, maybe ten or eleven, her hair was still bright red and her face had not changed much. This confused Raalasto but before she had time to think about it she heard more footsteps. She swung around to see the woman running away and a hooded figure taking hold of her, then the child being taken away from her. "I think it's time to say goodbye, Saria." What happened next was not pretty. The woman's throat was cut and everything happened in slow motion, the woman fell trough the air, her clothes streaking behind her. Dust flew up into the air as she hit the floor, followed by blood spilling across the temple steps. The child was passed over into the arms of the man; he took of his cloak and wrapped the baby in it. Raalasto almost fainted when she saw his face... it was her father Drake. He looked young, his face was smooth and his bearded trimmed, his majestic purple hair wasn't streaked with grey. But what came next she could not have anticipated. "I think I'll call my daughter... Raalasto." Everything around her started to fade away into stone walls, and new faces started to appear. There was Arista and Dezaria standing over her, someone had moved her, and Raalasto was now lying on a bed in a room unknown to her. She shot up and looked around. "What happened?" It was Arista who spoke first. "You had a vision, a very powerful vision that knocked you unconscious. We were hoping you could tell us what happened?" It took a minute for Raalasto say anything. "You were there, Arista, you were a young girl, and my father too. I think I saw myself, as a baby and a woman, she was killed." Everyone but Arista looked shocked. "Raalasto, that woman that was killed was your mother, Saria Rystalla." Raalasto didn't question her, she knew she was right. She had witnessed the death of her mother and she became angry. She wasn't angry at first that her father had killed her mother, but that for 18 years of her life she had been lied to. Everything that her parents had said and done had been a lie, every time they had kissed her on the forehead and sent her to bed at night had been a lie. It wasn't because Anastasia wasn't her mother; it was because neither of them had told her what happened. It filled her with anger, she wanted to kill them both, kill them for lying, and she detested them. Dezaria left Raalasto at the temple to find out the answers to the questions that she wanted to ask. She spent the night with her sister, Arista, in her mother's old bed. "Arista, what was our mother like?" Raalasto laid in the bed opposite to the open window that let the moonlight creep in to the room. "Our mother was the most beautiful woman I've ever known, Raalasto," Arista rolled over in her bed to face Raalasto. "I can remember her singing us both to sleep at night and how her eyes sparkled like emeralds in the sun," she smiled at her. "And the way her hair looked like fire against a moonlit sky at night whilst she fought." Raalasto seemed pleased with the answer she'd gotten and fell asleep. During the night Raalasto woke up in a hot sweat, her heart was beating fast and her vision was distorted for a while. She'd been dreaming, she'd been dreaming about her mothers' death, only it wasn't her father who had killed her, it was her, Raalasto who had killed her mother. She climbed out of bed making sure Arista was asleep and looked for a cloth to wipe the sweat of her brow when she noticed her mother's wardrobe standing ajar. She couldn't help opening it and noticing the saber hanging there, beside her mother's faded red cloak, black jumpsuit and the creamy white tunic that still held the blood stains on the collar. Raalasto made her way fiercely through the forest cutting at the reaching fingers of the wild trees with her mother's saber. The saber was the colour of the sea on a moonlit night at the centre of a thunderstorm. The heavens opened and tears fell to the floor. Raalasto was wearing her mothers clothing and the faded red hood over her head had fallen and her majestic purple hair clung to her face. It was dawn before she found her way to the Random Logic. Everyone but two guards were there, they where still at the negotiations. She decided to make a break for it. Her saber fully ignited, she rushed towards the guards but they had spotted her and started to run towards her too. With three steps she reached the first guard and ran up him placing a foot in his stomach and then his mouth, she then turned in mid air and delivered a spinning kick to his head, snapping his neck. The second one reached for his blaster but Raalasto had already flipped over his head and aimed a well-placed back kick shattering his spine. For the few minutes she had lost herself in the fight, she had forgotten everything, and all she wanted to do was keep on fighting. But the fight was over; both men lay on the floor one with a broken neck, the other a shattered spine. She stood examining the scene, then remembered she needed to go home. She didn't need a pilot, she had learned everything she needed to in military school about flying. The wind blew around Raalastos' home, blowing away grains of sand from the walls as she stood at the garden gate. The gate was unhinged, and as she walked down the garden path, she was reminded of happier times shattered by her "parents". It had only taken her a few days to fly home, and when she got there, the main door was left wide open, welcoming any strangers. The house like the garden had not changed, it looked almost exactly how she remembered, but she did not want to remember. It was early morning, her "parents" would be asleep upstairs and would not be awake normally till sunrise. But tonight was different, as the morning sun rose they would not wake up, but be sentenced forever to dream for eternity of the pain they inflicted to others. The only light into the room came from the open window overlooked by the moon. The pale moonlight washed over Drake's and Anastasia's still bodies. As Raalasto moved closer, she ignited her mothers old light saber and held it centimetres away from Drake's head. But the coloured light soaked into the pale, dead skin of Drake to show him stained in dry blood. The darkness on the room's far side was cast away by a red light, and Raalasto was amazed that the light was cast upon the face of her sister. She screamed and her blood ran cold like ice. She lost control of her surroundings for but an instant, sending forking lightning from the tips of her fingers, making the walls crumble slightly. Arista cowered for the time Raalasto went wild and hid in the dark shadows before taking a grip of herself and rising to her feet to find Raalasto curled in the corner shaking with fear. Yet nothing happened, and the two stood like statues all night until the sun rose in to the sky. Raalasto, still overwhelmed by her own powers that she was not ready for stood up shaking. Something had changed in her eyes, something had left her and she did not posses the strength or courage she once had when on the Jedi planet. "I thought you'd be happy dearest sister, you didn't have to kill your only family you ever knew." Raalasto had no idea what was happening, her mind had changed and Arista could sense that it had. She used the force to get inside her mind and manipulate Raalasto. Raalasto was devastated and her heart bled yet she didn't know why anymore, she was confused and she had no drive at all, like her soul had left her. "I did you a favour Raalasto, don't you see that? The Sith did you a favour. We should not fight my sister, join me by my side and let us rule the universe together. Let only the darkness in to your thoughts, become Saria." Raalasto didn't know what to say or do and she slowly approached Arista believing that it would be her that was to help her, as Raalasto needed someone to show her what to do. "That's it sister, we shall rule together just as our mother intended..." Arista kept eye contact with Raalasto and as she approached her, Arista grinned and her eyes twinkled with excitement. "One problem though..." Arista lunged forward driving her saber in to Raalastos' stomach twisting it around as Raalasto screamed in agony. "Mother didn't intend on me being a megalomaniac who can't share power." Her words were bitter and cold as she smirked intently as Raalastos lifeless body hit the ground, and with that Arista left all three bodies to their graves where they lay.