The New Empire

Chapter 17 - Half-finished Perfection

“You seem worried.” Liv was once again sitting in Plato’s lap on his bed. “Should I be scared?”

“No. In fact,” He stole a quick kiss from her before continuing. “forget it. He’s dead.”

“He said he cannot be beaten.”

“Whoever wrote that note wasn’t Snoke, just a rogue who wanted to scare us. Now you should be happy. You can build your Academy, you can teach and live on a planet. Speaking about that... Where do you want your school to be? On your planet maybe?”

“You mean Dhara? No, I don’t think so.”

Plato frowned, then smiled. “Dhara?”

She looked up at Plato with round eyes. “It was undiscovered and didn’t have a name. So I gave it one. Dhara.” She let her head down and sighed. “But too many bad memories tie me to that place, and I want a new beginning. I was thinking about Dantooine.”

“I liked it there too, it’s also closely connected to the Force.”

“It’s going to be wonderful.”

A soft chuckle came from Plato. “Oh, I’m sure of that.”
                                                                           _____

The sun was high up in the sky, occasionally hiding behind the clouds only to show up again and reflect on the vast glass windows. The building was still far from finished, after all it’s only been a month since Liv approved the final plans for the building, but it was already mesmerizing. Liv had one main rule that was more important than anything else. She wanted the building to be in harmony with the nature surrounding it. She wanted her school to adapt to the flora and fauna. Trees couldn’t be cut down, lakes and swamps couldn’t be drained. The school had to become a part of the landscape.

She and Plato, along with a handful of the Galaxy’s best architects, came up with a design that presented the monstrous building as a unified organism. From the windows, to the floors, to the individual chairs everything related to one another. Just like in nature.

And as Liv looked up at the main tower stretching towards the clouds she was more than satisfied. The main entrance was a  massive, two winged door made from the finest wood and carved with symbols that if someone stared at them for too long started to move. She couldn’t hide the fact that she took some inspiration of Luke’s academy, but this was much more spacious, perfectly lit by the sunlight coming through the long windows. She stepped inside. The strong smell of drying paint was already supressed by the scent of wood and wildflowers that bloomed in their bright planters in every corner and sometimes on the walls. The miniature waterfall, that would greet the students at first sight, was yet to be put into practice.

To both sides there were big communal places, stuffed with beanbags and pillows. Liv knew that it would took years until the shelves would be fully stacked with books and texts. So far they only had a handful of the rarities. And beside the two halls was the circular corridor, only one because Liv had grown tired of getting lost on the Luxe, where the dorm rooms opened. And thus the whole building was one great circle.
They didn’t yet know how many students they’d find and so they went big with capacity to house over seven hundred students, but of course extra rooms could be build anytime. 

Liv rejected the idea of more than two floors quite early on, saying it would block the sky too much. The second floor would give place to all the classrooms, but it wasn’t yet built.

The centre of the circle gave place to a peaceful little pond right in the middle of the park, but that wasn’t Liv’s favourite part. Her most beloved creation was behind the building. It was a massive hedge maze with a fountain in its middle. Liv also left some spare space for some kind of a memorial or statue which she still had no idea what it’d represent.