Yoda's face, dark in reflection, looked up at him from out of the pond. "Some believe it possible to enter completely into the Force after death."

"Surely we all do, Master."

"Ah -- but perhaps one can remain unique and individual. Can remain oneself."

"You are thinking of Jang Li-Li," the Gran said with a sad smile. "I would love to believe she is safe and free and laughing still, somewhere in the Force. I would love to, but I cannot. Every people longs for the hope of something after death. These hands and eyes have been knit into a shape by the universe, will hold it for a few score years, then lose it again. That must be enough. To enter more completely into the Force: one would dissolve, like honey mixed into hot stimcaf."

Yoda shrugged, looking down at poor Jang Li-Li's lightsaber handle. "Perhaps you are right. But I wonder . . ." He picked a pebble from a crack in the rock on which he was sitting. "If I drop this pebble into the pond, what will happen?"

"It will sink."

"And after?"

"Well," Master Leem said, feeling out of her depth. "There will be ripples, I suppose, spreading out."

Yoda's ears perked up. "Yes! The pebble strikes the water, and a wave carries out until . . . ?"

"It reaches the shore."

"Just so. But is the water in the wave where the pebble drops the same as the water in the wave that touches the shore?"

"No . . ."

"And yet the wave is the same wave?"

"You think we can become . . . waves in the Force, holding our shape?"

Yoda shrugged. "Speak of this once, Qui-Gon did."