HAN Solo removed the gleaming jewel from a forgotten spot in the MILLENNIUM FALCON. It's amazing what a little cleaning, and a lot of memories, can do. The ex-smuggler, ex-Rebellion hero knew the item stretched years before his involvement with the Alliance and even in his ownership of the very vessel it was now harbored in. It was something very special.
Han wasn't much for memories, mostly because even the sweet ones were bittered by events beyond his control...and even worse, some that were in his control. Solo had lived a very peaceful--he thought it boring then--life with his royal family on Corellia until deciding he could tolerate their oppression--less rebellious young men would have called it love--any longer. Taken into the Imperial Navy he soon learned he was on the wrong side when stationed on Kashyyyk and--narrowly escaping that--his life became checkered with Hutts, bounty hunters, and the Empire. Life became good again when he and the Wookiee had taken employment to that crazy old wizard and a kid even more naive than Solo had been.
Nevertheless, there was a before, and this small stone came from that previous existence.
Solo had been about seven-years-old when his father and mother were called on a mission to meet another royal family on a world far flung from Corellia. If Han's mind could have conceived a place the complete opposite of his homeworld it would have been that planet. As a kid the name of the world kept escaping him--details, who needed those?
Where Corellia had factories housed in buildings scraping the sky, this planet had mountains. Where Corellia seemed always one step ahead in technology this world seemed ancient, but embraced by a natural beauty and a citizenery whose diversity was a strength and not a point of contention. A memory flashed in his mind like a laser bolt; the starcaves. This remembered world had caves that were bright, lit by luminous crytals that glowed a white light that was both haunting and beautiful; though seven-year-old Solo would have never used either of those words to describe it.
Nevertheless, there was something of the boy in the man, for Han recalled this next memory not with the mind of a man looking back, but the boy, as he saw it: a field of blue and white, of crimson, emerald, and violet. They were called the jewel gardens. Stones that would have been precious on any of a million worlds were merely pebbles in this seeming paradise; laying on the street for any tourist, be he seven or seven hundred, to pick up and pocket.
The flight back to Corellia had left Han's head spinning. Perhaps it was this world that had given him his wanderlust. To know that just a light speed's journey away one could find something so utterly different from what laid in your own backyard.
The memories retreated back in his mind and an aging hero of the Rebellion felt a little old, until he thought of the treasure this little gem would be to his wife. He wondered how long it had been since Leia Organa Solo had held a piece of Alderaan.