Eluding Fics (3/4) - Alderaan part 1
Alderaan - unfinished
“Oh, best cards I think I’ve had all night!” the squat Sullustan said boastfully. “Beat that, Sabercat!” He held out a series of random sabacc cards.
“Hey, that rhymes,” Nyssa noted, eyeing her own hand. “We’re playing for keeps now, right? I have my vest; let’s play strip sabacc.”
Daven pondered that for a moment, scratching the stubble of his facial hair with the edge of his cards. It seemed like a good idea, but there was a problem.
“I don’t have any clothes,” he admitted. “I left my Jedi robes on Corellia, remember?”
They were sitting around a table in a darkened room. There was smoke in the air, but Daven couldn’t smell tabac anywhere. The Sullustan, a fellow smuggler whom Nyssa had long since named ‘Nubs,’ cackled under his breath.
“I guess you’ll have to fold then, yeah?”
“Now, now, no need to be hasty,” Nyssa said, pointing a warning finger at Nubs. “Daven, you can borrow my boots.” She smiled at him broadly.
“Will they fit?” He was pretty sure they were too small, but then again, Nyssa always had really nice feet. The sudden urge to grab her and kiss her ankles was so intense that he had to close his eyes for a moment. It wasn’t the right time - he had to finish the game first.
“I don’t know, kitten,” she told him, her expression one of contemplation. “They’re in the hydrofridge; I’ll go check.”
“Thank you, beautiful,” he said as she rose from the table. She winked at him before leaving. Daven turned his attention back to Nubs - a very tricky opponent - and smirked.
A few moments passed between them before either spoke. Then:
“Daddy,” Nubs said seriously. “Daddy?”
“What?” Daven blinked. That wasn’t right.
He opened his eyes to a vague glow of the motion sensor’s sleep-set lighting as it flowed into the room via the hallway. The whiteness, despite its design to be non-invasive, stung at his pupils. He closed his eyes again, simply wanting the blinding light to go away. Why was it on? Better yet, why was the door to their quarters open?
“Daddy?” A voice, not too loud but soft, begging. There was a light tug on his sleep shirt. The pieces fell into place quickly, and Daven’s eyelids immediately flew open.
“Mara?” He blinked to let his eyes focus, to let the spots in his vision clear, and then he stared at the young girl before him. She was going to be five years old tomorrow, and her red hair was stringy against her face and shoulders - Nyssa would be fighting with tangles in the morning.
Her face showed a combination of nervousness and fear. Nerves for the fact that she had just woken him up, perhaps, but Daven couldn’t quite place the origin of her fear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, worried, as he threw off his covers and sat on the edge of the bed. He was careful enough not to wake Nyssa still sleeping soundly next to him, but his concern for his daughter was beginning to make him jumpy.
He opened his arms and reached for her. Without hesitation, she ran into them and buried herself in his lap, her face in his shoulder, drawing that rag of a doll close against her chest.
“I’m scared,” she told him. Her voice was barely audible, muffled by his clothes.
Daven paused and reached out with the Force, feeling for any sort of danger, whether aboard the ship or elsewhere nearby. But there was nothing. Just the soft hum of the Star’s systems and the lives of the three individuals within her.
“Scared of what?” he asked. An obvious question, but what more could he do? He cradled her gently, waiting for a response. She curled closer to him, her breathing shallow but somewhat erratic.
“A monster,” she finally admitted. “There’s a mynock in my footlocker.” Her face was pressed so deeply into his chest, Daven was surprised that Mara could still breathe. He gripped her tighter, though, when he felt her tiny limbs start to shake.
He touched the Force once more, searching for the winged creature. Yet nothing. It was nearly impossible for a beast that large to be on the ship without them noticing it, and it was especially impossible for one to dwell inside a child’s footlocker.
“Mara,” he began soothingly. “There is no mynock. You were dreaming.”
The girl shook her head fiercely, and red strands flew across her face. “He’s there. He’s hiding.”
“It’s not real, youngling. It’s just your imagination.”
Daven remembered that he too saw creatures from the far reaches of the Coruscanti sewers as a young initiate at the Temple. When he was small - so small that he had to jump up to climb into his bunk - he had been woken up by such a monster. Frightened, he had run to the crèche Master in charge of the nightly infant care.
The woman, aged beyond her wisdom, had held his shoulders and told him firmly that there were no such things as wild animals living under little Jedi boys’ beds. Then she marched him back into the initiates’ dormitory and sat him on his bunk. She told him to meditate - to focus on the Force and why it did not signal to him that there was any being in the room other than his fellow Bantha Clan mates. Then she left, shutting off his small bed lamp as she went. Leaving him alone in the dark.
And he had cried himself to sleep, knowing full well that there was definitely a horrible, clawed thing lying in wait directly underneath him.
Mara’s face was red, and tears were threatening to spill over her eyelids. To her, there was a mynock as much as there was a bed, a footlocker, and a ship. It was completely real.
“Do you want me to get rid of it?” Daven asked gently. At Mara’s all too eager nod, he could barely hold back a smirk. His daughter may have been afraid, but she would never let it stop her sense of adventure.
He sat her on the floor and stood, straightening his sleep clothes as he walked towards the room’s weapons cache. It was a password-protected safe, located well out of Mara’s reach. Both he and Nyssa had no doubts that their daughter would someday desire to open the cache, but they had no intent to make it easy for her.
Daven’s lightsaber was inside, along with his and Nyssa’s favorite blasters. He grabbed the saber and slipped it into the pocket of his pants. Seeing all this, Mara had a content look on her face. She reached out for him and he held her hand.
Her quarters were only a few meters away from their own, but the cold floor on bare feet and blinding overhead lighting made the short trip an uncomfortable one at best.
They stopped at Mara’s open door, and Daven gestured for her to stay back. It was a good chance, if nothing else, to teach her how to respond to danger and listen to her parents’ commands. She obeyed, grabbing on to the doorframe and watching all his actions with earnest eyes.
He pulled out the saber, but didn’t ignite it - far too risky to even bother putting on that kind of spectacle, especially when he was as tired as he was.
The footlocker was in the corner of Mara’s room, pushed up and anchored against the wall. It held a good deal of her sleeping clothes and undergarments, and was easy for the young girl to reach. He moved toward it, his body in a defensive pose in hopes that his daughter would learn by example. He stooped down and lifted the lid slowly, carefully.
And found a pile of misshapen garments vaguely resembling the shadow of a mynock. He smiled; his little girl sure did have a good imagination.
He stood back up and turned to face Mara, who, for her part, was still staring, wide-eyed, at the footlocker.
“I think you scared him away,” she told him tentatively.
“Yeah, probably.” Still grinning, he sat on her sleepcouch. She watched him for a moment, curious, before joining him. She had to jump to climb up next to him. “You think you can go to sleep now, youngling?”
Mara glanced back at the footlocker nervously, but was able to nod. She was still afraid - Daven could see it in her eyes.
He paused, wondering what else he could possibly do to make her feel better. He would certainly not leave her in the dark, alone, when she still clearly thought that something was doing to attack her. That didn’t work.
“Do you,” he said, “want to come sleep with your mom and me?”
Her face brightened and she nodded enthusiastically, wrapping her arms around his neck. He grunted and lifted her up, carrying her.
“You’re getting heavy,” he told her as she happily wiggled in his grip. “You’re such a big girl. Almost five years old. Before you know it, I won’t even be able to pick you up.” Truth be told, Daven could lift Nyssa without much effort, but Mara’s weight and height were only signs of something more - the simple fact that his little girl was growing older.
Fast.
He honestly couldn’t say in detail where the last five years had gone. There had been that magical time with Nyssa, then a baby, then … now. It all seemed so short, so brief.
And he didn’t regret any of it.
Mara giggled and he swung her slightly in his arms - just enough to draw out another laugh.
Daven shut off the room’s lights, his brain thankful for the darkness, and headed back to his own quarters. The hallway’s sleep-set overheads would probably stay on for a few minutes more, but as soon as the door whipped shut, the blinding light was gone.
He breathed a sigh of relief as Mara, aware of the sudden blackness, shifted against him nervously. He placed her next to her mother, close so that her head could rest near hers. The bed wasn’t the largest one available - it barely held himself and Nyssa if they decided not to hold each other - but it would be big enough, especially if Nyssa didn’t get any half-asleep ideas during the night.
He yawned and relaxed, reaching out with the Force to feel the two beings he loved more than any other thing in the galaxy.
And it was a good feeling.
****
She yawned and stretched simultaneously, arching her spine and tensing her muscles. Her arms reached out far from her body, but Nyssa was careful not to ram her hand into the place where she knew Daven’s sleeping form would be.
Still in the process of waking up, she turned to him and was surprised by the fact that her husband had grown twice as much hair as he had the night before. She blinked and focused on him.
No, there was no more hair than usual - even though she had been suggesting for months that he cut the ear-length locks to a shorter, cropped style - only the presence of another redhead. Mara was curled up next to her father, her head facing his. His hand was lying between the two of them on the pillow, wrapped around her smaller one gently as if protecting it. Both held serene expressions and a slightly open mouth, near mirror images of each other.
Nyssa shook her head, but was unable to stop the smile that rose to her lips. It was times like these when she would wonder where exactly her genes fit into Mara, so alike Daven her daughter was. But then, of course, the girl would wake up and all she interacted with would be acutely aware of exactly which parent she took after.
She didn’t know the specifics of why Mara was in their sleepcouch, but it only took one guess: her baby had probably gotten scared during the night - a nightmare, perhaps - like every other child that age was prone to. Mara was surprisingly independent, but Nyssa was relieved to see that even she would still want to spend the night in her parents’ bed. The fact that something had scared Mara so bad was worrisome, but Daven seemed to have everything under control.
He was a good father. Not that the fact should have surprised her, but, with his background, she hadn’t been sure what to expect from him at the beginning. When Mara was a newborn, he had been nervous, unsure of how to comfort and show affection to his new daughter. He loved her - that much was obvious - but he had, at first, some trouble expressing it.
Instead of becoming angry - as a new mother is wont to be when a bewildered husband shoves a screaming child into her arms - she had been patient, showing him how to calm her, how to cradle. To kiss her on the forehead and rock her against his chest. And he had learned.
Even earlier, as Mara was growing inside her, Daven had been remarkably unable to express his love for Nyssa as well. He had fidgeted when she cornered him, sat on his lap, and demanded to cuddle. He wanted her, she could often see the desire, the love, racing through his eyes, but she would have to remind him to say, “I love you.” He would hesitate with that saying, too, sometimes painfully so, but, in time, she had forced him to learn to be comfortable with it.
And now he was. It was an incredible feeling when he came up silently and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck and whispering in her ear. The gesture was a simple one, but, for a man that had barely touched a woman before her, it was special.
And now he held his daughter, tossed her, and played piggyback like a father who had been raised by parents rather than crèche Masters, even if Nyssa had to give him hints every so often. He also called Mara “youngling” - a term, apparently, used of young Jedi. It had bothered her at first, as she thought that Daven considered Mara a barracked initiate rather than his own flesh and blood. But she soon realized that it was an affectionate endearment, a childhood term that Daven associated with positive feelings.
If Daven wanted to mix the better parts of his upbringing into his daughter’s life, she would not stop him. He was a Jedi and, as much as it worried her, Mara had the potential to be a Jedi, too. She needed the guidance of at least some of the old Jedi ways to survive; Nyssa realized that. And Daven could find a good balance between his old life and the new.
She climbed away from the sleeping pair softly, letting them continue to rest, and headed out of the sleeping quarters towards the cockpit. The lights had illuminated to daytime power, creating a bright, pleasant white glow as she walked through to the cockpit. It was refreshing.
Today was going to be a good day.
She sat in the pilot seat, reading up on the status checks as the red and blue streaks of hyperspace rushed passed the viewport. She pulled her knees up to her chest and let her bare toes dangle from the edge of the chair.
They were making perfect time - as expected with a ship like the Star - and should be ready to enter Alderaanian space by the time everyone was up and dressed.
Alderaan. She bristled in excitement at the very thought. It was a stunningly beautiful world, peaceful, natural, but Nyssa had only been there a handful of times in her whole life - mostly because it was featured on many popular trade routes and made for an excellent supply stop - and she hadn’t spent much time exploring before loading up and moving on to her next hunt or, more recently, her next delivery.
There was no delivery to make this time, though, and no supplies to reload. Today they were going to Alderaan to enjoy Alderaan. Mara was turning five and, to celebrate, Daven and Nyssa had planned a trip to Alderaan’s National Park Zone. While the Alderaanians were a nature-loving people, who built their cities to reflect this, nothing was more protected than that area.
It was located in the southern hemisphere, nearly a half a planet’s length away from the capital city of Aldera, and occupied several square kilometers of empty land upon which no structures were allowed to be built. It was a tourist beacon - when offworlders already had their fill of Alderaan’s stunning cultural and architectural developments. Visitors could hike or fly in thrantas across the Zone, taking weeks to complete the trip or a mere afternoon.
Nyssa and Daven had a young child with them, and had so accordingly decided on a single day aboard a great thranta with a lakeside picnic for lunch. Mara wanted to see animals - at least that was what she was most excited about - but Nyssa was beginning to daydream her daughter’s reaction at being able to run freely through kilometers of fresh grass.
She stretched again before leaving the cockpit and heading back to the galley. Mara was already there when Nyssa entered, and the young girl stared at her with wide, green eyes so like her mother’s. Her lips were formed into a small pout, and Nyssa didn’t even have to ask what that look was suggesting.
“Well, kid, what’ll it be today? Eggs, cereal, dewback …?” She raised her eyebrow as Mara pondered her choices.
“Eggs.”
“Always eggs with you,” she noted, shaking her head as she powered up the food synthesizer and entered the proper recipe. “Your father probably wants them, too.”
Mara shrugged at the statement and continued brushing back the hair of her doll. Nyssa smiled at that as she sat at the table next to her daughter. She was such a beautiful little girl. Her features were still pudgy with baby fat, but Nyssa wondered if her face would sharpen to resemble her mother or stay soft like her father’s.
“So,” she said, gently freeing a strand of loose hair from Mara’s eye, “I saw you in our couch this morning. Is everything all right?”
Mara nodded. “There was a mynock in my room. Daddy killed it, though.”
“He killed it?” It had to be Mara’s imagination, but how would Daven kill something that wasn’t really there?
“Well,” Mara begun to correct herself, “he scared it away. I bet he would have killed it, though.”
“Of course.” Nyssa hid her amused smirk behind her hand and chuckled to herself mentally. Mara’s love and admiration for Daven bordered on hero worship, but, since Nyssa had never known her own father, she could only assume the behavior was perfectly normal. “Do you feel like a big girl today, hon?”
Mara smiled broadly, her eyes sparkling, and nodded.
“Well, you should,” Nyssa told her authoritatively, “five’s a very big age.” The little girl giggled and brightened even more. “Well, the eggs are almost done -” she picked up a plasti-spoon and handed it to Mara - “why don’t you go hit your father on the head with this and wake him up. Not too hard.”
Mara’s eyes widened in shock, even as she took the spoon. “Isn’t that mean?”
“It’s only mean if he didn’t deserve it.”
“But what did he do bad?”
“It’s not so much that he did something wrong, but that he overslept. Again.” Nyssa informed her. “Maybe, if you hit him, he’ll get up on time from now on.”
“That’s not very nice, Mommy,” Mara commented disapprovingly. She knitted her eyebrows together, ready to pout and refuse to do anything Nyssa suggested.
“Mara,” Nyssa bent down to her daughter’s eye level. “Sometimes, when you want to teach a man to do something, you have to use physical reinforcement. So, go in there, hit him with the spoon, and tell him that Mommy sent you.”
Mara nodded dutifully, but her expression held reluctance. She stalked off towards her parents’ quarters as Nyssa stood back up and checked the progress of breakfast.
Daven’s sleeping habits were an oddity Nyssa hadn’t expected at the beginning of their relationship. As a Jedi, he should have been an early riser - ready to run into the morning’s dawn, do katas, or whatever else Jedi did to keep in such shape. But Daven slept, and slept, and slept - well past late morning if they were staying planet-side. He had never fit the Jedi stereotype anyway, and this was a more annoying reminder than most.
“Ow,” came the howl from their quarters. It was followed by a series of uncontrolled, girlish giggles. Nyssa smirked as she watched the cook cycle for the eggs finishing.
Daven entered the galley, still dressed in his wrinkled sleepclothes. Mara was slung, butt-first over his shoulder. She was still laughing, and her small feet were kicking wildly. Dave was grinning as well, but, when he saw Nyssa, his barrow furrowed.
“Youngling says the spoon was your idea,” he said. “Care to explain?”
“No, not really.” Her smile was haughty as Daven placed Mara back into her chair. He then grabbed Nyssa and held her close to him, wrapping his arm tightly around her waist.
“I’ll have my revenge for that, beautiful,” he growled quietly into her ear. She bristled at his touch and words, and felt her face grow hot.
“I hope so,” she admitted a second before the food synthesizer beeped. “I hit you with kitchenware more often, that being the case.” She pulled away from him and turned to the eggs. Piling the warm breakfast on to a plate, she shoved it at Daven and placed another in front of Mara.
“Oh, hey, eggs. Great,” Daven said, pleasantly surprised, yet then his voice turned serious. “But do you think that teaching our daughter to hit is a good practice? I mean, in general?”
This could lead to a fight, she knew, and now wasn’t the time - not on Mara’s lifeday. She pressed her lips together and sat down next to their daughter, who was currently eating, oblivious to the sudden tension. Daven joined her.
“I think it’s better for her to hit than be hit, don’t you?”
Daven sighed at that statement and ran his hand through his hair, grimacing as he touched a small bump.
“Then tell me, Nyssa,” he said, his tone begging. “Do you want me to teach her the saber or not? She’s getting older and soon it’ll be much harder to start training.”
The debate was a familiar one - one they had been having since Mara’s birth. She was strong enough to be a Jedi, but Nyssa and Daven were left with the question of should she. If she stayed ignorant of the Force, then the Emperor and his cronies would have difficultly finding her, but there was also the chance she would be without defense if she were discovered. It was truly a double-edged sword.
But the blade had already been turned when Daven began to teach her using the Force. At first Nyssa had been angry - she felt betrayed that Daven had taken to teaching Mara the Jedi ways without consulting her - but now she knew that Daven had done it unconsciously.
What else would Mara pick up from her father without either of them realizing it? The Force flowed through them both and connected them - much more than Nyssa could fathom - and, if they didn’t plan Mara’s learning concisely, it could backfire on them and, more importantly, her with brutal results.
“I know you don’t think you’re a good teacher, Daven,” she began gently. “But I’ve seen what you two do. You make her so excited about learning everything. I think you can do this, too, even if you’re unsure.” She watched his expression - one of contemplation - and also noticed Mara’s look of curiosity out of the corner of her eye.
“You want me to train her, then?”
“I want you to do what you think is best. What the Force tells you to do. It hasn’t let us down before, has it?” She reached cross the table and brushed the tips of his fingers with her own. He responded, locking his hand within hers.
“I think she was born to be a Jedi, Nyssa,” he admitted after a moment of silence. “Whether or not I’m the best Master is another question.”
“You’ll be a good teacher, Daven, I know it.” Daven nodded and let out a deep breath. In the distance, the hyperspace alarm beeped, announcing that the ship would soon pull out into real space near Alderaan. “I go get that.”
“You want me to help?” Daven asked, preparing to rise and follow her to the cockpit.
“No, no,” she said as she left, “stay here. Most likely, Alderaan control will put us in a holding pattern for a while.”
“Daddy? Can I have your eggs?” She heard the question echoing through the halls as she headed up to the cockpit.
“Not a chance. I’ll make you some more, though.” Came the response.
Those two and their damn eggs.
****
Fresh air. Now that had become a rarity of late. Not that he really minded spending weeks aboard the Gray Star and breathing in the dull, recycled oxygen all that much, but many of the planets they visited were polluted cyst-pools that he inwardly cringed about letting his daughter set foot upon.
Coruscant hadn’t been the greatest place to grow up either, Daven mused, but he and Nyssa had survived the air, at least.
Alderaan was something else, though, something else entirely. It was absolutely perfect.
They were directed to land the ship on the rim of the Zone, near a small settlement of stone and wooden buildings. They had been unspecific of their needs to the flight director, asking only of a tourist spot on the Zone. The woman had been helpful and kind, bringing up an onscreen list of possible towns that hosted guests and flew thrantas into the Zone. They had chosen this place - Charila Zonedistrict - randomly; it wasn’t the biggest nor the smallest, but had thranta tours.
It was little more than a village, snuggled in a narrow valley of grassy hills. The Zone stretched beyond its boarders, just over one of the sloops. Ship docks, which were surprising all but full, were located across the town and opposite the Zone - kept at distance as if the ion-burning engines were somehow unclean.
“It smells funny,” Mara noted, possibly picking up on her father’s thoughts.
“It’s the flowers, baby,” Nyssa told her. She was beautiful, his wife, as she always was, really, but today she was wearing a simple, tan colored dress - roughly woven and common on a thousand different worlds - and had placed her hair in a loose braid. Mara had her own hair in double braids, which was extraordinarily pretty, but hardly worth the screaming match that resulted from Nyssa catching one too many difficult tangles.
Daven’s eyes narrowed against the sun’s rays as he examined their new surroundings from the ship’s ramp. Blue, wide sky with small wisps of clouds. Rows of people, clothed in all sorts of garments, heading towards Charila. It was going to be crowded.
“Do you think we’ll find a guide?” Nyssa asked, noticing the amount of tourists.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how this works, really,” he admitted. “Let’s just go into town. See the situation for ourselves.”
People were packed against people, and the going was slow. Nyssa had picked Mara up and held her above her hip. She grasped onto Daven with her free hand.
“Mommy,” Mara whispered after they were somewhere in the middle of the town, heading indirectly towards the Zone, “I have to go to the ’fresher.”
Nyssa sighed, but stopped all the same, and yanked on Daven’s hand.
“’Fresher time, kitten,” she told him. He nodded, pressing his lips together as he searched the quaint stone façades for any universal symbols of male and female. They walked unsurely a few more meters between the crowds before spotting a very familiar set of signs and a heading written in Basic.
“They may look like primitives, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t a very well placed ’fresher,” Nyssa said admiringly. “Okay, we’ll be back.” She headed towards the busy, two-door building.
“Wait,” Daven told her quickly, “while you’re doing that, I’ll see if I can get some information, tickets, or whatever we need here.”
“Sounds good,” she agreed. Splitting up these days seemed to be the only way the two of them managed to accomplish any task when Mara was involved.
Daven nodded and turned away, staring straight ahead at the overlaying hills. He couldn’t blame the other travelers for wanting to come here, even if they were proving to be a bit of a nuisance for him at the moment. He could barely see anything over their multi-colored and shaped heads.
He moved a few steps forward, into the throng again, only to come out into a space rather free of people. He stood a minute and tried to find his bearings.
Suddenly, to his surprise, lithe arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him tight. He panicked for an instant and his heart raced - he knew it wasn’t Nyssa and there was, frankly, no one else alive that would know him well enough to hug him. He jumped away from the grip and whirled to face the one who had touched him.
It was a woman, perhaps the same age as he. She was short, but athletic, and her small frame was covered with a loose fitting, brown tunic and beige trousers. Her skin was tan and her hair long and chestnut, wrapped in several loops behind her head. Her black eyes were, at first, full of shock but were slowly beginning to hold look of utter embarrassment.
“Forgive me, I thought you were a friend of mine,” she said by way of apology. “You look so much like him.” Her accent and appearance were pure Alderaanian.
Daven smiled reassuringly. “No harm done.”
“You are not from here?” she asked, her eyes narrowing, observing his every movement. “You are a traveler, coming to pay homage to our lands?”
“Yes,” Daven admitted.
“I am Sisa,” she told him. “And you are from … I can guess everybody based on their voice alone, you see … you are from Coruscant, capital of the galaxy. Am I right?” She stared at him anxiously, hoping her guess would be correct.
“I’m from a lot of places,” Daven said wearily, unsure if he should so easily give her such information. Her face fell, assuming, probably, that her guess was incorrect and he was sparing her feelings.
Maybe it was his years spent with Nyssa and Mara, but it was getting harder and harder for him to deny a female anything. He sighed.
“I grew up on Coruscant, though.”
Sisa beamed and bobbed on the heels of her feet.
“Excellent. And your name?”
“Farin,” he lied. “Perhaps you can help me. It’s my daughter’s lifeday today and my wife and I were hoping to take a thranta tour …” He wondered if the emphasis on the word “wife” was really necessary, but, in his experience, it never hurt.
“How fortunate for both of us, then!” Sisa said, excited, apparently not at all aware of the significance of “wife.” “I am a thranta rider, and I can give you a tour of the Zone. I was not counting on any business today, since there will be a show later.”
“Is that what the all crowds are here for?”
Sisa nodded. “Should be great fun, but I’ve seen it all before. A much more perfect day it is to be out in the open air. You’ve made the right choice by opting for a tour.”
Daven nodded cautiously, but he felt no ill will radiating from this Sisa. She seemed genuinely pleased at his presence and was clearly hoping to earn a day’s pay honestly.
“We’ll take the tour, then.”
She smiled.
***
“Okay, find a glob of red,” Nyssa told herself as she scanned the crowd. Alderaanians were known for their usually dark features - brown hair and eyes - making a person like Daven stick out. But, to her dismay, people wandering through this town were an odd combination of blonds, brunettes, and, yes, redheads. She had gone up to a few men already only to find that none of them were her Daven.
So she and Mara waded through the human masses. Mara had been content to sit in her arms for while, but, after a few minutes, she began to wiggle uncontrollably and Nyssa thought it best to let the girl walk with her, hand in hand.
The crowds, if anything, seemed to be growing larger. Suffocatingly so - Nyssa was never one to enjoy being surrounded by people on all sides, she much rather preferred the solitude of her ship.
She wheeled back, trying to recover from an elbow jabbed against her shoulder. Gods, if only Alderaan allowed me to bring my blaster planetside, she thought, this would be so much easier.
There was another bump, this time against her hip, and she hopped back from it smoothly. But, when she regained her footing, there was something missing.
Mara was no longer holding her hand.
A crushing, unbearable panic filled her, and she was almost shaking. She looked down and around, searching for anything that even remotely resembled her daughter. Nothing.
Gods, oh, Gods. Force! Tears stung at her eyes until her vision began to blur.
“Mara!” she cried out as she forced her way through the crowd, shoving people away from her as she went. They seemed to realize what was happening, though, and moved out of her away, even if they could do nothing to help. “Mara!”
***
Aiya was an old woman, so it would seem. How many years she had seen the people come to her little town for the festival? So many that she could scarcely remember that she herself, as a young woman, had often flown in the show, on the back of prizing-winning thranta. What fun that had been.
Now, though, she was quite content to see her son do the same, while she sold small, handmade trinkets to the guests that came to Charila. Her weaving was of quaintly, and she made good credits.
She watched, bored, as all the people moved passed her stall. Some had paused momentarily to look at her stock, but there hadn’t been a sell all morning. Yet there was blessing in patience, or so she often told her son.
A doll, she noticed, had been kicked up the curb towards her. It lay on the ground, dirty, worn, and obviously much loved by some child. Aiya stared at it, wondering whether a certain little girl was crying for it right now.
To her surprise, a redheaded child appeared, popping out of the throng. She ran to the abandoned doll and scooped it up with a focused energy that only one her age could produce. But, when her task had been completed - clearly the only thing on her mind at the time - her eyes widened, and she stared into the large crowd of empty faces.
The poor thing looked …
“Sweetie,” Aiya called out before the little girl was swept up into the moving horde once more. She vacated her booth and reached out a hand to the scared girl.
The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment as she looked deeply into Aiya’s eyes. A strange sensation passed through the old woman - a shuddering passing down into her bones - and then the girl came forward.
“Are you lost?” Aiya asked as they moved back toward the calm of the booth. The girl looked around, as a last attempt at finding her family, and then nodded. Her face was slowly becoming red, and Aiya knew that there would soon be tears. “Okay,” she tried to soothe. “It will be okay. Just come sit with me, your mom will see you.”
There was a department of lost children specifically designed for tourists, but it was located on the far side of the city. Aiya could take the girl down there, she imagined, if she locked up her stall. Moving in the crowd, however, would take some time, though, and it seemed more likely that the mother would still be on this side of the town. Not to mention that she probably wouldn’t immediately know to go to the department.
It would be best to wait and see if the mother found her way here.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked, sitting back down on the stall’s bench and feeling her tired muscles sigh in relief. The girl bit her lip and glanced down at her doll.
“Mara,” she said softly.
“All right, Mara,” Aiya patted her shoulder. There were no tears yet, apparently - this little Mara was a brave child. Aiya could only hope, though, that some cruel parent hadn’t abandoned her. She had heard of people doing that in busy crowds.
The girl looked not so much like a main stream Alderaanian from other parts of the planet, but her resemblance was somewhat like a Thranta-rider native to a place like this village. Aiya didn’t know her, however, and she certainly knew every child here. That left only an offworld family; Aiya had seen such coloring in visitors before. Perhaps the mother’s features would also be so easy to spot.
The crowd slowly waned and thickened a few times as they watched, and the minutes passed. Mara’s face stayed focused on the street, looking for one familiar face.
“So, do you like dolls?” Aiya asked. She knew it would do the child no good to stand there and fret.
Mara glanced up at her and nodded, but not without first pulling her own toy closer to her chest.
“Ah, good.” The old woman smiled. “I make dolls to give to good little girls like you. Would you like to see one?” Children’s eyes always lit up at the mention of new toys, no matter how difficult a situation they faced, and Mara was no exception.
Aiya reached under her main table and dug around in the half full storage crate. She had decided to display her hand-blown glass thranta statuettes and kirngrass-braided blankets rather than the dolls today, but now she was beginning to wonder if that had been the best decision.
She pulled out a soft, familiar doll and handed it to the girl. It was in the shape of a small thranta - tourists often liked to remember their visit by buying such things - but, unlike the dolls that could be bought in the bigger towns, Aiya always insisted that hers would be made of the softest, natural materials that grew around the village.
Mara examined the stuffed thranta carefully, running a lone finger along its wingspan. Then she took it from Aiya’s hand slowly and held it against her face, feeling the smooth fabric rub along her cheek.
“You like it, yes?” Aiya asked. “You can have it, then,” she added before the girl had a chance to answer. She could have expected to fetch a good deal of credits for it, usually, but this Mara needed some comfort and Aiya was willing to give it. She had never had a daughter herself, only sons, and she often enjoyed watching the young girls of the town play with the dolls she worked so hard to make.
Mara was completely enthralled with the miniature thranta and her mind seemed to be at ease.
“Mara!” A blonde woman emerged from the crowd, rushing forward towards Aiya’s little stand. The girl looked up, shocked at first, but her face quickly turned to an expression of pure joy.
“Mommy!”
The two embraced hurriedly and the mother picked Mara up, wrapping her arms around the girl tightly. If her old eyes did not fail her, Aiya could have sworn that the poor woman was shaking.
Understandable. She would have, too, had it been her child.
After the woman had calmed down, she seemed to become aware of her surroundings and of Aiya gazing at them happily from her bench.
“You are the girl’s mother?” she asked in a pleasant voice.
“Yes,” the woman admitted, still holding her daughter close.
Before the mother could ask her any questions, Aiya decided it was best to give her answers to the most obvious ones freely. “Young Mara found her way to my booth here to retrieve her doll. She was a very good girl and waited for you to come find her.”
“You looked after her?” At Aiya’s nod, the woman seemed as if she was about to cry. Her eyes became watery and her voice was hoarse as she spoke her next words. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done … I …” She trailed off and buried her face in Mara’s hair.
“Yes, yes,” Aiya waved her hand casually as if stopping young girls from being lost in the crowd was a daily occurrence for her. “Glad to be of help.”
The mother didn’t respond to her, but turned her attention back to Mara. The girl was clenching to her, her head no more than a mop of red against the woman’s shoulder.
“Why did you do that, Mara?” the mother whispered at moment later. “Why did you let go of my hand?” Aiya watched with interest, most women would have panicked, yelled at their daughters, even. But this one had patience. Admirable.
“Sorry, mommy. Sorry, sorry,” Mara sobbed. Aiya could barely hear the small voice through the fabric.
“I thought I lost you,” the woman breathed, pulling at Aiya’s own heart. “And on your lifeday, too.”
Aiya spoke up again when she realized that soon all three of them would be weeping uncontrollably in the middle of a public street. “Lifeday? How exciting!”
The woman looked back at her, surprised as if she forgot that the old woman was even there. She recovered gracefully and smiled gently.
“You can consider the little thranta a gift then, no?” she asked. How pleasant, indeed. The girl’s day would turn out all right, even after such a stressful morning.
“Thranta?” The mother looked confused until Mara revealed the small toy still clutched in her palm.
“I make many things. Dolls among them,” Ayia told her. There was no hint of pride in her voice nor trepidation, just the statement of a clear fact.
The mother took the toy, studying it as she turned it around in her hands. Her fingers - delicate but decisive - surveyed the fabric with a calculated precision. What she was looking for exactly, Aiya could not tell.
“Surely, you can’t mean to just give this away,” she finally said. “It’s very well made. I’ll pay you for it. How much?”
Aiya noticed out of the corner of her eye little Mara’s slight hopping up and down - clearly excited that she’d keep the thranta in every given circumstance.
“Nonsense, please.” The older woman waved her hand once more, dismissively. And Mara’s mother stared at her with a blank expression. Confused, as if she had never before had a stranger perform a single act of kindness for her.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, sincerely, looking straight into Aiya’s eyes. Her stare was direct, intense - much like her daughter’s had been earlier. Aiya found herself lost in it, like a black hole she couldn’t escape from.
“Daddy!” Mara cried out, breaking their gazes. The girl slipped away from her mother’s grip and ran towards a man.
“Daven?” Aiya heard the woman whisper almost subconsciously as both pairs of eyes turned to watch the redheaded man scoop Mara up into his arms.
Daven. Aiya was never one to believe that one single event, one single word could change someone’s entire life. But that was, of course, until this very moment.
Daven said something to Mara’s mother, but the words were blurred no less obsurely than Aiya’s vision. Her breathing became rough, shallow, uneven.
It just couldn’t be.
The small family seemed oblivious to her distress and continued its greetings. Aiya remembered Daven turning to her and thanking her with a kind voice. She responded, she knew, but she wasn’t sure what specific words she had used.
Her mind was tangled - a thousand thoughts wrapped around one.
And then he was gone. Or leaving, actually. She blinked away her first tears as Mara, with her arms wrapped around her father’s neck and chin propped on his shoulder, waved a farewell to her. She waved back mindlessly.
After a few minutes, the storm in Aiya’s head cleared and she stood to lock up her stall.
She then made her way into the dense crowd, heading towards the arena.
***
She was beautiful - blonde with long legs, small waist, and a perfect face. That fact shouldn’t have surprised Sisa, but she couldn’t help but be unnerved by it. Farin was an attractive man and deserved no less, yet she still wished, almost unconsciously, that someone like him would find a boring girl like her beautiful.
But she could only believe that she wasn’t - Davick had implied as much. She was short, boxy, boyish to an extreme. How often had he said to her, simply in passing, more of a compliment than anything else, “Sisa, you fly like a boy”?
He didn’t mean anything by it, she was sure; he was her best friend, after all. But still, it seemed …
Sisa sighed, trying to clear her head. Her life had nothing to do with Farin and his family. His wife - what was her name? - was kind, if reserved, despite her extraordinary looks. And their little girl was an absolute dream of a child. Sisa fell in love with her the second they met. If only she could be so lucky to have such a daughter.
“Knoggles!” she called out as she led the family into a dusty wooden shack of a building. It was an old but durable place, which served as the town’s navigation station. She leaned on the waist-high counter and waited, staring at the piles of poorly organized datapads and charts. She heard her guests moving slowly around the room, exploring it, but she didn’t turn back to them. “Knoggles!”
Knoggles came out of the back room. He was a heavyset man, retired, who had offered to take the thankless job of Chief Navigation Advisor some years ago. Sisa liked him well enough, but he was prone to sleep and lay about at inopportune times. Like now.
“Sisa?” he questioned, confusion running across his wrinkled features. “Is there something wrong at the festival?” Sisa opened her mouth to speak, but Knoggles noticed the guests before she had the chance to explain. “You’re taking out a tour, then?”
Sisa nodded and smiled over her shoulder at the small group. “Not everyone is interested in drooling at fancy flying. Some would rather have a good trip.”
“Heh,” the old man chucked. “Some would say that you’re still irritated that you didn’t make the show’s cut this year.”
“Pasis is a lair and a cheater; we all know it,” she said in a whisper before she thought to bite her tongue. She looked back to the family, embarrassed by her near outburst, but they hadn’t seemed to notice. “Anyway. It’s a fine day out in the Zone, I’m sure. Standard one-day itinerary. I think following the river up and then taking the pass through the valley back.”
He nodded rhythmically as she spoke, easily agreeing with everything she said. He pulled out a datachip from a nondescript, otherwise unidentifiable pile and handed it to her. She inserted it into her navpad.
The navpad was a convenient tool, no larger than a datapad, but containing a navigational system that would locate its holder anywhere on Alderaan to within a half meter. The elders scoffed at their use, even though the technology had been available when they were infants. It was the principle of the matter, more so, and young riders would challenge each other to ride without them.
The course through the Zone appeared on screen and Sisa had to agree with Knoggles’ choice. “Looks good.”
Knoggles entered her information on his personal pad. “Unless things change soon, you’ll be the only party out there. At least none of the other towns have reported any trips. I guess the festival has kept everyone here. All right, pic time.”
Sisa turned back to Farin and his wife. They looked curious - not at all bored like the other tourists she had hosted in the past - and she began to fear just how much they had overheard.
“We have to take your holopics before we leave.”
“Why?” the wife asked, suspicious.
“Security,” Sisa answered, hoping that it would be adequate.
“So we can tell the other riders what you look like in case your bird goes down in the middle of the Zone,” came Knoggles’ sarcastic reply.
“Knoggles!” she shouted in protest. The man could be rude if he wanted, but trying to scare people? He simply had no boundaries.
“Knowing you, Sisa, it might.” He laughed when her face scrunched.
“How charming,” Farin said dryly before she could rebuke him. “Let’s take some pics, then.” Sisa smiled; she couldn’t help but like this man.
“Oh, best cards I think I’ve had all night!” the squat Sullustan said boastfully. “Beat that, Sabercat!” He held out a series of random sabacc cards.
“Hey, that rhymes,” Nyssa noted, eyeing her own hand. “We’re playing for keeps now, right? I have my vest; let’s play strip sabacc.”
Daven pondered that for a moment, scratching the stubble of his facial hair with the edge of his cards. It seemed like a good idea, but there was a problem.
“I don’t have any clothes,” he admitted. “I left my Jedi robes on Corellia, remember?”
They were sitting around a table in a darkened room. There was smoke in the air, but Daven couldn’t smell tabac anywhere. The Sullustan, a fellow smuggler whom Nyssa had long since named ‘Nubs,’ cackled under his breath.
“I guess you’ll have to fold then, yeah?”
“Now, now, no need to be hasty,” Nyssa said, pointing a warning finger at Nubs. “Daven, you can borrow my boots.” She smiled at him broadly.
“Will they fit?” He was pretty sure they were too small, but then again, Nyssa always had really nice feet. The sudden urge to grab her and kiss her ankles was so intense that he had to close his eyes for a moment. It wasn’t the right time - he had to finish the game first.
“I don’t know, kitten,” she told him, her expression one of contemplation. “They’re in the hydrofridge; I’ll go check.”
“Thank you, beautiful,” he said as she rose from the table. She winked at him before leaving. Daven turned his attention back to Nubs - a very tricky opponent - and smirked.
A few moments passed between them before either spoke. Then:
“Daddy,” Nubs said seriously. “Daddy?”
“What?” Daven blinked. That wasn’t right.
He opened his eyes to a vague glow of the motion sensor’s sleep-set lighting as it flowed into the room via the hallway. The whiteness, despite its design to be non-invasive, stung at his pupils. He closed his eyes again, simply wanting the blinding light to go away. Why was it on? Better yet, why was the door to their quarters open?
“Daddy?” A voice, not too loud but soft, begging. There was a light tug on his sleep shirt. The pieces fell into place quickly, and Daven’s eyelids immediately flew open.
“Mara?” He blinked to let his eyes focus, to let the spots in his vision clear, and then he stared at the young girl before him. She was going to be five years old tomorrow, and her red hair was stringy against her face and shoulders - Nyssa would be fighting with tangles in the morning.
Her face showed a combination of nervousness and fear. Nerves for the fact that she had just woken him up, perhaps, but Daven couldn’t quite place the origin of her fear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, worried, as he threw off his covers and sat on the edge of the bed. He was careful enough not to wake Nyssa still sleeping soundly next to him, but his concern for his daughter was beginning to make him jumpy.
He opened his arms and reached for her. Without hesitation, she ran into them and buried herself in his lap, her face in his shoulder, drawing that rag of a doll close against her chest.
“I’m scared,” she told him. Her voice was barely audible, muffled by his clothes.
Daven paused and reached out with the Force, feeling for any sort of danger, whether aboard the ship or elsewhere nearby. But there was nothing. Just the soft hum of the Star’s systems and the lives of the three individuals within her.
“Scared of what?” he asked. An obvious question, but what more could he do? He cradled her gently, waiting for a response. She curled closer to him, her breathing shallow but somewhat erratic.
“A monster,” she finally admitted. “There’s a mynock in my footlocker.” Her face was pressed so deeply into his chest, Daven was surprised that Mara could still breathe. He gripped her tighter, though, when he felt her tiny limbs start to shake.
He touched the Force once more, searching for the winged creature. Yet nothing. It was nearly impossible for a beast that large to be on the ship without them noticing it, and it was especially impossible for one to dwell inside a child’s footlocker.
“Mara,” he began soothingly. “There is no mynock. You were dreaming.”
The girl shook her head fiercely, and red strands flew across her face. “He’s there. He’s hiding.”
“It’s not real, youngling. It’s just your imagination.”
Daven remembered that he too saw creatures from the far reaches of the Coruscanti sewers as a young initiate at the Temple. When he was small - so small that he had to jump up to climb into his bunk - he had been woken up by such a monster. Frightened, he had run to the crèche Master in charge of the nightly infant care.
The woman, aged beyond her wisdom, had held his shoulders and told him firmly that there were no such things as wild animals living under little Jedi boys’ beds. Then she marched him back into the initiates’ dormitory and sat him on his bunk. She told him to meditate - to focus on the Force and why it did not signal to him that there was any being in the room other than his fellow Bantha Clan mates. Then she left, shutting off his small bed lamp as she went. Leaving him alone in the dark.
And he had cried himself to sleep, knowing full well that there was definitely a horrible, clawed thing lying in wait directly underneath him.
Mara’s face was red, and tears were threatening to spill over her eyelids. To her, there was a mynock as much as there was a bed, a footlocker, and a ship. It was completely real.
“Do you want me to get rid of it?” Daven asked gently. At Mara’s all too eager nod, he could barely hold back a smirk. His daughter may have been afraid, but she would never let it stop her sense of adventure.
He sat her on the floor and stood, straightening his sleep clothes as he walked towards the room’s weapons cache. It was a password-protected safe, located well out of Mara’s reach. Both he and Nyssa had no doubts that their daughter would someday desire to open the cache, but they had no intent to make it easy for her.
Daven’s lightsaber was inside, along with his and Nyssa’s favorite blasters. He grabbed the saber and slipped it into the pocket of his pants. Seeing all this, Mara had a content look on her face. She reached out for him and he held her hand.
Her quarters were only a few meters away from their own, but the cold floor on bare feet and blinding overhead lighting made the short trip an uncomfortable one at best.
They stopped at Mara’s open door, and Daven gestured for her to stay back. It was a good chance, if nothing else, to teach her how to respond to danger and listen to her parents’ commands. She obeyed, grabbing on to the doorframe and watching all his actions with earnest eyes.
He pulled out the saber, but didn’t ignite it - far too risky to even bother putting on that kind of spectacle, especially when he was as tired as he was.
The footlocker was in the corner of Mara’s room, pushed up and anchored against the wall. It held a good deal of her sleeping clothes and undergarments, and was easy for the young girl to reach. He moved toward it, his body in a defensive pose in hopes that his daughter would learn by example. He stooped down and lifted the lid slowly, carefully.
And found a pile of misshapen garments vaguely resembling the shadow of a mynock. He smiled; his little girl sure did have a good imagination.
He stood back up and turned to face Mara, who, for her part, was still staring, wide-eyed, at the footlocker.
“I think you scared him away,” she told him tentatively.
“Yeah, probably.” Still grinning, he sat on her sleepcouch. She watched him for a moment, curious, before joining him. She had to jump to climb up next to him. “You think you can go to sleep now, youngling?”
Mara glanced back at the footlocker nervously, but was able to nod. She was still afraid - Daven could see it in her eyes.
He paused, wondering what else he could possibly do to make her feel better. He would certainly not leave her in the dark, alone, when she still clearly thought that something was doing to attack her. That didn’t work.
“Do you,” he said, “want to come sleep with your mom and me?”
Her face brightened and she nodded enthusiastically, wrapping her arms around his neck. He grunted and lifted her up, carrying her.
“You’re getting heavy,” he told her as she happily wiggled in his grip. “You’re such a big girl. Almost five years old. Before you know it, I won’t even be able to pick you up.” Truth be told, Daven could lift Nyssa without much effort, but Mara’s weight and height were only signs of something more - the simple fact that his little girl was growing older.
Fast.
He honestly couldn’t say in detail where the last five years had gone. There had been that magical time with Nyssa, then a baby, then … now. It all seemed so short, so brief.
And he didn’t regret any of it.
Mara giggled and he swung her slightly in his arms - just enough to draw out another laugh.
Daven shut off the room’s lights, his brain thankful for the darkness, and headed back to his own quarters. The hallway’s sleep-set overheads would probably stay on for a few minutes more, but as soon as the door whipped shut, the blinding light was gone.
He breathed a sigh of relief as Mara, aware of the sudden blackness, shifted against him nervously. He placed her next to her mother, close so that her head could rest near hers. The bed wasn’t the largest one available - it barely held himself and Nyssa if they decided not to hold each other - but it would be big enough, especially if Nyssa didn’t get any half-asleep ideas during the night.
He yawned and relaxed, reaching out with the Force to feel the two beings he loved more than any other thing in the galaxy.
And it was a good feeling.
****
She yawned and stretched simultaneously, arching her spine and tensing her muscles. Her arms reached out far from her body, but Nyssa was careful not to ram her hand into the place where she knew Daven’s sleeping form would be.
Still in the process of waking up, she turned to him and was surprised by the fact that her husband had grown twice as much hair as he had the night before. She blinked and focused on him.
No, there was no more hair than usual - even though she had been suggesting for months that he cut the ear-length locks to a shorter, cropped style - only the presence of another redhead. Mara was curled up next to her father, her head facing his. His hand was lying between the two of them on the pillow, wrapped around her smaller one gently as if protecting it. Both held serene expressions and a slightly open mouth, near mirror images of each other.
Nyssa shook her head, but was unable to stop the smile that rose to her lips. It was times like these when she would wonder where exactly her genes fit into Mara, so alike Daven her daughter was. But then, of course, the girl would wake up and all she interacted with would be acutely aware of exactly which parent she took after.
She didn’t know the specifics of why Mara was in their sleepcouch, but it only took one guess: her baby had probably gotten scared during the night - a nightmare, perhaps - like every other child that age was prone to. Mara was surprisingly independent, but Nyssa was relieved to see that even she would still want to spend the night in her parents’ bed. The fact that something had scared Mara so bad was worrisome, but Daven seemed to have everything under control.
He was a good father. Not that the fact should have surprised her, but, with his background, she hadn’t been sure what to expect from him at the beginning. When Mara was a newborn, he had been nervous, unsure of how to comfort and show affection to his new daughter. He loved her - that much was obvious - but he had, at first, some trouble expressing it.
Instead of becoming angry - as a new mother is wont to be when a bewildered husband shoves a screaming child into her arms - she had been patient, showing him how to calm her, how to cradle. To kiss her on the forehead and rock her against his chest. And he had learned.
Even earlier, as Mara was growing inside her, Daven had been remarkably unable to express his love for Nyssa as well. He had fidgeted when she cornered him, sat on his lap, and demanded to cuddle. He wanted her, she could often see the desire, the love, racing through his eyes, but she would have to remind him to say, “I love you.” He would hesitate with that saying, too, sometimes painfully so, but, in time, she had forced him to learn to be comfortable with it.
And now he was. It was an incredible feeling when he came up silently and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her neck and whispering in her ear. The gesture was a simple one, but, for a man that had barely touched a woman before her, it was special.
And now he held his daughter, tossed her, and played piggyback like a father who had been raised by parents rather than crèche Masters, even if Nyssa had to give him hints every so often. He also called Mara “youngling” - a term, apparently, used of young Jedi. It had bothered her at first, as she thought that Daven considered Mara a barracked initiate rather than his own flesh and blood. But she soon realized that it was an affectionate endearment, a childhood term that Daven associated with positive feelings.
If Daven wanted to mix the better parts of his upbringing into his daughter’s life, she would not stop him. He was a Jedi and, as much as it worried her, Mara had the potential to be a Jedi, too. She needed the guidance of at least some of the old Jedi ways to survive; Nyssa realized that. And Daven could find a good balance between his old life and the new.
She climbed away from the sleeping pair softly, letting them continue to rest, and headed out of the sleeping quarters towards the cockpit. The lights had illuminated to daytime power, creating a bright, pleasant white glow as she walked through to the cockpit. It was refreshing.
Today was going to be a good day.
She sat in the pilot seat, reading up on the status checks as the red and blue streaks of hyperspace rushed passed the viewport. She pulled her knees up to her chest and let her bare toes dangle from the edge of the chair.
They were making perfect time - as expected with a ship like the Star - and should be ready to enter Alderaanian space by the time everyone was up and dressed.
Alderaan. She bristled in excitement at the very thought. It was a stunningly beautiful world, peaceful, natural, but Nyssa had only been there a handful of times in her whole life - mostly because it was featured on many popular trade routes and made for an excellent supply stop - and she hadn’t spent much time exploring before loading up and moving on to her next hunt or, more recently, her next delivery.
There was no delivery to make this time, though, and no supplies to reload. Today they were going to Alderaan to enjoy Alderaan. Mara was turning five and, to celebrate, Daven and Nyssa had planned a trip to Alderaan’s National Park Zone. While the Alderaanians were a nature-loving people, who built their cities to reflect this, nothing was more protected than that area.
It was located in the southern hemisphere, nearly a half a planet’s length away from the capital city of Aldera, and occupied several square kilometers of empty land upon which no structures were allowed to be built. It was a tourist beacon - when offworlders already had their fill of Alderaan’s stunning cultural and architectural developments. Visitors could hike or fly in thrantas across the Zone, taking weeks to complete the trip or a mere afternoon.
Nyssa and Daven had a young child with them, and had so accordingly decided on a single day aboard a great thranta with a lakeside picnic for lunch. Mara wanted to see animals - at least that was what she was most excited about - but Nyssa was beginning to daydream her daughter’s reaction at being able to run freely through kilometers of fresh grass.
She stretched again before leaving the cockpit and heading back to the galley. Mara was already there when Nyssa entered, and the young girl stared at her with wide, green eyes so like her mother’s. Her lips were formed into a small pout, and Nyssa didn’t even have to ask what that look was suggesting.
“Well, kid, what’ll it be today? Eggs, cereal, dewback …?” She raised her eyebrow as Mara pondered her choices.
“Eggs.”
“Always eggs with you,” she noted, shaking her head as she powered up the food synthesizer and entered the proper recipe. “Your father probably wants them, too.”
Mara shrugged at the statement and continued brushing back the hair of her doll. Nyssa smiled at that as she sat at the table next to her daughter. She was such a beautiful little girl. Her features were still pudgy with baby fat, but Nyssa wondered if her face would sharpen to resemble her mother or stay soft like her father’s.
“So,” she said, gently freeing a strand of loose hair from Mara’s eye, “I saw you in our couch this morning. Is everything all right?”
Mara nodded. “There was a mynock in my room. Daddy killed it, though.”
“He killed it?” It had to be Mara’s imagination, but how would Daven kill something that wasn’t really there?
“Well,” Mara begun to correct herself, “he scared it away. I bet he would have killed it, though.”
“Of course.” Nyssa hid her amused smirk behind her hand and chuckled to herself mentally. Mara’s love and admiration for Daven bordered on hero worship, but, since Nyssa had never known her own father, she could only assume the behavior was perfectly normal. “Do you feel like a big girl today, hon?”
Mara smiled broadly, her eyes sparkling, and nodded.
“Well, you should,” Nyssa told her authoritatively, “five’s a very big age.” The little girl giggled and brightened even more. “Well, the eggs are almost done -” she picked up a plasti-spoon and handed it to Mara - “why don’t you go hit your father on the head with this and wake him up. Not too hard.”
Mara’s eyes widened in shock, even as she took the spoon. “Isn’t that mean?”
“It’s only mean if he didn’t deserve it.”
“But what did he do bad?”
“It’s not so much that he did something wrong, but that he overslept. Again.” Nyssa informed her. “Maybe, if you hit him, he’ll get up on time from now on.”
“That’s not very nice, Mommy,” Mara commented disapprovingly. She knitted her eyebrows together, ready to pout and refuse to do anything Nyssa suggested.
“Mara,” Nyssa bent down to her daughter’s eye level. “Sometimes, when you want to teach a man to do something, you have to use physical reinforcement. So, go in there, hit him with the spoon, and tell him that Mommy sent you.”
Mara nodded dutifully, but her expression held reluctance. She stalked off towards her parents’ quarters as Nyssa stood back up and checked the progress of breakfast.
Daven’s sleeping habits were an oddity Nyssa hadn’t expected at the beginning of their relationship. As a Jedi, he should have been an early riser - ready to run into the morning’s dawn, do katas, or whatever else Jedi did to keep in such shape. But Daven slept, and slept, and slept - well past late morning if they were staying planet-side. He had never fit the Jedi stereotype anyway, and this was a more annoying reminder than most.
“Ow,” came the howl from their quarters. It was followed by a series of uncontrolled, girlish giggles. Nyssa smirked as she watched the cook cycle for the eggs finishing.
Daven entered the galley, still dressed in his wrinkled sleepclothes. Mara was slung, butt-first over his shoulder. She was still laughing, and her small feet were kicking wildly. Dave was grinning as well, but, when he saw Nyssa, his barrow furrowed.
“Youngling says the spoon was your idea,” he said. “Care to explain?”
“No, not really.” Her smile was haughty as Daven placed Mara back into her chair. He then grabbed Nyssa and held her close to him, wrapping his arm tightly around her waist.
“I’ll have my revenge for that, beautiful,” he growled quietly into her ear. She bristled at his touch and words, and felt her face grow hot.
“I hope so,” she admitted a second before the food synthesizer beeped. “I hit you with kitchenware more often, that being the case.” She pulled away from him and turned to the eggs. Piling the warm breakfast on to a plate, she shoved it at Daven and placed another in front of Mara.
“Oh, hey, eggs. Great,” Daven said, pleasantly surprised, yet then his voice turned serious. “But do you think that teaching our daughter to hit is a good practice? I mean, in general?”
This could lead to a fight, she knew, and now wasn’t the time - not on Mara’s lifeday. She pressed her lips together and sat down next to their daughter, who was currently eating, oblivious to the sudden tension. Daven joined her.
“I think it’s better for her to hit than be hit, don’t you?”
Daven sighed at that statement and ran his hand through his hair, grimacing as he touched a small bump.
“Then tell me, Nyssa,” he said, his tone begging. “Do you want me to teach her the saber or not? She’s getting older and soon it’ll be much harder to start training.”
The debate was a familiar one - one they had been having since Mara’s birth. She was strong enough to be a Jedi, but Nyssa and Daven were left with the question of should she. If she stayed ignorant of the Force, then the Emperor and his cronies would have difficultly finding her, but there was also the chance she would be without defense if she were discovered. It was truly a double-edged sword.
But the blade had already been turned when Daven began to teach her using the Force. At first Nyssa had been angry - she felt betrayed that Daven had taken to teaching Mara the Jedi ways without consulting her - but now she knew that Daven had done it unconsciously.
What else would Mara pick up from her father without either of them realizing it? The Force flowed through them both and connected them - much more than Nyssa could fathom - and, if they didn’t plan Mara’s learning concisely, it could backfire on them and, more importantly, her with brutal results.
“I know you don’t think you’re a good teacher, Daven,” she began gently. “But I’ve seen what you two do. You make her so excited about learning everything. I think you can do this, too, even if you’re unsure.” She watched his expression - one of contemplation - and also noticed Mara’s look of curiosity out of the corner of her eye.
“You want me to train her, then?”
“I want you to do what you think is best. What the Force tells you to do. It hasn’t let us down before, has it?” She reached cross the table and brushed the tips of his fingers with her own. He responded, locking his hand within hers.
“I think she was born to be a Jedi, Nyssa,” he admitted after a moment of silence. “Whether or not I’m the best Master is another question.”
“You’ll be a good teacher, Daven, I know it.” Daven nodded and let out a deep breath. In the distance, the hyperspace alarm beeped, announcing that the ship would soon pull out into real space near Alderaan. “I go get that.”
“You want me to help?” Daven asked, preparing to rise and follow her to the cockpit.
“No, no,” she said as she left, “stay here. Most likely, Alderaan control will put us in a holding pattern for a while.”
“Daddy? Can I have your eggs?” She heard the question echoing through the halls as she headed up to the cockpit.
“Not a chance. I’ll make you some more, though.” Came the response.
Those two and their damn eggs.
****
Fresh air. Now that had become a rarity of late. Not that he really minded spending weeks aboard the Gray Star and breathing in the dull, recycled oxygen all that much, but many of the planets they visited were polluted cyst-pools that he inwardly cringed about letting his daughter set foot upon.
Coruscant hadn’t been the greatest place to grow up either, Daven mused, but he and Nyssa had survived the air, at least.
Alderaan was something else, though, something else entirely. It was absolutely perfect.
They were directed to land the ship on the rim of the Zone, near a small settlement of stone and wooden buildings. They had been unspecific of their needs to the flight director, asking only of a tourist spot on the Zone. The woman had been helpful and kind, bringing up an onscreen list of possible towns that hosted guests and flew thrantas into the Zone. They had chosen this place - Charila Zonedistrict - randomly; it wasn’t the biggest nor the smallest, but had thranta tours.
It was little more than a village, snuggled in a narrow valley of grassy hills. The Zone stretched beyond its boarders, just over one of the sloops. Ship docks, which were surprising all but full, were located across the town and opposite the Zone - kept at distance as if the ion-burning engines were somehow unclean.
“It smells funny,” Mara noted, possibly picking up on her father’s thoughts.
“It’s the flowers, baby,” Nyssa told her. She was beautiful, his wife, as she always was, really, but today she was wearing a simple, tan colored dress - roughly woven and common on a thousand different worlds - and had placed her hair in a loose braid. Mara had her own hair in double braids, which was extraordinarily pretty, but hardly worth the screaming match that resulted from Nyssa catching one too many difficult tangles.
Daven’s eyes narrowed against the sun’s rays as he examined their new surroundings from the ship’s ramp. Blue, wide sky with small wisps of clouds. Rows of people, clothed in all sorts of garments, heading towards Charila. It was going to be crowded.
“Do you think we’ll find a guide?” Nyssa asked, noticing the amount of tourists.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how this works, really,” he admitted. “Let’s just go into town. See the situation for ourselves.”
People were packed against people, and the going was slow. Nyssa had picked Mara up and held her above her hip. She grasped onto Daven with her free hand.
“Mommy,” Mara whispered after they were somewhere in the middle of the town, heading indirectly towards the Zone, “I have to go to the ’fresher.”
Nyssa sighed, but stopped all the same, and yanked on Daven’s hand.
“’Fresher time, kitten,” she told him. He nodded, pressing his lips together as he searched the quaint stone façades for any universal symbols of male and female. They walked unsurely a few more meters between the crowds before spotting a very familiar set of signs and a heading written in Basic.
“They may look like primitives, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t a very well placed ’fresher,” Nyssa said admiringly. “Okay, we’ll be back.” She headed towards the busy, two-door building.
“Wait,” Daven told her quickly, “while you’re doing that, I’ll see if I can get some information, tickets, or whatever we need here.”
“Sounds good,” she agreed. Splitting up these days seemed to be the only way the two of them managed to accomplish any task when Mara was involved.
Daven nodded and turned away, staring straight ahead at the overlaying hills. He couldn’t blame the other travelers for wanting to come here, even if they were proving to be a bit of a nuisance for him at the moment. He could barely see anything over their multi-colored and shaped heads.
He moved a few steps forward, into the throng again, only to come out into a space rather free of people. He stood a minute and tried to find his bearings.
Suddenly, to his surprise, lithe arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him tight. He panicked for an instant and his heart raced - he knew it wasn’t Nyssa and there was, frankly, no one else alive that would know him well enough to hug him. He jumped away from the grip and whirled to face the one who had touched him.
It was a woman, perhaps the same age as he. She was short, but athletic, and her small frame was covered with a loose fitting, brown tunic and beige trousers. Her skin was tan and her hair long and chestnut, wrapped in several loops behind her head. Her black eyes were, at first, full of shock but were slowly beginning to hold look of utter embarrassment.
“Forgive me, I thought you were a friend of mine,” she said by way of apology. “You look so much like him.” Her accent and appearance were pure Alderaanian.
Daven smiled reassuringly. “No harm done.”
“You are not from here?” she asked, her eyes narrowing, observing his every movement. “You are a traveler, coming to pay homage to our lands?”
“Yes,” Daven admitted.
“I am Sisa,” she told him. “And you are from … I can guess everybody based on their voice alone, you see … you are from Coruscant, capital of the galaxy. Am I right?” She stared at him anxiously, hoping her guess would be correct.
“I’m from a lot of places,” Daven said wearily, unsure if he should so easily give her such information. Her face fell, assuming, probably, that her guess was incorrect and he was sparing her feelings.
Maybe it was his years spent with Nyssa and Mara, but it was getting harder and harder for him to deny a female anything. He sighed.
“I grew up on Coruscant, though.”
Sisa beamed and bobbed on the heels of her feet.
“Excellent. And your name?”
“Farin,” he lied. “Perhaps you can help me. It’s my daughter’s lifeday today and my wife and I were hoping to take a thranta tour …” He wondered if the emphasis on the word “wife” was really necessary, but, in his experience, it never hurt.
“How fortunate for both of us, then!” Sisa said, excited, apparently not at all aware of the significance of “wife.” “I am a thranta rider, and I can give you a tour of the Zone. I was not counting on any business today, since there will be a show later.”
“Is that what the all crowds are here for?”
Sisa nodded. “Should be great fun, but I’ve seen it all before. A much more perfect day it is to be out in the open air. You’ve made the right choice by opting for a tour.”
Daven nodded cautiously, but he felt no ill will radiating from this Sisa. She seemed genuinely pleased at his presence and was clearly hoping to earn a day’s pay honestly.
“We’ll take the tour, then.”
She smiled.
***
“Okay, find a glob of red,” Nyssa told herself as she scanned the crowd. Alderaanians were known for their usually dark features - brown hair and eyes - making a person like Daven stick out. But, to her dismay, people wandering through this town were an odd combination of blonds, brunettes, and, yes, redheads. She had gone up to a few men already only to find that none of them were her Daven.
So she and Mara waded through the human masses. Mara had been content to sit in her arms for while, but, after a few minutes, she began to wiggle uncontrollably and Nyssa thought it best to let the girl walk with her, hand in hand.
The crowds, if anything, seemed to be growing larger. Suffocatingly so - Nyssa was never one to enjoy being surrounded by people on all sides, she much rather preferred the solitude of her ship.
She wheeled back, trying to recover from an elbow jabbed against her shoulder. Gods, if only Alderaan allowed me to bring my blaster planetside, she thought, this would be so much easier.
There was another bump, this time against her hip, and she hopped back from it smoothly. But, when she regained her footing, there was something missing.
Mara was no longer holding her hand.
A crushing, unbearable panic filled her, and she was almost shaking. She looked down and around, searching for anything that even remotely resembled her daughter. Nothing.
Gods, oh, Gods. Force! Tears stung at her eyes until her vision began to blur.
“Mara!” she cried out as she forced her way through the crowd, shoving people away from her as she went. They seemed to realize what was happening, though, and moved out of her away, even if they could do nothing to help. “Mara!”
***
Aiya was an old woman, so it would seem. How many years she had seen the people come to her little town for the festival? So many that she could scarcely remember that she herself, as a young woman, had often flown in the show, on the back of prizing-winning thranta. What fun that had been.
Now, though, she was quite content to see her son do the same, while she sold small, handmade trinkets to the guests that came to Charila. Her weaving was of quaintly, and she made good credits.
She watched, bored, as all the people moved passed her stall. Some had paused momentarily to look at her stock, but there hadn’t been a sell all morning. Yet there was blessing in patience, or so she often told her son.
A doll, she noticed, had been kicked up the curb towards her. It lay on the ground, dirty, worn, and obviously much loved by some child. Aiya stared at it, wondering whether a certain little girl was crying for it right now.
To her surprise, a redheaded child appeared, popping out of the throng. She ran to the abandoned doll and scooped it up with a focused energy that only one her age could produce. But, when her task had been completed - clearly the only thing on her mind at the time - her eyes widened, and she stared into the large crowd of empty faces.
The poor thing looked …
“Sweetie,” Aiya called out before the little girl was swept up into the moving horde once more. She vacated her booth and reached out a hand to the scared girl.
The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment as she looked deeply into Aiya’s eyes. A strange sensation passed through the old woman - a shuddering passing down into her bones - and then the girl came forward.
“Are you lost?” Aiya asked as they moved back toward the calm of the booth. The girl looked around, as a last attempt at finding her family, and then nodded. Her face was slowly becoming red, and Aiya knew that there would soon be tears. “Okay,” she tried to soothe. “It will be okay. Just come sit with me, your mom will see you.”
There was a department of lost children specifically designed for tourists, but it was located on the far side of the city. Aiya could take the girl down there, she imagined, if she locked up her stall. Moving in the crowd, however, would take some time, though, and it seemed more likely that the mother would still be on this side of the town. Not to mention that she probably wouldn’t immediately know to go to the department.
It would be best to wait and see if the mother found her way here.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked, sitting back down on the stall’s bench and feeling her tired muscles sigh in relief. The girl bit her lip and glanced down at her doll.
“Mara,” she said softly.
“All right, Mara,” Aiya patted her shoulder. There were no tears yet, apparently - this little Mara was a brave child. Aiya could only hope, though, that some cruel parent hadn’t abandoned her. She had heard of people doing that in busy crowds.
The girl looked not so much like a main stream Alderaanian from other parts of the planet, but her resemblance was somewhat like a Thranta-rider native to a place like this village. Aiya didn’t know her, however, and she certainly knew every child here. That left only an offworld family; Aiya had seen such coloring in visitors before. Perhaps the mother’s features would also be so easy to spot.
The crowd slowly waned and thickened a few times as they watched, and the minutes passed. Mara’s face stayed focused on the street, looking for one familiar face.
“So, do you like dolls?” Aiya asked. She knew it would do the child no good to stand there and fret.
Mara glanced up at her and nodded, but not without first pulling her own toy closer to her chest.
“Ah, good.” The old woman smiled. “I make dolls to give to good little girls like you. Would you like to see one?” Children’s eyes always lit up at the mention of new toys, no matter how difficult a situation they faced, and Mara was no exception.
Aiya reached under her main table and dug around in the half full storage crate. She had decided to display her hand-blown glass thranta statuettes and kirngrass-braided blankets rather than the dolls today, but now she was beginning to wonder if that had been the best decision.
She pulled out a soft, familiar doll and handed it to the girl. It was in the shape of a small thranta - tourists often liked to remember their visit by buying such things - but, unlike the dolls that could be bought in the bigger towns, Aiya always insisted that hers would be made of the softest, natural materials that grew around the village.
Mara examined the stuffed thranta carefully, running a lone finger along its wingspan. Then she took it from Aiya’s hand slowly and held it against her face, feeling the smooth fabric rub along her cheek.
“You like it, yes?” Aiya asked. “You can have it, then,” she added before the girl had a chance to answer. She could have expected to fetch a good deal of credits for it, usually, but this Mara needed some comfort and Aiya was willing to give it. She had never had a daughter herself, only sons, and she often enjoyed watching the young girls of the town play with the dolls she worked so hard to make.
Mara was completely enthralled with the miniature thranta and her mind seemed to be at ease.
“Mara!” A blonde woman emerged from the crowd, rushing forward towards Aiya’s little stand. The girl looked up, shocked at first, but her face quickly turned to an expression of pure joy.
“Mommy!”
The two embraced hurriedly and the mother picked Mara up, wrapping her arms around the girl tightly. If her old eyes did not fail her, Aiya could have sworn that the poor woman was shaking.
Understandable. She would have, too, had it been her child.
After the woman had calmed down, she seemed to become aware of her surroundings and of Aiya gazing at them happily from her bench.
“You are the girl’s mother?” she asked in a pleasant voice.
“Yes,” the woman admitted, still holding her daughter close.
Before the mother could ask her any questions, Aiya decided it was best to give her answers to the most obvious ones freely. “Young Mara found her way to my booth here to retrieve her doll. She was a very good girl and waited for you to come find her.”
“You looked after her?” At Aiya’s nod, the woman seemed as if she was about to cry. Her eyes became watery and her voice was hoarse as she spoke her next words. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would have done … I …” She trailed off and buried her face in Mara’s hair.
“Yes, yes,” Aiya waved her hand casually as if stopping young girls from being lost in the crowd was a daily occurrence for her. “Glad to be of help.”
The mother didn’t respond to her, but turned her attention back to Mara. The girl was clenching to her, her head no more than a mop of red against the woman’s shoulder.
“Why did you do that, Mara?” the mother whispered at moment later. “Why did you let go of my hand?” Aiya watched with interest, most women would have panicked, yelled at their daughters, even. But this one had patience. Admirable.
“Sorry, mommy. Sorry, sorry,” Mara sobbed. Aiya could barely hear the small voice through the fabric.
“I thought I lost you,” the woman breathed, pulling at Aiya’s own heart. “And on your lifeday, too.”
Aiya spoke up again when she realized that soon all three of them would be weeping uncontrollably in the middle of a public street. “Lifeday? How exciting!”
The woman looked back at her, surprised as if she forgot that the old woman was even there. She recovered gracefully and smiled gently.
“You can consider the little thranta a gift then, no?” she asked. How pleasant, indeed. The girl’s day would turn out all right, even after such a stressful morning.
“Thranta?” The mother looked confused until Mara revealed the small toy still clutched in her palm.
“I make many things. Dolls among them,” Ayia told her. There was no hint of pride in her voice nor trepidation, just the statement of a clear fact.
The mother took the toy, studying it as she turned it around in her hands. Her fingers - delicate but decisive - surveyed the fabric with a calculated precision. What she was looking for exactly, Aiya could not tell.
“Surely, you can’t mean to just give this away,” she finally said. “It’s very well made. I’ll pay you for it. How much?”
Aiya noticed out of the corner of her eye little Mara’s slight hopping up and down - clearly excited that she’d keep the thranta in every given circumstance.
“Nonsense, please.” The older woman waved her hand once more, dismissively. And Mara’s mother stared at her with a blank expression. Confused, as if she had never before had a stranger perform a single act of kindness for her.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, sincerely, looking straight into Aiya’s eyes. Her stare was direct, intense - much like her daughter’s had been earlier. Aiya found herself lost in it, like a black hole she couldn’t escape from.
“Daddy!” Mara cried out, breaking their gazes. The girl slipped away from her mother’s grip and ran towards a man.
“Daven?” Aiya heard the woman whisper almost subconsciously as both pairs of eyes turned to watch the redheaded man scoop Mara up into his arms.
Daven. Aiya was never one to believe that one single event, one single word could change someone’s entire life. But that was, of course, until this very moment.
Daven said something to Mara’s mother, but the words were blurred no less obsurely than Aiya’s vision. Her breathing became rough, shallow, uneven.
It just couldn’t be.
The small family seemed oblivious to her distress and continued its greetings. Aiya remembered Daven turning to her and thanking her with a kind voice. She responded, she knew, but she wasn’t sure what specific words she had used.
Her mind was tangled - a thousand thoughts wrapped around one.
And then he was gone. Or leaving, actually. She blinked away her first tears as Mara, with her arms wrapped around her father’s neck and chin propped on his shoulder, waved a farewell to her. She waved back mindlessly.
After a few minutes, the storm in Aiya’s head cleared and she stood to lock up her stall.
She then made her way into the dense crowd, heading towards the arena.
***
She was beautiful - blonde with long legs, small waist, and a perfect face. That fact shouldn’t have surprised Sisa, but she couldn’t help but be unnerved by it. Farin was an attractive man and deserved no less, yet she still wished, almost unconsciously, that someone like him would find a boring girl like her beautiful.
But she could only believe that she wasn’t - Davick had implied as much. She was short, boxy, boyish to an extreme. How often had he said to her, simply in passing, more of a compliment than anything else, “Sisa, you fly like a boy”?
He didn’t mean anything by it, she was sure; he was her best friend, after all. But still, it seemed …
Sisa sighed, trying to clear her head. Her life had nothing to do with Farin and his family. His wife - what was her name? - was kind, if reserved, despite her extraordinary looks. And their little girl was an absolute dream of a child. Sisa fell in love with her the second they met. If only she could be so lucky to have such a daughter.
“Knoggles!” she called out as she led the family into a dusty wooden shack of a building. It was an old but durable place, which served as the town’s navigation station. She leaned on the waist-high counter and waited, staring at the piles of poorly organized datapads and charts. She heard her guests moving slowly around the room, exploring it, but she didn’t turn back to them. “Knoggles!”
Knoggles came out of the back room. He was a heavyset man, retired, who had offered to take the thankless job of Chief Navigation Advisor some years ago. Sisa liked him well enough, but he was prone to sleep and lay about at inopportune times. Like now.
“Sisa?” he questioned, confusion running across his wrinkled features. “Is there something wrong at the festival?” Sisa opened her mouth to speak, but Knoggles noticed the guests before she had the chance to explain. “You’re taking out a tour, then?”
Sisa nodded and smiled over her shoulder at the small group. “Not everyone is interested in drooling at fancy flying. Some would rather have a good trip.”
“Heh,” the old man chucked. “Some would say that you’re still irritated that you didn’t make the show’s cut this year.”
“Pasis is a lair and a cheater; we all know it,” she said in a whisper before she thought to bite her tongue. She looked back to the family, embarrassed by her near outburst, but they hadn’t seemed to notice. “Anyway. It’s a fine day out in the Zone, I’m sure. Standard one-day itinerary. I think following the river up and then taking the pass through the valley back.”
He nodded rhythmically as she spoke, easily agreeing with everything she said. He pulled out a datachip from a nondescript, otherwise unidentifiable pile and handed it to her. She inserted it into her navpad.
The navpad was a convenient tool, no larger than a datapad, but containing a navigational system that would locate its holder anywhere on Alderaan to within a half meter. The elders scoffed at their use, even though the technology had been available when they were infants. It was the principle of the matter, more so, and young riders would challenge each other to ride without them.
The course through the Zone appeared on screen and Sisa had to agree with Knoggles’ choice. “Looks good.”
Knoggles entered her information on his personal pad. “Unless things change soon, you’ll be the only party out there. At least none of the other towns have reported any trips. I guess the festival has kept everyone here. All right, pic time.”
Sisa turned back to Farin and his wife. They looked curious - not at all bored like the other tourists she had hosted in the past - and she began to fear just how much they had overheard.
“We have to take your holopics before we leave.”
“Why?” the wife asked, suspicious.
“Security,” Sisa answered, hoping that it would be adequate.
“So we can tell the other riders what you look like in case your bird goes down in the middle of the Zone,” came Knoggles’ sarcastic reply.
“Knoggles!” she shouted in protest. The man could be rude if he wanted, but trying to scare people? He simply had no boundaries.
“Knowing you, Sisa, it might.” He laughed when her face scrunched.
“How charming,” Farin said dryly before she could rebuke him. “Let’s take some pics, then.” Sisa smiled; she couldn’t help but like this man.