Warm Cider (complete)

[Rhea Kaylen]

The rain streaked the window as it fell dripping from the overhang. The triple-pane assembly had been cranked open an inch or so, and a cool breath of air sighed in through the narrow crack, stirring the filtered atmosphere in the stuffy room.

For a moment, Rhea Kaylen fancied she could smell the rain, the cool, damp pleasantness of water and grass and wet turf carried on a westerly breeze. But the wind only carried the rubbery tang of smog and, faintly, of transport fuel, reminding Rhea of where she was and why she disliked Coruscant rain when she so loved Imran rain.

Still, in the upper levels, rain was still a little bit nice to watch, and, drumming against the alabaster durasteel and shining glass of the Jedi Temple's spires, was still music worth listening to. And there are some nice things to smell in here, too, I daresay, the Imrani woman thought with a flickering smile, prodding again at the crimson liquid in the stewpot bubbling over the warm cooking range in front of her.

From this angle, Rhea could not see the front room or the hall door; the archway of the kitchenette blocked it all. Which was aggravating, since she very much wanted to keep glancing back at the door every few seconds; but, for this same reason, she supposed the layout of the small Temple dorm suite was rather a blessing to her sanity.

He would be here any moment, now. She had received his message a few days ago--his messages always came with little fore-notice, which she'd grown to accept--and left him word he was to come directly to her dorm when he arrived. Rhea was cooking, and had been planning to cook ever since he'd notified her of his impending arrival, so she could not leave the room to meet him at the docking bay, her usual custom.

As "usual" as three previous such meetings could dictate, anyway.

"Usual"-ness did nothing to settle Rhea's butterflies, pesky internal flutters she'd been trying for ages to stifle and kill, to little avail. After all, as always, he was a friend--perhaps, by this point, her dearest--and so she had nothing to be nervous about.

Right, Rhea, you keep telling yourself that.

Frowning, Rhea swirled her stir-stick in the sweet-smelling liquid again and tried to ignore her anxiety. He would be here, soon, and she had cooking to do.

[Corias Bonaventure]

In a singularly rare exception from the bureaucratic laws of fate that, as Corias Bonaventure understood them, seemed to govern life, the universe, and everything, the controllers at Ben Zedi Public Spaceport had not only found an open berth for the Iolanthe but also run out the moorings, started the fuel lines, and navigated through all the paperwork of registering his arrival and maintenance requests in two hours instead of the usual six.

Which meant that Corias found himself on his way out of the squalid, smelly spaceport a great deal earlier than he was expecting. It was early afternoon—even though he’d been up for the last twelve hours directing the ticklish final approach through the core systems to Coruscant, but after a shower with honest-to-goodness hot water in the spaceport’s public washroom, he felt fully refreshed.

Corias considered heading straight to the Temple—after all, Rhea had said to come right on over, but it was still well before the ETA he’d given her, even by his own extemporal standards. So he milled the bazaars in the Temple district for an odd hour, then took a taxi to the Jedi Temple Complex around fifteen-hundred.

It was probably a good thing he’d arrived early; the security at the front had been ramped up significantly. Corias turned over his sidearm, submitted to a battery of automated chem- and bio-scans, and was briefly questioned by an empath—to his chagrin, they made him open the small box he’d been carrying in his coat pocket. Once they were satisfied that he wasn’t a Sith agent or whatever else they were suspecting, they issued him a “visitor” tag and directed him back to the LQ.

He took a quick elevator ride with a teenaged Padawan who didn’t respond to his attempts at friendly small-talk, then quickly navigated the now-familiar route to Rhea’s suite. Corias hit the door chime, then briefly leaned forward to straighten his hair by the blurry reflection in the brass-veneer doorframe.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea jumped despite herself when the doorbell sounded, though her stomach rather seemed to stay where it was, growing leaden with a rush of sudden worry. When she felt she'd reassembled herself to a satisfactory degree, she hastily turned down the knob on the stove temp and hopped about the kitchen, the stir-stick in her teeth, as she tried, swear-mumbling around the stick to undo the knot in the canvas apron she wore.

Finally she shucked it off her and clanked the stirrer down on the counter, then dashed out of the kitchen, hands shaking, and feeling of her hair and straightening her clothes (a small bit dressier than her normal Temple drab, in keeping with the situation), she took two deep breaths and palmed the door control switch, trying, panicked, to recall her well-rehearsed smile and greeting.

[Corias Bonaventure]

The spacer abruptly straightened back up as the door wooshed open, and the motion cast the thin lick of hair he’d been trying to straighten back down over his forehead.

Oh—well, never mind, she was there already.

Corias stood in the doorway, clad in his familiar flight jacket, which was still streaked from the rain outside, and a red oriental-print shirt a few steps classier than his usual T-shirts but brought comfortably into casual status by his faded jeans. He smiled lightly.

“Hope I didn’t come at an inconvenient time,” he said. “Ben Zedi’s on some sort of weird efficiency kick today. How’re you doing, kid?”

[Rhea Kaylen]

Well, Rhea'd forgotten her line, but it was alright, in the end. Corias picked up her cue instead. And how well, too.

She grinned broadly, her anxiety washing away like rainwater at his smile. She remembered now: Corias Bonaventure, spacer extraordinaire and a terrible flirt and an altogether pleasant human being (which Rhea thought, sometimes, to be an oxymoron), from whom she had less to fear than she had to fear from Kale or her master. In fact, come to that, much less to fear than from her master...

But, oh, could the man do weird things to her voice. He looked very nice. He always did, when he came for a visit. She dare not breathe too deeply; Cor also had the unsettling habit of wearing something-or-other that smelled nice.

Still, happiness and Imran made Rhea unable to stop herself hugging him--and she knew he wouldn't mind. She beamed and drew him inside and shut the door and finally replied to his question.

"I'm fine. Busy, but fine. Master gave me the next couple days off, for which I am eternally grateful, and had they come a week later, there may not have been anything left of me for him to excuse. Here, give me that wet jacket...thanks. Make yourself at home, won't you?"

Rhea hung up the flight jacket and unnecessarily smoothed the front of her blouse, again--Rikki had said red was a good color for her, but she had her doubts--and as she turned and passed Corias to return to her activity-warmed kitchen, called to him,

"Tell me about everything. How are you?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Oh, it felt good to take a load off. Even though Iolanthe was home almost ten months out of the year for Corias, there was nothing that could match a little planetside hospitality.

Coruscant was chilly this time of year, especially so high up in the architectural atmosphere. As Rhea turned to hang up Corias’s flight jacket, the spacer felt the bare skin on his arms prickle slightly at a draft from the window—Imrani heat tolerances tended to run a little lower than the average human’s. But he didn’t mind; he usually kept Iolanthe’s internal temperature fairly low to conserve power. A slight chill kept the mind alert.

Besides, something smelled good in the kitchen. He followed his nose and stood by the threshold of the kitchenette, leaning against the arched aperture.

“Oh… nothing terribly out of the ordinary,” Corias replied. “I fulfilled a few contracts on the borders of Hutt space, then scoped out a pocket of dwarf stars near Mimban. I’m doing fine, and ‘Lanthe’s doing fine, aside from a little routine maintenance, and an ion storm that… ah, I can tell you about that later. How’re you?”

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea smiled down at the stovetop as she lazily stirred the thickening liquid. Corias thought he was being boring. She wondered if he knew how fascinating his tales, even the uneventful ones, really were to her--sights she would never see, things she would never know, all unfolded before him. To Corias, a matter of course, a way of life.

"I'm good," she replied, glancing back at him leaning in the doorway. "Master Tondry keeps me busy, and there are a lot of things to study, and I'm not sure I like feeling like I'm back in school again, to be honest, but of course I'd have to be court-martialed and ritually sacrificed if Master heard me say that. So I'll keep trying to memorize dates for really vitally important events in Jedi history, and if I can just learn to remember them five minutes after I memorize them, maybe I'll almost make it."

Rhea snatched up a pair of handtowels from off the counter and flung open the oven door with a wave of heat and spicy scent. Carefully she removed the baking dish inside and--clank!--set it on the stove next to her bubbling pot.

"Other than that, there really isn't anything new to report--it's me you're talking to, remember?--but Kale is doing much better in his studies. The boy's really amazing; I know you don't know him other than what I've told you, but he's a great kid. He drives Master crazy, sometimes. Drives me crazy sometimes." She shrugged. "Aaaand...I've made dinner. You hungry?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Kale, Tondry... Corias had met them briefly during his previous visits. He wasn't sure what to make of them. Jedi were usually tough to figure out.

And so was Rhea, though in different ways. It had surprised him when she'd announced she was joining the Order, especially after living so long in its shadow. The best he could figure was that something had happened to her in the Veil that changed her mind.

That train of thought ended abruptly as the steaming, aromatic whatever-it-was that Rhea had drawn from the oven grabbed his attention. The spacer's stomach gurgled expectantly.

Coughing to cover it, he replied, "Enough to eat a bantha. Now, what's this?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

She laughed. "Calovian wheat stew and black mallows. Thought you might like to eat this the way it was meant to be prepared. And snap peas, and bread and cheese, and hot berries." She pointed to each dish (except for the pot with the still-steaming red stuff in it) as she opened up the narrow cabinet next to the stove and extracted two fluted glasses.

"Here you go. You can take these to the table and have a seat. I'll only be a minute."

Rhea turned in the small space and retrieved the pitcher of laran from the cooler, then handed that to Corias, as well.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias took the laran and the laran-glasses with a dutiful nod--he knew enough to let the cook have free reign over her kitchen. He set the pitcher on the dining room table, then leaned down to inhale the citrus aroma--sour-sweet with a pungency that reminded him of nutmeg. Somehow it all worked together to make a delightful drink that seemed apt for almost any occasion, and certainly for a dinner between friends. Corias had been introduced to laran during his last stay on Imran--he was impressed that Rhea still had a few bottles on hand.

He strolled over to a desk by the window--he could tell it was Rhea's by the tidy spread of knicknacks and keepsakes--a well used journal, a stack of papers under an Astrel's teardrop, the hand-carved figure Taya had made for her on Imran. Corias fingered the small cardboard box still resting in his pocket and glanced around for a likely place to add a little something.

An incongruous flash of sterile plastic caught his eye, and he carefully moved a wicker pen-holder aside. There was a small, white medicine bottle sitting there in the sheltered back corner of the desk--something that must have escaped Rhea's fastidious rounds of straightening up. As much as Corias knew he ought to leave it alone, his curiosity was overpowering--he carefully reached back with a single finger and rotated the bottle so he could see its label.

Sleeping pills?

He heard a rattle from the kitchen and quickly set the pen basket back in place, then turned back, his hand still in his pocket.

[Rhea Kaylen]

"Okay, done!" Rhea called, carefully pulverizing the little piece of agae in the palm of her left hand with the first two fingers of her right hand. When the rock spice was crushed, she sprinkled the powder into the steaming pot of red liquid, turned the heat off under that burner, and covered the pot to let the stuff steep until after dinner. Then she seized upon the casserole dish and took it out to the table.

Corias was standing at the window, watching her bring in the food. He'd set out the glasses nicely, she saw. She set down the dish for a moment so she could shift the towels underneath as hot pads, then settled the casserole and turned back to the kitchen.

As she finished bringing out dinner, she quickly threw ingredients back into the cooler and wiped up the countertop, glancing with dispair at the sinkful of mixing bowls and measuring cups. She hated washing dishes. She really did.

Then everything was ready, and she emerged from the kitchen like a victor returning home from glorious battle, happy that she had managed to make a decent meal for her guest, with a minimum of disaster. So far. She prayed to Astrel the rest of the evening would go as smoothly.

As she came to the table, she realized her hair was still up in the hasty knot she'd whipped together in an attempt to cool down and keep it out of her way. She walked over to close the window--the rain was starting to get inside--as she pulled the elastic out of the knot and shook out her shoulder-length black-and-white hair, tucking it shyly behind her ear.

"Dinner's ready."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was caught a little off his keel, but he moved silently to one side of the table as Rhea set it for dinner, then closed the window. His hand was still in his pocket when she turned back to face him.

"Smells great," the spacer said. "I guess--"

He'd drawn his hand out of his pocket, and the box had conspicuously wiggled its way upward with his hand. He could see Rhea glance down toward it. For an indecisive moment, he shoved it back down, then realized the surprise was spent anyway.

"Maybe if I'd thought things through a little better, I'd have this hidden already," he said with a sheepish smile. "But, as it is, well, happy birthday."

He pulled the box out--about eight centimeters square, four centimeters deep, the tape on the flap obviously torn open. "Or, merry Christmas, or happy Festival of Rebirth; I'm late for all of them, so it doesn't really matter. Do you want to open it now, or wait until after dinner?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's hand flew to her mouth. It wasn't the first present Corias had ever given her, especially since Rhea counted as gifts such things as him showing her the dreaming-stone, and bringing her a fire-lily the last time he'd come to Coruscant. Still, it was the first time he'd ever brought her something in a box, which indicated something he must have spent some money on. It also suggested something just slightly personal. Jewelry came in boxes. Perfume. Hair combs.

And a box was, really, an infuriating puzzle. A flower could not be contained, and came with no mystery attached. It was just a flower, obvious and pretty. But a box gave no clues. Anything that could fit in the palm of her hand could be inside. She didn't know whether she should be shocked or excited or afraid or all three.

So Rhea simply took the proffered gift once she had gotten over her surprise and cradled it, marveling. She glanced up at Corias, whose eyes twinkled. She realized a little belatedly he had asked her a question.

She considered. "Ahm...hm. Well, you're hungry. And dinner's getting cold, so I won't make you wait longer yet to eat. I'll open it afterwards, so I can take all the time I want over it." She smiled, hoping her reply was acceptable, that she had not disappointed him.

[Corias Bonaventure]

"All right, then." Corias gently set the box on a convenient armchair, then turned to gather up the laran-pitcher and Rhea's glass. Once he'd filled it, he filled his own, then raised the glass to Rhea's.

"I know it's sort of late, but... to the new year. May the stars shine brightly on it. And, while we're at it--to another excellent dinner, ma cherie."

Corias had introduced Rhea to the custom of toasting the first time they had dinner together--this was only the third time he'd done it with her, but it felt right. They drank to good fortune, then took their seats at the dinner table.

For the next minute or two, the conversation was chiefly about passing the food; then there was little other than the sound of ringing silverware. Hot, hearty comfort food was ambrosia to a spacer who'd just made planetfall after months on reconstituted mealpacks.

"I'm serious, you've outdone yourself this time," Corias said. "Is that sherry in the sauce?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea took a drink from her glass and tried to keep from smiling like an idiot. The food was alright, fairly average, in her opinion, but, hey, if he wanted to enjoy it so much, who was she to turn his fancy?

She nodded. "A little. It's the closest I could manage to find on Coruscant to what the recipe calls for. All the ingredients, except the spices, I had to improvise. There really isn't that much liquor in it, though--there's an Imrani herb that takes on the flavor of whatever it's mixed into. The sauce is one part sherry, two parts herb.

"You've got a very good sense of taste, though." Rhea rather suspected Corias was actually quite a connoisseur of flavors and aromas; he had seemed on previous occasions as he seemed now--discerning of taste. Not that she was any great cook, but the one flavor he had pinpointed was very faint, and in low proportion to the myriad other flavors incorporated in the food.

Rhea took a small bite off a snap pea. There wasn't much food on her plate. But Rhea Kaylen could out-eat Corias Bonaventure any day, and probably twice over. And she knew he knew it, too. Imrani metabolism, and her metabolism in particular, was faster than a human's by a good deal.

However, Rhea was still a little uneasy--pleasantly uneasy, as she was, after all, in pleasant company--and her stomach felt unsettled enough, and she was just timid enough, not to eat normally in front of him.

Bleh. The peas were boring. And the bread was too airy. And the mushrooms were not sliced thinly enough. Maybe she ought to get his mind on something else, before he noticed...

"You were starting to tell me about an ion storm. What have you been up to? Not dragging 'Lanthe through rough weather, after all that work you had done on her. I feel certain." She suppressed a wicked smile.

[Corias Bonaventure]

She'd caught him just about to swallow--he stopped short and chewed his mouthful of meat and gravy a few moments longer while he organized the story.

Corias swallowed, wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin, and took a quick sip of laran to clear his throat.

"Well... not intentionally. I just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time."

He reached for another slice of bread and began buttering it--he could feel her eyes on him. She wasn't letting him go at that.

"I was scouting a primitive world in system G-816. It was a small planet--barely as big as Imran's largest moon--but it had the magnetic field of a gas giant. Now, I've scouted worlds like that before. Only way to get accurate readings is to keep your instruments shielded through the magnetosphere and make a high-atmospheric pass. I got in, got my readings--no problem. Then I shut down my primary instruments so they don't get fried on the way back out--so I'm running on mechanicals, blind as a bat..."

He took a bite of his bread and chewed it thoughtfully.

"Guess I should've taken a closer look at the solar activity before I went in. A massive wave of solar wind rolled over the planet just as I cleared the upper atmosphere, and the magnetic field spun it into one frell of an ion storm. If I hadn't had my instruments shut down, they probably would've been completely destroyed. As it was, I lost most of my secondary systems; there was enough hardware damage that I couldn't reboot my primaries, and I still hadn't cleared the gravity well."

He was trying not to make it out to be as grim as it really was, but he knew Rhea was spacefarer enough to read between the lines. There were few situations more fearful for a pilot than to be stranded in a low, decaying orbit with his control systems down--blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed, and slowly and silently spiraling down toward fiery oblivion in the upper atmosphere.

"Took me almost eight hours to get my primary scanners and comm. antennae up again. As luck would have, I was able to flag down a Pakled freighter, and they towed me to safety where I could finish making repairs. For a price, of course. But it worked out in the end. Set me back a day or two, but I had enough spare parts to jury everything together again."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea stared hard at a point on the table-top, trying not to clutch her fork too hard and struggling to keep her face composed. She wondered if Corias had any idea how much she worried about him whenever she heard he'd been in obvious danger.

But then, of course, she had been the one to revive the subject, not him. He wouldn't want her making this a huge issue, since, after all, Cor often seemed to think that making it out of a situation alive was reason enough not to belabor the danger he had been in before making it out.

Rhea often wished she could be so pragmatic.

"Luck," she finally managed to choke out in what she hoped was a voice not too strained by concern, "had little to do with it, I think, ad'gan-da."

[Kale]

Please delete.

[Corias Bonaventure]

It didn't take a Force-user to sense the sudden tension in Rhea's composure. That was why Corias had hoped to avoid the topic--not that he resented her concern, but he didn't want her to worry every time he headed out on another survey tour.

Though he was a bit nonplussed by her reply.

"Well... yeah, I guess I'd like to think there's somebody watching out for me," he said with a manufactured laugh.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea took a drink and forced her tight face to relax. She smiled wanly, but genuinely. She raised her eyes to Corias'.

"I've never been a great believer in the gods of my people, especially since the most religious believers today are those superstitious idiots who are in the business of turning my own people against me. But...I have read many of the ancient writings of my planet. Our old gods were not as the Traditionalists make them out to be; Astrel and his court were vitally concerned and deeply involved in the affairs of their creation."

Rhea passed her napkin over her lips, folded it, and slid it into her lap. "Unfortunately, ancient Imrani myth made no mention of the gods' thoughts regarding yr'gani, non-Imrani. But later, once we learned that others lived beyond our atmosphere, the myths were adapted, and the Force became an all-encompassing link between the Imrani gods and all the living creatures of the universe.

"I still don't know if I believe in the gods, but the Force is very real. It's no deity; it's not really watching you in exactly the way everyone thinks of. But...it is a connection. And it--it has a will. Sometimes it feels like luck, sometimes like fate, sometimes like providence. But through the Force you're connected. To me, to your parents, to everyone in the galaxy. So, I guess, in a way, you do have somebody watching out for you. We all are."

Rhea realized then how insipidly she was carrying on, and quickly shut her mouth, then took another drink and cracked a more sardonic grin.

"Besides, you're Imrani, now. You've got a whole team of watchful eyes always checking up on you." Not that I'm going to tell you what they're asking me about you every time they call...

[Corias Bonaventure]

That was more response than Corias had expected--and he wasn't entirely sure what to make of it all. He'd seen enough of the galaxy that he couldn't deny the existence of an arcane, transcendent source of power like the Force, but he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the idea of it watching out for him--or people watching out for him through it--honestly, he wasn't sure how literal Rhea was being.

It wasn't something that needed over-analyzing. Best to appreciate the sentiment for what it was.

Though, from what he'd learned of Imrani culture, to be included--not just welcomed as a visitor, but accepted and integrated--into their family, their perceived society, was a big deal. He felt flattered... and a little self-conscious.

"Well, luck, the Force, watchcarers... I guess whoever it is, they're on the job," he said. "Speaking of which, how is the family, anyway? You hear from your uncle recently?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Corias' sudden bent for telepathy was not reassuring.

Rhea's smile grew a tad fixed. "I have. Now he knows I'm safe in the Temple, and he doesn't have to worry about being all cloak-and-dagger for the sake of the ghetto, he calls me pretty often. He and his wife are, to all reports, a couple of love-happy teenagers, and she is expecting her first child next summer, so I will have a little cousin to meet, next time I go back to Imran."

Rhea tried, rather unsuccessfully, to hide her overwhelming excitement over this. She had only once before ever even held an infant, which was strange for her culture--usually, a new arrival in the village would be fawned over extensively by every female and half the males in the community. But, while there had been no shortage of births while Rhea had been growing up, there had been little enough willingness to let a cursed teenage girl join in the festivities. So she fully planned to be selfish and play mother to her little cousin the entire time she was there. She only hoped she could convince the Council and her master to let her go home for a month or so at the time her aunt was due.

A sudden realization struck her. "Oh, it may interest you to know--Taya is doing very well in school. Near the top of her class. My uncle says she is exceedingly talented."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was glad to leave the subject of his occupational hazards and move on to happier things.

"Good," he replied. "I'm sure her brother would be glad to know she's doing well."

Oops, that was a prime way to sully the mood--reminding both of them of their captivity with the Fyrokkians. Even their escape had been made bittersweet, and bad memories made poor dinner conversation.

So he steered them in a lighter direction--something about the contract he'd just finished and how it'd be enough to finish the latest suite of upgrades he'd planned for Iolanthe--another pair of sensor heads, a new central computer core, an updated tachyon array--he almost sounded like a kid listing what he wanted for Christmas.

It was about that time that he realized Rhea had stopped pushing her fork around her plate, and he was feeling thoroughly stuffed himself.

Turning in his seat, Corias plucked the carboard box from the armchair and set it down in the middle of the table next to the nearly empty casserole dish. "Go ahead and open it. Oh, don't worry about the dishes; I'll help you with those in a minute. I had this wrapped, but, well, the Jedi at the door insisted."

[Rhea Kaylen]

"Oh!"

Rhea put her napkin onto the table and reached out for the little box. She could see where the tape had been torn; whatever it was, the (overly neurotic and paranoid) Security guys had given it a pass.

Her heart beat a bit faster in anticipation. She pulled back the loosened tape and lifted up the lid.

Something glittered beneath.

When Rhea moved aside the gauzy stuff protecting the treasure, she drew her breath in a gasp. Gleaming edges and deep hollows of crystal were folded delicately together in a vaguely spiral form, a piece of cut-glass, or something like it, the size of her palm, resting coolly in its place.

She blinked, and saw what it really was. A rose, perfect, ideal, petals blossomed outward in flawless array, frozen in their statuesqe likeness, carven, or formed, from crystal.

"Oh, Corias..."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was leaning forward over the table, his chin perched on folded hands.

"I picked it up from a trader on the Mid Rim," he said. "He called it a Passion Flower. They grow in the caves of Abydos near the Maw."

He stood from his seat and came around the table behind Rhea to see it again himself. The edges of the crystal rose were transparent, but its heart was foggy white.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea gently--gently--plucked up the crystal bloom from the box and set the empty cardboard shell aside. She cradled the lovely thing in the cupped palms of her hands, rapt as she stared into its milky, slightly shifting depths.

She felt Corias come behind her, lean on the back of her chair, and she turned her head a little, her eyes not leaving the crystal, to ask him breathlessly,

"Why do they call it a Pass--"

Suddenly the white fog inside the rose dissolved at the center, an expanding spot of vivid yellow blossoming in its midst. As Rhea watched, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the color bled through the fog and overtook it, until she was holding a perfect yellow rose of crystal, shot through with minute veins of orange and a deeper gold color.

[Corias Bonaventure]

For a moment, Corias was as mesmerized by the swirl of color as Rhea had been, and he leaned closer over Rhea's shoulder, nearly touching her hair. "Wow, that was fast," he murmured.

Then, as if coming to his senses, he straightened up and took a step backwards from the table.

"I'm not sure whether it's alive--if it is, it doesn't need food or water. But it reacts to touch... well, more specifically, it reacts to its handler's emotional state. It's empathetic."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea blinked down, surprised by the notion the crystal might be alive, and, as she watched, the rose pulsed brighter yellow, the color rippling across the gleaming petals and smoothing out the veins of disparate color.

"Empathetic? It...it reads emotions?"

She finally tore her eyes away from the treasure to look, stunned, up at Corias. She didn't notice the thread of ochre bleed through the yellow along the edge of one petal as she did.

"This is incredible! You...you have to touch it, though, will it work if..." Looking back, she gently set the rose onto the tablecloth. Still it shimmered golden, as beautifully as ever.

"Oh!" Rhea smiled brightly, enthralled. "It's...this is..." She faltered, then stopped, embarrassed at her thoughtlessness. She looked up at Corias again, tempering her smile a little, bashful.

"Thank you, Corias. Thank you so much. It's beautiful."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Such a deep, golden yellow--Corias had owned it for almost two months, and he'd never seen it respond so vividly. He smiled back at Rhea. "I'm glad it makes you happy," he said.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea smiled, but something about what he'd said twinged at her ear.

I'm glad it makes you happy. That was a strange way of responding, it seemed to her. She wasn't a native speaker of Basic, so it was possible she was just unused to hearing such an answer. But she knew that if the roles had been switched, she would have said "I'm glad you like it" or something of the sort.

I'm glad it makes you...

Happy.

That was it. Happy. He'd specifically said she was happy. Not excited or pleased. Not that she liked it. That she was happy. Sure, she'd obviously liked it, been excited, but to say she was happy was...

A snatch of yellow caught Rhea's eye, and her gaze drifted to the rose, still yellow but veined with sharp branches of green, now. The golden petals winked at her brightly...happily.

"Happy," Rhea murmured unconsciously. Then she looked back up to Corias in realization. "Yellow. It says I'm happy."

[Corias Bonaventure]

He felt a little embarrassed--but he nodded.

"Yeah, as far as I can tell. I never really had the chance to study it. I don't know what sort of range it has, or if it's really a reliable indicator."

He gazed down at the rose. What looked like an opaque, uniform yellow at first glance was actually a complex network of clouds and threads of various tinctures. Happy... that seemed to be the easiest color to read.

"It may seem like an odd present... but, for some reason it made me think of you."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea shook her head. "No, it isn't odd. It's..." She spread her hands, at a loss for a good word. It's you Corias. Only you could find such a thing. Only you would think it would make a good present.

"It's perfect."

Rhea wanted to jump up and laugh. That Corias had thought of her at all was gift enough for her. That he had brought her such a marvel...

She stood and turned to pick it back up, then paused as she saw deep orange and rich gold ripples vacillate across the yellow crystal. She blinked, then picked up the rose, holding it with utmost care.

"And you don't know what the other colors mean? Hm...um, let's see." She frowned, then closed her eyes and tried to conjure a powerful thought, something that would stir her own emotions enough to make the rose react.

A flash of smoky reddish fur darted across her mind's eye, and the rustle of black robes in her memory's ear. Her heart beat faster as a pair of strange, pale eyes, almost luminescent and very cold, stared back at her through her mind. Sarojin Kimatra's sneering face filled her with momentary dread, and then Rhea felt her anger, burning hot, rise in her, fiercely overcoming the fear. Hatred.

She opened her eyes to watch the crystal. A black finger of indigo was poking through the yellow heart of the rose like a horrid inkstain, violet seeping out along the edge, sullying the gold. Crimson followed in the black's wake, almost pulsing, and weird. Slowly the rose was overwhelmed by the new colors, red filling the heart of the crystal, the petals edged in black. Like drying blood on a deep, fresh wound.

Rhea shivered. "That's...anger."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias swore he felt the cheer go out of the room as the crystal changed. Whatever Rhea had put before her mind--it obviously troubled both her and the rose greatly.

But was she really troubled--or was she just experimenting, testing the rose's limits?

"Are you... are you all right?" he asked hesitantly.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea had not meant to actually sour her emotions, or dampen Corias' mood. She had no idea she still felt so strongly, that that horrible creature could still have so powerful an effect on her. She shivered again, remembering the icy touch of his mind on hers.

It had been terrible. A nightmare. But she had awakened. She refused to allow it to affect her anymore.

Quickly she blinked and shook her head, giving Corias a wan smile. As she brushed by him, she gently touched his hand.

I'm alright.

She sighed, taking joy in the rose again, watching the red mellow and fade with strikes of green and grey and yellow. She crossed the room and set it on her writing desk, where she could see it.

"This is an amazing thing," she murmured, turning back. She leaned against the desk and wrapped her arms around herself. "And...it can read anyone's emotions. Yours?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias had to hold back a sigh of relief as the crystal--and Rhea--calmed down once more.

"Well, it's read mine before," he said. "This is the first I've had the chance to try it out with anyone else."

Crossing to the desk, he carefully took the rose in hand. The color faded to gray, then slowly surged back again--a brooding shade of green, not nearly as full as Rhea's happy yellow had been.

"I don't know what green is," he confessed. "Maybe it's what you feel when you're not really feeling much of anything. Or maybe I'm overanalyzing."

He laughed. But there was no shift in the rose's color.

"It didn't exactly come with a user's manual. But I think that purple is uncertainty. Or--maybe fear. Blue is..."

A light mist of blue, flecked with purple, had just floated outward from the crystal's center. Corias set the crystal back down, and it became gray again.

"I guess I haven't really figured the thing out."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea grinned. Corias did seem to have the...not bad, but somewhat unsettling habit of actively using and experimenting with objects he had little or no idea how to use. It should have bothered her, probably, but she couldn't help but find it amusing.

Suddenly she recalled the mess of her table, behind her, and, startled into motivation, she turned and began stacking up dishes and collecting trash.

"Let me just take these into the kitchen. I won't be a moment."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Oh, let me help you with that!" Corias hurried over to the table, but she already had the casserole, the dinner plates, and the silverware--the laran and glasses were still out, and he decided to leave them there.

Ah, well. He resigned himself to idly exploring the room while Rhea squared things away in the kitchenette. He steered clear of the desk, hoping he wouldn't set off the crystal again with a few stray, worrisome thoughts.

There was something... something bothering Rhea. As much as he hated to admit it, he had been curious about what he'd see if she touched the Passion Flower. The yellow glow had been encouraging, but that angry red... whatever it was... unsettled him.

He was probably overreacting... overanalyzing. He didn't want Rhea to think he was a busybody.

When Rhea came back into the room, she found him sitting in the armchair, distantly watching the air traffic through the rain out the window.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's brow knitted at the look she saw on Corias' face as he gazed out the window. She had seen it once or twice before. His mind was probably a thousand light-years away, on some distant world. His eyes were troubled.

She had not meant to upset him; she really hadn't. She had only wanted to try out the crystal. Her reaction had been an unhappy accident. Surely he knew that. Surely he wasn't worried, not about her. Why would he be? What were her troubles to him? Problems he did not need.

No, it must have been something else. Quietly Rhea picked up the two fluted glasses on the table and moved to stand beside Corias' chair, extending his glass to him as a sort of peace offering.

"You're thinking, again," she murmured around the rim of her glass, her eyes glinting. "Maybe you're already on your next flight out of here. Where will you be heading, do you know?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

It took a moment to register Rhea's presence--Corias lifted his eyes to the glass of laran and then to her face.

"Hmm? Oh."

He took the glass with a nod, then shifted in his seat.

"Don't know yet, actually," he replied. "I've got a little extra maintenance to do on 'Lanthe after that ion storm. I may be onshore a little longer than usual this time around."

He took a sip and waited for Rhea to make herself comfortable in the chair on the other side of the coffee table. Then he decided to go for the plunge.

"Rhea, you mind if I ask you something? Why, uh... why exactly did you decide to join the Jedi Order?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

She was shocked by the question.

"Oh, um...well." She took a second to reconnoitre. "I--"

Oh, Astrel. Where to start.

"Many reasons. Mostly...I needed a place to go, when I came back from Imran. I couldn't go back to the Plaza."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Well, yeah, but..."

Hoo boy... where to start? He didn't want to sound like he was questioning her judgment--even if, possibly, he really was.

"There had to be more to it than that. I mean, it's a big galaxy."

He laughed self-consciously. "I guess I'm just a little confused. You know, after you lived so long within walking distance of the Temple, that you finally decided to join. I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad decision. I'm just a little... you know... curious."

[Rhea Kaylen]

This boy should have been born Imrani.

"No, you're right, it doesn't make sense, I know. It's really hard to explain, so...I guess I'll just tell you, and some of it you'll probably not understand. But...

"See, after my parents died, I grew up on Imran suffering the full effects of my family 'curse.' There was just a constant whispering behind my back, over my head. Always about things that just further ostracized me. So I left, and I came back here. I had only ever known one place on Coruscant--known well, anyway--and the thought of joining the Temple...it just scared me. My parents died for the Temple. I wasn't ready to approach the unapproachable.

"I went back, instead, to the place I knew--the Plaza. I thought, and maybe I was nuts, I thought that I could do more good there, in such a horrible place, than I could do holed up in some self-righteous Temple, you know?"

Rhea took a drink to steady her hand and voice, then continued.

"I tried for years. Sometimes I think it worked. I just helped who I could, tried to keep the youngest ghetto kids from getting caught up in the wrong lifestyles, and tried to keep the oldest and sickest from starving and overdosing. Kale--he was my best 'project.' It sounds horrible to say that, but that's what those kids were. They were my kids. I'll never have children, so I took it on myself to mother them. They were projects. They kept me going.

"And then there weren't any more. Kale had entered the Temple, and there wasn't really anything more I could do for him. And...Gucchi." She couldn't talk about it, her voice stuck in her throat. But she forced the words out. "He threatened me for being associated with Kale, with the Jedi. I couldn't stay. That's why I hired you to take me home.

"Then...I was home. I don't know, I guess I'd hoped everything would be different. That I would be happy there. But it was exactly the same as it had been six years before. They all still wanted me to just disappear. I was a...reminder to them of what they didn't want to see. It wasn't home.

"I didn't have a home. I couldn't stay there, I couldn't come back to the Plaza. I had no more children to help, no one to care for, nowhere to go." Rhea lowered her eyes, unable to look at Corias as she came to the crux of it all. "I needed a purpose in life as much as I needed a roof and four walls. So I joined the Order. It was a job, it was a place to stay, and...in the end, it was a reason to live."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias kept forgetting how forthright Rhea could be. It wasn't something he'd come to expect when dealing with females of any species. If she'd been waffling or backpedaling, he thought he might have known how to respond, but he wasn't sure he knew how to take a straight answer.

A reason to live... That disconcerted him a little.

The rose behind him puffed an odd mix of colors, then settled back into an uneasy shade of gray.

"But you are..." Oh, frell, this sounded odd... "...happy here? What I mean is..."

He closed his eyes, backtracked, and started over. "All right, I'm going to lay it out, and if I'm out of line, you can say so. But it's like this. After something like what happened in the Veil... your perspective tends to change on a lot of things. Sometimes it's for the better. Sometimes it's not. And it can be tough to tell the difference. I mean, I had to take a good, long look at myself. I had to make sure I was still doing what I really wanted to be doing. That's why I stayed on Imran as long as I did. And after thinking about it, I decided that exploring the stars, for me, is worth the risk, and I'd be a lot sorrier if I gave it up so early."

He wasn't sure if he'd left Rhea behind in that stream of consciousness, but the only way to go from there was forward.

"Do you get what I'm saying? I'm not saying joining the Order is bad. If it makes you happy, great, and I'm happy for you. But I'd hate to see you give up something else you really wanted to do just because you feel an obligation to do something else."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea cocked her head, at the moment too curious about the turn the conversation had taken to remember to play politics with her words. She looked him square in the eyes.

"I understand exactly what you're saying; but...what else is there for me?" She paused a moment, then blurted out, "Sometimes a person can't do things they want to do because they're obligated to do otherwise. I have always had certain duties that were mine to fulfill. It would be more wrong of me to abandon them than it is to take the alternative--whatever the alternative may be. Sometimes...that alternative, that thing you give up...sometimes that's your dream."

These words were barely cognizant on Rhea's part; they were tearing themselves from some deep and visceral place in her soul that Corias' words had unlocked. She did not even realize what she had said until she'd said it.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias pursed his lips, sensing he was treading on hallowed ground.

"Are you saying you are giving up your dream?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea suddenly realized she'd said too much. She closed her mouth and looked at Corias, finally turning her eyes away from his suddenly brutal stare.

"It is no matter."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Abashed, Corias turned away. The rose took on a furious, surging mix of violet and crimson.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea had been trying to find a convenient place to rest her displaced eyes, and had chosen the Passion Flower.

Just in time to see it explode in color--restless purple and red, swirled like a hurricane inside the crystal's heart. She gasped a little and turned back to Corias, desperate to repair the damage she'd inflicted with her careless words.

"Corias...I will be honest with you, and you must believe me. I am...content here with the Jedi. As I see things, this is the only path left to me to take where I may be of some use to someone. It has been long since I was really happy, and I have no expectations of ever really being fulfilled here. But it is the most fulfilling thing I can do. Do you understand? I chose to join the Order so that I would have a duty to fulfill. And I must be content with that." She spread her hands, feeling pain balling up in her throat and wishing beyond all wishing that she could just...tell him. But she couldn't. He didn't want to hear about her problems, and she was not about to further burden him with them. He had burdens enough of his own. And she had said too much already.

Her eyes flickered to the Passion Flower, still oscillating violet and red. She buried her face in her hands, fighting the sting of tears.

"Please...please don't be angry with me..."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Oh, krasst--what had he said?

He couldn't see the Passion Flower behind him, and he didn't realize where Rhea's eyes were drifting--didn't know that she was misinterpreting his self-directed anger as anger directed at her. All he could see was her growing more and more distressed.

"Rhea, I'm not angry," he said, almost pleading. "Listen, if you say you're content, I believe you."

Setting his laran down on the coffeetable, he crossed over to her side, and gently laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Rhea... I never meant to upset you. I'm sorry."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea had the almost suffocating urge to throw her arms around him and hug him and never let go. She could not remember the last hug she'd received.

But she didn't dare. Instead she quickly drew a ragged breath, swallowed her sudden bout of tears, and drew her hands away to look up at Corias.

"You...you haven't done anything to apologize for, ad'gan-da. Forgive my carelessness."

Rhea was terribly sorry she'd angered him. She remembered Corias liked things to be normal, and she tried very hard to summon a strained smile, just to return the status quo, the most important thing.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was at an utter loss--Rhea was trying to smooth things over, as if she were afraid she'd offended him or something--even after he'd told her she hadn't.

The best he could figure was that he'd messed up... somehow... and Rhea was too polite, or worse, too hurt, to say how. The only thing he could think to do was to try his darnedest to make it up to her.

So, even though he wasn't buying that smile for a moment, he guessed he'd better let it pass.

"There's nothing to forgive," he replied gently. "Are you going to be all right? Can I get you anything? Some... Swedish meatballs?"

It was a lame attempt at a joke--anything to break the tension.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea burst out laughing. That combined with the remnants of her almost-tears made her hiccup twice, but she was too amused to care.

She looked back up at Corias perched on the arm of her chair and, grateful that he seemed to have forgiven her (for, despite his words, Rhea knew she had done or said something that had angered him), she put up her hand to touch his, warm on her shoulder.

"Oh!" she said, suddenly remembering something. "I have something for you to taste."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Well, that seemed to help--though, by Corias's reckoning, he still owed her a dinner and a movie, at least. He gave Rhea's shoulders a slight, reassuring squeeze.

"Oh? What's that?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea grinned widely, plucked up one of his hands, and pulled him gently after her into the kitchen.

She reached for the lid to her simmering pot and beckoned Corias close.

"Here, smell this," she said, drawing off the lid and waving away a bit of unruly steam. Ah, it had steeped nicely, and its color was now rich and deep.

[Corias Bonaventure]

He smelled it before she opened the lid--afterward, the aroma swept through his sinuses, a powerful and captivating combination of fruit and spice that set his senses tingling and his mouth watering.

"Ooh--now, what's this?" he asked with an eager grin.

[Rhea Kaylen]

His enthusiasm was catching, and Rhea giggled. She took up her stir-stick again and gave the liquid a final couple of turns before tapping it against the side of the pot and opening the kitchen drawer closest to the stove.

"This is called binamae. Well, it would be if we were on Imran. Here I think it's called...cidron, or...cider. Something like that. It just hot fruit punch and spices. We drink it on Imran after the harvest, at the beginning of winter." Rhea glanced out the widow at the slate sky and relentless drizzle, and smiled lightly. "Just this time of year."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Cider he'd heard of, but only in an alcoholic form. Hot cider had never been a part of the Bonaventure tradition--grapes had been far more readily available in Cyprien's climate than apples.

But Corias certainly didn't mind trying new things.

"Binamae," he repeated. "Smells as good as it sounds. Especially on a day like this. Is it ready?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

"It is." Rhea extracted a ladle from the drawer and stood on tiptoe to take two mugs from a shelf above her head.

She dipped the crimson liquid steaming into each glass and seized a last lump of agae from the bowl at her elbow. She crushed the crumbly spice in her palm and sprinkled a bit more of the aromatic flavor over the top of each glass. Dusting off her hand, she raised her fingertips up to Corias.

"Here, this is agae. Smell."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Ah, so that's what reminded him of cinnamon.

"Delicious. Mind if I...?" Corias lifted his mug, waited for a nod of approval, then brought it to his lips, pausing to inhale the full force of the hearty aroma. Then he carefully tilted the cup.

"Oh--hot!"

[Rhea Kaylen]

"Careful!" Rhea admonished as he winced. She lifted her own mug and blew across the top, slowly lowering her lip over the rim to taste it.

Ouch, it was hot. She carefully sipped, testing the flavors. Pretty good, all considered. Of course, the flavor was a little skewed simply because she wasn't using Imrani ingredients, for the most part, but on the whole it was still nice and spicy and sweet and generally comforting.

"Mmm...good memories," she mused distantly. Then she blinked and smiled at her companion, back in the present. "Have you ever had something like this before, Cor?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Memories... ironic, because there was something tickling at the corner of his mind, and he couldn't quite bring it into focus.

"No, I..."

Memories! Oh, that was it!

"Well, actually... not quite like this, but similar. A spiced fruit juice heated over a fire. The Awatii drank it to stay awake and keep warm at night while they told stories."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea frowned. Awatii? Who were they? She couldn't remember him ever mentioning them before...but she was afraid to ask, considering her legendary inability to recall information. He might have already told her, and she had simply forgotten. Still, she had known Corias about a year, now, and she had often made it a point to commit her encounters with him to very permanent memory, since he was a good friend and she felt she owed him at least that much attention. And she couldn't remember him ever mentioning anyone by the name of Awatii, before.

So she went out on a limb. "Awatii?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias looked at her blankly--for a moment, he'd been back in the meeting-tent high in the trees, listening to an elder's sonorous voice, shivering in the breeze of an unaccountably cool tropic night.

"Oh... oh, I'm sorry. I forgot I hadn't mentioned them before."

Wow, where to begin... oh, that's right.

"The Awatii are the people who gave me the stone... the memory stone. I was with them for some time... almost five years ago."

A strange, dreamy look passed over his eyes.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's eyebrows flew upward. Oh! For all that she had known of the memory stone for months, she had never thought to inquire after the people from whom Corias had gotten it, and he had never really said that much about them. Which, now that she thought about it, was...actually kind of odd, for him. He hadn't even mentioned their name.

Rhea watched the past play out in Corias' distant eyes, and smiled. She could feel a story coming.

Lacing her fingers together around her warm cider mug, she moved past Corias to lead him back into the living room, looking back over her shoulder to encourage him,

"That's right, you never did say anything about the people who gave the stone to you."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"No, I didn't..."

Corias took another sip from his mug--ow, still hot. That seemed to knock him back down to Coruscant. He followed Rhea back into the living room, blowing lightly on the cider. Then he took his seat by the coffee table, settled himself, and breathed deeply.

He took a more measured sip to wet his throat as he gathered his thoughts.

"It was a mesozoic world," he said. "By the wisdom of the NR Astronomical Survey, it had been given the glorious designation of DY-116. But the Awatii called it Azul'may. I had given it a brief scan... fertile planet, massive life-form readings, but nothing spectacular. Would have left it alone, but I had just run into a meteor shower in-system, and I needed to set down and make repairs. I was so anxious to make planetfall that I didn't keep an eye on the weather--came down in the path of an electrical storm. That was my first mistake. The landing turned out to be almost as bad as the shower. By the time I got a look at my ship, I knew I'd be stuck there for at least a week, so I decided to do some exploring."

He gave a wan smile. "That was my second mistake."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea sat and curled herself up into the chair, clutching her mug as she swirled the cider with a teaspoon to cool it.

She nodded, wide-eyed, at Corias, to encourage him, blowing at the steam from her cup. She said nothing, unwilling to break his concentration or jar the memory from his eyes, lest he lose it. Rhea was puzzled at his tone of voice, and puzzled at his choice of words. Corias almost never said that he had blatantly made "mistakes;" it wasn't in his character to think even of mishaps and disasters as "mistakes."

Rhea was afraid that this story would not be a happy one.

[Corias Bonaventure]

"I had settled down on a grassy plateau surrounded by dense rain forest, and I wanted to have a look at it--never intended to go very far, mind you. I just thought that, as long as I was there, I might as well take some pictures of the indigenous flora and fauna."

Rhea gave him that look--the same sort of look she'd given him when he'd suggested they start surveying the Veil as long as they were stranded inside it.

Corias shrugged helplessly. "Well, I was running an engine diagnostic, and I had to pass the time somehow. But I wasn't a hundred yards into the forest when I heard something behind me."

---

It wasn't loud--in fact, he could barely hear it above the omnipresent insect drone and antiphonal birdsong that echoed through the treetops. But it was close--close enough that it wasn't diffused by the lush, green boughs that soared high above his head like cathedral arches. And it was getting closer. And louder.

It sounded like a small rancor charging through the brush--a heavy, loping, bipedal stride and deep, guttural breath. Corias couldn't see it. All he knew was that he didn't want to be in its way.

Glancing about frantically, he spotted a stunted tree just off his path enraveled in thick, woody vines. He leapt for it and began climbing the twisted stems as fast as he thought he could safely manage--ten, fifteen feet up. An indeterminate blur passed by his peripheral vision and disappeared into a nearby shroud of foliage. It was gone when Corias snapped his head back to see it, but there was something else hard on its heels.

Down on the forest floor, a terrifying beast skidded to a halt beneath Corias's tree. It looked like a crocodile--a massive head that was almost all jaws, a broad, armored back, a thick, tapered tail--but it was mounted on a single pair of muscular theropod legs that ended in three-toed feet with large, hooked claws. He thought it had to have been nine feet long from nose to tail. The predator paced at the foot of the tree, still scenting for its original quarry.

Corias didn't dare move, or even breathe--as far as he knew, the beast wasn't aware of him. It had been chasing some unfortunate forest animal; with luck, it would find its prey's scent and move on.

And then he saw, in the boughs of the tree across the path, what looked like a slender humanoid clutching the branches, her large, dark eyes rapidly scanning the foliage above her for a hiding place.

Corias watched her, his heart in his throat--she was reaching for a higher branch when the whole tree shook violently.

The beast had seen her, and it was throwing its massive bulk against the trunk of the tree, trying to shake her out of it. She fell short of the branch and nearly toppled from her perch.

Corias barely knew what he was doing--whether he was trying to be heroic or whether he was simply afraid the beast would come after hm next. He planted his feet against the base of a sturdy branch, grabbed another branch securely in his left hand, and freed his P-16S blaster from its snap holster with his right. Somehow, he managed to squeeze off a clean shot.

The blaster bolt struck the beast on the flank, and it squalled angrily and wheeled. Krasst--it was still on its feet, and now it had seen him. Corias fired again, striking the ground near its feet--it charged and leapt with frightening speed. The massive jaws crashed together mere inches from his toes.

The beast's armor was thick enough that he needed penetration, not the diffuse impact of a blaster bolt. Corias thumbed the master lever and activated the rail barrel--the magnetic accelerators whined into action as he leveled the pistol again at the beast.

Two heavy slugs stung the creature--one through the thigh, another through its thick neck muscles. The predator roared like a banshee, hobbling, but still on its feet. It stumbled and crashed against the trunks of the vines Corias was nestled in, and his feet began to slip. Sensing its prey was about to drop, the beast crouched for another leap, its jaws opened wide.

And in that instant, Corias found his footing again just long enough to straighten his arm and aim right down the beast's throat.

The rail gun throbbed once, twice, three times, and the beast convulsed as the slugs sliced through its upper palate and into its brain cavity. It moaned and lurched sideways, falling heavily against the roots of the vines once more.

It was enough to upset Corias's fragile footing. The spacer slipped and tumbled down the tree trunk, landing with a crash on the forest floor beside the dead predator. The side of his head struck a protruding tree root, and he was out cold.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea hadn't taken a drink of her cider for several long minutes, and she suddenly realized she hadn't blinked in almost as long, either. Her mouth had gone dry, and she took a quick sip to wet her tongue and digest Corias' story.

While in the Veil, she had seen what the man could do with that gun of his. Rhea was, of course, no judge of skill as far as blaster marksmanship was concerned (she could barely hit the broad side of an air shuttle with one), but he had seemed an exceptionally swift and deadly shot, even under pressure. Still, how he'd managed to peg such a monster, while falling out of a tree...

Rhea tried hard not to think about what might have happened.

Meanwhile, Corias seemed to have either drifted off or hit a snag mid-stream, because he'd trailed off and his eyes were unfocused in thought. Rhea leaned forward a little in her chair.

"Did you get hurt?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias had been lost in the telling of his own story--he only now noticed how captivated Rhea had become.

"Well... actually, not much. The branches of the vines must have slowed down my fall a bit--I got a lot of scratches and bruises, but nothing serious from the fall."

He sipped his cider, which had cooled off to a very manageable temperature.

"But something happened while I was out that I didn't find out about until later. The girl I saw in the tree, the one the kilgor was after, she was Awatii. And she came down to help me. She had a memory stone with her--I guess that's really kind of a crude name for it, considering all the things they do with it--they can use it to link minds as well as poject one's own memories. Anyway, from what I can gather, she used it to bring me around. Not only that, she planted her language in my head so we could speak to one another."

It was a pretty outrageous claim--Corias knew that. Few "civilized" beings would ever choose to believe that an aboriginal race like the Awatii could have such powers.

"Unfortunately--I'm not sure whether it was because of the differences between human and Awatii brain patterns, or whether it was her inexperience--there were a few unintended side-effects."

---

The first thing he noticed when he came to his senses was a headache that seemed to be pulling his skull apart at the seams. He squeezed his eyes shut, took in a sharp breath, then realized how badly his ribs were aching.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and saw a face hovering over him--tan skin, large, dark eyes, a thick mane of sienna hair, an enormous pair of tapered, furry ears, like the ears of a deer. It was the girl he'd rescued, clutching a smooth, black stone on a leather strap in her oversized hand. When he stirred, her ears lifted in surprise, and she leapt back a few feet like a frightened animal.

Clutching his pounding head, he sat himself up and checked himself for injury. Nothing broken as far as he could tell. But he didn't want to chance his legs so soon.

A quiet voice shook him out of his self-diagnostic. "Are you... Are you injured?"

He snapped his head toward the girl--ow, too fast--in surprise. "You... I can understand you," he said.

"Yes," she replied, looking relieved. "Are you all right?"

"I think so." He continued checking himself over, still dazed and disoriented. "Where am I?"

"This is the border of the forest, just outside the lands of my village," she replied. "I have never seen one like you before. Where is your village?"

"I..." He hesitated. He didn't know what to say.

"Are you from far away?" she asked.

He still didn't know what to say. Not only that, he didn't know what to think. He couldn't remember.

"I think so," he murmured.

She seemed disappointed. "What is your name?" she asked.

He took a deep breath. He was sure he ought to remember--but it was hazy. "C... Cor...."

She furrowed her brow. "Cor?"

"I... I don't remember," he said helplessly.

"You do not--" She stopped short, and her eyes suddenly widened. "Oh, no." She looked down at the stone in her hand. "Oh, no, oh... You... do you remember anything?"

He rubbed his face wearily, then looked at the dead beast and shuddered. "I killed that," he said. "Then fell out of the tree."

"And before that?" she asked hopefully.

"I was... going somewhere. No, I was trying to find something. I can't remember."

She looked at the stone again, appearing very distressed. He didn't know what was frightening her.

"Cor," she said, "we need to get off the ground. There may be more kil'gare about. I will take you to my village. We will be able to help you there."

He felt suspicious, but he couldn't think of a reason to doubt her. "Okay. I think I can move. Where's my gun?"

"Your... what?"

Suddenly, he was aware that he'd just used a word in a different language--a word from a language other than the one they'd been speaking. He tried to think of a word that she would understand, but he couldn't.

"It's... it's what I used to kill the beast. It's black. Shiny, like your stone."

She scanned the forest floor, then gave a soft cry. Reaching down, she pulled the "gun" out from a drift of dried leaves. "This?"

"Careful with that!" Cor reached out his hand. "Set it my hand gently. It's dangerous."

Her ears laid back and her eyes wide, she gingerly lowered the gun into his hand. Cor replaced it in his holster, then, with her help, slowly rose to his feet.

She hurried to the base of the tree with the vines and bounded up its side in a heartbeat. Then she paused and looked back down. "Can you climb, Cor?" she asked.

"Um... not very well," he replied sheepishly.

"Oh, I did not realize you were hurt so badly," she said apologetically. "We can go along the ground, though, but we must be careful. Follow me!"

[Corias Bonaventure]

"So I followed her. Because, as far as I knew, I didn't have anything better to do, or anywhere else to go. It's a pretty disarming situation to find yourself in. But I had the presence of mind to keep asking about the forest, about the plants and animals. And about the Awatii themselves."

Corias leaned his head back, cradling his half-empty cider mug in his hands. "The best way I can think to describe them is... they're like deer. Or like the adnori on Imran. Very shy. Very passive and peaceful. They love community, and they seek safety in numbers. The Awatii build villages in the trees to get away from the surface predators. If they're just passing through a region, they'll use tents; when they're in a territory for a long time, they build thatched huts on wooden platforms. That was the sort of village I ended up in.

"They were afraid of me at first, but they seemed to understand what had happened to me. I guess Arilay convinced them I wasn't a threat, and she must've really talked up how I managed to shoot down the kilgor, because the herd elders invited me to stay with them while they tried to find my memory again. I lived in that village, oh... almost six months. Obviously, my memory eventually returned. My ship was a total loss by then, of course, but I was able to salvage the hypespace transmitter and signal for a pick-up."

[Rhea Kaylen]

"Six months? Wow." Rhea was trying to imagine the life he described, trying to envision the Awatii. Unfortunately, she was getting a lot of mental images of Ewoks.

Shaking her head and giving up, she picked another topic of interest.

"Arilay? Pretty name; seems she must have thought you were pretty brave."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Uh..." Corias was suddenly at a loss for words, and he took a deep breath.

"Yeah, I... I guess you could say that. In any case, she seemed to feel responsible for me after messing with my head. In fact, she was the one who gave me the memory stone. And the one who showed me how to use it."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Hmm. Something about the way Corias had hesitated seemed odd for that reply. She had been expecting him to laugh. Rhea frowned just a little. Well, perhaps it was only just remembered embarrassment at having been treated as a hero.

"She did? Weren't you afraid it might do something to your memory again?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Well, I didn't have too much more to lose at the time," Corias replied with a shrug. "Mainly, she did for me what I did for you--she helped me use the stone to draw out my own memories and give them a form. She showed me some of her own, too. So vivid I could have touched them. She even showed me some of her dreams..."

He trailed off there--maybe he was being a little too forthcoming.

"Like I said, those stones are versatile."

[Rhea Kaylen]

No, that time there was something strange in his voice! Rhea could hear his tone drop and edge along a softer range she'd never heard him use before.

Versatile, my ear, the Imrani thought, definitely curious now. He's not thinking about that stone. He's thinking about what he saw with it. He's thinking about what she did with it.

What had he seen?

Rhea cocked her head and quickly phrased a hopefully-innocuous question to see if she could tease out something a bit more concrete than a hunch.

"Her dreams?" She kept her tone light. "I thought the stone could only reproduce memories."

Do tell.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Suddenly, he felt like he was in a corner--why exactly had she chosen this element of the story to pursue?

But now that he'd started explaining, started exploring the story again, he didn't want to stop. It was hard enough finding an interested audience for the tales of a spacer errant.

"Well, memory and the subconscious are somewhat related," he hazarded. "They're both latent elements within the brain... they both deal in experience rather than abstraction... they're both immersive, both transportive. So, just as the stone reacts when the memory is engaged, it also reacts when the subconscious--"

Oops, oops... that was just about the equivalent of telling Rhea that Arilay talked in her sleep.

[Rhea Kaylen]

"Oh! So you meant real dreams!" Rhea's mind had still been somewhat along the lines of their earlier conversation regarding "dreams," as in life-goals, aspirations. So, Arilay had somehow allowed Corias to see what went on in her mind while she slept? Wow.

But...wait a minute? Wasn't the activity of the "subconscious," as Cor put it, something outside the realm of control? How could Arilay let Corias do anything with her dreams? Unless somehow the black memory stone channeled dreams the same way it channeled memories and reproduced them as physical environments.

So...Arilay had to have been holding the stone while she slept. And Corias' words suggested she'd intended for the stone to reproduce her dreams for him to see. The only question was...

"But...why did she do that? Most dreams don't even make any sense. And...the ones that do can be embarrassing." Really, really embarrassing...

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias made a strange face--meanwhile, the passion flower blushed pink.

"To be honest, her reasons were, well... personal," he admitted.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea blinked in shock. Personal? Personal, as in, none of my business. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. Corias had never before, in all their acquaintance, simply just out and said something wasn't Rhea's business. If he didn't want to talk about something, he generally just suavely deflected the question, or feigned an innocent subject-change. He often had the uncomfortable practice of turning unwanted questions back on Rhea. But he'd never just told her to back off.

For an instant, she was mildly hurt, and then she grew terribly ashamed and embarrassed that she should have blundered onto such a delicate subject without any right to be there. After all, who was she to say what Corias should and should not talk about? She had no right to force him to divulge personal information.

Only...he hadn't said it was personal to him. He'd said it was personal to Arilay. Which meant that, consciously or not, he was protecting, not his own interests, but hers. Maybe he was protecting Arilay, herself. But that didn't make any sense. What threat could Rhea possibly be to Arilay, a million light-years away and with no more than a passing interest in this particular subject, anyway? Corias' becoming defensive was an almost...paranoid gesture, Rhea thought. Or, if not paranoid, it was certainly over-protective, when all Rhea was doing was trying to make conversation. His response was almost the way a brother would act when speaking about his sister, or a father when speaking about his child. Or...

Or a husband when speaking about his wife.

A sudden flash darted across Rhea's mind, a sudden illumination of logic. And her mouth responded with a simple,

"Oh." And then she sipped her cider, turning her eyes away in embarrassment. "I am sorry, I did not mean to..."

She said no more.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Maybe he'd over-reacted... or at least, he could have shut the door on the topic a little more gently.

Grasping for a way to recover, Corias slowly shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I mean, it was ages ago."

He nervously clasped his fingers around his cup. Then he began to explain, very slowly and deliberately.

"At the time, even when my memory started returning, I wasn't sure I would ever make it off-planet again. And by then, Arilay had become special to me. But, in the end, it just didn't work out that way. I could never have stayed there. She could never have left. So, eventually, we parted ways."

The passion flower had taken on a bittersweet spectrum of colors. Corias set his cider cup down and drummed up a smile.

"Don't feel bad, Rhea. I have a lot of happy memories of that place. You know... maybe I could show it to you sometime."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Now she felt terrible. "Oh, Corias, I'm so sorry, I should have..." Should have just shut your mouth, idiot, so why don't you go about doing it sooner rather than later?

She shook her head and finished lamely, "That...would be really nice."

Why did she have to be so obtuse all the time? Just once, Rhea would have liked to pick up on a nuance that would keep her from making an idiot out of herself. Why did she just have to be so blasted thick? Now she was afraid she'd really hurt Corias by dragging up the memory of a love he'd lost.

Wow, great going, you moron...

[Corias Bonaventure]

All in all, the night could've gone better... Maybe some fewer faux pas and less emotional gymnastics... Fine time to bring something like a passion flower.

Corias took up his mug again for a sip and found that the cider was already gone. He rose and cleared his throat, trying to ease back to comfortable normality again.

"The, uh... the cider is excellent, Rhea. I think I'll pour myself some more. Anything I could get you while I'm up?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea started from her round of self-debasement to look up at Corias in surprise. She was actually very glad he'd so abruptly changed the subject.

"Oh! No, here, let me get it for you!" She wanted to put her mug in the sink, anyway, and she wasn't about to let Corias play his own host. So she rose from her chair and extended her hand to take his cup, smiling a little.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Well, apparently he'd done something right--she was smiling again. Corias surrendered his mug and followed Rhea into the kitchen.

They settled back into a conversation as they drank the next round of cider--the stuff seemed far better-suited to lighter subjects like Rhea's training, the latest batch of ship upgrades Corias had his eye on, the theatre company on Velorum Avenue that was putting on an obscure, ancient opretta called The Pirates of Penzance. By the time they'd drained their mugs again, their spirits were high again--even when Rhea turned and found herself confronted by a formidable sink-full of dirty dishes.

"Help you with those?" Corias offered.

And he wouldn't be deterred. So they set about cleaning up, a process that would've been quicker if not for the minor suds-fight that errupted partway through the dinner plates.

By the time they were finished, the sunset had already faded from the horizon, and the windows glowed with a mosaic of city lights underneath a starless sky. As they meandered back into the kitchen, Corias glanced down at his wristwatch and registered, regretfully, how late it was.

"Ah, I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to get going pretty soon. I have some paperwork I need to fill out before I meet with my clients tomorrow."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's happy face fell at those words.

"Oh. Alright, then." She paused for a moment, unsure of what to say, when suddenly she remembered something.

"Oh! Wow, I'm really on top of things...just a second, I have something for you."

The Imrani woman darted off through a side-door into her bedroom and reemerged a moment later with a small, lumpy package in hand. It was roughly nine inches square, wrapped in plain paper and bound with twine.

"Um...here. This is for you. And..." She sighed heavily. "Oh, Corias, I'm sorry this evening wasn't as happy as it should have been. I hope you'll forgive me." Rhea had trouble meeting the man's eyes.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was genuinely surprised by the package. But he held off on his rabid curiosity for just a moment.

"Hey, it was a great evening, kid," he said, gently lifting her chin. "Nothing we couldn't handle. Right?"

He smiled, then took the package. "Hmm, now what's this...?"

Glancing back to Rhea, he slipped his forefinger underneath the twine and began to loosen it.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea threaded her fingers together nervously in front of her, biting her lower lip while Cor undid the twine and pushed back the crinkly paper.

The liquid folds of the heavy blue fabric spilled over the side of his hand, and the edge of the little writing notebook peeked out from under the handwoven blanket.

"Here," she said helpfully, stepping closer and pushing the blanket off the notebook. She flipped open the cover of the spiral-bound writing pad so that he could read the note she'd scrawled there.

Corias--

I know you go through notebooks fairly quickly, and thought you might be needing a new one before too long. I tried to find one small enough for you to carry around in your jacket pocket, and I hope this one works.

As for the blanket...well, Iolanthe gets cold. And don't try to say it "keeps you alert," because you shiver sometimes when you sleep. I hope the colors are alright--they're traditional Imrani, but some of the designs I modeled after things I saw on your ship. If you don't like it, though, you can feel free to stuff it in your closet. (Here she'd doodled a tiny smiley face.)

Please take care on your next tour. And tell Nelson I said hi.

Best, as always,
Rhea

At the bottom, next to the signature, Rhea had lightly sketched a rough drawing of Imran, surrounded by wispy high-atmosphere clouds.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias's mouth came open by a fraction as he read the note.

"I don't know what to say."

He glanced back over the note fondly, then flipped through the notebook pages, then closed it and pantomimed dropping it into his coat pocket.

"That ought to be just right," he said. He set the book down on the back of the sofa, then took the blanket by its corners and let the smooth, dense fabric cascade downward, unfurling all of Rhea's intricate designs.

"Oh, Rhea... This is beautiful." He folded it over in his hands and stroked the plush cloth. "When did you make this?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea couldn't help blushing a little. She was so happy he liked it, or seemed to, at least.

"I've been working on it in my spare time since...oh, I think since before your last visit, actually. It would have been done sooner, but I'm usually so busy in the daytimes..."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Sooner? Corias was impressed that she'd found the time at all--even more impressed that she'd chosen to spend it on him.

"I love it," he broke in to forestall any more self-conscious apologies. "Both of them. That is, the notebook and the blanket. They're perfect."

Tucking the blanket over one arm, he caught Rhea's hand in his own, raised it to his lips, and kissed it warmly.

"Thank you," he said. "For the gifts, and for the evening."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea was struck dumb for a long, long moment, staring unbelieving at Corias bending his head over her hand to kiss it. For one thing, it was such a strange gesture; she had never seen its like. She didn't think it was a widely-used human gesture.

For another thing entirely, he was kissing her hand. Which was rather distracting.

Quickly she blinked, trying to clear her head and respond, even as she fleetingly wished he didn't have to let go.

"Y-you're welcome. I'm so glad you could come, and I'm relieved you're home safely." After she said it, Rhea realized how vainly she had used the word "home:" Coruscant was not Corias Bonaventure's home. His ship was, or his father's house, maybe. Or perhaps he considered one of the myriad planets he'd visited to be his real home. Who knew.

"And, I hope those things will be useful to you." She grinned. "Anytime you get hungry for something that doesn't come out of a box, you're welcome to stop by."

A sudden thought struck her. "Oh, um...would you...I have more binamae left than I can drink. Do you want to take some with you.?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias was amused at Rhea's choice of words, but he didn't think much of it. He was pretty sure he knew what she meant.

Another trip into the kitchen resulted in him carrying a thermos full of binamae as well as a healthy portion of the leftovers from dinner. And at last, Corias turned, regretfully, to leave.

"Thanks again--listen, I'll call later. I won't give details now, but if these contracts come off the way I hope they will, I might be in a celebrating mood."

He let Rhea help him into his flight jacket and backed out the door. "Take it easy, Rhea--at least, as easy as your master'll let you."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea followed him to the door, leaning against it as he stepped into the hall.

"I'll try. I look forward to your call. Please be safe, going back to your ship, ad'gan-da."

She felt almost like there should be something else, something more, for her to say, but there was not. She smiled up at him, feeling the silence in the empty dorm room behind her pressing malevolently against her back, wishing she did not have to turn back and face it alone.

Corias raised his hand in a motion that was halfway between a wave and a lighthearted salute, then turned and strolled down the hall, his mementos and sustenance tucked under his arm. He didn't look back, and Rhea turned her eyes away and drew inside before he turned the corner and disappeared at the end of the hall. It was bad luck to watch a loved one out of sight--if you did, you would never see them again.

The Imrani woman pushed the door shut and leaned her back against it, her eyes trailing to the back of the hand Corias had kissed. Then she grinned, remembering his very oblique reference to a "celebration" later in the week, and walked into the kitchen to heat up the rest of the leftovers. She was hungry.