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Mene s'Mene

by Tem-ve H'syan (tem-ve@gmx.de)

However long it would take to draw the damned bath, he would have one. He just had to.

It had set in pretty much the moment his feet had touched what passed for ground on Coruscant. The weariness, the leaden, hollow feeling of being home. Of being in a place where nobody expected you to go anywhere, and where there wasn't much of an anywhere to go to. It was quite a change after the last eight months.

Hardly lifting his gaze from the dulled and battered leather of his boots, Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi keyed the door open, almost surprised he still remembered his own door code after all this time.

All this time. He snorted, a little lost sound in the cool dusty dimness of his apartment, unused for eight standard months, and hardly ever used before that. They had sent him off on his first mission pretty much the day the collective hangover from his Knighting party had worn off. Not that he had had much of a hangover himself, but the fact that young Kenobi had lost his braid at the tender age of twenty-two had caused quite some hooray among his age-mates, senior Padawans to a man, woman, and sundry other being.

Well, his Master had said there wasn't much left that he could have taught him, and the Council had pretty much agreed straight away. Looking back, the formal Trials had been an initiate's exercise compared to what he'd been led to expect.

Compared to what he'd been through since.

Eight months of never touching ground. Rushing from one urgent mission to the next, reluctantly leaving unfinished business where there was no hope of success, and racing to the next festering wound of Galactic politics in the hope of being able to achieve something. And when he had indeed achieved something, having to abscond himself like a thief in the middle of the celebrations because the Council had mapped his next port of call already, and more nights of rubbing s'vala oil on his eyelids to keep himself from falling asleep at the controls, and setting the datapad to voice output to try and cram at least the most vital bits of information into his head... which would inevitably be incomplete, or biased, or both. Names would vary, problems stayed the same, and nobody was ever genuinely happy to see a Jedi, though some had been genuinely happy to see him go, successful or not.

It's like being a fireman, Obi-Wan thought as he pulled his tunics off, like jumping from one fire to the next trying to swat it out, and no time to look back and make sure it doesn't flare up again.

He felt scorched, and frayed, and smiled bitterly at how the neat reddish spikes of his Padawan cut had grown out into messy waves, bleached from ultra-violet suns and moist caustic atmospheres, an awkward length that kept flopping into his face at the most inopportune moments. He had developed a middle parting somewhere along the way, and stared for a moment at his hairline and the improbable way the battered-copper hair rose from his forehead in two almost-symmetrical locks, right there where the headache sat.

Obi-Wan rubbed his eyes and blinked into the mirror. Home, he thought. Thank the Force they called me back for at least a little while.

Not that he hadn't been expecting the kind of hardship that the string of back-to-back missions had brought. He'd seen this, and worse, during the years of his apprenticeship, and had acquitted himself well in both the diplomatic and the warlike arts, and had taken modest pride in his achievements and genuine joy in the little improvements he had managed to impose on the universe now and then.

What he'd missed most of all was his Master.

Somewhere between the series of wars in Fghan and the installation of a complex system of government suited to the extremely short-lived Lepi population of Birivac-aa, Obi-Wan had begun to doubt the merits of solo missions. Long strings of solo missions, at least. Of course that was not the way it was meant to be, the Council kept assuring him, but we are living in times of great uproar and peril, and surely just this one more, it was of utmost importance and he would be perfectly suited to it...

The burden of a great reputation I guess, Obi-Wan thought wearily as he watched the steaming bluish water swirl into the bathtub. Though I sometimes wonder how much of that is my own reputation and how much of that is my Master's.

And I can't even ask him.

Master Pyau was away on an undercover mission, had been for weeks apparently, and communication was hazardous. Obi-Wan had left messages anyway, feeling better for just having talked to his former Master, even though he knew Pyau would only get the messages weeks later. He would reply, of that Obi-Wan was sure. He had been Knight Pyau's first Padawan, as such earned him the title of Master, and the best thing was that it didn't matter in the least to Pyau, amicable and informal man that he was. Obi-Wan though fondly of the tall thin man's coarse, slightly lopsided features, and his sincere smile that made his face transform into something almost beautiful. He'd been like a father to Obi-Wan, and a good friend at that.

Still, I guess I'll get to see him eventually, he thought, wincing at the sting of the hot water on his skin as he lowered himself into the tub. For now, I'm home.

He only found the note on his way back from the 'fresher, warm and glowing from the bath, the lead in his bones melted into something that was still undeniably heavy, but shimmering and mobile. His damp hair dripped on the small sheet of paper as he picked it up off the floor.

I must have walked right over it, he thought. Typical.

The handwriting was familiar, if only because its owner was one of the few young ones in the Order who would still write short texts by hand. In a spidery black scrawl across beige notepaper it said:

"Welcome home, Flower of the Order! Bet you're hungry, and your kitchen's fossilised, eh? Come over for a drink and a bite -- got a little surprise for you!

Garen

P.S. Oh, 376 Level RR by the way... see ya!"

Obi-Wan smiled. Of all the people he knew, Garen Muln was the only one who would write exactly the way he talked, and meant it. They had been friends since their crèche days, years of brother-like closeness alternating with phases of almost no contact. They'd fallen out spectacularly a few years ago, only to realise how silly it had all been and celebrate a noisy reunion.

In truth, Garen was probably the only friend that had stuck with Obi-Wan through the years, at least since Bant had pursued her career in the Healers' Wing and communication had grown sparser. Garen and my Master, Obi-Wan thought. Small family indeed.

Garen had a surprise.

Wondering idly, Obi-Wan dressed in fresh tunics and leggings, kicked his boots under the bed, then knelt on the floor swearing and rummaging for his moccasins in the dusty plain stirred up by his boots. He put them on, wiped them on the coverlet, ran his hands through his still-damp hair and decided he didn't need the robe, not for the short trip to Level RR. So Garen had moved? Strange. Maybe he'd made it to Knight himself now, he who had always teased Obi-Wan as the "bloody high-flyer"... let's hope it's that, and he hasn't lost his Master. Not Ek-Eanu, he thought. She should be bringing up Padawans until she's old and grey because she's brilliant at it, Obi-Wan thought. Garen was a perfect example.

And Garen had a surprise.

The door slid open, and a bright smile greeted Obi-Wan. A bright female smile. Puzzled, the young Knight smiled back, wondering briefly whether he'd got the room number wrong. A yell from the recesses of the apartment assured him he hadn't.

"Kenobi!!!!" Garen was upon him in a split second, hugging him fiercely until all the breath had left Obi-Wan's chest, and a muffled "...i 'aren" was all he could manage.

"Thank the Little Gods you're back! From the legends and rumours around Temple I nearly thought you'd been made one of them..."

Obi-Wan's puzzled face made Garen break into a wide grin, thick brown eyebrows dancing on the high forehead under the short Padawan fur. "One of the Little Gods, I mean... you're a legend in your own time, Kenobi! Now go find your voice, and then say hi to my lovely lady here... Merr, I bet you've heard more about Obi-Wan Kenobi than you'd care to know... Obi, this is Knight Ha-Meret Woot, or more accurately Ha-Meret Woot and a half..."

The petite woman smiled at him, a winning, open expression on a clear calm face that didn't strike Obi-Wan as particularly feminine or girlish. Her hair was quite extraordinarily blond, almost white, and stood in unruly spikes like a field of corn that had been used as a makeshift bed by more than one pair of lovers of various species.

He had never seen her before, but then she appeared to be a little older than Garen and himself, so that was little wonder. And as a Knight, she had probably been away on missions while the Padawans had been stuck at Temple catching up on history, rhetoric, and mathematics.

"Pleased to meet you, Knight Ha-Meret... and a half??"

The woman giggled, a silvery little noise, and Garen chuckled low in his throat and put his arm round his lover's shoulder. Now that they were standing shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, Obi-Wan couldn't help noticing the distinct roundness of Ha-Meret's belly...

"Can't exactly say it was planned, but... we're looking forward to the tiny one." Garen beamed and kissed Ha-Meret on the nose.

"You're... breeding?" Obi-Wan blurted out, silently cursing himself for his clumsiness. Such things had never mattered to him, and Garen knew that very well. It had made their friendship an easy one -- never any jealousy over potential girlfriends, and Obi-Wan had accepted his lack of interest in matters sexual as normal. If anything, it made eight-month missions less of an ordeal than they would be for people like Garen...

"Yep. My Master laughed her head off, Ha-Meret's ex-Master has been building a custom-made cot for weeks now, Bant's first in line to deliver the little one when she comes out, and I hope you'll be the guest of honour at the little ceremony afterwards, hm, Obi? Tell you what, how about you decide on the name -- because Merr and I have reached... um, I guess you call it an impasse in diplomatese..."

Garen winced slightly at the sharp nudge in the ribs from Knight Ha-Meret's sharper elbow. "What he means is that the silly boy won't accept Wequa as a good girls' name, and a Wequa she is, I feel it in my... uh, whatever the diplomatic expression for that is --"

Garen laughed, short and loud, caught himself just in time to avoid another sharp nudge, and tenderly stroked his lover's round belly. "Wequa Muln... I don't know... doesn't that sound like a particularly unpleasant swamp planet, Obi? C'mon, help me sweet-talk her out of this one... you're the diplomat, no?"

"Garen, I'm on leave!" The mock outrage in Kenobi's voice amused the quibbling couple no end. "Besides, for all I care she can be a xDioumba or an iiiii, as long as you give me sufficient advance notice so that I can practice pronouncing her... and believe me, you wouldn't want to hear me say some of the more outlandish names I've come across in the last eight months, Garen!"

Grinning, Garen dragged his lover away from the door and motioned towards a worn-looking sofa and a low table housing a haphazard assortment of bottles, plates, papers and bowls. "Make yourself at home by any means, Obi-Wan. I imagine _you've_ had a pretty exciting eight months too?"

"Not conclusive by any means, I know, but still... for some reason I just can't let go of this one, Mace."

"Hm." Councillor Windu bent over the report on the screen, absently rubbing his upper lip. "Where's this one from?"

"The account?" Adi Gallia smiled sweetly. "This is normally the bit where I get to look all cryptic and say 'An Informant', isn't it Mace? But this time I'm afraid that's all I've got -- it could be any of three currently active in the sector, and they travel so much that I would need a whole separate web of informants to keep track of these three... the actual report is pretty uninteresting actually... it's just that... he caught my eye, you see? The age range fits to plus minus two years, and the description... well, it could be. And the location, though that would be almost ironic..."

"Tihaar? Wasn't that his homeworld?"

Adi Gallia nodded. "Not the most likely place for someone to get lost, but... I don't know, Mace. He just _feels_ like a potential candidate."

Mace Windu glanced over the description given. "Of course there is a vast number of possible appearances he could have... after over thirty years, Adi. And we can't even safely assume that he is still alive at all."

Though I certainly wish he was, he added privately. He had never been officially pronounced dead, but hope had dwindled over the decades until the lost Padawan had faded from pretty much everybody's minds. Except his old Master's, who had given up training young ones, pronouncing himself old and tired after bringing seventy-three Jedi to Knighthood, and his best friend's, who nowadays had difficulty conjuring up the mental image of the lanky tall youth of decades ago.

And Adi Gallia's. She had been eleven when it had happened, a latecomer to the Order, reluctantly let go by a family of wealthy functionaries who gave a tangible shudder at their eldest daughter's wish to don Jedi tunics instead of the bright silks and velvets of the ruling classes of her homeworld. For her, it had been a dream come true... and then, within days of her arriving at Temple, the news had transpired.

A Padawan had been lost. Lost, like an object. Disappeared without trace, without burial or memorial. Without rites or honours, a name relegated to the pending lists and fading memories and hopes.

Even here, one could get lost. It had come as quite a shock to her.

"But if he _is_ alive, and this is him... and evidence points to a definite Force-sensitivity, Mace... then this is the perfect moment to pick him up."

"And if this isn't him?"

Adi shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with Windu's diligent what-ifs. "Another potential member of staff for the gardening section maybe. If he decides he wants to come here in the first place. But Mace, I _feel_ it... this _is_ him."

"Hm." The bald Councillor sounded unconvinced, but knew from experience that there was no overruling young Master Gallia unless one had hard facts to prove the opposite. Hunches and assumptions and deductions were her job, and she was unusually good at them.

"Maybe just a reconnaissance mission, Mace? Overseeing the changing of the guard, so to speak? I'm pretty sure, for what data I have available, that the Tihaaroth would tolerate foreign visitors while the festival lasts... and once the new Mene s'Mene is installed, we can get our man to quietly ascertain the identity of the old one. Sound sensible?"

"Mh." Mace was clearly not in a talkative mood today.

"Oh, come on, Windu. You know what this means to me... and he was your friend too after all! He _is_ out there, in a vague sense, Mace. Let us send someone out there to get a closer look. Not a grand mission, just a bit of wandering the planetscape... could be a holiday, you know?"

"I was just thinking... it had better be. Someone with no knowledge of the story would be best suited to the job. No preconceptions, you see?" Adi frowned, and Mace caught himself just in time. "Give him the barest data, ask him to escort the departing Menesomething back to Coruscant if the Menesomething so wishes, and tell him to have a good time at the festival otherwise."

Adi nodded, slowly. It would be the best she could get for the time being, and better than nothing now that she felt close to finding that lost Padawan.

Mace brightened visibly, as if a brilliant thought had just struck him this very moment.

"In fact, Adi, I have just the man for you."

It would almost have been a holiday, Obi-Wan thought bitterly. Go to this lovely colourful steppe culture on this lovely colourful little planet, grace the once-in-a-lifetime festivities with your gently brown-robed presence, then tactfully ask the local deity if he would like a trip to Coruscant for some lovely intellectual head-to-head with assorted Jedi scholars, and if said deity didn't feel like it, fine. According to the electronic equivalent of a tourist brochure that he'd been given, the deity (the Menesomething-or-other) was actually enlightened enough to consider himself human, which in all probability he was anyway. Yes, it should have been to all intents and purposes a holiday.

Except the flimsy tourist brochure had been edited by the High Council.

Never trust a bunch of Jedi further than you can throw them, Obi-Wan hissed under his clouding breath. I'm not surprised the universe's going to the dogs if they can't even provide their own Knights with decent material!

He pulled his robe tighter around himself, curled as he was into a tight ball on the synthetic latex surface of the command chair that was slowly but surely turning brittle as the cold of outer space encroached on the interior of his marooned ship. One decidedly slate-grey eye peeked from under his hood, focused on the voltmeter gauging the state of the emergency power supply. Not much more than an old-fashioned electrochemical battery, he thought morosely, wet brown stuff wearily dripping electrons. It probably wouldn't be enough to power up the brake rocket once he'd get caught in a planet's gravity field, and he'd speed screaming and hissing to a certain death, the atmosphere's friction melting him and his disabled transport into one amorphous spitting lump of white-hot metal.

Maybe the life forms on the planet would make a wish when they saw him fall.

He wasn't entirely sure it was his Jedi upbringing that kept him clinging to the barest hope, turning the wreck's systems down to a bare minimum to conserve what little energy he had for a potential landing manoeuvre. He wasn't sure at all what kept him going -- thoughts of food, drink, or sleep had long since ceased to matter at the sight of the quivering needle of the pitifully mechanical voltmeter as it moved, imperceptibly, or so Obi-Wan told himself, towards the unassuming quarter-inch of red at the left-hand end of the scale.

The comm radar had gone with the blast -- whatever it was that had spectacularly blown itself off the propulsion unit had managed to razor off the antennae as it went, leaving them trundling through space, towards their destiny as rather small and pitiful shooting stars.

He was alone, truly alone for the first time in ages, and all he could do was curse himself for being so dependent on a piece of malfunctioning technology. To even contemplate the vastness of the distance between himself and the nearest inhabited planet would have sucked the last spark of defiance from his head, out into the cold velvet of interstellar space, to wink out eventually, like the antennae, like the disabled hull, like the stars themselves.

It should have been a holiday.

Refusing to fall asleep, Obi-Wan fixed his eyes on the thin red segment on the voltmeter's scale, willing it to be a sunrise. One that would colour the undersides of the clouds cherry red, cold glowing fires in the greyish-blue sky over the sea. A sunrise best seen coming home from extensive late-night revelries --

Obi-Wan shook his head, burrowing deeper into the recesses of his robe. Revelries. What do you know, Kenobi.

And now... now you'll never know.

When he looked up again, the red segment had swum into a quivering iridescent arc, shot through with the gleam of his own tears. The first strangled sob echoed loudly in the empty cabin, and Obi-Wan was relieved beyond belief to feel the warm tears brimming over and rolling down his cheeks, cooling trails in the chill of what would be his last hours. He let his eyes fall shut, dipping his lashes in the living moisture, releasing a deep breath. You have lived well, he thought. You have tried your best and done your best, you will be a fond memory to a few good friends. You have lived well.

And I wish I could live some more, he thought. These tears feltl inexplicably good, heavy warm blurred red calm, not the steely clarity that had always been so good so far. So good, so vague, so red...

!!!

He was out of his chair faster than his brain could catch up with, and consequently tangled his feet in his robe quite spectacularly, hitting the floor headlong. Before the pain had a chance to kick in, he was on his feet again, banging his fist on to the glass of the voltmeter, willing it to creep just that tiny bit further right, to show enough energy, just enough for this one least manoeuvre...

The blurred red arc was the surface of a planet, coming closer slowly, silently. Obi-Wan's body stood agape, clammy fingers uncertain of what to reach for first, while his mind raced and somersaulted in a desperate attempt to save itself... the gravity of this planet must have been so low that he'd not registered it coming near, expecting a mad plunge, not a gently speeding-up drift downwards. And if its gravity was low that meant its atmosphere was probably less dense and less expansive... estimates and figures tumbled before his mind's eye faster than he himself could make sense of. Trembling, he slid the flat palm of his hand over the mutely glowing panel that controlled the brake rocket, slowly giving all, all of the energy left in this cracked shell of a ship, the last fiery exhale it would be capable of.

Let's hope this rock is inhabited, he thought, sweltering in the sudden heat of the rocket's headfire and the atmosphere's friction. Let's hope they have an idea of where the hell I am.

The crash and splinter of his entry into the planet's troposphere had not, to Obi-Wan's great surprise, been from the breaking of his own bones against the twisted steel of his ship. Nor had it been the ship itself splitting asunder against jagged red rocks... hanging on to a support beam with one hand, Obi-Wan peered out of the porthole to find that the ship was suspended, at a rather precarious angle, amid a tangle of rather demolished-looking tree-like vegetation.

A forest. Obi-Wan's heart skipped a beat. Life.

Carefully creeping towards the ship's controls resulted in the floor beneath him taking another dip, one that ended with a satisfying thud and Obi-Wan rubbing his smarting backside, and expression of mad glee on his face. Fighting the urge to leap outside immediately to touch the life-covered ground, Obi-Wan forced himself to go through the routine of checking the atmosphere, surveying his surroundings as far as he could see, and packing as much potentially useful material as he had.

He doubted that an inoperative commlink would be of any use to him out here, but kept it clipped to his belt anyway. At best, it could still create the impression of a second presence by translating his own voice into any number of sentient languages, always an advantage with less technological races. At worst, it would probably be eaten before he would, because in his experience something shiny and silvery proved more attractive than something dull and brown nine times out of ten.

He packed a small part of the ship's still untouched rations into a pouch, added a spare tunic and a recording datapad, the batteries of which were in a questionable state, then decided he might as well go and see some of the planet while there was still daylight. Whatever illuminated this landscape (a sun was not immediately apparent through the thick canopy of brownish-red leaves) was fading slowly, bathing the ground in thickening green-grey shadows.

The plant life was surprisingly varied, and Obi-Wan discovered to his great amusement that what he had thought of as the planet's surface was in all probability just a particularly dense layer of vegetation, gnarled and twisted branches covered in webbed vines, thick pads of moss, hairlike grasses, and any number of small upwardly mobile shrubs that looked like solidified seaweed, all in various shades of the same brownish red, the colour of dried blood. They must be using iron for their photosynthetic dye, he thought. Interesting.

He would very nearly have tripped over the strip of deeper shadow within the dim evening forest... if said shadow hadn't suddenly blinked a pair of very alert-looking eyes at him. Obi-Wan's shocked little gasp made the eyes go even wider, pale blue orbs in a face that still appeared to be one with the background of mottled reddish-brown vegetation.

"--!---/- =--?"

"Uh." Obi-Wan laid one palm flat on his chest, as much an attempt at an interspecies greeting as an attempt to keep his furiously hammering heart inside his body. The eyes crinkled slightly, whether in a smile or a frown he dared not surmise. Blinking, he tried to pick out the outline of the eyes' owner.

Tall, thin and gnarled like the tree trunks with their twisting vines, covered with a skin that dipped into the reds and browns of the vegetation as if it _was_ made of the same material as the leaves.

It was a humanoid body, lanky and hairless, covered in nothing but a long strip of something dull and bark-like trailing down its front, but wearing the faint beauty of plant life around it like a scent. The eyes were the blossoms, large and luminous, the only discerning features in the being's head, two round beacons in the centre of a smooth round head that seemed to regard him with a quizzical look.

"!—'--- =. /-- --?," the being said, having no apparent need for a mouth to say this with. The clicking and scraping noises that made up its language seemed to emerge from its whole skin, a grammar of tiny twitching movements. Numbly, Obi-Wan relaxed his face into a weak smile and removed the hand from his chest, holding it out palm-upward.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, of the Jedi."

The creature regarded him with its unmoving liquid gaze, unsure what to make of the stranger's utterances, or his pale soft appendage about a foot away from its middle. It shifted a little, and Obi-Wan mirrored the embarrassed little wriggle unwittingly... at which the creature looked up in surprised delight.

Obi-Wan looked puzzled, then moved a little more. The creature's eyes grew animated, their pearly depths clouding with visible thought. Obi-Wan's own brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to deduce just in what way he appeared to be communicating with the being, and if so, what on whatever this planet was called he was saying to it.

Then it hit him. The rustle of his tunics and the occasional clink of his 'sabre against his commlink were pretty similar... to... the... creature's... hang on. Commlink.

With lightning speed, Obi-Wan whipped out the device, keyed it to ambient-mode translation and hoped for the best.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, of the Jedi. I come in peace... in fact, one could say I come in pieces. Is there a chance I could spend the night here?"

The machine sprang into action, translating Obi-Wan's softly-spoken words into a series of clicks and squeaks that were more than a little enervating. So that's what my name sounds like in alien tongues, he thought. Force give that it's not a rude word in their world...

The tree-creature's eyes crinkled in amusement at the commlink's metallic accent, and it replied with a volley of animated clicking and snarling that the translation algorithm had a hard time keeping up with. Why else would it have come up with

"Come with see-before, unfamiliar-shaped. Welcome to round-red outside-coming will always be. Mine enjoys Tlön-Uqbar!"

Assuming the programme isn't totally on the blink, Obi-Wan thought, that must be what they call this place. Amazing how something unintelligible can get translated and remain intact. As something unintelligible.

"I am eternally grateful, stranger. May I know your name too?"

The being motioned Obi-Wan to follow, as it slowly crept across the uneven potential surface of Tlön-Uqbar, chattering away in merry clicks and clacks.

"Calling-be making-leaps-yellow-higher!"

"Suits me. Actually, I won't pretend I ever knew what Kenobi meant either..."

Laughing with the desperate relief of the stranded, Obi-Wan followed the chuckling Tlön-Uqbari into the dusk.

It was not so much a homestead that the thin bony being led him to. Obi-Wan wasn't sure what he had expected really, but in all probability it wasn't this. It figures, he thought, usually we get sent to highly civilised cultures to unpick their highly civilised socio-political messes. This lot don't look like they have much need of a Jedi's services.

There were about a dozen of them, all looking rather alike, slender bald creatures with mottled reddish-brown skin and a pair of closely-set opalescent blue eyes in the centre of their round faces. They were all clad in the same strip of bark running from their sinewy necks down to their knees, held in place by a few strategically placed thongs.

They had regarded him with open curiosity for a while, studying the paleness of his tunics and the unruly mop of hair, but had lost interest fairly quickly and accepted him as a strange but non-threatening creature. Leaps-yellow-higher, or whatever his name was, had probably paved the way for that -- Obi-Wan's commlink had clearly gone into overload the moment they'd all started chattering amongst themselves, and he had switched it off for a while and retreated into the background to gather his thoughts.

Not that it had helped an awful lot -- every time he tried to start a train of thought with the word 'I...' it derailed either into mad bubbling joy at having survived a crash on an uncharted planet, or, with annoying frequency, into being massively pissed off with the Council for supplying him with this ridiculous ship, no backup comms, and no usable information beyond a tourist leaflet on the beauties of Tihaaroth festivals. The Force alone knew how he was ever going to get off _this_ blasted planet in the first place -- with his ship damaged to a level he hadn't even had time to gauge yet, nothing but forest and vegetation wherever he looked (and that included down, he realised with no slight concern), and nothing but a bunch of clicking and clacking tree creatures to help him.

His heart sank as he surveyed the tiny clearing bustling with Tlön-Uqbarians. The only artefact he could see was a portable rack constructed from some type of wood, elegant despite its charred exterior, but ultimately just an assortment of sticks tied together in a pretty and efficient way. A far cry from what he would need to get his ship going again.

They were building a fire, on top of the rack, diligently clearing away the ambient vegetation to leave nothing but a few brush-like sprigs of something auburn which they piled on top of the rack and lit up, hitting sparks from something Obi-Wan couldn't make out in the thickening dusk. The fire caught sluggishly, spreading a sticky sweet smoke over the clearing; the Tlön-Uqbarian nearest the flames frowned and reached one hand into the smoking pile, dragged out a thin brown branch and disgustedly threw it to the ground (or at least to the lowest stable level of vegetation), where it smouldered for a minute, then went out.

The smoke from the fire began to rise now, a thin white column of pleasantly clean scent rising from a lively orange flame. That would explain, Obi-Wan thought, why my ship didn't catch fire when it came down with its rocket at full thrust... the stuff just doesn't burn well.

The clicking and whirring of the creatures' voices were beginning to lull him into sleep, the dull leaden sleep of one who's had far too much life crammed into a single day. Obi-Wan fought to keep his eyes open, to at least give the impression of being a grateful guest, but it was hard for him to stay focused on the actions of the thin brown beings if he couldn't even tell them apart. They probably recognise each other by their skin markings, he thought, or by the sound of their voices... from what he could tell, there weren't any visible genders or age groups, nor any evident hierarchy, at least not among this group. They behaved like a good dozen mirror images of each other, chattering away in their strange tongue as they proceeded to roast large leathery brown fruits over the fire until the skins cracked open to reveal a pale pink inside...

A soft nudge on his shoulder woke Obi-Wan from what he realised had been the beginning stages of sleep... eyes crinkled in amusement, a Tlön-Uqbarian (Obi-Wan assumed it was Leaps-yellow-higher simply because he would be the most familiar with their strange guest, but had no way of verifying his guess) squatted next to him, offering a large cracked-open fruit on the palm of his outstretched hand. Numbly, Obi-Wan reached for it, smiling gratefully and mumbling a thankyou the creature probably wouldn't understand, before once more slumping against the tree trunk he'd been leaning against all evening.

The fruit was foamy, fleshy, sticky and slightly sour... pleasant... and bits of the glistening pale pink pulp were slithering down his chin, dripping into the V of his tunics, leaving moist trails from his half-open mouth as Obi-Wan went under, too exhausted even to lick his lips.

He awoke the next morning to a slow purple-grey dawn and a sticky feeling on his chest. He sat up and blushed, embarrassed at the large pink stain on the front of his tunics, there where he had dropped the cooked fruit that had just now landed on the ground with a quiet little splat. He sighed and rubbed his face. His cheeks were stubbly and sticky with the juice, and he was intensely relieved there was nobody here to see him.

He was also quite ravenous and decided to breakfast on the remains of the fruit as well as the two ration bars he'd salvaged from the ship. He decided against changing into his spare tunic, seeing as he appeared to be completely alone anyway. The ashes from the fire and the remains of the Tlön-Uqbarians' meal were still visible, but the fire-rack was gone, and the place looked abandoned. So they had moved on, leaving their guest to sleep and fend for himself. Fair enough, he thought, under the circumstances. Careless nomads would be vastly preferable over any number of other potential cultures... shouldering his pack, he set out trying to retrace last night's steps, back to what was left of his ship.

It wasn't as bad as he had feared, Obi-Wan thought, sitting back against the meteorite-streaked hull, wedged between three large branches. He wiped his sooty and lubricant-stained hands on a pad of brown moss that turned out to be totally inefficient as a hand-towel and surveyed the damage.

The comms unit was beyond repair, simply because large parts of it had gone missing -- the antennae were probably trundling through space like silvery spider legs right now. Still, that was expendable.

The main pressure door had taken the brunt of the fall, and was quite badly bent out of shape. Still, with the heat of his lightsabre and the pilot seat's synthetic-latex covering for gasket material he was pretty confident he'd get it back into some serviceable state, at least until he reached the nearest space-faring civilisation. He'd just have to sit on bare metal and his robe for a while. That's what the thing was for, after all...

The only thing that did worry him was the state of the engines. The single thruster rocket was burned out, not surprisingly after his emergency landing, and wouldn't be any good for anything now. The fuel tanks were still reasonably full... and from what he had been able to deduce from the warped state of the main combustors, there were enough parts left intact to restore one of the pair and hope for the best.

Drawing a deep breath and willing himself to calm at the sudden bubble of hope rising within his chest, Obi-Wan ignited his 'sabre and began to free workable parts from the torn mess that was the ship's propulsion unit.

It was near nightfall again when Obi-Wan doused the cool blue blade of his lightsabre. The day-and-night cycles on Tlön-Uqbar seemed quite a bit longer than he was used to, and he felt quite ready to retire into the battered hull of his ship for a good night's sleep, to resume his task tomorrow. He'd pretty much welded the gutted engines back together into one, much smaller and desperately makeshift, but still almost functional, unit. All he was missing, from what he could see, was a replacement for the grid stabilisers, both of which had been blown out in the explosion. Simple long pieces of rigid, electrically isolating material would do, at least temporarily... or so he had thought. Much to his chagrin, nothing in our around his ship had fit that description; there were few things that weren't made of metal in the first place, and none of the remaining materials could be persuaded to muster the necessary rigidity to keep the catalyst grids apart. He'd tried some of the local vegetation, but found that the fireproof qualities of the wood, while enough to hamper the building of a campfire, were nowhere near enough to withstand the storms of electrical energy unleashed by a fuel cell in full swing.

Sighing, he swept the ashes out of the combustion chamber, wiped his grey-smeared hands on his stained tunic, and contemplated going to sleep. If only Leaps-yellow were here... or Make-leaps-yellow-higher, if he remembered correctly. He snorted. In their skewed tongue, that probably came as close to 'firestarter' as one could get. Which was probably an honorific in this terminally damp and semi-combustible forest that stretched out red and brown in all directions now, only slightly darker underfoot than overhead, now that the sun or suns were fading, only slightly darker in front than behind... lighter?

Hardly daring to hope, Obi-Wan turned around, straining his eyes to detect the flicker he'd just seen for the corner of one eye.

Yes. It was there. Another fire. Which meant _they_ were there.

The tree trunk felt good against his back, smooth and damp and warm, and Obi-Wan allowed the weariness to flow through his limbs like liquid lead. He'd been in extreme luck, he thought, to find another bunch of Tlön-Uqbarians, and even though Leaps-yellow and his (her?) people weren't among them, they had welcomed the pale stranger to the edge of their fire-clearing, just as the other group had done two nights before. They had served him roasted pink fruit, and Obi-Wan had eaten hungrily, relishing the tart flavour and the bubbly texture of the flesh. He had left his commlink on, volume turned down, as much to preserve energy as to try to make sense of their conversation without intruding upon it.

Their language appeared to be fully functional -- it lacked but one thing, a thing that kept throwing the translation algorithm seriously off the rails every time.

Nouns.

They had no word for 'forest' -- they called it by its nounless and just as appropriate local name, 'red-around'. Similarly, Obi-Wan was referred to, in hushed and respectful tones, as either 'white-alive' or 'unfamiliar-coming', or combinations of both. Each other they just addressed as 'mine', and they had not objected to Obi-Wan calling them by that name, even though he thought he had detected a slight swirl of surprise in their cloudy eyes every time he had spoken to one of them.

And he had conversed with nearly all of them in the course of the evening, exchanged pleasantries and names (they had attempted to convey the meaning of his name in their tongue, and he was fairly sure now that it had something to do with basket-weaving and the colour orange, and open palms), and told his story over and over again to amazed faces listening intently to the clicking and purring of his commlink, and had patiently listened to their replies, all the '!"%--___""s and their metallically-spoken translations as produced by a commlink that was sorely in need of nouns.

They had been very eager to communicate, and to help, and by the time the fire was burning down, Obi-Wan had gathered a number of promises to help him look for potential spare part material the next day. Hopeful and exhausted, he fell into a dreamless sleep.

"... from-nowhere scared... impossible-living... best left alone... not three-hundredth real-dark, no... no, no..."

It was the quiet chattering from his commlink that woke Obi-Wan, a while before the sluggish Tlön-Uqbarian dawn. He cracked open his eyes and found himself surrounded by a ring of concerned faces that drew away almost in shock the moment he looked at them.

"Falling-greenish?", he muttered, essaying one of the names he remembered from last night's camp. The faces looked terrified, and the commlink's translation (--!_"--!!?") echoed in the silence.

Obi-Wan sat up, puzzled, and the ring of faces withdrew further, quivering visibly with fear now. Obi-Wan automatically touched one palm to his cheeks. No, he was all right. Nothing beyond his usual rumpled early-morning self. Smiling a reassuring smile, he tried again.

"Falling-greenish, Ringed-with-sour, don't you remember me? It's me, Obi-Wan... thanking you for the lovely meal, and, uh... you were going to help me with my search, weren't you? Friends?"

That last word did it -- Obi-Wan cursed under his breath as the last series of clicks and rustles from the commlink drowned in the rustle and rush of a hasty retreat. They were running from him like he was about to eat them. Or as if they had never seen him before. "Impossible-living"? Was that what they had called him?

Were they a different group again? Then where had his friends gone? No, highly unlikely, he thought, that one clan should be replaced with another in the middle of the night, in such a relatively thinly populated area... they must still be the same people, then. Their number had seemed right...

It couldn't have been the commlink either. All right, it could have been that the thing had translated his words badly, but on the whole it had never yet screwed up meanings completely. It had served him well during the small talk last night, and the Tlön-Uqbarians had appeared to understand what he was saying, nouns or no. Besides, they had appeared horrified at the sight of his face, his eyes, his body as he sat up in his soiled pale tunic... and they had seen him like that all evening and not minded in the least?!

There was only one possible explanation: they had forgotten all about him.

They might even be the same lot he'd met on the first night... no, none of them had been called Leaps-yellow, he remembered that much. On the other hand, if they forgot someone as strikingly strange as Obi-Wan, how unlikely was it that they would forget their own names overnight was well?

It was no use. He would have to go in search of a serviceable grid stabiliser on his own.

At least it looked like they regarded him as something terrible rather than something edible. That would make things a little less difficult, should he run into them again.

Should he run into them again, he would make a point of trying to watch their sleep.

Well, at least he wasn't as worn out as he had been the previous nights. Wandering the messy rust-red forest in ever-widening circles around his ship had proven to be less exhausting than welding bits of it back into shape, and so he'd spent the best part of the day-cycle seeking out promising bits of wood. He'd given up after a few hours and exercised himself on the pressure door, and when that had closed satisfactorily at last, had felt uplifted enough to continue his search.

So far, all of the vegetable materials he had brought back had turned out to be unsuitable: too soft, too easily combustible, and in one case electrically conducting, spattering Obi-Wan's hands with scalding droplets of aromatic oil from a burst vine.

Another skim through the ship had yielded nothing that would not terminally disable the vessel by its removal, and Obi-Wan had been shocked at one point to see his thoughts straying off in the direction of Tlön-Uqbarian bones, if he happened to come across a dead one of course. He had wondered briefly as to what kind of burial rites would prevail in an environment that didn't have a ground to bury things in, and in which hardly anything burned... unless subjected to the sort of electric currents his ship's engine produced. It would probably char their bones too, he thought. It would char mine I'm pretty sure...

Still, he wasn't sleepy yet, and he thought he remembered the location of the leathery-pink-fruit tree that they had raided last night, so he set off in the general direction of last night's camp...

... only to find himself facing the gentle orange glow of another fire, and another group of frightened but curious faces.

He had told his story again, he had made friends again, and he had managed to extract some information about the creatures' culture in the process this time. For the first time in his career, he had been intensely grateful for Master Pyau's insistence that he learn a certain technique of questioning (he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was known as, but it began with a 'mä' or some such silly syllable), which prompted the Tlön-Uqbarians to give simple answers such as 'yes' or 'that's never been known'.

It seemed there really wasn't any distinction between genders, or at least the concept of 'male' and 'female' didn't mean anything to them. Neither was there a sense of statehood, or of a ruling class or individual -- they were 'mine' to each other, and appeared to treat each other with the kind of careless respect that grew out of familiarity. They did not have a concept of birth or death (which made sense given the absence of children or burials, but threw up a host of other questions Obi-Wan couldn't even begin to formulate), but had a certain set of beliefs that could vaguely be classed as religion.

Apart from their belief in being 'mine' to each other, the chief maxim of this seemed to be what a Tlön-Uqbarian named 'Wrapping-around-impatient' had attempted to convey in the following words:

"True-happening only once, in three-hundredth dark-between-light."

A few curious questions from Obi-Wan had verified that this was not an error in translation... their religion was apparently founded on the belief that the truth only happened once every three hundred nights!

Which would go some way towards explaining why the hell they didn't remember Obi-Wan in the morning... they probably thought him a ghost or some such.

Which would mean...

Obi-Wan sat up decidedly, gathering a few of his new-found friends around him. "Would you help me find the thing I am looking for... like, now?" Before nightfall, he thought, before I'll have to explain this all over again... please?

Minutes later, the forest was swarming with enthusiastically chattering Tlön-Uqbarians, some forming a search party with Obi-Wan, others rushing for what they thought were the best places to find suitable material.

Unfortunately, all they turned up were variations on the same types of wood that Obi-Wan had been trying out all day, and the search party got quieter and more despondent the nearer they came back to their fire-clearing, the more Tlön-Uqbarians joined the group, only to be rejected by a sighing Obi-Wan.

I guess it'll have to be gutting the ship's steering and hoping for the best, the Jedi thought hopelessly, or else I'll be stuck here forever... in a loop.

That was the precise moment he hit his shin on something sticking out between the branches that made up the ground here... he had picked it up before he'd even had time to look at it.

It wasn't so much a piece of wood as... an unknown material. Nothing he'd ever seen on Coruscant, or on any of the worlds he'd been to, and certainly nothing like the stuff that grew here. Hard and black like solidified rubber, the rod was almost twice as long as his lightsabre hilt, and slightly thinner than his forearm.

It looked bloody perfect for the job.

Amazed, Obi-Wan held the strange rod aloft like a trophy, letting out a scream of relieved joy. He would be out of here at last!! Falling into a jog, he explained to his companions en route to his ship that this was the perfect part he'd been hoping for all along, and that he wouldn't waste a minute trying it out...

The Tlön-Uqbarians appeared pleased, and not at all surprised at the appearance of the object that was so unlike the native materials. They seemed to regard it as an achievement of will rather than a stroke of uncommon good luck, or at least that's what Obi-Wan gathered from the scraps of language the commlink at his belt translated. One word kept recurring as untranslatable: 'hrön', or something like that.

Obi-Wan decided he would worry about that later.

Surrounded by a panting crowd of excited Tlön-Uqbarians, Obi-Wan opened the mangled hatch that gave access to the engine cavity. There was the space this beauty would fit into. Almost reverently, he slid it into place --

- and jarred. The rod was stuck diagonally between the grids. It was quite simply too large.

Still, that could be fixed. Turning his 'sabre to low power, Obi-Wan carefully lopped one end off. That should do. Biting his tongue in concentration, he slipped the rod into the cavity again... and it dropped to the ground. Too short!

He let out a curse. Moving the grids closer together was near on impossible, and at any rate a closer distance between them might raise the danger of freak discharges bridging the gap -- the whole thing might just blow apart before he'd even left the planet... swearing, he tossed the shortened rod to the ground and slumped against the hull of the ship.

One gentle brown hand on his shoulder woke him from his misery.

"What?"

"Hrön-found mine has. Second-hrön are always too large, though. Normally-good hrön-finding on eleventh light-between-dark, pale-living!"

Only the genuine brightness in the creature's eyes convinced Obi-Wan that it wasn't mocking him. He would have to go through nine more reiterations of this? What for??

"Just what the hell _is_ a hrön, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh, hrön-finding is willing-happily. Strongly-mental-living must mine be. Not-finding leads to finding better, again and again. Eleventh-hrön will be perfect. Always is."

Obi-Wan sighed. "Thanks for the heads-up, mate. So you grown them here, do you?"

The eyes smiled mildly. "Mine mental-grow. Don't need Tlön-nari, only willing-happily."

"So I grow them myself? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes, mine."

"By hoping to find the spare part, I will eventually find one that suits my needs?"

"Yes."

"It'll just appear like... like this one?" He gestured at the discarded rod on the ground.

"Yes."

Obi-Wan drew a deep breath, then straightened himself. "All right then. Tonight, the fire-fruit's on me..."

He had stayed awake long after the fire had gone out, willing himself to observant quiet. He did not want the Tlön-nari (so that's what they called themselves, he thought) to notice they were being watched...

Not that he could see much in the dim light of the planet's moon or moons -- the shadows cast by the enveloping vegetation weren't entirely clear on this subject. Still, he memorised the exact place where each and every Tlön-nari bedded down, curling up on branches, under aerial roots, under wads of large leaves, or just on a tree trunk that had not fallen far enough to reach the ground.

That was the one nearest to him, and though Obi-Wan could not off-hand remember his (or its) name, he picked this one to watch. As stealthily as possibly, he crept closer, taken special care not to make any noise that could be mistaken for speech.

One hand on his lightsabre and one cupping his commlink on his belt, the Jedi advanced step by cautious step, holding his breath in the quiet forest. Only now did he notice there didn't seem to be any other animal lifeforms here except for the Tlön-nari themselves... one of whom was now lying in full view, mottled brown skin edged with pale white moonlight.

It stirred, and Obi-Wan froze.

There was animal life. There was... there _were_...

Obi-Wan stared open-mouthed as hundreds of tiny lizard-like creatures crawled from the space where the Tlön-nari had lain, dissolving the humanoid silhouette in a sprawl of tiny leathery brown bodies. They matched the skin markings perfectly, Obi-Wan thought numbly, inch-long chameleon-like creatures with thin curling tails and minds of their own... they scattered around the forest floor, disappearing up branches and into crevices, leaving nothing but the strip of bark that had been the Tlön-nari's clothing.

They... they dispersed. Every night.

It seemed to make sense, now. They were never the same lot... chances were that the crowd of little chameleoids that would gather in the morning would not be the same that had just scuttled away into all directions... and they'd make a new Tlön-nari, with a new idea of self, who would give himself a new name. Himself, itself. Of course they have no need to be male or female that way, or to give birth. They don't even strictly speaking die! Except they only ever live for one long Tlön-Uqbar day either... and reappear as someone else the next day.

Of course they would forget all but the most archetypal memories, such as the fact that fruits were edible, that fire was a thing that could be made, and that only every three hundred nights the truth happened.

Obi-Wan wasn't one of these things, and he was saddened and relieved at the same time at this. He would not have upset a primeval culture by arriving here in his spaceship. They would just have forgotten about him come the dawn.

He would go in search of his hrön, whatever that would turn out to be, on his own from now on.

The third hrön had proven to be a little too hard to squeeze into the gap between the grids. The fourth had been too soft, the fifth had had a fuzziness around the edges that hurt the eye, the sixth and seventh had expanded the concept of 'rod' into dimensions Obi-Wan had never thought the word could entail, the eighth had been a negative image of a rod, like a mould, the ninth had consisted of two caps that would hold the perfect rod between them but didn't, and the tenth had calmed down to just being a rod, but sadly made of metal and thus conducting electricity like mad.

Today was the big day, and Obi-Wan had been up well before dawn, beginning his search in the fashion he had learned over the past few days. It did not matter to a hrön how hard one looked -- the thing seemed to turn up once it sensed it was wished for hard enough. Which was pretty early on in the day nowadays, as Obi-Wan had learnt to focus his mind on the finding of a perfect grid stabiliser rod, forcing himself to believe he would find it.

And then he did.

It was brown, like the growth surrounding it, brown like the robe Obi-Wan had thrown over his shoulders against the early-morning cold (and to hide the increasingly disgusting state of his tunic -- he had been reluctant to change into his clean one during his mechanical duties here). Unassuming. Long, hard, slightly rough to the touch.

Perfect.

The Tlön-nari were nowhere to be seen, and probably still asleep, or scattered around the dozing damp forest in their tiny chameleoid shapes... they would not be roused or horrified by the sound of Obi-Wan's ship powering up, and they would not live to carry memories of the fire that would come from his engine, blue like no fire should be here on Tlön-Uqbar.

And even if one of the chameleoids, or even one of the humanoids, should catch sight of him leaving, they would have forgotten by tomorrow.

Smiling wistfully, Obi-Wan wrenched the recently-repaired door shut, folded his robe into a cushion and sat down in the command seat.

"Snowed-under or plain, sir?"

"Snowed-under?" Obi-Wan tried his best to hide his puzzlement behind the studied worldly Jedi facade. The server gave him an indulgent little grin.

"Same as your normal drink, with a perfect virgin layer of authentic snow from the Three-Mountain on top. A floating island of soft fluffy white, and a little extra tang added to the flavour. Highly recommended. Unless you're allergic to a little sodium nitrate. All natural, you see?"

Obi-Wan couldn't help noticing that the server was obviously quite bored with having to rattle off perfectly plain explanations for stupid offworlders, and shooed the boy away with a cheerful 'just plain, then'...

Another collared one.

"Sprague."

"What?"

The burly humanoid sighed ostentatiously, holding out his huge rifted palm. You just couldn't get the staff on this pitiful little rock. Eterau m Hekle, choice spaceport of the Inner Rim, my foot he thought. If it wasn't for the lucrative odd jobs, he'd have decamped long ago to somewhere that wasn't quite as replete with scrappy ancient technology and brainless assistant lifeforms.

The assistant lifeform in question was still milling helplessly around the neatly dismembered innards of the Jedi's ship, blush growing hotter by the second. The mechanic, Trega to his few friends, found he rather enjoyed the sight. The sight of the little one's discomfort. It was endearing in a way, and often the only thing that kept Trega from sweeping him into the ranks of the collared ones, and off into the outlying regions of the galaxy, to leave nothing in Trega's workshop but a faint memory and a neat stack of credits.

"That," Trega lectured, soaking up his assistant's discomfort, "is a sprague. Pray do tell me what you call it on that oh-so-civilised world of yours, dear?".

The assistant tittered a little at the sight of Trega's huge hand grabbing the long metal rod, shiny with yellowish grease, then rubbed his hands a little and busied them amongst the smaller parts of the ship's bowels, out of the giant's sight. "Well, I thought... I just didn't know we'd come this far yet. I would have thought..."

A bark from Trega (or was it the sound of him clearing his throat?) stopped him short. "Leave the thinking to me, okay? You do the bitty work and enjoy the fruits, right?"

"Right... sir."

The fruits that had come with the snow-free drink had been rather too sweet for Obi-Wan's taste, and he had left them languishing in the sticky remains of something that had not quite managed to slake his thirst, but left him feeling rather well-fed anyway.

He'd be done before moonrise, Trega the mechanic had said, and that he had all the spare parts at hand. At a conservative estimate, that would be two hours from now, Obi-Wan thought, and he would be ready to leave this place again.

He would be more than ready to leave this place by then. For all its bustle and technology and the cosmopolitan mix of humanoid and non-humanoid races, Eterau m Hekle exuded a clamminess that made Obi-Wan deeply uncomfortable. It was not so much the spaceport feel of the place -- he expected to feel alienated at spaceports really. There was an oppressive dankness to the surrounding Force here that stifled his mind and that had made him reach for the collar of his tunic more than once, on impulse, as if to loosen an invisible constriction.

He suspected it was all the collared ones.

Ornate collars like the delicate metal one the server at the bar had worn, almost decorative were it not for the unmistakable presence of the lock and the defiant shine of the metal... crude hide ones drawn tight around the wearer's neck, often complemented with manacles and shackles... plain matte iron bands issued by the dozen and worn on dozens of different necks, under heads hung in shame or fear, under dull eyes and empty faces, half-disappearing under as yet unshorn hair, weighing down sagging shoulders.

The collars were everywhere. It wasn't hard to deduce for even the most casual observer what the economic basis of Eterau m Hekle was.

Sighing deeply, Obi-Wan turned back towards the terminal building and the hangars and shacks making up the mechanical workshops of the spaceport.

Over the past eight months, he had slowly, gradually given up the hope that he could impose his own, better, world view on world that plainly didn't ask for it. Plus, it would be hopeless. Close down one slave trading place here, and another three will spring up elsewhere to make up for the loss of one, charging marginally higher prices to cover the cost of moving operations. And with all his skills and powers, Obi-Wan knew perfectly well that he, as a single individual, was utterly powerless against the well-rusted and ingrained un-culture of Eterau m Hekle.

All he could do was make a mental note for later missions, and thank the Force that he was a free man, and free to do what he could.

That wasn't much, but it was something.

"Gasket."

Trega blinked as his assistant smilingly handed him the object he'd asked for. Buried deep within the entrails of the ship, he allowed himself a little grudging grin. He wouldn't be tempted to sell that one off into oblivion so soon after all.

"Ta. Just the one more... thingy," a meaningful clearing of throat made up for the fact that Trega couldn't give his assistant a wicked glare from where he was crouching in the engine cavity of Obi-Wan's ship, "and we can send our sweet little Jedi boy on his way, eh?"

The assistant tittered. "Sweet little Jedi boy..."

"Oh, come on," Trega's mood was ostensibly lightening, now that the work was drawing to an end, and a neat stack of credits loomed ever closer within sight, "don't tell me you wouldn't quite like to keep him, huh?"

The assistant blushed wildly, and a groan from the abused ship's hull was ample evidence that Trega had seen the moment fit to extricate himself from the cavity and gloat. "What? Not your taste? C'mon, I know you like 'em young... think about it... all that pure pale skin... silky red hair, eyes grey as the moons, that little pink mouth open in invitation..."

The assistant squirmed, patently unable to hide his growing arousal.

Trega grinned mercilessly. "And he's a fully qualified Jedi, dear. Think about that too. I bet you've heard about what they can do with the Force, I bet they talk about nothing else in those shabby little gay bars you hang out at... not that a Jedi Knight would want anything to do with scum like you, darling."

The assistant glared, his head clearly in a world separate from the one his groin was inhabiting.

"Oh, I beg your pardon. I forgot your noble profession. I am sure you would be able to... let me say, convince him to see your point of view... think about it. Those delectable muscles straining against the ropes, tightly bound hand and foot, the adorable mouth gagged into reverent silence... or would you prefer muffled moans? Anyway. I bet he'd fight to his last, resist you putting the collar on his slender white neck... or would you remember to bring your knife, darling? Assert your superiority, huh? Watch him go all slack as the blade whispers through his drab Jedi linens, leaving faint pink lines on that creamy skin, hear nothing but his heavy breathing, no scream as you ram into him, no scream, just a moan that could be pleasure. Is pleasure, your pleasure, isn't it, darling?"

Trega grinned wickedly as the assistant convulsed on the floor in a frenzied orgasm.

"Pity we can't take this one, dear. Jedi, you know. Too risky for little buggers like us. Little _buggers_, heh? Nudge, nudge!" He nudged his panting assistant unceremoniously with his boot.

"C'mon, get up here. You don't wanna be caught like that by your sweet little Jedi boy, do you? Here, hold this, it's rather bloody important. A little extra service for our esteemed customer from Coruscant, if you catch my drift, eh?"

The assistant caught the drift, and held the little black box up while Trega wired it in place under the top of the ship's main comms unit.

It wasn't much, but it was something.

Obi-Wan had lost count of how many times his thoughts had drifted down that particular avenue. To be free at least. At least he was out here of his own free will, and because he chose to be here. He could have refused the mission, could have refused any mission at all, could have chosen the life of a Contemplative if he so wished. He had all the options. Being unbound was one of the few glories of his life, and one he relished.

Fortunately, his Master had been the same, an independent spirit demanding no eternal vows of obedience or even respect. They had been thrown together by the Force to make the best of Obi-Wan's training, and had paradoxically grown to be good friends over the years. Still, Obi-Wan had never grown so attached to Master Pyau as to be unable to function without him. Longing was not something he found applicable to himself, and on second thoughts that was a good thing.

Garen couldn't be doing this, he thought, not what I'm doing.

And that's a kind of bond-slavery too, slavery to the bond he has with his lover. Not that I think they shouldn't have that... but for me... I'm glad it's not required for a fulfilled life. I certainly don't miss the missing, he thought, the pining after my Master when he's out on a solo mission, or craving my lover when she's away.

My lover. He snorted. He had not known a single woman in his life that could be called that, and after a few half-serious attempts at intercourse, had given that up as well. It had seemed more like a necessary chore, a complicated socio-sexual dance, than a truly satisfying experience, and he found his body functioned quite well without the strangled exertion of sex.

Give me a good 'sabre-match any day, he thought, or a game of sabacc with my Master and Garen. Or a spiky philosophical discourse.

Born and bred a Jedi, I guess, he smiled to himself. Fulfilled in fulfilling his job... and the best thing was, in two hours' time he would be off this rotten rock, leaving behind a tendril of bad conscience for the evils of this world, and off towards the goal of his mission. Hopefully. If there was _any_ truth in the Council's tourist-leaflet documentation...

Popping his knuckles, Obi-Wan strode through the terminal building, towards where his ship was awaiting completion.

The assistant nervously eyed the stack of credits in Trega's gnarled hand, trying to gauge if he was in for a reward other than being allowed to keep the fantasy of the young Jedi Knight who had just departed the atmosphere of Eterau m Hekle.

Timidly. "How much...?"

"This one? A fucking fortune... though I guess he'll be as hard to sell as he'll be to get. Not a toy for everyone, a Jedi. They'll have him head the contingent at the auction. Prestige, you know. Only the best. VIPs, beauties, Force-sensitives... they'll be pleased with us, darling, they will."

"Who...?"

Exasperated sigh. "I told you so many times, didn't I? The less you ask, the more you get. And that goes for questions too, right? Besides, even I don't know. They never showed me the auctions... Gods, if I saw the clients I'd be up on the block in no time, never to be seen again... you know they don't all come back somewhere? Some of the choice slaves are... never seen again." The mechanic's voice had dropped to a menacing growl, and the assistant had paled visibly.

Trega straightened himself with an acid grin, delighting in the terrified whimper from his assistant. "Give that sort of perspective, I bet you wish we'd built a camera into the pilot seat, eh? Catch some more glimpses of that sweet little bottom before it disappears forever? Those delicious firm round cheeks...?"

Another whimper, this time accompanied by a slight squirm. Grunting in satisfaction, Trega turned back to his tools. His work was done.

The transmitter would mark the pretty young Jedi well enough.

Well, it was a bed, that much could be said in its favour.

It was probably quite luxurious given the Spartan nature of the prevalent local culture of Tihaar actually. Damn the Council and their ludicrous fact sheets, he thought for the hundredth time as he dropped his bundle on the rug-covered ledge that passed for a bed in the little room, and shortly afterwards dropped himself right on top, his scrunched-up robe providing a half-decent substitute for a pillow.

The boots could wait, he decided.

He wouldn't mind if he never had to walk in his entire life.

Half a day from where he had landed his ship, inconspicuously, to the capital city of whatever his land was called. Well, at least the city had been where his scant data had predicted it would be. But that was about where the similarity ended.

All right, the Council had been right about the xenophobia. That was why he'd landed so far outside the city in the first place and trekked all the way here on foot, carrying all he considered necessary with him. With nothing but his drab Jedi browns and a bundle of stuff on his shoulder, he surely had more of a chance to blend into the festivities than if he'd tried to park a battered spaceship on the outskirts of the city...

Wrong.

Even in his inconspicuous Jedi browns and with a bundle of stuff on his shoulder, Obi-Wan had stood out like a sore thumb. Not that the people here had ever heard of Jedi. They didn't care at all what he was. All that mattered was that he was not what he needed to be, namely one of them.

He had been sent for one place of hospitality to the next, the open smiles on the receptionist's faces winking out like electric lights the moment he'd explained to them that he didn't have the passport they so adamantly demanded to see. Nothing had worked -- his Jedi Council briefing had not meant a thing to them, the commlink was out of range as usual, and no amount of extra credits could sway the natives into putting an offworlder up in their house.

And he was above trying to mind-trick his way into this place, damn it. Besides, he wasn't sure it would have worked, and given the quality of the Tihaaroth's hospitality, he didn't much fancy intimate knowledge of their policing system.

He had even tried mentioning the festival once.

There was no festival, was what they told him.

It was really only the state of his heels that had kept Obi-Wan from turning on his heel and making off home to Coruscant as quickly as possible, there to pour his foaming rage over the assembled Council. As it was, he was over half a day away from his ship, and night was falling.

The woman had grudgingly rented him the back room of her house - for a lot of extra credits of course, and with a lavish display of disdainful stares and mumbles at the offworlder who'd dare come here on whatever shady business. He was dutifully watered and fed, much like an animal, and Obi-Wan wasn't surprised to find his landlady had locked the door behind her, leaving her guest stuck in his room for the night.

Not that he felt much like a brisk evening walk, but the thought made him a little uneasy.

Still tomorrow he'd be out of here, and damn the Menesomething. Probably didn't exist anyway, like the silly festival.

He hadn't noticed he'd drifted off into a light doze, and so the arrival of the landlady in the doorway came as quite a shock. Sitting up straight on the back-breakingly hard ledge that passed for his bed, Obi-Wan mutely watched the ponderous old woman potter about the remnants of his scant meal, gathering up the dishes with her be-ringed fingers, all the while muttering to herself a if to ward off the evil influence of the offworlder. Obi-Wan saw little more than a precise array of ash-blond curls surmounted by a cobalt blue shawl, but he could picture the woman's face with its expression of disgusted righteousness. Still, at least she did put him up, and for that she deserved a little gratitude.

"Good lady, one question if you please?"

Not that Obi-Wan's studied politeness had any effect on the woman. Not even his sweetest, most sparkly-eyed smile had. But at least she was listening, or at any rate had stopped muttering.

"I was sent here to attend a religious festival that was to take place here in this very city. I have found no such thing... please tell me, was there a mistake?"

"Mistake all right, young man. Hah, religious festival! You've come to the wrong place, silly boy. Send you to Tihaar for a religious festival, huh? No such thing here, lad. We have no truck with ghosts and such stuff... or people who do." A pointed look at Obi-Wan made clear just who she was referring to.

"Well, good lady, I wasn't sent to take part in the worshipping, or whatever the festival entails... I am merely here to escort one of its participants back to the centre of the Galactic Republic, should he so wish. A messenger, so to speak."

"Come to take someone with religion away from here? Good idea if you ask me, but we don't have any of 'em here, and if we had, we wouldn't have 'em, you know what I mean? We'd drive them right out of town, prob'ly off the edge of the planet. Silly timewasters. No better than the Azzies!"

"Azzies?"

The woman's thunderous frown deepened a further shade. "Azzies. Asun-Tihaar, or so they say in their filthy language. Half-animals from the wastes of the West. Horrible creatures, best kept far away if you ask me. Of course they had to claim this little bit of forgotten earth at the western end of Tihaar town, and that oh-so-benign Lord Mayor granted them leave to use it, and you know what? Mayor's gone, Azzies are still there. Shouldn't have written that down in writing, you know? They claim it's holy ground now. Holy, my foot! It'll be infested with religion if they stay there any longer, mark my words! Them and their silly ghosts and fellow-beasts and that man with the painted face they think is a god..."

"The Mene s'Mene?"

"Mene-shmene, what does it matter what they call him in their barbaric tongue? It's all a terrible waste of time just to talk about it if you ask me. Young men like you shouldn't fill their heads with nonsense like that. Young men like you shouldn't go about roving the planets far away from their family in the first place!"

Another sharp look, and the landlady disappeared in a flurry of skirts, rattling the keys as she locked Obi-Wan in.

Azzies, Obi-Wan thought, curling up uneasily on the bed-ledge. However beastly and barbaric, it can't get much worse than this.

Mene s'Mene, here I come.

It wasn't what he had been led to expect, not by the sparse notes the Council had left him with, and much less by the grudging remarks of the inhabitants of this town. Tihaar Town, or Firsttown to those who felt too modern and enlightened to even dirty their mouths with the old name that the place had had since it had been little more than an agglomeration of hovels.

Tihaar, you see, had been a goddess. Or a delusion, depending on whom you asked. Independently of whom Obi-Wan had asked, he had got the impression that the universally hated gypsy race of the 'Azzies' were much more closely related to the successful if xenophobic city population of Firsttown, and any of the smaller cities, named logically and in order of importance, all the way to Thirty-Seventhtown.

The townsfolk had more or less told him not to go to the Enclosure, not if he wanted to remain uncontaminated by the filthy half-beasts that lived there, worshipping their flimsy deities in sin and squalor. That didn't deter him. He'd seen worse in the last eight months. And this was what he had come for after all.

Even though he hadn't expected it to look like this.

Behind the high fences of painted wood, a small herd of dark red tents clustered around a central larger one, high, conical things of smooth heavy woollen fabric with gently sloping walls and slanted door-like opening, hanging open in careless invitation.

The ground between them was hard, smooth dry loamy yellow, broken only by hardy strands of bluish-green grass. The place looked like it had just been swept.

There was not a soul to be seen.

They, whoever they were, had just let him wander in here, through the narrow gate in the fence, unguarded, unchecked. Maybe they assumed that whoever came here would know exactly what he wanted.

Well, they were wrong. Obi-Wan hadn't the faintest.

He drew a deep breath, straightened his robe over his shoulders, and approached the largest of the red tents. There were voices inside, speaking quietly in a strange tongue, hushed voices. Obi-Wan stopped just outside the slit in the wall that passed for a door, and listened.

Of course he couldn't make out a word without his commlink, but the tone of the voices was telling enough. Quiet, a little nervous maybe. Nothing like the harsh clear utterances of the townsfolk with their sharply-accented version of Standard. These here people had their own language, and seemed to try their best to keep it to themselves. Or maybe they were whispering in the presence of something awesome.

Obi-Wan racked his brain for any information beyond that of the meagre mission briefing the Council had given him, and failed comprehensively. All he knew was that the 'Azzies'' religion (who had been billed as Tihaaroth in the briefing, so that showed how much the Council knew, he thought bitterly) was one based on the worship of the earth, the wind, and assorted other forces of nature, and involved meditative trance as well as the personification of these forces in a godlike priest who went by the title of Mene s'Mene, whatever that meant.

Not much to go by. The rest had been plain command language that bore Master Windu's handwriting even though Master Windu had probably never written a single word by hand in his life: It has come to our attention that the current Mene s'Mene [link to description] is about to be deposed ritually. Join the festivities as a guest. If possible, convince him to come to Coruscant for a symposium on the finer points of meditative trance. If he refuses, give our courteous regards and leave.

Well, one down, two to go. There were no festivities anywhere in sight, and he very much doubted Master Windu would give a kaadu's about the finer points of meditative trance... probably a case of the wife interfering, he thought with a grin, refusing to even imagine what Depa would owe Windu in return for sending one of the Order's most in-demand Knights on a mission that could only be described as hazy.

Shaking his head, Obi-Wan cautiously stepped inside the large dark red tent.

Silence greeted him, maybe half a dozen pairs of brown eyes blinking at him in dumb curiosity. The place was sparse, empty save for a few low benches ranged around the perimeter of the tent, benches that were mostly empty too. Here and there, a small human figure sat in the warm red gloom of the walls, elbows on knees, face upturned to where the daylight filtered in through the hole in the middle of the roof, faces that were mostly empty too.

They were looking at him with mild curiosity, and Obi-Wan couldn't help staring back. It wasn't the look he was used to, the hostile taxing look that was trying to gauge if he was best robbed, raped, or avoided, and it wasn't the awed fear of the big bad Jedi Knight either. These people had probably never seen one in their lives, and it showed. They just couldn't stop themselves from seeing one now, and they looked their fill, silently appreciating Obi-Wan's long brown robe, drinking the cream of his tunics and memorising every line of his face as he stood silhouetted in the entrance of the tent, wondering who to turn to first.

That question was answered with the tap of a hand on his shoulder, and Obi-Wan had to shake himself out of the mesmeric atmosphere of the place, and look down to meet the earnest face of a very short old man with a black cap and a curious expression. And a voice.

Surprisingly, the shrivelled old man possessed a low and sonorous voice, and even more surprisingly, he spoke intelligibly, some rusted and heavily-accented version of Standard. He demanded to know who the stranger was, and Obi-Wan told him his name and where he had come from. The little man nodded slowly, and Obi-Wan was less than certain that 'Jedi' meant anything but 'complete and utter stranger' to him. Still, he motioned him to sit down on one of the benches, proceeded to ask him a few more questions (he seemed pleased that Obi-Wan wasn't in possession of a passport, for example), then told him to await his turn and disappeared.

So Obi-Wan waited, not entirely sure what for.

There was nothing happening inside the large dark red space of the tent, nothing that he could determine with any of his senses anyway. In the middle of the room, next to the central pole that held the tent up, a small altar contained a messy arrangement of flowers, fruits, spices and rocks, and a flat round censer that sent a sharp-smelling thin wisp of smoke rising up towards the round piece of sky visible through the hole in the roof.

Once in a while, a new person would enter the tent, quietly as Obi-Wan himself had, and the little old man would come and ask them their names and where they came from, and take the small gifts they had brought and place them on the altar. Occasionally, the little old man would appear at the other end of the tent, wave at a waiting figure and beckon them to follow him out, which they did with an expression of mixed awe and joy.

After a while, the hushed conversations had begun again, and by now most of the people that were present in the tent had arrived after Obi-Wan and were apparently taking the silent brown-robed figure for granted. Obi-Wan listened, words that had no meaning to him, and waited, letting the calm numbing aura of the place wash over him. Maybe they knew a thing or two about... meditative... trance...

He awoke with a start at the touch of a hand in his hair, and stared into the face of the little old man, blinking. It was dark inside the red tent, and from what he could see he was the only one left waiting. Night had fallen... had he missed his turn? Was the gnome about to quietly and politely throw him out, and tell him not to come back...?

//Unbeliever// The tone of the voice was soothing, almost kind, and it took Obi-Wan a startled second to realise the old man hadn't moved his lips.

Force-sensitives?!

//You may now approach the Mene s'Mene if you like//, the old man continued, smiling at Obi-Wan's shaken expression. Reflexively, the Jedi sent a warm blanket of reassurance into the old man's mind, which seemed to please him. //Follow me.//

Stretching, Obi-Wan rose from the low bench and followed the little man out of the red darkness of the tent, into the blue darkness of the Tihaar night, frantically trying to remember as much as he could of the description of the man (god?) he was supposed to be inviting back to Coruscant... human, male, about Master Windu's age, a good five standard decades then, just over a span taller than Obi-Wan himself, blue-eyed and brown-haired, a rare enough combination in this place where everyone seemed to turn from midnight black to white in the space of a breath, and eyes were invariably some shade of amber or brown.

The little old man's eyes shone pale gold as he stooped under the entrance flap to a tiny purple tent at the edge of the village, beckoning Obi-Wan to follow.

The sight that greeted him was nothing like what he'd expected.

On a throne of wood carved so elaborately as to look like solidified brown lace, the Mene s'Mene of Tihaar sat motionlessly, eyes closed, lips painted into a meaningful purple smile that encompassed most of the lower half of the man's face.

If it was a man at all.

Obi-Wan wasn't entirely sure -- the robes hid the body completely from view under layers of shiny black silk, spidery lace and supple polished leather in shades of brown, purple, and silver. A pair of soft brown boots peeked out from under the delicate cascade of rich fabrics, grounding the seated figure in the earth... the hands were slim and tender, almost porcelain-like, the waist, encircled by a tight leather sash, was exceedingly slender, and the long elegant neck that rose from a wide embroidered silk collar appeared almost translucent, even more so for all the raven-black hair that fell on to the Mene s'Mene's shoulders in thick shiny locks.

The long dark lashes that rested on the figure's even cheeks were decidedly feminine, as was the creamy pallor of the skin -- on the other hand, the long sharp nose and the angular jaw weren't, and the lips underneath the elegant purple markings had all the thin sharpness of a man's, or a boy's. Really, there was no way of telling how old this Mene s'Mene was, but there was one thing he definitely wasn't.

He wasn't the one Obi-Wan had come here for.

Maybe it was the Jedi's exasperated sigh that roused the figure out of meditation -- the heavy black lashes lifted, and large amber eyes gazed down on Obi-Wan, filling him with a warmth like liquid honey trickling along his nerves. Obi-Wan tried to resist the temptation to just open up, open his mouth and his hands and his heart and drink up the delicious golden flood that emanated from the young man's mind... it was just too good, too good. As if every single fibre of his being had been dipped in pure Living Force, coated and gilded in existential bliss, and Obi-Wan whimpered blindly as he drowned in the liquid wonder of the man's mind, and found himself stranded upon his gentle low laugh, panting, heavy with sated joy.

"You have a beautiful mind, stranger. Beautiful. Even the walls inside it are well-measured... a joy to the one who will bond with you and move in. Hopefully to tear them down. Beautiful walls, beautiful walls..." the Mene s'Mene's warm and undeniably male voice trailed off into a low hum, a short snippet of melody repeated a few times until it had taken root in Obi-Wan's mind like a small golden insect released inside the labyrinth of his baffled thoughts, carrying the Mene s'Mene's absent-sounding voice through every fibre of his being.

Obi-Wan tried to shield, but found he felt absolutely no need to. Not from the warmth of this tranced-out starry-eyed boy. He was good where he was...

"I may be good where I am," the Mene s'Mene smiled, relishing Obi-Wan's broadcast thoughts like a rare delicacy, "but I sense it is not I who should be in that place. The one you are looking for... is not here, is not now. He was, I am told, before me, before I was born into this place..."

"He's -- dead?"

"Oh no, oh no -- none that have the Qui will just die. He just took his Qui away from this place at my birth, as I am told generations of Mene s'Mene did before him, and returned to the life of a man. Seek him out, and I am sure you will find him."

"But... but if he left... what, fifteen, twenty years ago? He could be anywhere on this planet now!" Obi-Wan stared, puzzlement slowly turning into anger at the continued mildness of the boy's expression. The Mene s'Mene smiled, and Obi-Wan felt the anger running through the fingers of his mind, soaking into the dry ground.

"I know nothing of such a long time ago, stranger. I was born no more than twenty-four nights ago, and this long has he left this place to seek his home in the West, among his people. So they tell me, for you must forgive me for not knowing such distant things... I am but born a little while ago, and know nothing beyond what is."

Obi-Wan reeled at the pure golden wave of Living Force emanating from the boy's sad smile. His mind was indeed empty, Obi-Wan sensed, razed of the 'walls' that kept his thoughts in place. Whether it was a drug or a meditation technique that had achieved this, Obi-Wan was deeply envious of the blissful stupefied purity of the strange man's mind. No wonder they worship him as a god, he thought.

The honey-coloured eyes smiled at him, and the purple lips spoke again. "Not a god, stranger. Merely an empty vessel for Tihaar to fill with her Qui. He who you seek is still full of it... and I am sure you will find him, and what you are looking for, if you keep your mind as beautiful as it is now. Your need is deep, and your thirst for the Qui is about to be slaked. Beautiful mind, beautiful mind..." The voice trailed off into the hypnotic hum again, and Obi-Wan watched in awed surprise as the golden eyes closed again, and the low light in the purple tent dimmed along with the Mene s'Mene's consciousness.

Sensing a dismissal, Obi-Wan gathered his robe about him and left.

So he was late. By about 24 days.

Damn the blasted ship. Damn the Tlön-nari and their mysterious attitude to finding spare parts. Damn... no. It didn't work.

Obi-Wan couldn't find it in himself to damn anyone. Must have been something they burned in that tent, he thought. Or the aura of that extravagantly-dressed golden-eyed boy... he had never felt a Force presence as strong as this outside the confines of the Jedi Temple.

Well, that explained why Master Billaba wanted one of them.

Except whoever it was was now roughly twenty-four days ahead of him, and even given the prevalent hair and eye colour among the locals, it could take him anything up to twenty-four years to try and track him down on the blue-grassed wastes of Tihaar.

There was nothing to it but to follow the Mene s'Mene's advice -- walk westwards, and follow the drips of golden glow.

Shouldering his pack, Obi-Wan set off into the dark blue night.

He had walked all night and all day, at first because he had wanted to waste as little time as possibly, then because he hadn't felt like camping anywhere near the curious mild stares that still greeted him whenever he came across an Asun-Tihaar native. Inevitably amber or brown-eyed stares.

He had built a fire, munched the last rations from his pack, then plopped the pitifully thin sack on the ground and bedded himself on it, curling up under his robe.

At sunrise, he had got up again, surprised at the thin sheen of hoar-frost on the rough wool of his robe. He had wet his hands in the hard grass and wiped his face and set off again, hungry.

Ever more urgently, he had an idea of where he was going.

That night, the feeling had grown too strong to give him any clue as to where he was going any more. Maybe it was the hunger too. The dribs and drabs of Force he had sensed had bled into a diffuse aura, as if he was walking in the middle of a sunset, which strictly speaking he was of course.

The plain was as empty as the tiled floors of the Great Hall at the Temple, save for the tiny A of a tent in the distance. Sod it, Obi-Wan thought, I'm not going to wake up under a frost-covered robe two nights in a row, not when there's a fire around. Let them stare at me all they like...

Close-up, the tent appeared a little bigger than the Mene s'Mene's audience chamber had, though it still looked too small to harbour a family. The mild glow of a low fire illuminated the tent from within, making it look like a coarsely-woven ruby on the cold blue plain. As close to home as it'll get, Obi-Wan thought, squirming in the warm grip of the Force-sunset that had refused to die with the light.

Drawing a deep breath, he lifted the door-flap of the small home and entered. "I come in peace, and in need... will you let me rest by your fire for the night...?" He had had little confidence that he would be understood, so far away from the town, but a rustle from the other side of the fire told him he'd at least been heard.

Uneasy, smiling even though his cheeks ached from the constant onslaught of the invisible golden light, Obi-Wan squinted past the very real glow of the fire. A brownish shadow dripped from the recesses of the tent, rising to an elegant height... Obi-Wan saw a flash of silver fur, and found himself thrown to the ground, yelping in surprise as a warm musky face nuzzled into his.

"Hällilaul!"

The creature atop Obi-Wan pricked up its ears and deigned to clamber off him, allowing him to breathe at last. Panting, Obi-Wan sat up and stared at the graceful, slightly bored-looking beast. Felinoid, only just. Short silver fur, with sharply defined wide black stripes, trailing off into scattered markings on its snowy belly. Eyes of the same silver as its fur, unsettlingly cold and sparkling. Sharp thick claws, and yet it had not rent Obi-Wan asunder... .not even made as much as a nick in his robe.

The beast lay down next to Obi-Wan gracefully, radiating warmth and staring intently at where its master's voice had come from, just outside the red tent.

Slowly so as not to upset beast or master, Obi-Wan turned around to face the entrance.

"Hällilaul, is that a way to treat a guest? Can't you see he's a bit weaker than me, old girl? Pounce on him, tss...". The voice had the same strange lilting accent as the pale boy's, though the man could not have looked more different. Dumbfounded, Obi-Wan raked his gaze up the man's back as he diligently tied the door shut...

Soft high brown boots, the same buff leather that had adorned the Mene s'Mene's feet, tied about with black thongs moulding the supple material to the man's calves. Higher up, more leather, worn and broken but still retaining some of the pure black sheen it must have had when it was new. Softened with wear and age, the kilt clung to the man's mighty thighs, wrapping around his slim hips tightly, trailing off around his knees in a ragged hem, half-covered by an uneven film of what looked like spider webs in the dying firelight... lace. Silver lace, dulled and torn but still shimmeringly beautiful as it stretched over the man's broad back, disappearing under a jacket that was little more than a pair of wide black sleeves held together by a scrap of fabric in the back... it may have been silk once, a robe even. Now it was just ragged greying softness enveloping broad shoulders, merely a background for the straggly cascade of long grey hair, merely a muted undertone in the overwhelming presence of the man who hummed his approval at Obi-Wan's quiet gasp in a voice that spoke of steppes and fires and thick golden sunsets and a rugged, ragged beauty that threatened to burst the young Jedi's heart.

Smiling, the grey-haired giant turned around to face his guest.

His eyes were the bluest Obi-Wan had ever seen.

He wasn't beautiful as such.

Handsome perhaps, at a little stretch of the imagination, handsome for his age. The way the tiny lines exploded around his eyes as he smiled at Obi-Wan, an open smile with closed lips. Lips painted the same way as the young Mene s'Mene's had been: a large purple field in the shape of a mouth overlaid over the man's own, curling up into a sharp-edged smile on his cheeks, on either side of a short and well-groomed silvery-grey moustache and beard the colour of the man's unadorned long hair. Hair that fell all the way to his waist in untidy silver strands. He looked utterly outlandish, savage almost.

He wasn't beautiful as such.

The appearance of his clothes added to the savage impression -- hardly anything about him that wasn't well-worn, faded, or torn. And yet there was hardly anything about his attire that didn't speak of great antiquity and nobility, a faded splendour of kings and temples. Obi-Wan found himself staring at the man's collarbones, barely covered by a web of blemished and ragged silver lace that stretched across his wide chest, held in place by something soft and purple wound around his chest and stomach and strapped around the waist with a sturdy dark brown leather belt not unlike his own. The lace continued past the man's waist, meandering over the thin worn leather of his kilt and trailing off into a ragged hemline made by age, cheerful neglect, and the sharp claws of the tiger-creature that was now lying beside Obi-Wan, staring at the stranger intently.

With a start, Obi-Wan realised he was staring too. Worse still, he was still sitting on the floor, propped up on one arm, being towered over by this strange and savage-looking man... who wasn't beautiful. He had a broken nose, and his eyes were relatively small. And blue. Blue as the sky.

He wasn't beautiful.

But something made Obi-Wan's stomach tighten nevertheless, a warm hard sensation deep in his gut. Like fear, only closer, and yet less familiar. Not that Obi-Wan was a fearful person, far from it... but this... it wasn't a feeling he had ever encountered in his life, and he wasn't entirely sure whether he wanted to encounter it ever again.

Wrinkling her nose, Hällilaul growled quietly and rested her head on her paws.

It wasn't just the presence of an apparently tame predator in the tent, was it? Obi-Wan shook his head and cleared his throat, as much to dispel his embarrassment at the situation as to reassure himself he still had a voice.

The man had moved away again, busying himself at the fire. Just as Obi-Wan felt ready to speak to the outlandish apparition again, the man turned around, the glow of the low fire turning stray hairs into a quivering golden halo, and proffered two earthen cups of a cloudy light brown liquid.

"Sorry, stranger... that's the last of the pot, the dregs of today's chai, so to speak. I hope it's not too strong, and ask you to forgive me for not brewing a fresh kettle before the night."

Obi-Wan stared, mesmerised by how small the cup seemed in the man's large hand, then wordlessly took the cup and sipped the lukewarm drink. It was thicker than he'd thought, sweet and salty and slightly rancid, as if it contained fermented milk or old butter. Still, it did something towards slaking the savage thirst he hadn't been aware of until now.

"You've come a long way, have you, young stranger?" The purple smile was unnerving in its mild warmth.

Putting the empty cup down, Obi-Wan opened his mouth to answer. All that came out was an almighty yawn.

The blue-eyed man chuckled. "Tell me all about it tomorrow, if you can spare a little time for me... I'm always curious to hear of faraway places, and you look like you come from one. Make yourself comfortable," he gestured towards a slanted wooden rack a step or two away from the dying fire, "and I'll see you in the morning. Sleep well in my humble house, stranger."

With that, and another of those stomach-tightening smiles, the tall man turned his back, leaving Obi-Wan to himself. Grateful, confused, and above all, bone-weary, the young Knight curled up on the floor under his robe, too tired to move even when the large tiger-creature stretched out along his back, growling gently.

At least she's warm, he thought weakly before dropping into deep black sleep.

They were many, and they were like jewels, dozens of bright jewels just below the surface of the stream, silhouetted against the smooth pale sand at the bottom of the shallow crystal-clear water.

They were his for the catch, swarms of thin silvery-grey ones like ribbons, undulating as they swam against the stream, staying in place perfectly, reflecting the whitish blue of the sky and the mottled dark green of the trees on their metallic bodies as he stood on the steep bank, naked feet sinking in the rich dark earth. He had taken his boots and socks off already, and was standing there in just his tunic and leggings, ready to wade in and catch them.

Nervously, he fingered the long handle of the implement in his hand. It didn't feel at all familiar, and looked to all intents and purposes like a rake with rather fine teeth. Not the perfect implement for catching fish, but it would do, he thought. There's so many of them...

Slowly, trying not to disturb the water's surface, he dipped one foot into the crystal coldness. The sand was smooth and firm under his sole, and the fish didn't move at all. All they did was stare at the new arrival in mute admiration or disapproval. He couldn't tell from their round black- and-white eyes.

He took one more step, then another and another, until he stood in the middle of the wide shallow brook, up to his calves in shimmering icy water, surrounded by a display so rich he was unable to make up his mind as to which one to go for first.

There were the ribbon-like silver ones, there were small fat black ones with pouting pale pink mouths, there were flat white ones with intricate thin purple markings on their tails. There was a whole family of bright metallic orange fish of all sizes, flecked with white, hovering just below the surface as if they were basking in his gaze. He took one step towards them, and they retreated by one step, and regrouped around his feet again, as they had been before. He shook his head. How was he suppose to catch them if they followed him?

He experimentally swung the rake over the surface of the water, totally failing to upset any of the fish. Puzzled, he staked the long handle into the soft sand at the bottom of the river, leaning on it and pondering what to do next.

Then, something tickled his foot.

It was a coal-grey fish about the size of his hand, unassuming and completely unlike any of the bright jewels hovering around his feet. It danced around him, inviting chase with lusty flicks of its tail, flashing a small spot of white on its side as it flitted between the other fish.

It wasn't beautiful, and it certainly wouldn't make a decent meal.

But Obi-Wan was determined to catch it, simply because it acted like it wanted to be caught, and however useless his equipment was, he would get this one out of the water, whatever it took.

Moving stealthily, Obi-Wan angled the rake over the surface of the stream until it hovered just inches above the quivering little grey fish, then let it drop, hoping to pin it to the sand.

A flash of dizzy grey movement told him he'd missed. Infuriated and intrigued, he set off in pursuit, water splashing in glittering beads around his naked feet, flying in long strides along the shallow river. He could just see it, there where the fallen tree lay right across the banks, flitting to and from among the big jewel-like swarms that did not even move and inch as Obi-Wan's feet broke the surface amid them.

The rake darted under the fallen tree, just where the little grey fish had been -- and came up empty. Cursing under his breath Obi-Wan clambered over the mossy trunk and ran further down the river to where he just saw the tiny splash of the little grey one's tail diving back into the clear cool water. He was definitely getting faster, but so was Obi-Wan, racing, nearly flying, low over the brook's surface, the jewel fish a blur in his hot pursuit of the flitting, wiggling coal-grey one that was always just beyond his reach, just one step ahead, just one tailstroke nearer the horizon, and the horizon was getting closer...

He'd missed again, and this time the little grey fish darted off to the side, no longer straight ahead. Puzzled, Obi-Wan pulled the rake up out of the water and gazed ahead. There was nothing ahead, no river, no trees. He turned around and looked behind him -- the banks of the little river had receded, the trees had thinned, and all that was left was the smooth pale sand underneath, and the shallow clear water all around.

He was standing in the middle of the sea.

The jewel fish were gone too. From horizon to horizon, there was nothing but pale sky, pale sand, and the joyful flitting movements of one tiny grey fish that seemed to fill the entire ocean with its speed and elegance and sheer exuberant liveliness. He stood in mute wonder and watched, and however long he watched, he knew he would never lose sight of the little grey fish. However big the ocean was, there was nothing else here but him and the fish -- how could they possibly lose sight of each other?

Throwing his useless rake into the shallow shimmering water, Obi-Wan tore off his tunic and ran, ran into where the pale sky and the pale sand met.

He woke up in the muted red gloom of the tent, momentarily disoriented. He was alone.

He had been dreaming? Dreaming.

He stretched carefully, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Such a strange dream, and so vivid. If he closed his eyes he had no difficulty sensing the cold water around his feet, and bathing in the pale light reflecting off the sand and the sea. He even saw the after- image of the little grey fish, flashing his white spot at him as if in greeting.

Obi-Wan shook his head. He had not dreamed like this since he'd been an initiate, fifteen... maybe twenty years ago. Strange.

He gathered up his robe, stood up, and threw it over his shoulders. The tent was empty, no sign of the strange grey-haired man or the even stranger grey-furred felinoid. The thick yellow Force-sunset was still there though, all around him, unmoving. It felt almost, but not entirely like the pale light of his dream, and it was closing in on him.

"Ah, you're awake. I hope you've slept well?" The man's deep rumbling voice meshed with the afterglow of his dream and the honey-yellow light that was bathing his Force-sense in stupefying fearful pleasure.

"Uh, yes, very well. Thank you for your hospitality, good man. I realise I was very rude last night to not even tell you my name... Obi-Wan Kenobi, Knight of the Jedi Order of Coruscant, at your service." He held out his hand, and the tall man took it, bemused, wrapping Obi-Wan's hand in the dry warmth of his huge palm.

"You are most welcome. Though you might allow me one question that has troubled me considerably since the early morning..." The smirk on the man's face belied the apparent earnestness of his question.

"Please, ask." Obi-Wan fidgeted slightly, unwilling to let go of the warm hand.

"What, pray, is a 'fish'?"

Obi-Wan stared, again. Damn, couldn't he do anything but stare in the presence of this infuriating man? He felt like he'd done nothing else since he had arrived here last night, as if the thick golden glow of the Force around here had slowed down his mind. His thoughts moved as if through honey under the gaze of those impossibly blue eyes. He couldn't read minds, could he...?

"I heard you talking in your sleep, and you seemed wholly focused on this 'fish' thing... if it bothers you, you don't have to tell me..."

"No, no, it's all right..." Obi-Wan was almost relieved. "You don't have fish here, do you? Small sleek aquatic life forms that breathe water and procreate by laying tiny eggs and... come in all sorts of colours and shapes, like jewels?"

The man raised his eyebrows in bemused curiosity. "They live in the water, you say? Interesting. No, the waters of Tihaar are silent, completely silent."

"Oh, fish don't make noises either."

"Fish -- one fish, two fish?" The grey-haired man paused for a moment, contemplating the odd plural in what was probably, Obi-Wan reflected, his second language. True, the fish in his dream had behaved pretty much like one amorphous creature, even though they hadn't looked like one exactly...

"And you seemed quite agitated about them anyway, young stranger. You woke Hällilaul, I think...," he stroked a fresh gash on his shoulder, half-covered by the ragged silk sleeve of what may once have been a robe.

Obi-Wan blushed. "I'm sorry... I don't usually dream this vividly. I probably jerked and twitched in my sleep too, did I? Must have been all the running after the fish..."

The man looked at him levelly, as if in contemplation of something in Obi-Wan's face. "So you're in search of something, are you?"

Momentarily taken aback, Obi-Wan drew in a deep breath. "Yes. Yes, I am searching for something. Someone, to be precise..."

The deep blue eyes still gazed at him impassively. Was he imagining it, or was the man's mouth quirked in the slightest of wry smiles?

"The Masters of my Order back at our central temple on Coruscant have sent me here, to Tihaar. They wish to converse with the old Mene s'Mene on, I imagine, matters of deep philosophical and meditative importance. It is my mission to invite and escort said Mene s'Mene to the Jedi Temple for a visit, should he so wish. And... please forgive my ignorance of local custom and dress, but... from the meagre description I have... are you this man?"

The grey head nodded thoughtfully, blunt fingertips combing through the long tresses absent-mindedly. "I used to be the Nameless One for the longest time, yes... I have been named now though, and am merely a man now. Certainly no match for your Masters, I imagine..."

"Named?"

"Yes -- like any child born of a woman and a man, I carry a name now, even though strictly speaking I am not such an any-child. Have you not been told what the title Mene s'Mene means, Knight Kenobi?"

Obi-Wan flushed slightly, as much at his implied ignorance as at the formal address spoken in the big man's warm low voice. The tight feeling in his stomach reasserted itself, and he felt thirsty again. "N...no. To be honest, nobody here has felt like talking to me much at all --"

The old man snorted and began busying himself at the fireplace, never taking his eyes off Obi-Wan. Sweeping up the ashes, he continued. "The Mene s'Mene is the child that wasn't a child. That's what the words mean, in the Asun-Tihaar tongue -- child-not-child, meaning he is a man born into this world as a fully-grown adult, with nothing in his mind but the ability to read the light of Tihaar in all her glory. Very rarely is such a child born into our world, and there's never anybody around to witness it but the Mene s'Mene himself. That's how I came into being -- one moment I wasn't, and then I was, infant in a man's body, full of the singing light of Tihaar, and nothing else."

"And that's when the Asun-Tihaar started worshipping you?"

The man grinned. "Not quite. You must excuse, but my memory of that early time is a little stained and faded...", his large rough hands caressed the washed-out silk of his sleeves as if to illustrate, "I remember a lot of curious questions and awed faces, and excitement at the sight of me. And then, yes, they took me to the Enclosure where I spent most of my life, communing with Tihaar and the light. Following the light, and dealing it out into the minds of those who came to seek me, handfuls of light from the vessel that never seemed to run dry... some worshipped _me_ as the earthly vessel, but I would have been empty without the gift of the light. I would not even be alive without it, I think... I cannot imagine life without it."

"And yet you were deposed?"

"Yes." The man sighed, as if in wistful memory. "There was another grown child born not far from here, a new pure empty vessel for the light, sprung freshly from Tihaar's own soil. And, as it has been for centuries," he paused dramatically while balancing the kettle on the incipient fire, "they got rid of the old fart and installed the new child-not-child in my stead. They still revere me, mind you. My, some days I wake up and find some complete stranger standing in my tent with flowers and scents, wanting to worship me!"

The look of amused indignation on the man's broad features made Obi- Wan grin involuntarily. I could imagine wanting to worship him, he thought quietly, then, where did that come from? Shaking his head, he gestured at the tattered silk and leather enveloping the man's broad frame. "At least they let you keep the robes."

"Yeah, my old set. Had to give up the ceremonial robes to the new Mene s'Mene, of course, never mind the fact that they're way too large for him. Well, at least I won't have to throw a fit every time Hällilaul caresses another tear into these," he fingered the shredded hem of the silver lace shirt, "and the long gowns and robes made for a nice set of bedsheets for the overgrown bachelor that I appear to be now. I tell you -- ow!" He sucked his fingertip and gingerly wrapped his wide sleeve around his other hand before trying to lift the hot kettle off the fire again. "Tell you, the cooking is the hardest bit... never had to do any of that while I was given to the contemplation of the light!"

Obi-Wan laughed in sympathy as the man broke a piece off a large brown brick and proceeded to pound it into a powder in a crude mortar. "That we have in common, nameless one -- my Master was such an adept cook that I never felt the need to even set foot in the kitchen. Imagine my helplessness when I got Knighted... contemplation of the Light, ten out of ten, cooking, zero." His laugh sounded a little hollow, he noticed, nervously dancing over the top of the resounding feeling in the bottom of his stomach. Thirst? Fear? Neither seemed appropriate... and yet it was a nameless dread, a nameless need, nameless as the man in front of him who was now tipping the powder into the hot water, sending up a cloud of scented steam.

"Not nameless, Knight Kenobi. They named me for what I was -- a son not born of a woman. A son born of the light, the living-thing, the flow of Tihaar herself. Of course, the Asun-Tihaar word for that is a bit shorter and more elegant.... they named me En-Qui."

"En-Qui."

"Son-of-living-light."

Obi-Wan felt inexplicably awed. And embarrassed that he couldn't reciprocate with an explanation of what his own name meant.

"Usually shortened to 'Nqui... by all those out there who have no desire to worship me at ungodly hours of the morning. And I believe some of those who have seen me early in the morning have decided to lay off the worshipping at any rate. Salt?"

For someone who's been to all intents and purposes a god until a few weeks ago, he's got an extremely earthy sense of humour, Obi-Wan thought. Earthy. That voice. He felt the thirst surge up in him again, and gratefully accepted the cup of hot brown brew En-Qui offered him, salt or not. He stared mutely at the bit of butter floating in the middle, then cautiously sipped it anyway. Much better than last night's, he thought, though that may just be because I'm no longer tired...

"If you desire more breakfast I'm afraid you'll have to go milk it yourself... I'm not one for keeping stores in the house. Typical bachelor really."

Obi-Wan looked up from his cup, into the wickedly smiling blue eyes with their tiny wrinkles that spoke of a light and beautiful mind. Beautiful? He wasn't beautiful... was he?

"Now, don't tell me you haven't been approached by ladies yet, En- Qui. I mean... they come to your bedside in the early morning and all they want to do is _worship_ you?" Sith, where had that come from?? Obi-Wan flushed deeply. I'm behaving like a complete idiot... like a rude child trying to cover up his underlying insecurity. And these eyes... these hands... absurd, Kenobi. You obviously haven't slept enough.

"Approached maybe... but that doesn't mean any of them would dare marry me. It's about the most unlucky thing to do in the mind of an Asun-Tihaar -- to marry someone who used to be a god. This quite apart from the fact that an ex-god usually doesn't know how to make decent chai!"

"So you've been celibate all your life, and now nobody will take you?" Stop it, his mind shouted at his mouth. Where are you going with that conversation, Kenobi? Do you know what the hell you're talking about? Want, said his belly, quietly but insistently. Want.

En-Qui grinned. "Oh no... they would, gladly, if it wasn't for my personal reputation. Sex with a Nameless One is considered a very blessed and fortunate act, and any offspring fathered by a Mene s'Mene is said to be more in touch with the light of Tihaar than ordinary human beings. I could have blessed a dozen women every year if I'd wanted... it's just that, well, I never wanted. I've never been interested in girls. Present company excepted," he added gingerly as Hällilaul reached out to lay one razor-clawed paw on his thigh. "She's kept me company for years, and kept me fit while I officiated at the Enclosure." He affectionately dug one large hand into the tiger-creature's thick silvery fur, exposing a mesh of pale scars on his forearm. "She doesn't ask, she just feels, don't you, old lady?"

She doesn't ask, she just feels. This was the man that the Council were so keen on meeting? This blunt unrefined savage who sank his mind into the ambient light of some goddess because that was what he'd been told to do as far back as he could remember? Fine, there was the mystery of what exactly had happened to the Nameless One's missing childhood, but... this empty unorganised mind? What could he possibly have that a Jedi Master would want? How could this... wonderful... primitive teach Masters Windu and Gallia on advanced meditation techniques as they had apparently hoped he would? Compared to the splendour of a Jedi's Force abilities, this man was... was like the steppe of Tihaar was to the Temple at Coruscant!

Uncultured.

Empty.

Vast.

Starkly beautiful.

Light-drenched, and filling Obi-Wan with a yearning he had never known...

The sunlight was failing already when Obi-Wan surfaced from his meditation, none the wiser. For all the golden light surrounding him and filling his eyes as well as his Force sense, his mind felt as vast and directionless as the blue-grassed plain.

He stretched, wincing at the sting of pain in his limbs, stiff from the bluish cold of a Tihaar evening. There wasn't anything in this landscape that could have told him what season it was, but he knew there would be frost on the plains again tonight. He shuddered, chilled to the bone.

Why the Sith am I still here anyway, he thought. The mission was beginning to look like an utter failure -- given the more than flimsy Council brief and his rotten luck so far, they should be glad to have at least Kenobi back at Temple, savage demi-god or not. And it didn't look like said savage demi-god, Mene s'Mene, En-Qui, whatever, was in any way inclined to let himself be escorted back to the Temple for some meaningful religious heads-together. He should just leave it at that, give his thanks and go...

Except he couldn't.

Which was why he'd settled himself on this flat grey stone this morning, just as the... just as En-Qui was getting ready to go about his daily chores. The strange man had smiled his unreadable purple smile, and Obi-Wan had settled into an uneasy trance, facing away from the small red A of En-Qui's tent.

His knees were sore, and he felt unable to move. Immobile. Stuck. Biting his lip, he pulled out his legs from under himself, shivering at the pin pricks and twitches of sensation returning to his feet. That's me, he thought. Sitting here desperate for guidance from the Force, and I can't even walk. Never mind that the Force had been less than clear as well -- the thick, honey-coloured warmth seemed to be tied into the aura of this place somehow, and he'd been utterly unable to reach the crystal clarity of the Unifying Force. All he had got was images, hazy pictures of the sort that fresh initiates get when they first attempt to open their minds to the Force.

There had been fish again. Fish, in the honey-coloured glistening air, beautiful beyond words... and pointless beyond words, he added in his mind, massaging feeling back into his calves. Fish. In the air.

Beautiful beyond words... the now-familiar thirst surged up in Obi-Wan's belly again, spreading thin grey tendrils through his entire body. Shivering, Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around himself, craving he knew not what. Warmth. The golden light. The touch. Drawing his arms tighter around himself, Obi-Wan rested his forehead on his prickling and tingling knees, desperately seeking grounding, seeking his centre.

He felt like his centre had been ripped from him, displaced. He felt like his centre was outside himself, in the smiling blue eyes of the strange man he had met only last night, in the thick golden aura that surrounded him and filled him with nameless need. He wanted, needed, craved, had never felt this vulnerable in his entire life. He was scared, deeply afraid of what was happening with him. His control had been taken out of his hands, and the Force seemed to be mocking him for it too... and yet, the tight warm feeling in his belly was not all fear...

Taking a deep breath, Obi-Wan closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling, allowing it to wash through his body in all its gut-wrenching intensity. The tightness in his stomach expanded, spreading out along his nerves like strands of thin grey veil, laced with gold, unspeakably delicate and yet strong. He allowed himself to be wrapped in the feeling, felt it tying him down and tying him up in bonds too beautiful to fight. It pulsed through his veins, throbbing at his throat, making it tighten and melt into a great racking liquid sob and he threw his head back and howled his glorious need, the desperate powerless painful joy at the sheer immensity of this craving, this desire, this impossible inhumane love.

Love. He lay on his back, panting, staring sightlessly at the starless Tihaar sky that had darkened to a purplish grey, utterly speechless. It wasn't the sky he saw before him, it was the purple of En-Qui's rags and the soft grey of his hair, the purple of his mouth surrounded by the silvered beard... tears streamed from Obi-Wan's eyes over his flushed cheeks, and he felt powerless to stop them, didn't even want to stop them while his mind was full of the glorious presence of the man who filled him, filled him with feelings too big for him to hold.

Wrapped in his own arms and the dying light of the sun, Obi-Wan cried until the sky had faded into blackness, cried at the enormity of this feeling he'd tasted, cried at the hopelessness of it all. A man, a stranger, a base savage, and one who wasn't interested in following him anywhere. A man who belonged here, and whom he would never see again in his life.

A man beautiful beyond belief.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Obi-Wan sat up and reached for his robe. There was something scary about how this one chance encounter had utterly pulverised the young Knight's ego... there was something terrifying and wonderful about it.

There was also... something wet? Incredulous, Obi-Wan touched his fingertips to the cool sticky stain on the front of his leggings, sniffed the liquid almost instinctively, then stiffened, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

This hadn't happened since... since his early Padawan years. The craving, the tightness in his belly... lust? He _lusted_ for somebody? This impossible, insufferable, incredible man had broken through his control of his _own body_ and made him... uh.

This night would indeed be a test of his control.

Blindly, Obi-Wan erected what shields he had around his sanity as he turned towards the small ruby glow of En-Qui's tent.

He found En-Qui by the fire, half-dressed, hair tied back in a straggly tail, exposing the fire-gilded bronze of his broad shoulders. The smell inside the tent overwhelmed Obi-Wan's oversensitive nostrils -- compared to the tart chill air outside, the small red space around the fire was heavy with the man's musk, laced with a hint of fresh bread, bitter chai, and a scent eerily reminiscent of Obi-Wan's own fingertips. He drew his robe around himself reflexively.

"Good evening."

En-Qui turned around to face him. "Ah, so you're back from your much-needed meditation? You must be freezing... I for one laid off the day-long meditations when I realised that out here nobody would wait for me with a hot cup of chai and something to eat when I resurface. The kettle's still hot, help yourself to some bread if you want, it's up over there," he gestured at the dark wall of the tent, "sorry I can't serve you at the moment -- this deserves my undivided... attention."

Mesmerised, Obi-Wan gazed at the short wooden brush almost disappearing in the man's large hand. Its tip glistened an intense purple, and traced slow and deliberate lines on En-Qui's stony face as he gazed into the clouded surface of a piece of polished metal.

Beautiful beyond belief...

Biting his lip, Obi-Wan tore himself away from the sight and reached for the bread, threaded on to a leather thong and hung from one of the tent-poles. The crust was hard and dusted with grey flour, and the scent was gorgeous as Obi-Wan tore one small loaf free from the thong and bit into it hungrily. He was certain bread had never tasted this good to him in his life, not even when he had been starved on missions... the taste exploded on his tongue, warm and musky and soft, senses heightened to an almost painful degree.

"Good?" The lips smiled cautiously, ringed with a rapidly darkening crust of purple.

"Mmm... very. You make this yourself?"

En-Qui nodded. "Took me a while to get it right... but we're all virgins at something, aren't we?"

Obi-Wan's eyes widened, and he swallowed his shocked gasp. Shields...? No, they were perfectly in place. Just a coincidence... he doesn't know how he is torturing me, he thought. And he mustn't know.

Swallowing, Obi-Wan settled down on the floor, on the other side of the fire, doing his best to appear calm. "And this is...?"

"Burac. Dried, ground, pounded into a paste with pit salt and milk. Applied once a month, or at least that's enough I think. Of course, when I was still the Nameless One I had it done for me, about once a week. Keeps the bad breathings of the underground out, or so it's said. Me, I just can't imagine myself without it... plays havoc with the skin of course," he winced slightly as he rubbed the dried salt-and-dye crust off his lips and cheeks, exposing roughened and deeply purple skin, "but that's vanity for you." He smiled his twinkling blue smile as he reached for the plate of butter, scooping up a small dollop with two thick fingers and smearing it on his lips.

Glistening purple smiling lips...

"Uh. I think it's time for me to retire -- if you don't mind?"

"Fine with me -- I'm about ready to turn in myself. May I tuck you in, Knight Kenobi?"

"What?" Obi-Wan had spilled some mercifully lukewarm chai on the back of his hand at the odd proposal. Tuck him in??

En-Qui chuckled, gesturing at the narrow steeply tilted wooden frame on the other side of the fireplace. "You've never seen one of these, have you? Quite comfortable, I assure you. Of course one would say that if you're a member of a nomadic culture with decidedly limited floor space," he grinned disarmingly, "but it does keep your head out of the danger zone of assorted creatures, and you're closer to the fire than you would be if you were sleeping on a horizontal lattice. The downside is of course that you need to strap yourself in before retiring for the night..."

Obi-Wan's mind reeled. "Uhn... n-no, I think I'd rather sleep on the floor... m-my robe is quite comfortable, you know?" Praying to the Force that his blush had gone unnoticed, Obi-Wan curled up in the safety of his brown robe, drawing the hood up over his face, just barely hearing En-Qui's gruffly friendly "Please yourself. Good night, Knight Kenobi." before willing himself to sleep.

It had no sting, it had no fangs, it was utterly unthreatening in appearance. It was coal-grey, with a small white stripe along one side of its tail. It had calm black-and-white eyes that reflected the sky, a sky he could not see here, underwater, under gold.

He was desperate to get out of its sight.

Struggling, Obi-Wan scrabbled for purchase on the ground, a ground that seemed further and further away with each desperate lash of his feet in the clinging golden water. It was thick and heavy, slowing his movements, clinging to his skin, encasing him in sticky amber, entering his nostrils, filling his mouth slowly and inexorably as he tried to scream but no sound came out, no sound...

... no sound but his own shocked gasp. The embers, the ground, his robe... he had dreamed again. Shuddering under the heavy wool of the robe, he blinked his eyes into shape and got up hastily, throwing off his tunic for good measure too. He felt unbearably hot, sweaty, sticky, and in need of a drink of cool water.

Locating the pail in the gloom of the dying fire, Obi-Wan carefully traipsed around the sleeping form of Hällilaul who appeared altogether unconcerned about the alleged lack of floor space and comfortably took up most of it. Wish I could sleep like that, Obi-Wan thought bitterly.

The water was a blessing, cold and fresh down his parched throat, cooling and sharpening his nerves and driving the heavy stifling heat from his body. He felt thoroughly invigorated and ready to return to the floor for some serious sleeping. Best not upset the tiger cat, he thought, I'll go the other way round. Can't be cautious enough in the dark, and I don't think En-Qui is as easily stirred as Hälli--

Of course it wasn't dark at all. It was near full moon, and the whitish light from the sky-hole at the centre of the tent mingled with the fading gold from the fire was quite enough to let him see... and the thick heat he had thought dispersed returned with a vengeance, dripping down his freshly-awakened nerves to pool in his groin, urgent, throbbing, hard.

En-Qui... his head dipped slightly to one side, exposing the long smooth line of his neck, barely covered by the thick strands of grey hair that were everywhere, caressing the broad features in peaceful sleep. Lips still shiny, half-parted... Obi-Wan felt his mouth water and his cock throb at the delicious sight. Oh how he wished he could kiss those lips, suck on the sweet tender flesh, nuzzle into the short silvery beard and just cover the man with kisses, desperate needy kisses raining on to every square inch of exposed skin, all the way to where the sheet covered his body... stretched tight... thin, washed-out black silk of a maddening softness... and the straps, wide well-worn brown leather straps pinning the silk-covered body to the narrow frame, outlining him gloriously under the filmy sheet... Obi-Wan was quite certain he could see the man's nipples through the silk, tiny delicious nubs that he just craved, needed to lick, to suck, to eat up just like the rest of this unbelievable vision of gorgeousness, of sheer rugged perfection.

Obi-Wan swallowed thickly, spellbound as he watched the broad chest rise and fall with En-Qui's slow breaths, shifting the thin sheet ever so slightly, stretching the taut leather ever so minutely... he let his gaze travel further down the man's long form, licking his lips already at the anticipated sight of those muscular thighs barely covered by the worn silk that may once have been the Nameless One's... robe...

Thought became impossible at the sight of the perfect bulge between En-Qui's massive thighs... the outline of something as wonderful as it was scary... Obi-Wan was quite certain he could make out the veins standing proudly on the engorged cock that was straining against the thin filmy fabric, could feel the heat radiating off the proud hard thing, straight to his own cock, twitching and leaking in sense-crushing need... so big, and so hard... to touch this, to caress it... to feel it inside... Obi-Wan bit back a whimper that was half lust and half fear, fear at the overwhelming power of his own lust. His mind... the sight melted his mind, and it dripped from the tip of his own iron-hard cock on to the hard floor.

Control, Obi-Wan, he screamed at himself. This is not yours to take... not yours...

Biting his lip and clenching one hand around his burning cock, he spilled his need on to the dying embers of the fire, barely hearing the hiss as he collapsed on to his robe, dazed, glowing, burned out.

He woke bleary-eyed in the middle of the morning, the sun already streaming in through the sky-hole. He felt dry, and hot, and his skin prickled all over. And... he was hard. Again. Still. Whatever. Wrapping his robe around his half-naked body, he went in search of the pail of cold water, only to find it gone. Had En-Qui...? No, he was probably just out fetching new water... Obi-Wan's eyes strayed to the now-abandoned bed-frame, straps hanging loose, the thin sheet carelessly draped over one corner.

Before his mind could kick in, he'd grabbed the filmy silk sheet and buried his face in it, inhaling the musky scent of En-Qui's skin and hair and sex. Moaning softly into the sheet, he wrapped his hand around his needy cock, pumping frantically, ever too slow to satisfy his burning need, the thirst that grabbed his entire body, clenching every muscle and then breaking, breaking in a glorious wave of light that threw him off balance and sent him crashing to the floor, tangled in his own robe and En-Qui's silk sheet and bright tight tendrils of screaming Force-light.

When he came to a moment later, the smell was overwhelming, almost making him retch at the thick bitter musk hanging in the air, evidence of his hopeless uncontrollable need. Biting his lip, he wiped at his sticky hand with the hem of his robe, checking the sheet for any evidence of the sordid thing he'd just done. This is the last time you're letting yourself get carried away, Kenobi, he said to himself, trying and utterly failing to imitate his Master's 'don't-mess-with-me' tone.

Today, you're asking for directions. Tomorrow, you're leaving.

The dirty, earthy, throat-constricting glorious fullness he felt would hopefully last him until then.

You will ask him for directions, he reminded himself as he held the ewe by her tether, watching tight-lipped as En-Qui's large hands gently milked her. Of course, he had been meaning to ask when he had met the man this morning, coming back from his water-gathering trip. And then later in the afternoon as he'd offered him to help herd in the sheep, and all the way through the milking, every single one of them.

He couldn't bring himself to ask. Not when he could watch these hands at work, and imagine behind tight shields what these hands could be doing to him in the pool of his dirty savage need.

All he could do was keep up a half-hearted conversation, interspersed with long pauses, about this and that and nothing, when he wanted to talk about everything, confess that En-Qui _was_ that everything, and sink himself into a desire that knew no direction and no bounds. He had no idea what he would _do_ with En-Qui in the event... if the event ever happened. And he was trying his best not to unsettle his willing host and reluctant conversationalist with the enormity of his feelings.

"And this one?"

"Keshasha. Named for one of Tihaar's younger sisters, 'she of the reluctant springs'. Fortunately she's neither reluctant nor particularly springy." He patted the ewe's woolly brown back affectionately, and was answered with a soft 'baa'.

Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows. "You name your animals after gods?"

"Certainly. Why shouldn't I?"

"But... wouldn't that be... I mean, an insult to the goddess in question? To be identified with a...sheep?"

En-Qui chuckled. "If Tihaar could hear you now... she'd laugh heartily, Knight. There is nothing wrong at all with naming any part of creation after any other..."

"But -- but a goddess surely isn't just a part of creation? And what do you mean, she can't hear you? For someone who has devoted most of his life to her, that sounds mighty... disrespectful." Obi-Wan had flushed in excitement, half relieved that he could vent some of his brimming emotion in a sound philosophical argument.

"Tihaar is dead, Knight Kenobi. She died some two thousand years ago. She gave us the Chants, and helped form a clearer idea of what the living-thing, the light, means to us, but beyond that, she's gone into the light. She was only a woman in the end, a bright one whose memory is preserved in the character of Tihaar the goddess."

"A -- woman?"

"A wise one, but a woman nevertheless. And Keshasha wasn't her sister either, not in the real world. She lived and died some three hundred summers later, and is believed to have brought the culture of the grain to her people. And so it went on, through the centuries... Ibki gave us the art of arrowsmithy, and En-Denu, as a man, was a great writer of songs. As a god, he represents the song of the light. I know," En-Qui smiled indulgently at Obi-Wan's aghast face, "I was shocked too. They didn't tell me straight away, of course... but in the end, it comes down to what I've always felt since I dawned into existence. The only deity there is is the living-thing, the light. The Qui. Only it's not human-shaped and palpable. People wouldn't understand, you see?" He sighed. "That's always the problem with religion, isn't it?"

Obi-Wan stared. "The... Force?"

"Hm?" En-Qui gave the sheep a pat on her back and sent he on her way.

"The Force -- the living-thing-light-whatnot. That's... that's what you _really_ believe in?"

"Not a matter of believing, I'm afraid. It's there, and it's not like I could tell it to go away, god or not. It's in every living thing, it's what makes them living things." He shrugged. "It's in you too, you know?"

Obi-Wan gaped, opening and closing his mouth while words struggled for supremacy in his mind. "You... I... yes. Yes, damn it. It's in me, it's what I gave my whole Sithdamned life to, it's why I'm here, it's why you are here, and it's why the... world is here!"

En-Qui grinned, picked up the pail of warm milk and gave Obi-Wan a pat on the shoulder. "Well, that's one thing we're clear on, Knight."

"Obi-Wan," Obi-Wan croaked, shaking himself out of his daze and running to keep up with En-Qui's long strides.

He had forgotten all about the directions.

"Will you... will you consider accompanying me to the Temple? I am sure the Masters would be delighted to see you and your... unspoiled connection to the Force..." Obi-Wan squirmed slightly as the old man's warm dry hands skimmed over his body, quickly and effectively undressing him. What have I let myself in for, he thought desperately, letting him 'tuck me in' when I can barely keep my arousal under control at the sound of his voice --

"I don't live well in walls, Knight... Obi-Wan. And as for your Masters...," firm but gentle hands pressed Obi-Wan to the narrow wooden frame, and he gasped at the cool smoothness of the thin smoke-grey silk sheet against his heated skin, "... I doubt I could teach them anything they don't know yet. Besides, what would poor old Hällilaul be doing without me?" Hands lingered heavily on Obi-Wan's silk-wrapped body, slowly and carefully tying the leather straps in place. One at the ankles.

"Make no mistake...," one at the knees, pressing them together, "I'd be curious to get off Tihaar for a few months, just to see...," one across Obi-Wan's thighs, quivering with barely suppressed desire. Was that a deliberate brush of fingers against his slowly, inexorably rising sex, and how much longer could he keep himself under control under the onslaught of these marvellous hands through the silk? "...the world at large. But I very much doubt your masters would be impressed...," a strap across Obi-Wan's waist, pinning his wrists to his sides, just loosely enough that he could work them free, should he want to, "...with what little wisdom I have to offer. I'm not a man of walls and scriptures, Obi-Wan...," another strap across his chest, the taut leather pressing the sheer silk to his nipples, making him moan involuntarily, "... I don't even have words for most of what the Qui gives me. I couldn't teach them, Obi-Wan...," the last strap, around the young man's shoulders, was tied only loosely, allowing for nightly movement. Obi-Wan felt like screaming as En-Qui tucked the top of the sheet under the strap, fingertips brushing bare skin.

"...but I would love to teach you."

And Obi-Wan screamed, screamed into the smiling purple mouth a hair's breadth from his own, and drowned himself in En-Qui's slow soft kiss, biting the sweet moist lips, drinking deeply of the gentle heat in the older man's mouth, spreading it through his entire body as En-Qui leaned over him, warm heavy body pressing against his own, against his deep hungry need throbbing in every fibre of his being, throbbing against the warming silk, against the gentle but firm bonds, against the maddening golden heat flowing from En-Qui's body that enveloped him in a savage, primal bliss that sang through his veins like pure Living Force, too strong, too much for one mind to hold.

Moaning softly into En-Qui's lingering kiss, Obi-Wan gave himself to the golden flood, barely feeling the man's warm palm on his sweaty forehead, closing the young Jedi's eyes. Barely hearing the whisper like raw silk.

"Your last night here, Obi-Wan. Sleep."

A deep sigh from En-Qui's chest.

"And mine, and mine. Tihaar, dead though you may be, let me sleep at least a little..."

And the coal-grey fish settled silently in Obi-Wan's hand.

"Don't give that Trega guy any more stuff, I say to him, but would he listen? Nah, of course not. No one ever listens to me!"

Obviously angered and disappointed, the burly humanoid banged one hairy fist on the monitor screen, momentarily upsetting the readout. "'s obviously on the blink, innit?"

"Um, but we've had a readout pretty regularly, Commander..."

"Like that's gonna mean anything! A readout! All it's saying is that the bloody transmitter is still on board, in the co-ordinate region of some tiny rock called Tihaar, but the ship's not moved an inch for the last ten or so. And how fuckin' likely is that, I ask you? This is a Jedi on a mission, damn it, not some kid on holiday!" He took a deep breath that only succeeded in calming his voice from a shout to a menacing growl as he continued to pace the small control room. "More likely Trega's taken the positioning device out and sold it, and all we've got in terms of payload is a little empty shell that goes beep every three hours or so. Fine job, Trega, fine job! That one would have been a prize to catch. Freshly knighted human Jedi... they would've been licking their fingers, fuck it!"

"Um... Commander? I suggest we give it another ten or so. It's not like the device is costing us where it is..."

"Are you nuts? Of course I'm giving it another ten or so, or however long it takes until the fuckin' battery runs out! I'll tell Enga's lot to stay cached away in that sector until their toes fall off with boredom if necessary! But no movement -- not good. Not good, Barty. He could be at the bottom of a lake somewhere, feeding the fish, if you know what I mean..."

"Commander?"

"Yes?"

"There are no fish on Tihaar."

It was grey, the light was. Despite the red warmth of the tent walls, despite the fact that he felt quite warm under the flimsy sheet. It felt like it was before dawn, or like the small sun of Tihaar was fighting its way through dense fog.

How appropriate.

No, he hadn't dreamed it. He had dreamed, but it had been about the fish again, and nothing beyond that that he could remember. But he hadn't dreamed the warm weight of those hands on his skin, ghosting over him with every slight movement under the silk. He hadn't dreamed that breath-eating kiss, the glorious moist heat of En-Qui's mouth as it swallowed his sanity whole. And he hadn't dreamed those words.

'I would love to teach you.'

He resented the dawn, the bright sunlight that would sharpen the lines between light and shadow. The light that would cast into sharp relief his decision, a decision he hadn't even managed to find words for yet. He felt adrift, strangely absent. Like his mind had made itself up while he was asleep.

He heard a low growl from outside, and felt his body react, tighten in response, craving that mouth. Even though it was probably Hällilaul making that noise.

Slowly, he wriggled his arms out of the silk cocoon, feeling the straps around his upper body slackening. He squirmed slightly at the loose touch of breeze-soft silk on his chest, rubbed his dry eyes to no avail, sighed and started to undo the straps that had held him to the sleeping-frame. He was surprised at the total lack of aches and pains, even though he must have lain immobile all night. One more strange discovery to add to the list, he thought morosely as he slid off the frame, the worn sheet puddling around his feet.

He felt warm, slightly numb, and inexplicably glorious.

He was also quite ostensibly hard.

Shaking his head, he reached for his tunic and winced at the roughness of the linen on the back of his hand. The fabric felt like it didn't want to be worn any longer, and his hand felt like it had been sensitised beyond belief. The sadness in his heart expanded like a flooding river as he dropped the tunic, a shapeless beige pile of linen on the floor, and reached for the grey silk sheet to wrap it around himself.

The light told him it would be cold outside.

A petulant growl greeted Obi-Wan as he stepped outside. Hällilaul lay on the hoar-frosted plain, grey as the misty blue grass, grey as the soft wispy fog enveloping the landscape and hiding it from view. The outside world seemed to have taken a step back; there was nothing but the soft featureless grey, and himself, and the grey tiger, and the grey cascade of En-Qui's hair as he squatted by the tiger's side, hunched over her prone form, his back to Obi-Wan.

The wish, the need to freeze this moment in time was overwhelming. Please, let there be no need to decide, he prayed silently, knowing he would not be heard. Knowing that the decision had already made itself.

Softly, silently on bare feet, he approached, standing and watching for long minutes as En-Qui soothed Hällilaul's tense body, applying a yellowish salve to the cuts and scrapes in the wise, cold-eyed face, muttering calming words. "Will all heal, Hällilaul, believe you me. Just a few scratches, girl. Ssssh, just let me. You know it'll be good for you. Much better tomorrow, much better. Yes, you did well protecting me and mine, yes you did. Just let me give you some gratitude and some salve, hm? Hold still... that's it. Good girl..."

"En-Qui."

The large greasy hands stilled in the grey fur, and the frosted waterfall of hair shifted slowly, maddeningly slowly, as En-Qui turned around.

The smile at the sight of Obi-Wan dressed in nothing but the crumpled sheet lit up his entire face.

"En-Qui... I need to talk to you." A deep breath, a shake of head. "No, En-Qui, I don't really need to talk to you. You take the words right out of me and fill me with... I don't even know how to say it. You fill me, and I need, I need, I need..." Tears glimmered in Obi-Wan's eyes, grey as the steppe. "You said you would... teach me?"

Slowly, the purple lips parted, and no speech came out. Obi-Wan watched in mute surrender, in silent trembling need as En-Qui rose up to his full height and enveloped him in an embrace so tight and warm he was sure he would melt, melt and drip away on to the shimmering blades of grass at his feet.

No speech came from out of that purple mouth, but the smile was angelic, burning deep into Obi-Wan's starved scared soul, and when one huge sticky warm hand tangled in his hair, pressing his mouth to meet En-Qui's, Obi-Wan was sure he would die, just dissolve into a floating golden puddle of pure Force and be no more, be no more Knight Kenobi, no more Jedi, no more man.

His body, though, had other ideas. Ideas more akin to being man... and it just felt too glorious, the smooth leather covering En-Qui's firm buttocks, and the thin torn lace stretching over his warm chest, all that perfect bronzed skin that tasted of earth and salt and sun and of him, the man he desperately wanted to crawl inside...

A short tearing noise brought him to his senses, momentarily. Blue eyes twinkled at him, radiant, the little lines at the corners forming sunbursts of mirth. "Slowly, my wonderful," that voice purred, amused. "We've got all the time in the world."

Overcome with need and rage and relief, Obi-Wan hammered his fists into the broad chest, pounding the torn lace into En-Qui's skin, sobbing. "How _can_ you say this... how can you be so calm when I'm... I'm breaking apart under you... in you..."

"Sssssh. All will be well," strong arms wrapped around Obi-Wan's shuddering body. "I've seen this coming a long way, my Obi-Wan, from the day you set foot in my life. The Qui cannot be mistaken... and it told me in no uncertain terms. As it told you, I believe...?"

"It has, 'Nqui, it has...," more uncontrolled sobs, and it felt so right to cry on that mighty shoulder, Obi-Wan thought raggedly. Catching his breath, "but it's so... it never asked me, you know? Did I want to give up all I thought I lived for... it just... isn't fair!"

"Do you want it, Obi-Wan? Do you accept my life as a gift, entwined and braided into yours? Will you fill me as you are filled, fill me with yourself? Please..."

"Oh Force, En-Qui, you know I do, you know I do! It's not like I have a choice... and it's not like I could live without this any more... it's just... I'm leaving behind a lifetime for you... love..."

"So am I, Obi-Wan, so am I. Though here, nobody will need more than the memory of me. You are wanted elsewhere, Obi-Wan, and I will follow you to whatever Elsewhere your Order can come up with, to ensure that you are wanted wherever you go."

Obi-Wan's howl of startled, soul-shattered joy made Hällilaul jump, regardless though it was muffled by a deep, hungry kiss pretty much the second it left the young man's throat.

It was just so right. Obi-Wan, En-Qui, a bemused old tigress, and nothing but soft grey mist as far as the eye could see.

Trembling fingers slid the wide silken sleeves off En-Qui's shoulders, tugged at the fastening of the older man's sash, parted the torn lace shirt to reveal more glorious tanned skin and a pair of perfect bronzed nipples, inviting, demanding to be touched, tasted, worshipped. En-Qui moaned deep in his throat as Obi-Wan's lips closed around one of the delicious nubs, sucking up the gorgeous salty horny flavour of the man's skin. Force, he couldn't get enough, never enough of the taste of En-Qui, of the firm grip of the man's hard hands through the silk sheet that barely clung to his hips, hands that were cupping his buttocks like that was what they'd been created for. Overcome with nameless need, he whimpered blindly and bit down on the delicious flesh in his mouth, wanting, craving to eat En-Qui whole.

All he succeeded in was toppling both of them over on to the small pile of En-Qui's shed clothing, frosted grass tickling his heated skin. His lips felt empty without En-Qui on them, and the sheet had fallen away to leave him completely naked, sprawled all over his lover's still-half-dressed form. Gasping, he felt En-Qui's legs spread and encircle his own, the soft leather of the older man's boots caressing the backs of his knees, and his throbbing hard cock squeezed against En-Qui's answering hardness, separated only by the thin cracked leather of the kilt, stretched taut and leaving nothing to the imagination.

Obi-Wan reared up and thrust, like an animal in heat, in need. So good... he had to have more, to see and taste and touch... not bothering with fastenings or even moving En-Qui from where he was, Obi-Wan pushed the kilt up over his lover's hips and wriggled down until En-Qui's thighs were wrapped around his shoulders and his senses were filled to overflowing with the delicious sight and scent of that gorgeous swollen cock, hard and red and the most wonderful thing he could ever remember seeing. And the taste... one lick to the glistening tip, and he was lost. Addicted already. Swallowing, he sank down on the glorious cock, breathing in the scent of the musky silver-brown curls, filling himself with the hot hardness until he was sure he couldn't breathe any more. Oh, the sounds... the bone-deep purring moans as Obi-Wan resurfaced for breath. The ragged sighs as he licked his own lips, and licked the clear salty drop from the smooth head. And these clear blue eyes radiating pure joy. These hands... hands that came up to tangle in his hair, holding him --

- keeping him from going down on En-Qui's alluring flesh again.

Obi-Wan managed little more than a disappointed needy grunt, and En-Qui laughed deep in his throat at the obvious hunger in the young man's face. "Mmmmm. You're driving me mad, Obi-Wan... too fast... for an old man like me. Let me..." With that, En-Qui hooked his booted heels under Obi-Wan's rear and drew him up until his warm slick hands could easily grasp the young man's weeping erection. And grasp him he did, squeezing gently at first, then more roughly, cupping his balls in the other, rubbing pure pleasure into Obi-Wan's needy flesh. "Want... you... in me...," the older man's growl was cut short by Obi-Wan's determined tongue, for a brief eternity, until they couldn't help but breathe. Desperately, En-Qui twisted out from under Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan whimpered at the loss of contact.

Not for long, though -- the large hand returned, still warm but now smeared with a fresh coat of the yellowish salve, spreading it urgently on Obi-Wan's needy flesh as the meaning of the growled words sank into Obi-Wan's lust-hazed mind. In... in him? The thought was too enormous to bear, and when En-Qui spread his legs and drew his knees up and touched one greased finger to the tiny opening there, Obi-Wan abandoned all thought and rammed inside, heat seeking heat, burying himself in the tight clenched heat and the liquid moans and the glorious golden light that was En-Qui... so good, so maddeningly good, so full of light as he pounded into the hard willing body, tears of pure joy stinging in his eyes, blindly grabbing for En-Qui's twitching cock and finding it, finding it just as En-Qui's blunt slick finger reached his own tender opening, sending spears of raw naked lust through him and he held on to En-Qui's cock for dear life as the wave overtook him and he was nothing but light, nothing but light, wrapped inside the hard heat of En-Qui's body, inside the deep dark warmth of his voice as he roared his own orgasm and spurted sticky warmth on to Obi-Wan's hand and his own stomach, there on the ground, between the cold earth of Tihaar and the warm heaven of Obi-Wan.

A small cloud of steam rose from the tiny pool of seed on En-Qui's stomach, and the new sunlight danced on the shimmering whiteness as the two men's laughter danced over the frosty plain, wrapped in each other, in a cocoon of golden warmth that outshone the pale yellow sun as it broke through the milky morning fog.

Circling lazily, Hällilaul stretched her long frame and took one long look at the pair. Yes, the humans had mated. It wouldn't be long now until they'd be off to their own lair to start a family.

Gingerly wiping a dab of salve from under her eye, the old tigress set off towards the rising sun.

Teaching him all about the joys of the human body, and dipping him into the glowing gold of a melted mind. Letting go had never felt this good... in fact, reflecting on his career, Obi-Wan was pretty certain letting go had not ever been a priority of his. Force, how could I have missed this, he thought again and again, every time En-Qui's fading purple lips turned his brain to goo. Pure Living Force.

Like that one day when... he'd lost track of how long they'd been travelling since they'd left Tihaar. Not so much because of the time shifts involved in interstellar travel, and not because there was anything wrong with the day-night cycle as calculated by the ship's navigation unit which was mercifully in a better state than the blasted-out comms device, and which hadn't shown any signs of flagging so far. When he had his mind free to think of such little things, Obi-Wan thanked the grouchy mechanic on Eterau m Hekle for kicking his ship back into shape, at a king's ransom, but at least he appeared to have done decent work.

Obi-Wan's mind wasn't free to think of mechanics and such things much, though.

Not when every sound, every touch from En-Qui enflamed him in a liquid heat that he was unable, and unwilling, to resist. Days and nights passed in a blur, long stretches of excited conversation interspersed with short naps and frenzied bouts of lovemaking, any time, any place, before they would fall asleep again, curled around each other in delicious sweat-scented exhaustion.

Obi-Wan wished they would never arrive.

Not that he didn't want to see Coruscant again -- far from it. He was Jedi at heart, and keen to see his old Master again, should he have returned from his mystery mission. And Garen... was the little one born yet?

Only it was hard to concentrate on wanting to see one's old friends when in the privacy of a ship in the depths of space, in the company of the man that was his one and everything, needed and needy, filling every available space in Obi-Wan's mind, and in his body too. Like that one day when he had... Obi-Wan sighed, a deep dreamy sigh, and the grey head he had almost forgotten he was cradling shifted a little, and amused blue eyes gazed up at him.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, my own?", the voice rumbled, sleepy and smooth as the old silk he was still wearing.

Minutes later, Obi-Wan's screams of ecstasy echoed through the ship, barely muffled by En-Qui's hand covering the lower half of the young man's face. Bent over the edge of the bunk, Obi-Wan writhed in delicious abandon as his lover pounded into him, sending sparks up his spine with every thrust, the tips of his long hair tickling his back, a gentle counterpoint to the vice grip of En-Qui's hand, effortlessly holding both of Obi-Wan's wrists down and moaning hotly at every thrust, slamming into Obi-Wan's creamy flesh over and over until they both collapsed into a sweaty heap on the floor, stars showering on them from Force knew where.

En-Qui looked a little awkward in Obi-Wan's Jedi robe. Apart from the fact that it was several sizes too small for him, it rankled oddly with the long strands of wet silver hair falling over his shoulders. The wool looks too coarse on him, Obi-Wan thought. But these silks are going in the wash, whatever he says. It was quite enough to leave him with the thin loincloth that had probably started life as part of the same silk robe that he now wears as a pair of sleeves, and his boots because the floors were cold. If Obi-Wan had anything to do with it he'd keep En-Qui completely naked all day. If it wasn't a little too cold for that.

These rags of silk and lace and leather were all that En-Qui had brought with him actually. The clothes on his body, and the brick of chai, a cup of butter, and his old kettle -- hardly any baggage worth mentioning. How someone could dance through his life like that was a mystery to Obi-Wan, and one that he was grateful to learn about.

En-Qui had no baggage worth mentioning. Not emotionally either. His mind, whenever Obi-Wan caught glimpses of it in their most intimate moments, was as open and pure as the sun-drenched steppe the morning they had left Tihaar. He soaked up everything, was curious to learn about the Jedi way of meditation, though his success had been limited. He had been much better at the initiate-level katas, the ones that required only basic body control but an acute sense of the Living Force.

He had packed virtually nothing. No arcane meditation techniques, no drugs. Obi-Wan's thoughts kept returning to the same point, like a fly to a sore. They had talked about it, but had found nothing to give him any clue, and they had left it at that, again and again, trusting in each other and savouring the moment over the past.

The past. No drugs, no self-brainwashing. Where had the man's youth gone? Beyond the age of roughly twenty, he had no memory at all, so much so that he insisted that that time didn't exist, and that he had been born an adult like all the Mene s'Menes of Tihaar.

But surely that wasn't possible? Not given the facts, the fact that En-Qui was a standard human... albeit a standard human with glorious attributes...

Sighing, Obi-Wan hung up the soaked silks and laces -- and blinked incredulously when the wet fabric slapped him in the face.

What-?

Another blow sent the whole ship rocking and threw Obi-Wan off his feet, slamming into the 'fresher wall. Shit, what's happening?? Scrabbling to his feet, he reached for the lightsabre at his belt. Voices? There were voices... En-Qui! A roar as of a wounded lion... En-Qui!! Sick with shock and rage, Obi-Wan burst through the 'fresher door, igniting his bright blue blade just in time to impale a shadowy armoured figure that crumpled to the floor with a pathetic whimper. What on... they were everywhere, crowding the ship, brown, human, identical and barely reaching to En-Qui's shoulders as the tall man... fell...

The last thing Obi-Wan saw was En-Qui's silver mane sinking in a bustling sea of crude brown armour. Then the shattering pain spread out from the back of his head, enveloping him in blind, numb blackness.

Light, faint greyish despondent light that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. Obi-Wan had no way of telling how long he'd been here since he'd come to, groggy and achy but otherwise apparently unharmed.

There was no daylight here in this grey cube of a room, and neither was there a night to crawl into and hide. There was only the dim greyish light, and oppressive silence. Which was quite amazing given the number of sentient life forms huddled on the floor in various positions of sleep and discomfort, the rattle and clink of their chains as they stirred the only noise.

Twenty, maybe twenty-five of them, males, females, indiscernibles, a wild mixture, and yet no different from the last group of captives he'd been with in this room, an indistinct amount of time ago. They were moved and reshuffled apparently at random, perhaps to keep any sort of familiarity from forming. He couldn't tell.

And even though there were many of them, the clinks of their chains were the only noise, punctuated only by the heavy booted footfalls of their guards. Sighing, Obi-Wan ran his hand over the light but sturdy manacles that linked his wrists together at a length that was just short of being actually restrictive, just enough to disable him. Same with the shackles on his ankles... just enough to allow him to walk, small shuffling steps, but not to run.

Not that any hasty movement wouldn't have drawn the attention of the guards anyway, who were only too ready to turn rebellious captives into quickly spreading pools of soft red. There was still this one faint stain on the skin-rough concrete floor that they hadn't quite managed to scrub out... a spot nobody dared to sit on still, ever since it had seen the quick and nasty demise of that small skinny humanoid who had risen up too quickly and stared the guards in the face... Force knew how many hours or days or maybe weeks ago.

Obi-Wan cast a furtive glance out of the corner of his eye. Three or four of them, lazily patrolling the railed balustrade that circled the room-cube on three sides, disappearing into the fourth wall through two door-holes so black they might as well have led straight into a Hell. Three or four of them. Obi-Wan bit his lip in shame -- usually, that would have been a fair chance. If only he'd had his 'sabre. As it was, these creatures were quite happy to unload a few megawatts of blaster fire on anything that moved too fast for their liking. And he had no way of shielding himself, not from such an overwhelming display of brute force. Force. No, they didn't keep him from it, it ran smoothly and clearly through his mind, a shimmering river of lively blues and greens in the dull grey room. He just couldn't use it, unless he wanted to wind up dead.

And mind tricks wouldn't work either. Given the mental framework of the guards, they would register any kind of mental activity in their brains instantly, and react by an instantaneous blaster-fire reflex, Obi-Wan thought bitterly.

What on wherever this place was were they keeping him for?

More to the point, why were they keeping him completely naked save for the chains and his boots? Complete control? No misunderstandings over movement under clothes? Nothing to commit suicide with? For all the pleasure he'd recently learned to find in his body, Obi-Wan was acutely embarrassed to be kept naked in what was after all a public space, even though none of the people around him actually looked at him. Or maybe the flush came from the warmth? The room was quite warm -- but it wasn't because of the temperature that he fervently wished for his enveloping robe...

.... the robe that he had last seen disappearing through the black door-hole as they had taken En-Qui away yet again.

En-Qui. However much he had tried to banish the thought from his head to keep himself from going insane, the need and fear cramped his stomach and made his head spin every time he even thought of the beloved name... so far, he had always come back, silent and obviously in great pain, but outwardly unharmed and with a look of stubborn animalistic defiance in his eyes that had made Obi-Wan shudder to the bone. These eyes were the only true light in here, and he dreaded the moment he'd lose sight of him. The moment... they'd flicker and die. He hoped he wouldn't be there, and then he hoped he would.

They were torturing him. For what, he had no idea, but he sensed the toll it was taking on the big man's stamina, saw the lustre in his eyes grow duller every time they brought him back, limp and cracked-lipped and smelling of disinfectant.

If only he could talk, whisper soothing words into the beloved ears, words that would make no difference except to reassure En-Qui that he was still with him. Words that would doubtless be his last if he dared to speak them out loud. He had held his tongue, thinking intense thoughts in the direction of the weary blue eyes, giving and catching furtive glances from under lowered lashes. Moving his lips silently under the clink of his chains as he slowly, carefully, rearranged himself into a similarly uncomfortable position on the hard floor.

What were they here for? Nobody had made any attempts at torturing him, nor any of the others as far as he could tell. Nobody even questioned him, nor any of the others. They were kept in relative comfort -- at least the cell-halls were warm, the restraints didn't actually injure anybody, the food was drab but sufficient, and even though personal hygiene involved having your wrist-chain attached to a tight belt and being escorted to the 'fresher facilities by a guard, all the way to the actual bowl, the place was clean. Clinically clean, almost. As if they were some precious commodity.

And yet they'd shoot at anyone that dared rise up, apparently not valuing the lives they held... at least not if said lives belonged to individuals intent on keeping them. The only way to survive here, paradoxically, was to fall into an enforced vegetable state... the perfect slave.

Breaking. Yes, that was what this would result in... breaking all the strange and beautiful ones that were being shuffled around grey, endlessly half-lit cells in nothing but their skin and chains. Breaking by means of silence, fear, and indifference. It would work. Frighteningly well.

But why then were they torturing En-Qui? What were they hoping to get from him that they wouldn't achieve by that slow breaking...?

Obi-Wan's eyes darted unconsciously to the sleeping form just a few steps away when he heard the heavy clunk of a pair of booted feet landing on the floor of the cell, then another one. They always leapt off the balustrade, that much he had gathered from listening. Show-offs. And they always came for En-Qui... sour tears stung in his eyes as he followed the dull footfalls across the floor, sensing them closing in on the helpless man.

He didn't have to lift his head to know they were roughly dragging him to his feet, likely by his hair or his upper arm, in that place where you could hurt without leaving a bruise. In fact, if he had lifted his head he would have faced certain death, not for looking up maybe but for the scream of pain and outrage that would doubtless have followed at _seeing_ his lover handled so brutally. Just imagining it made Obi-Wan tremble all over, and he forced himself to keep his eyes on the slowly growing number of darker grey spots on the light grey floor under him. Wet spots. He focused on watching his tears fall, from his eyes to the featureless ground, falling into sharp focus, trying to keep his senses about himself when all he wanted, needed, was to cling to En-Qui's retreating form, to seep into his skin and be with him in his moments of darkness and agony.

He couldn't hear the soft steps of En-Qui's feet in their worn old boots; all he could hear was the clink of the chains and the hard hollow footfalls of the two guards, slowly retreating towards the ramp that led up to the balustrade.

And he heard something else, under the footfalls. Whispered conversation.

Straining his ears and subduing his own heart brutally to damp down on the rushing in his ears, loud in the silence of the cell, he listened.

"Think it's gonna be a coupla more days, Defra? Give him, what, two, three before he breaks?"

"Ever the optimist, eh? Can tell you're new here, mate. This one? Week at least, if he's gonna talk at all..."

"Maybe he can't -- dumb fish, you know what I mean? Doesn't get a word of what the fuck the Inquisitors are saying?"

"K'leel. He's a _Jedi_. They all speak Standard. I just wish he'd own up already."

"Yeah, but maybe 'e really don't remember -- you know, got hit on the head, sort of thing?"

A faint snort, just on the edge of hearing as the booted steps rang in the black doorway. "Gotta have a secret if he keeps telling us he doesn't rem-"

The sound cut out abruptly, swallowed by whatever was behind the black doorway.

Obi-Wan drew a deep breath, sorely reminded of how he needed air to survive. He breathed out rather more air than he'd gulped in, feeling utterly empty.

They thought En-Qui was a Jedi. Of course. He'd been wearing Obi-Wan's robe when they were captured... and if these Inquisitors had some way of detecting Force sensitivity, En-Qui's untrained mind would nevertheless have turned up a positive reading.

And they thought En-Qui was a Jedi guarding a secret... purely because he had no memory of his childhood and youth, and of course he would deny being Jedi since he quite simply wasn't.

Obi-Wan felt like retching. Whatever they were doing to him, they would be left with a meticulously unmarked body housing a shattered soul... he simply _couldn't_ come up with the answers they were expecting of him.

Worse still was the utter helplessness that weighed down Obi-Wan's thoughts like the chains that dragged on his limbs every time he moved. There was nothing he could do to help En-Qui, none of the years of training and meditation would do him any good now. For all that he was a fully-qualified Jedi himself, all he would succeed at by using any of his skills would be to get himself killed quickly and painfully. And En-Qui would stay alive, barely, indefinitely, and weep silently over his young red blood. The sheer frustration and despair made Obi-Wan feel as if the iron bands were around his heart, not around his wrists and ankles... alone, truly alone, his pride beaten into a pile of shards, and he couldn't even be with the man who, only days, hours, or weeks ago, had shown him life in all its glorious fullness. Now, he felt hollow, nothing but hollow.

He hadn't even noticed the hollow ring of booted feet approaching again, through the black doorway, down the balustrade, leaping off, one, two, three of them. They didn't go any further though. They stopped right where they must have landed.

"Right, everyone. Move. You, and you, and you lot over there, and you. Change of cell."

A gloved hand at the back of Obi-Wan's neck made it unmistakably clear that there _was_ an even deeper level of despair to sink to. Change of cell. Away, further away from En-Qui...

It didn't look any different from the cell he'd been in since he'd been taken. A cube of smooth grey, the dim back lighting even more oppressive to him now that he no longer even had a direction to look in, in search of a glimpse of those blue eyes. Not even a doorway at which to cast furtive glances in the hope that he would return.

There were more prisoners in this room, though, and Obi-Wan almost felt safe in the huddle of naked chained bodies on the bare floor. They could hide him from view... at least the tall and somewhat craggy bluish-grey creature on his right could, by dint of sheer size. Behind him someone with more limbs than standard clinked his or her chains despondently while settling down, and on his right sat a slender human girl of maybe fifteen standard years, clutching something pink to her breast.

She had something in her arms?

Fighting hard to rein in his shocked curiosity, Obi-Wan inched closer to the boulder-sized creature on his right, dragging his chains across the floor with extreme care so as not to make any sound. He couldn't risk using the Force, not even for something as trivial as that. Not if he didn't want to get himself _and_ his craggy blue-grey shield reduced to pulp by the guards' blasters.

A cautious glance through long lashes. She was holding something...

Someone.

A human baby, rather too pink and wrinkled, and too quiet to be well. And far too small. Born way ahead of its time, probably in the shock of its mother's capture. It lay limply in the thin girl's arms, eyes closed, an utter look of exhaustion on its face.

Only when she shifted the little one a tiny bit, warily eyeing her surroundings, did he see it. A fist the size of Obi-Wan's big toe clutched desperately at a short strand of tousled yellow hair, the tips sticking out between the tiny fingers as if this had been the last thing the baby had held on to.

Only, the thin girl's hair was black.

Obi-Wan tried hard not to let the memories take him... only weeks ago, he'd known a home at Temple, and had laughed and joked about his best friend and his pregnant lover. Within weeks since then, he'd had a brush with death, very nearly had his heart broken, and had it refilled with the most amazing golden feeling he'd never imagined. Only to have it torn from him again, alone among strangers, deprived of speech and movement, muted, dimmed.

He might never see that other, happier baby now. Ha-Meret's little one. What were they going to call her again? He couldn't remember, or wouldn't remember. There had been an argument over the name, a happy argument, looking back on it. Too happy. This little one had probably never been named, a shapeless pink blob of humankind born too early, with no memory of its dead mother but for a strand of dirty-blond hair and no caresses in this world but the awkward embrace of a stranger, and a wide pink scar across its little back already.

Wait. Obi-Wan focused, trying hard not to project his attention to the guards.

This wasn't a scar. Well, it was, but it was a deliberate one. Crudely hacked into the skin with something not quite sharp enough to leave clean cuts. A shard of twisted metal perhaps, a broken piece of equipment, a fingernail even, bitten and torn into a point. A desperate measure. And it wasn't just a scar.

It was writing. Aurobesh.

Obi-Wan's eyelids trembled as he tried to make out the tiny blotched markings on the baby's skin. It read...

Wequa.

His stomach fell, leaving him even emptier inside. This couldn't be true? Not... Wequa? That was what Ha-Meret would have called the little one if Garen hadn't interfered... Ha-Meret who should have been about seven months pregnant now. He-Meret who had never let that keep her from der duties. Ha-Meret whose hair was just the colour and length of the strand in the barely-alive baby's fist. Ha-Meret who... who bore an inscription of her own name on her lower back, an elaborate tattoo in reds and browns - Garen hadn't been able to resist showing that off. In Aurobesh.

This was... this was Wequa. His best friend's child, wounded and named by her mother who must have been breathing her last, alone. The little one's breaths were laboured too, whistling quietly and coming slowly as if the air was too thick to pass the tiny one's windpipe. The thin girl rocked her gently, and she didn't even make a sound. Neither did the guards.

Silently, Obi-Wan reached out with his mind, carefully, one thought at a time, keeping his eyes on the floor and stretching out a thin tendril of thought in the direction of the baby, ready to snap it off the instant he heard movement from the balustrade.

There was silence.

Overwhelming silence, and the faintest throb of an unformed mind about to die of starvation, the dried-up strands of a bond severed before it had time to form. Strands, just strands, and more silence from above as he slowly picked through them with his mind. Yes, Ha-Meret was there, blurred, more of a sensation than an image. Garen... he was even fainter, an echo within the baby's blood more than in her mind, too diluted to even identify if Obi-Wan hadn't known what he was looking for. Was he really? Did he even want to see it?

More silence from above.

He did. He was seeing it anyway, it wasn't like he could help it. Garen. He focused on the hazy echo, concentrating more and more of his mind, channelling more and more of his memories into the limp little body until she was filled with him, with the life-force of a stranger curling around the dried-up strands of the bond, a life force desperately trying to seep into the bond, to keep it alive, or to make it alive in the first place... to get through to Garen, wherever he was, if he was anywhere still.

But he wasn't water, and the dry strands shrivelled up further, slowly. Just slowly enough for him to notice.

And he was water, and cried silently at Garen's loss, and his own. The loss of hope.

The measured hollow footsteps filled his head with hammer blows as they emerged from the black doorway, abruptly, in step with each other. Two of them.

They didn't leap. They were carrying something.

Seconds later, Obi-Wan stared from eyes cried empty of tears. Stared at the body he thought he had lost forever. En-Qui.

Alive. Barely breathing, but alive. He lay on the floor in a heavy heap, just as they had dumped him. He was clean, and smelling of the acrid disinfectant they used. His skin was unmarked, though the way his sinews stood out made it clear that he had suffered limb-wrenching agony. And survived. Why does he have to keep surviving, Obi-Wan thought, what for?

So that you can see those blue eyes once more, a small voice inside him said, and he willed himself to believe it. Wherever that voice had come from, it said something he wanted to believe... even if those eyes were closed in leaden unconsciousness, and the lips were cracked and... he was bleeding? Oh, Force, what have they done to you, En-Qui, he thought, twitching as he willed his body to silence.

Blood beaded on En-Qui's lips, seeping in ruby droplets from two deep cuts that traced the exact outline of his mouth, overwhelming the fading purple of his lips. Obi-Wan bit his own lip sharply to keep himself from screaming. This most sensitive of places... the place he had tasted only a few days ago, split open in raw agony. And yet En-Qui survived. For him.

Obi-Wan's eyes filled with tears he hadn't known he had, and he wrapped all of his mind around En-Qui, throwing caution to the wind.

Nobody killed him. And En-Qui felt warm underneath all that pain, muddled and desperate yet glorious. He was alive, and he was all Obi-Wan had.

He was also... stirring.

Heavy and slow, En-Qui's body awoke before his mind. Obi-Wan watched in mute astonishment as thighs sought each other, toes uncurled, the broad back arched and relaxed. He was like a cat, Obi-Wan thought, like the old grey tigress he had had... the same heavy animal grace. The same grey fur, mussed long hair and the slightly darker beard that was beginning to grow out. They weren't allowed knives in here of course... they weren't, but _they_, whoever the hell 'they' were, they were allowed knives, and they were allowed to leave their bloody marks on En-Qui's face, deep gashes, drying blood that had seeped into the beard, marring the soft lips in their fading purple. Wish I had the salve, Obi-Wan thought, wish I could touch him, just hold him.

Wish that he's not a complete and utter animal yet.

En-Qui stretched, bone-weary, pale and drawn, and yet the most beautiful thing Obi-Wan could ever remember seeing. En-Qui, alive. It was all he could ask for.

One large hand moved slowly to rub the big man's face, rub the sleep from his closed eyes... eyes that flew open in shock at the feel of his face. The other hand darted up to En-Qui's face to join its mate, and his mouth stood open in pure astonishment as blunt fingertips ghosted over the blood-encrusted gashes in his lips, rubbed the bearded cheeks, tangled in the long hair...

A voiceless gasp as his fingers caught in the long grey mane... then, lightning quick, his hand flew to the spot behind his right ear as if to catch a lingering headache. The bright blue eyes blinked incredulously.

"Who... what has happened to --"

Obi-Wan's hasty shut-up gesture would have been enough to get both of them killed in the other room -- fortunately for both of them, he only realised this afterwards, and the guard with the raised blaster was calmed down by another, identically armoured one. The scowls from underneath their visor helmets were quite enough to silence En-Qui.

Oh Force no. No! Not 'who...?' They hadn't destroyed his mind yet, had they? Desperate now, and still on a rush from hearing the beloved voice, Obi-Wan reached out with his mind, to wrap himself around the muddy thick warmth that he had sensed in the unconscious En-Qui, to soothe and comfort the troubled mauled mind...

...and found -- images.

Blurred and pale, ghost-like but undeniably inhabiting En-Qui's mind. And words. Echoes of voices, lines from imagined books curling around the images. A human face, a man, or a boy maybe, it was hard to tell. Dark-skinned. A hand sinking in a tub of something glistening and blue. A flicker, just at the edge of vision but clearer than the rest of the image. Laughter, distant youthful laughter and a tinge of embarrassment. Flavour. Tart spicy sensations, fingertips on lips, getting clearer. His, En-Qui's own fingertips. Obi-Wan recognised them. En-Qui saw his own fingertips and between them the wet, but no longer blue end of a thin brown braid...

The black youth laughed, and Obi-Wan tumbled sideways out of En-Qui's mind in amazement at what he'd seen. Seen quite clearly, as if the internal camera was warming up and falling into focus, picking up colour and definition as it went.

The youth had been wearing Jedi tunics.

En-Qui remembered _Jedi_?

En-Qui remembered... a... Padawan braid?

Obi-Wan stared. En-Qui's eyes had fallen shut again with the effort of moving his body, but his mind was heating up now. It stretched before Obi-Wan like a pale shimmering road, an open invitation. Such trust...

But do you remember me, Obi-Wan thought, concentrating on painting the words into En-Qui's mental book, accompanying them with memories of their days on Tihaar. The stranger in the brown robe? Shearing Keshasha the sheep that was a goddess? The face I made at your lukewarm chai?

The face you made when you came inside me, a weak but amused mental voice answered. Was that really me too? Why didn't anyone tell me...?

En-Qui... Obi-Wan smiled, knowing the older man couldn't see it, but projecting all the tenderness and relief he felt into the mind-touch, putting all the helpless love he had into the syllables of the name. En-Qui, he thought, you are the son of the Living Force, you truly are.

Blue eyes flew open again. The name spun around in En-Qui's mind, visibly, an indistinct crooked shape of yellowish beige. He seemed to look, no, think at it from all angles. That.... yes, that is what they named me, Obi-Wan heard. It's coming back to me now... book pages fluttered through the clearing field of En-Qui's mind, wiping the name-shape off and leaving scintillating green fibres in the velvet dark. Seems so far away, so long ago... the man born an adult...

Mene s'Mene, Obi-Wan said softly, letting his voice ring out in the enveloping warmth of the older man's mind.

Child... not child, pale words struggled to the surface in En-Qui's mind. Child... but I was... was... child. Small... and grew... outgrew... Master...

The leaden thickness of unconsciousness fell over the exhausted man again, and Obi-Wan took a long time before he exposed his eyes to the dim grey light of the cell-cube again. En-Qui was beginning to remember, and they both hadn't been shot yet.

And was that last image... it had been very dim, but... there were _very_ few entities in the universe that combined the notion of 'Master' with the attributes 'small' and... 'green'...

They continued not to get shot day after day after day, lying beside each other delving into each other's minds. Soon, Obi-Wan had boldly taken to nursing his mate as he slowly regained his physical strength. They must have given him electric shocks, at least that was what it felt like, the lingering numbness in the man's outwardly unharmed limbs. Burn marks along his nerves. But his mind, oh his mind was a treasure burst open by this cruel treatment... and a treasure Obi-Wan guarded with his life.

They would not want to torture him again, not if his mind was as empty and broken as it looked, at least to the casual observer. To those who didn't perceive Obi-Wan's fierce shielding of his lover's mind, the grey-haired man was little more than an animal, one that needed to be fed and bathed and left alone to lie apathetically on his side, eyeballs twitching under closed lids as in a fever dream.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Behind those shields that apparently managed to keep the guards satisfied, the story of a lifetime was unfolding in a wild stream of images and words, and in a voice that was entirely En-Qui's. But it didn't belong to En-Qui.

He had had another name in his childhood, one by which his friends and his Master had called him, and Obi-Wan had beamed in incongruous pride and happiness as the other's mind had projected Master Yoda's raspy voice, instructing that keep lightsabres in one's pockets, a Jedi did not, and that repair that hole in his robe, Padawan Jinn would.

Padawan Jinn. Qui-Gon Jinn altogether, a slender, overly tall teenager with a cute blush offsetting his immutably diamond-blue eyes. Later, a devastatingly handsome youth with a broad open smile and a thick shock of short brown hair. And that braid he had unconsciously groped for the first time he awoke as himself again, in the cold grey light of the warm cell cube.

They didn't need words to understand each other. The mere fact that they could meld their minds so deeply spoke volumes. And he remembered Obi-Wan, remembered the strange young man in the long brown robe who had crashed into his peaceful life on Tihaar and made the Qui sing. Now he understood him too.

Qui-Gon. In En-Qui's tongue, that meant 'he-who-makes-living', or so the man that was both informed Obi-Wan smilingly. And he made living, a recovery that exceeded even Obi-Wan's expectations. Jedi or not, this man was in touch with the Living Force, and it showed. Within days, he was fully able to walk again. Not that he had to, not much at least. Still, he made his trips to the 'fresher, always accompanied by a brown-armoured guard, heavily armed and almost two feet shorter, and he moved among the captives like the demi-god he'd spent half his life as.

Still, Obi-Wan thought as he watched the unequal pair move towards to doorway, Qui-Gon's stride shortened by the chains around his ankles, his divine powers weren't enough for Wequa.

They had tried to revive her withered life-bond together, to fill her weakening mind with images of home, of the Temple and their past lives there, as much an attempt at saving the little one as a desperate measure to try and contact anyone who might still be linked to her in whatever tenuous way. Garen? Was he still alive? And Qui-Gon had thought of his friends, who might be anyone and anywhere now...

On the third day after they'd been moved into this cell, Wequa had been spirited away by a brown-armoured guard, supposedly to be healed. Obi-Wan doubted there was much hope for the child even if the guard's intentions had indeed been good. But Wequa being carried away revived the notion of 'away' in Obi-Wan's mind. They hadn't come for Qui-Gon any more, not to torture him and not to move him, and they hadn't reacted at all to Obi-Wan's moving into Qui-Gon's mind. They seemed oblivious to the mental plane of their relationship, only giving slight trigger-finger twitches whenever Obi-Wan moved to touch Qui-Gon physically to feed him or untangle his hair... should they really be insensitive to any mental activity not directed at them? Obi-Wan dared not probe -- they might notice _that_, and Qui-Gon would come back from the 'fresher to find a spreading pool of bright red...

Speaking of 'fresher... Obi-Wan ran his hands through his hair, almost to his chin now, uncut since his Knighting which felt like decades ago already. And grimy. I'm spending too much time inside Qui-Gon's mind, he thought ruefully, feeling the warm metal of his manacles against his ear. Would I could spend at least a fraction of the time inside his body...

It was definitely warm in that cell, and Obi-Wan slowly raised a chained hand at one of the three remaining guards to inform him that he would like to wash that light sweat off his skin please.

They had obliged, almost eagerly. Grabbing Obi-Wan by his buttocks to still him, the unusually tall brown-armoured man had cinched a wide metal belt around his waist, locking it in a position that was just a notch too tight even for Obi-Wan's slender body, constricting him and reminding him of his status. The wrist chain hooked into the same lock that held the tight band around his waist, keeping his hands bound down. Obi-Wan squirmed slightly against the constricting belt, but knew from experience there was no way of making it any more comfortable. This thing was designed to humiliate as much as to bind, and it succeeded at both.

And yet... the fresh heat at the thought of Qui-Gon, and the memory of being inside him, made it almost tolerable. Taking small steps, pulling the short chain between his shackles taut at every step, Obi-Wan followed the guard to the 'fresher.

The showers were large, featureless rooms tiled with white, separated by a waist-high wall into the side that held the actual showers, arrayed along the ceiling, and the other, dry side where the guards would sit with their blasters cocked while the captives washed.

Or let the warm water wash them. There was not much active washing to be done with your hands chained down as they were, but the spray was hot and quite powerful, and it would have to do.

There was one guard already lounging on the dry side of the low wall, idly watching the bound man standing in the shower. Steam curled around the powerful figure, caressing the glistening skin, and he bore his chains and belt in such a way that they were almost a regal adornments on the long lean body. His eyes were closed, water running freely all over the broad calm face, beading in the beard, snaking down the strands of thick grey hair.

Even if Obi-Wan had been blindfolded he would have sensed Qui-Gon's Force aura. Now, with his eyes open, he noticed another thing as he stepped under the hot spray next to him, under the watchful eyes of two vicious-looking guards.

Those huge hands, cuffed and chained, were hiding a sizeable erection.

Obi-Wan's arousal sparked at the sight, and he'd mind-nudged Qui-Gon out of his reverie even before he'd noticed he'd done so. Amazed blue eyes raked up and down the slender wet body, and Qui-Gon's tongue flicked out to lick his lips at the sight, which did nothing to stop Obi-Wan's own cock from rising at the sheer need in Qui-Gon's eyes.

Moving ever so slightly and carefully, Obi-Wan slipped one hand underneath the other which was still hanging relaxedly where it was chained. Tantalisingly slowly, one eye on the guards, one on Qui-Gon, he ran his palm up the length of his hardening cock, squirming slightly at the sensation. It had been too long, much too long...

Outwardly unperturbed, Qui-Gon's hands had begun to move ever so slowly too, undulating against his proud hard shaft in a hesitant clumsy rhythm that so belied the bright bliss his mind radiated. His breathing was quite loud, even over the rush of the hot water, and soon enough Qui-Gon had wrapped his fist around his cock and was pumping insistently, eyes closed, mouth open, small inarticulate grunts escaping his throat, the sounds of an animal in heat.

Obi-Wan was quite sure the guards were aware of what was going on by now, and were quite simply too indifferent to do anything about it. Or they were voyeurs. He was quite past caring at the sight of Qui-Gon pumping himself to glory, and let himself fall into the flood of images and sensations that had been threatening to overwhelm him the moment he had set eyes on his impossible lover, chained, naked, wet, beautiful beyond words.

He sent words of love, memories of past caresses, of the tender first time on the frozen steppe, of that one violent fuck on board their ship, where Obi-Wan had felt no less bound then he was now, except Qui-Gon's hands and arms were such all-round wonderful chains, he sent the echoes of his orgasms, the screams of sheer overflowing bliss as Qui-Gon had filled him with pure fat pounding goodness... and he sent images of himself this very moment, past Qui-Gon's closed eyelids.

Obi-Wan standing under the hot spray of a shower, hair soaked and almost brown in its wet state, water beading on his pale shoulders and sluicing over his chest towards his bound hands frantically working his cock, chain clinking rhythmically, his whole body writhing gently in animal pleasure, lips parting in a low whimper as his hands pumped faster, faster, approaching a climax that sent stars racing up his spine and echoed in the low moan of Qui-Gon's voice as the water washed the seed from their glowing bodies.

They had dried off under the hot-air vents, and Obi-Wan had delighted in the sight of Qui-Gon's hair getting blown about his face whichever way he turned. With his hands chained, the older man could do nothing but endure it, and endure it he did, and Obi-Wan was quite sure he was showing off too. All that lush thick hair... there would be a lot of untangling to do in the very near future. Once they'd got back to the cell.

The guards had been indulgent, and Obi-Wan was almost willing to thank them for this moment of private/public pleasure as they gruffly escorted the two naked men back to their cell.

It seemed as if even the guards were surprised to find not two, but eight of their brown-armoured colleagues in the cell, evidently awaiting their return.

"'Ere, what have you two been doing with them, lads? We was beginning to worry, you know..." The toneless chuckle hinted at altogether unsavoury worries. "Defra 'ere," a nod at the squat guard up on the balustrade, "will want a word with ya, I imagine."

"You want the Jedi?"

"Jus' the big one, tra. Since 'e says 'e's not a Jedi 'e shouldn't have to be treated like one either, eh? Found a buyer for 'im, mate."

"That one? What -- for meat?"

Laughter, raucous laughter. "Meat all right, mate. No' labour though -- Pi'edja's int'rested in 'im..."

The rushing in Obi-Wan's ears grew louder, and he bit his lip to keep himself from crying out loud. He didn't need to hear who this woman was, and yet his ears didn't spare him the information he could guess at already.

"_The_ Pi'edja...?"

"Yep. Owns three dozen industries, two moons, one planet and a coupla religions. Slaves, dunno. Too many to count I guess."

"But none of them a brawny mindless ex-Jedi piece of meat!" The guard grabbed Qui-Gon's arse quite firmly. Qui-Gon just stood, eyes closed, trying not to project his horror at Obi-Wan. The perfect piece of meat.

"Guess ya got lucky then, piece o' meat. Might get yourself a coupla fun days before she feeds ya to her pets. If ya lucky she'll 'ave worn ya out so much ya won't notice when ya dead. Pi'edja has... the biggest sexual ap-pe-tite in t'universe, matey. Glad to get a taste, eh?"

Qui-Gon stood silently. Obi-Wan raged, fumed, screamed inwardly, tears stinging his eyes, fighting to get out, fighting to break through the shields he had erected around himself and Qui-Gon, shields that were vital now... or should he just break them down and assault the guards and get a blaster bolt inside him and be freed from this... the thought of clutching to Qui-Gon's mind as he faced his last days at the hands of a cruel owner was much too painful to even think at this point.

Desperate, he lunged, not at the guards, at Qui-Gon, latching his mouth on to his lover's in a trembling thirsty kiss that lasted longer than his breath and ended only when a pair of cold gloved hands pulled him away by his shoulders.

"Easy, lad... ya playin' with fire 'ere."

Obi-Wan didn't spare the tallish guard behind him a glance as he tightened his shields, shutting his mind off from the outside world, shutting his mind off from Qui-Gon's step by step, sending last breaths of love and remembered happiness as he watched him leave, naked and chained, stumbling as they dragged him along faster than he could walk with his feet shackled, but infinitely more graceful than any of the jerky brown guards. Infinitely beautiful, a flame of bright Living Force about to be swallowed by the black doorway... forever.

"'ere, Defra, Mettgh, wait a minute..." The two creatures who were dragging Qui-Gon along by his upper arms slowed their step grudgingly as their colleague, the tall one who'd been standing behind Obi-Wan, called out to them, running towards where they stood, waving a hand...

It all happened too fast for Obi-Wan's eyes. He had... the tall one had cannoned straight into Qui-Gon, knocking him to the ground and sending him skidding along the floor, painfully. And the place where the naked Qui-Gon had been was now occupied by a tall figure in brown armour, moving with lightning speed, and by... lightning.

A lightsabre? The guard had a _lightsabre_??

A blue lightsabre, rather shorter than was Jedi standard, his mind supplied dizzily as he watched the glowing blade reduce both guards' blasters to twisted dripping pieces of metal in one elegant spinning swoop. The guards lunged, intent to kill the traitor with their bare hands, and the 'sabre whirled around again almost carelessly, neatly slicing them in half, armour clattering to the ground.

The room was on fire -- left, right and centre, blaster bolts were ricocheting off the walls, weaving a deadly net of racing white flame around the guards. They were shooting - at each other?? Was this some sort of rebellion? Cursing his chains, Obi-Wan cowered on the floor, as far out of the line of fire as was possible, hiding amongst the other trembling bodies while trying to keep an eye on Qui-Gon, lying against the far wall, bruised but unattended. Unthreatened.

There -- another 'sabre!! Warm yellow beams criss-crossed among the frenzied blaster fire, methodically redirecting the white-hot bolts, taking out another brown-armoured figure who crumpled to the floor, annihilated by his own fire. Another body fell screaming on the other side of the room, momentarily distracted and caught in the web of blaster bolts zooming around the top half of the cell's walls. His head followed his body to the ground a split second later, landing on the shattered armour with a dirty smacking sound.

"Ceeeeease!" The blue 'sabre pointed skywards, gathering the remaining bolts and directing them towards the black doorway, where they were swallowed without a sound, to wreak havoc on whatever was outside the cell. The tall man extinguished his lightsabre, clipped it to his belt, looked at his hands. Disgustedly, he pulled off his bloodstained gloves and threw them on the floor. "Right. Knight Ssibb, could ya round 'em up and explain stuff? Take 'em to t'ship, if they want." A commlink on the tall man's belt beeped. "Ikmi says they've got everything under control. Get 'em out fast before they send reinforcements. Padawan, doors. We're coming."

Unceremoniously, the tall man's hands grabbed Obi-Wan by his wrists, and the manacles sprang open. Numb, Obi-Wan stared.

"Shields, mate, shields. Force, stubborn as ever, eh, Obi?"

He knew his _name_? What in all the Sith hells... with a sound that was half exasperated sigh, half indulgent chuckle, the tall guard removed his battered helmet and grinned at Obi-Wan.

Who stared into the familiar asymmetrical face of his former Master.

"Master... Pyau..."

"The same. Borrowed the voice from a Correllian," he cleared his throat ostentatiously, falling back into the familiar thickly-accented tones of the Jedi Master, "but it's me nevertheless. You all right? Force, let your shields down, Kenobi. You're miles away! Always too stubborn, you were... and hard-minded enough to project over half a bloody galaxy!"

"Where's... Qui-Gon?"

"Over there. Ssibb, wait for us, will ya? C'mon, Pada... Obi-Wan , we've gotta get out of here soon, and don't tell me ya don't want that? I'd rather be in orbit when they send the army..."

"You... you got my call?"

"Nope. Garen did. They sent Knight Ssibb after me to pry me out of my mission and drag me to the coordinates the lad had gathered. Had to sweet-talk some of my spies into joining," he waved loosely at the other armoured figures who were busy rounding up the other slaves, forcing their chains open and keeping them calm, "seems we made it just in time though. We'll have to get back 'ere ay ess ay pee as soon as the army comes in, watchin' though, not fightin'. Whoever is behind this is a seriously major crook... guess we'll be in this sector for a while still. Not that you're meant to tell anyone, right lad?"

Obi-Wan wasn't paying attention, sobbing quietly, arms wrapped around Qui-Gon, face buried in the crook of his neck. It didn't matter that he was crying in front of his old Master. Nothing mattered but the hard salty warmth of Qui-Gon's skin. Alive. Free.

As his mind sank into his lover's, and his body stumbled as Pyau gently nudged him to move, his ears dimly registered the familiar sound of his Master's voice.

"Padawan? Keep 'em open. We're gonna be with ya in a minute. Yeah, late again. I know. Standby."

Obi-Wan had clean refused to let go of Qui-Gon. Even after they'd all squeezed aboard the Master's ship, even after his shock had worn off enough for him to lower his shields and feel the clear river of the Force flowing through him again. Even after Master Pyau had sketched the story of his rescue mission. Even after he'd been introduced to Knight Ssibb and the 'spies', who turned out to be several dozen spectacularly ugly but wonderfully bright females of a species not unlike Toydarians. Even after they had deposited the freed slaves on the nearest friendly planet.

Which, to his great surprise, was Tihaar.

So they hadn't been all that far away after all. Close enough for the young Mene s'Mene to still remember Obi-Wan, at any rate. And the young man had graciously accepted the task of keeping the freedmen in his tent village until they had arranged for transport to whatever homeworld they would be going to. Master Pyau had given him the spare comm unit Ssibb had brought from Coruscant in the hope of replacing Obi-Wan's missing one. The amber eyes beamed in joy at the idea of being able to stay in touch with other worlds long after this amazing intriguing crowd of relieved and grateful live forms had vanished to their homeworlds, and the Mene s'Mene of Tihaar waved a long goodbye to the ship as it set off again without its precious cargo, bringing the stranger and his Master and his allies, and the Named One, back to wherever they belonged.

The walls in the young one's mind had been broken down, that much he had seen. Beautiful rubble. Endless new paths.

They had parted tenderly and affectionately, the Master returning to his duty of tracking the middlemen of the slave-trading ring that had nearly cost Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon their lives. Pyau had docked at the hiding place where Knight Ssibb had concealed the shuttle that had brought him from Coruscant, and had insisted Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon return there immediately, seeing as they were being expected.

Obi-Wan had looked a tiny bit puzzled at this (sure, Garen was expecting _him_, but who could be expecting Qui-Gon Jinn after all these years? They hadn't had any communication from the Temple even acknowledging their existence...), and Master Pyau grinned at him. "Don't forget, we're undercover. Don't go live on comms until you've well cleared the system, right? Don't want ya to give us away to the bastards... oh, and take Padawan Xealliwi with you, I think she's still a tad too young for what this is turning into... treat 'er like you would a little sister, eh? Oh, and she's a mean pilot, just in case you two wanna take... you know... time off..."

Obi-Wan was winded at the slap of his Master's palm on his back, but he laughed nevertheless. Oh yes, he laughed.

They had spent their 'time off' well, getting acquainted with Pyau's second Padawan, a short half-Iktotchi with slender horns and a gorgeous liquid voice who loved Qui-Gon's Tihaarian chai and who sang to herself while flying. Maybe to drown out the decidedly joyful noises coming from Knight Kenobi's cabin...

They went live on comms a day and a half later than Pyau had advised them to, just to be on the safe side, and just to see how long they could hold out before the need to touch base became too great. When they powered up the comms unit, there were two requests for return calls logged there already. Temple codes. With Qui-Gon leaning warmly over his shoulder to catch a glimpse at the small viewscreen, Obi-Wan punched the first of the two codes.

The screen flickered into life, and after about half a minute a human face appeared through the haze of static.

"Obi-Wan!! Man, you are... alive..." Tears sprang from the Padawan's eyes, and he didn't even bother to wipe them away, staring from the screen in a wild mixture of joy and pain.

"Garen... Garen, I am so sorry..."

A hand brushed away his words, and the face smiled bravely. "I knew, Obi-Wan. I knew the minute her transport turned up without her. It's... I can't say it yet...," he sobbed, "but they're being good to me here, Master Ek is an absolute angel, and oh Force you're alive, Obi-Wan, you're alive..."

Obi-Wan nodded, tears stinging in his own eyes at the sight of his oldest friend in such turmoil. "Yes, Garen. And I'm coming home."

"Good... so good. Force, Obi-Wan, stay home, will you? Don't want to lose you too--"

A soft chime announced an incoming communication. Garen wiped at his tears with the back of his hand, smiling. "There. They must have been waiting for you to go live, Obi. I will... will see you soon, yes?"

"Three more standard days, Garen. And you'll be my first port of call, I swear."

"May the Force be with you, Obi..."

"And you, Garen... and yes, it is with me, it most definitely is."

The incoming comm code flashed unobtrusively at the bottom of the display screen, scrolling across the fading image of Padawan Garen Muln. A Temple code, in clearscript... Master Mace Windu. "I believe that's for both of us, Qui-Gon," Obi-Wan announced, and Qui-Gon wrapped his arms tighter around Obi-Wan as his mouth formed the unaccustomed title. "_Master_ Mace... Force, it's been decades, hasn't it? I wonder if he remembers me at all..."

The grainy image of Master Windu's bald head flickered into being, and even Obi-Wan hadn't been prepared for the bellow of laughter that rocked Qui-Gon's mighty frame at the sight.

"Mace! What on Coruscant are you doing in the Council chamber, you old prankster?? _Master_ Prankster Windu, pardon..."

Mace scowled, then let his dark face split open in a wide grin. "Oh, so Knight Kenobi's been too busy to tell you, eh?" Serious again, he addressed Obi-Wan directly: "In the name of the Council, I apologise for the insufficient information given to you on this mission. We had thought it better for you to arrive with an unbiased mind, and..."

"... well, it nearly backfired." Another voice spoke up from the background, velvety and female, and the tall shape of Councillor Adi Gallia appeared in the background. "You have taught us all a lesson, Knight Kenobi, and we are deeply in your debt. Please accept our sincere apologies."

Obi-Wan still stared, and nodded mute assent while Qui-Gon still shook with laughter. "In the name of... the Council??," he gasped, unable to stop himself. "You are what, Mace?"

The earnest head shook in an unbelieving gesture. "Acting Head of the Jedi Council. Welcome, back, Qui-Gon Jinn. May I add that you haven't changed a bit -- even your inarticulate mental cries for help are brute violent dabs of pure Living Force. Nearly knocked poor Padawan Muln out, Jinney. Force, what are we going to do with you now that you're back to haunt us here at Temple...?" The amusement had crept back into master Windu's stern voice, and he listened intently, eyebrows raised, as Qui-Gon cleared his throat to reply.

"Mace... Councillor Windu... I have a request to make. One that may shock you, or appear impossible to you, I do not know. I am not fully healed yet, and not at what I seem to remember as my old strength, but I am whole again in my mind, and in the Force. And I can only be so thanks to this wonderful young man you have sent after me, Mace..." He took a deep breath, casting a bright blue gaze at Obi-Wan's pleasantly astonished face. "I humbly ask the High Council of the Jedi Order to reinstate me as Padawan Learner... to Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or, failing that," he brushed aside Mace's half-uttered reply, "as his husband."

Obi-Wan's voice congealed in his throat, and spurted over his lips in one bright word, spoken loud and clear and with a firmness he was sure he didn't have in him. He melted against Qui-Gon at his back, eyes closed, mouth forming the single word that was large enough to encompass the way he felt.

"Yes."

The image at the other end of the comm flickered and wobbled for a moment, swept across random angles of the Council chamber floor until it settled jerkily on a round green face that filled half the screen. "Mace, hold this further away you will... thank you. Wish this to, do you, Knight Kenobi?"

"Yes." Obi-Wan felt quite incapable of saying any more, and didn't see the need to anyway. The whole world was 'yes' right now...

"Granted, your wish shall be. Welcome you back to the Order, we do, my young... old Padawan."

He was almost presentable now, ready to face the Council in the few hours it would take them to reach Coruscant. Obi-Wan had kept the borrowed set of tunics from Master Pyau stowed away until now, vastly preferring to keep Qui-Gon wearing as little clothing as possible. Now it was time to change, and he had to admit Qui-Gon made a wonderful Jedi, despite the fact that Master Pyau's tunics were made for a similarly tall, but thinner figure. They gaped open quite attractively over the big man's chest, and the sash and belt fit tightly around the trim waist. All that was missing were the robe and the boots -- Master Pyau hadn't had spares of either, and Obi-Wan very much doubted Pyau's slender feet had anything in common with Qui-Gon's massive ones, apart from the fact that they both followed the same basic human model.

"I'll miss your lace and silks, Qui... you looked so beautifully feral in them..."

Adjusting the belt one last time, Obi-Wan took a step back to admire his new Padawan. Blushing slightly at the intense regard, Qui-Gon ran one large hand down the braided length of hair almost lost in the fall of his grey mane. Smiling, Obi-Wan ran a hand through the thick silvered tresses and swept them back over Qui-Gon's shoulder, face too close to the big man's ear not to take a quick nip at the warm earlobe.

Qui-Gon squirmed ever so slightly, amused and aroused at his new Master's playfulness. "Master... Obi. Don't you think this might be a problem... the long hair, I mean...?"

Obi-Wan grinned, slate-grey eyes locked with diamond-blue, lips so close that Qui-Gon could almost taste the words.

"Let them try to stop me, Padawan. Let them try to stop mmmmmmm."

The rest of the word drowned in a deep extravagant kiss that neither Qui-Gon nor Obi-Wan remembered ending.

--- The End ---