"Ow!"
"Too tight?" the man asked gently, and when the boy nodded, he loosened the bandage.
The child had spend the last few minutes going through the entire inventory of possible relations with no success. He couldn't imagine this man living alone in the desert, with no family or friends. After such a life of adventure, how could he end up all alone? It made him strangely sad to think of it, yet the man betrayed no signs of self-pity or sorrow.
"Anyone?" the boy finally asked, determined to mask his exasperation.
There was someone….once…," the old man's voice trailed off, and his gaze seemed suddenly distant, as though he were peeling away the layers of the present and looking back into the past.
"But I thought you said you were a...." the younger man began, his blonde hair spreading over his blue-eyed gaze.
"I was," the old man interrupted, with a knowing smile. His voice had rose slightly to emphasize his sincerity. "But that was long ago."
"Well I heard that they weren't aloud to marry," the child answered, as though it were fact.
"Oh, yes, we were," the man answered, with a hint of amusement in his voice.
"Well?" the boy looked towards him impatiently, as the old man carefully bandaged his knee.
"Well, what?" he replied innocently, as he finished his ministrations.
"Did you marry her?"he asked, brushing the mop of sandy hair from his bright eyes.
He leveled his gaze at the young boy for a moment then clapped his hands onto his knees, and sending a fine mist of sand into the air, rose. "But *you* should be getting home now. Surely there is someone there worried about you."
"Eh," the boy shrugged and looked down at his bandaged knee, wrapped neatly a few minutes before by the old man. "I guess my mom might worry," he answered haphazardly, and glanced up at the old man.
It was almost so faint that he might've missed it. After all, he was only eight years old. But children can often see things that adults cannot, and the boy felt at that moment that someone had tugged at a string on the old man's heart. The elder's gaze seemed to soften ever so slowly, and it seemed as though a glisten had formed in the weathered eyes.
The boy didn't know what to say. Had he done something to upset him? He didn't understand the emotions playing over the old man's face, and felt uncomfortable as he turned his gaze on the child, staring at him with that stare of a time long gone.
"Well," the older man said, snapping out of his daze, "then we must get you home to her." He patted the boy on the head and then headed off down the dune towards Mos Eisley.
The youth watched him for a moment, and wondered at the stories he'd been told earlier this afternoon. Could this old man really have been a jedi knight once? When the boy failed to follow, the man turned his gaze around, and raised his eyebrows in a question. The boy ventured an apologetic smile and lumbered after him.
He brightened again as the old man resumed his friendly demeanor of earlier. "Can I tell people that you're a jedi?"
"Of course you can," he answered cheerfully, "but no one will believe you. They all think I'm a crazy old wizard."
"You're not crazy," said the boy, suddenly annoyed by the rumors that he'd been told, and had believed ever since he was a baby.
"Try telling them that. To them the jedi never existed -- they are old stories, only myth." They stopped at the edge of the Dune Sea and looked out over the baking horizon at the golden glimmer of the mud-brick dwellings of Mos Eisley. Making their way down the hillside, they came to the beginning of the rough road that would carry the boy home.
The boy looked up at the old man and smiled brightly. For a moment he stood beneath the old man's gaze, absorbing his tranquil expression filled with warmth. It was like coming out of the shadows and absorbing the rays of the sun. "I believe you," the boy said, decidedly.
He smiled at the boy, and breathed a deep sigh. "Thank you." He gazed at the sun beginning to lower over the horizon. "You'd better be getting home. You don't want to be caught out of the settlement after dark."
He became very still. Their parting of the ways had arrived, and the boy had a nagging feeling he would never see the old man again -- he would return to the desert and resume his lonely life without any of the comfort of friends or family. The child thought of the unbearable existence as if he had been parted from his own mother. "I know!" he said excitedly, "You can come live with us in Mos Eisley! We have enough room, you could…"
"I don't belong in that world anymore," the old man kneeled before the boy, as his rusty robes dragged the sand floor.
"But you told me you don't have anyone! You never answered me…did you marry her?" he asked in frustration.
"No," the man answered. Then he lifted his hand from the boy's shoulder and placed it on his heart. "But she is here," he said, then raised his eyes and glanced over the expanse of the desert, "and all around me." He placed his arms again on the boy's shoulders and squeezed them reassuringly. "And we will be together again. As you and I shall, too."
"And then you can finish your stories," the boy said smiling at his gentle words.
"Yes," he said rising, and he urged the boy finally towards the road. "But you will have many adventures of your own to tell. Perhaps you will tell me a story then."
The boy smiled back at him, then headed down the road with a light step. He looked up at the starry sky beginning to spread out above him, and for the first time, he saw a world beyond his own.
"I will have great adventures someday," he whispered to himself, and headed towards the gleaming homefires of Mos Eisley.