Speak without thinking and you will be bitten; think without speaking and you may be swallowed.

—The Collected Wisdom of the Ka'andesi Peoples, as told to Inalia Kenobi, Chronicler of the Ch'lliear.

This time, we were actually early for lunch. Aunt Bee was tromping into the courtyard about the same time that we arrived. Her knee-high boots were entirely coated in mud, her vest was gone, and her typically neat braid was all loose, with fly-aways sticking out all over her head. Even the complex strings of Weaver's beads which usually decorated her hair were gone.

"What happened?" I cried.

"There was trihorn stuck in the creek out by the Gowans'," she huffed. "No one was home."

"You should have come and got us!" I said.

"It might have broken its leg by the time I found you out there," she shook her head, doggedly continuing her way into the kitchen.

"Bee!" my mother's sharp tone of warning stopped all three of us in the doorway.

"What?" she blinked.

"I just cleaned the floors this morning!" Mom told her.

"Oh…" Aunt Bee hurriedly stepped back and kicked off her boots, still talking as she did so. "You know, you shouldn't be cleaning the floors anyway, Sajani. You're six months along now, and this is a ris—"

"Someone else is going to do it with you gone all day and the boys getting ready for a run to Coruscant?" Mom interrupted. She turned away from the food prep station where she had been stirring a pot of soup, and one hand moved protectively over her swollen belly. Her tone was quiet and reasonable, but her blue eyes flashed dangerously in Aunt Bee's direction. I felt my chest tighten as I realized that the two women were preparing to square off.

They rarely fought, but when they did, the whole plain soon felt it. I looked back and forth at them in confusion, trying to figure out what they were really saying—or maybe what they weren't saying. It wasn't like Mom to interrupt someone, and I knew plenty of Ka'andesi women who washed floors and did other kinds of housework when they were pregnant. What was different here?

Aunt Bee took a breath, and I could feel the storm gathering. Ierei nudged me with her elbow. Swallowing, I stepped forward and inserted myself between them.

"I will," I said.

Both women paused. Their eyebrows rose and they looked at me with a clear question. I realized that I'd just voluntarily added to my own load of chores, and I bit back a long sigh.

"I will," I repeated firmly. "From now on, I'll scrub the floors and whatever else Aunt Bee says."

They glanced at one another, and some kind of silent exchange passed between them. The tension melted, and I let out a small, relieved puff. My mother's mouth quirked upward in amusement. My fate was now sealed, and I knew it.

"You heard him," Mom winked.

"And we have Ierei as a witness," Aunt Bee nodded.

I groaned.

Aunt Bee started to say something else, then she looked down at her disheveled, muddy clothes and sighed. "We'll have to discuss the specifics later, Owen. I need a shower."

"You two can wash your hands in here," said Mom, waving toward the kitchen sink. "Then the table needs setting."

Aunt Bee bustled off toward the 'fresher. Ierei leaned her board in the corner by the open doorway, and I set my book down in front of it. Once our things were settled, we trooped to the sink and scrubbed up, a process which was made infinitely more difficult by the fact that my mother seemed to have three sets of eyes—one for the cooking, one for Ierei, and the best one of all trained on me.

Just about the time we were finishing, Dad and Uncle Dannik came barreling into the kitchen from their shop. They were both sweaty and covered in brownish-black grease from whatever pieces of heavy equipment they had been working on that morning. Fall was harvest time on the plains, which always meant that their business picked up. Harvesters, worker droids, and other equipment broke down or wore out, needing quick patch jobs that could tide the farmers over until the cold season hit. Anybody with a working farm could fix basic problems by themselves, but credits were scarce on the plains, and that meant the machinery had to last much longer than it was usually meant to. My father and Uncle Dannik had a way of being able to make things work when no one else could, and they could turn a repair job out again faster than the farmers could since they didn't have to spend daylight hours in the fields.

They jostled one another good naturedly until they reached the interior door, then Uncle Dannik headed for the downstairs 'fresher and Dad did a quick about face to dart for the second floor. It only took a beat for Uncle Dannik to hear the shower running and realize he'd been had. Spinning around, he shouted after my father.

"One of these days, I'm just gonna trip you, little brother!"

"I'd see you coming, Dannik!" Dad yelled back.

"You know, I think he would," Uncle Dannik winked at Mom. He moved up beside her in a few quick strides and grabbed the arched handle of the old, coral colored soup pot, carrying it back to the table.

"Of course he would," Mom said easily. "Be careful; your hands are dirty."

"I know, I know," he sighed.

Ierei and I giggled.

"What?" he arched his eyebrow at us.

"Nothing, Uncle Dannik," we chorused, busying ourselves with the task of setting the table.

"Good," he half-laughed, returning to take the bread, cheese, and salad to the table in turn.

When the dishes were all laid out, Ierei and I each took one of my mother's arms and helped her down to the table. The baby made it hard for her to get up and down, and I didn't like seeing her struggle. Ierei was a Healer in training, and she had gotten pretty vocal about her feelings toward this particular Ka'andesi tradition in the last few months.

"This would be a lot easier if you had a big table and chairs, Aunt Sajani," she declared. In the past, I would have just put the comment down to the fact that she wasn't a Clan girl. Even if she was my best friend, she didn't really understand our traditions. Ever since this baby had started making things so difficult for Mom, I had wondered if maybe she was right. After all, why was a table really that big of a deal?

"This is the Ch'lliear way, Ierei," Mom shook her head. "This was my mother's table, and it will be Owen's table after me unless I have daughter."

"Miri Deccol has a big table," Ierei grumbled. "Chairs are way more comfortable than pillows, and nobody has to put them away when you're done eating."

"The Deccols' get more outclan every year!" I objected automatically. I couldn't help it; even if I did agree with Ierei, I hated the way she compared our family to people like that.

"Who cares if it makes things easier?" Ierei glared at me. "Your mom shouldn't be sitting on the dumb floor like this, Owen!"

"Enough!" Uncle Dannik's voice rang out over both of ours. We shrank back in surprise. Dad was kind of a blowhard. He bellowed and stomped around, generally acting like a spring storm, and then he got over it. Uncle Dannik, on the other hand, rarely raised his voice except when he was joking with Dad the way he had when they came inside. I think I had seen him shout twice in my life before this afternoon, and neither of those occasions had ended well for the person on the receiving end.

My mother held up her hands for peace, looking from side to side at Ierei and I. She spoke mildly, but the set of her jaw and the slight narrowing of her brown eyes told me that this would be the last word spoken on the subject.

"Both of you respect this table. You know better than to bicker when a meal is laid out. Ierei, Ka'andesi women have carried children and sat to table this way for thousands of years. Yes, it's less convenient, but that is not the only consideration. Owen, Miri Deccol's mother is still my friend. She practically grew up in this house, the same as Ierei now. In fact, I think that when I go into the city to have this baby, you should stay with the Deccols instead of at the den with Ierei."

My jaw dropped.

"Can I stay there too?" Ierei asked eagerly.

"Ierei!" I cried.

"To keep you company!" she insisted.

"You'll have to ask your father," Mom told her, stifling a laugh.

I grit my teeth on the urge to complain that this wasn't funny. I could feel my face turning red with frustration until my father's heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs. I whirled around, racing to him for support.

"Okodi!" I wailed, running through the parlor to the foot of the stairs.

"What? What's wrong?" he asked as he reached the bottom, his voice alarmed.

Reverting to Ch'lliear in my distress, I told him, "Mom says I have to stay with the Deccols when the baby is born!"

Dad paused in surprise, obviously having expected another kind of problem. Then he frowned at me and stepped off the bottom stair. I swallowed and bit my lip, suddenly wondering if I had been wrong to expect him to take my side.

When he spoke, it was also in our clan tongue, so I knew that there would be no chance of argument. "If your mother says it, then it is so. And this way you'll be making an informed statement if you decide to call the Deccols outclan again."

Great. Somebody remind me to keep my big mouth shut next time.