LL1 34 Force Telekinesis

Luke heard her voice singing before he saw her. She lay on the deck of the cockpit with her lower body jutting out of an open panel. Luke could barely make out the words, "Sitting on a speckled log, eating the most delicious bugs. Yum. Yum." He grinned as he approached and rapped hard on the metal bulkhead with his knuckles.

"Argh!" Her head dipped out to look at him. "That's kinda loud in here." She was only half-annoyed because she knew he did it on purpose. It was her punishment for not paying attention to the Force enough to notice that someone was approaching. She slid out and stood, wiping her filthy hands with an equally filthy rag. She noticed immediately that he'd shed the tunic of his uniform and loosened the top two buttons on his black shirt. Then she noticed the time. "Lunch break?"

Luke leaned his shoulder against the jam and shook his head. "We quit early. So we start early. Are you at a stopping place?"

Kess nodded. She was always at a stopping point when Luke showed up. She wondered if he ever noticed.

He turned away to go find Chewie, "Get cleaned up."

Chewie and Han had slowly loosened their grip about the kind of repairs she did. So slowly, in fact, that Kess hardly noticed the way her orders advanced in difficulty and importance. Comparing the then and now: her first assignment was to clean the showerhead. Now, a month later, Chewie gave her the fuse box to repair and rewire. Not one repair touched upon the list she was supposed to be doing, but she would get there in about a standard year at this rate.

It took only a few minutes for her to peel the coveralls from her hidden civvies, change into lighter shoes, and wash her hands clean of the grease. Working on a fuse box had not gotten her all that dirty, so she didn't mind training without showering first. Trotting happily down the ramp, she ripped the braids from their ties and proceeded to unravel her hair as she walked with Luke out of the docking bay. He watched her scrub her scalp with unpainted fingernails, shaking up the full head of hair and letting sand-colored locks fall down the back of that skin-tinted blouse.

During several minutes of walking silently to the beach, Kess thought about the possibility of talking Luke into not training, just for one day. She hungered to see the man relax a little, or maybe talk about something that didn't have to do with the Force. She slid her fingers into the front pockets of her pants and grinned at him. "Have you guys ever heard of some people getting a day off? It's Benduday on Yavin Base right now."

Luke responded like he really didn't care, "Is it? I hardly notice it's Benduday when I'm on Yavin." His boots sank into the sand as he stepped off the curb and onto the scarcely populated beach. The sunlight of midday sparkled on thousands of waves on the blue-purple ocean. He drank in the cool sea air.

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" she complained lightly. "We've been working non-stop for two months and nobody seems to have noticed but me."

Luke stopped in his tracks, clasped his hands in front of him, and looked down to her with a crisp. "You wanna day off?"

She passed a few steps and turned to him. "That would be nice." What would really be nice is to spend the whole afternoon with you without having to train.

"Fine." He shrugged quickly. "See you tomorrow." He did an about-face and started walking back towards the hotel. He was already grinning at himself when she stopped him.

"Wait!" Kess hopped with mild panic.

He stopped politely and slowly turned, "Yes?"

"Tomorrow," she said shyly.

Luke grinned, but shrugged again, "Okay, you can have tomorrow off." He turned to the ocean and strolled out towards the waterline. Blue gulls flew over them, cawing at each other. "What are you going to do on your day off?"

"I don't know." She walked next to him, turning as they reached the wet sand and strolled in front of crashing waves. "What are you going to do?"

"Try to figure out this treaty," he said distantly.

"That's not really a day off, y'know."

Luke realized that and shrugged, grinning.

"Did they ever ask for that Usak thingy?"

Luke glanced at her, "Yeah, but they never said what it was." He forced himself to look away. "Did you put any more thought into it?"

She looked at him quizzically, "You already figured it out, didn't you?"

He grinned over, "Very good." She had kept her mind open and sensed the deceit from his half-truth. He let his gaze drift down the beach. "We have an educated guess. That's all."

She hopped along waterline beside him, pulling her lips in for an exaggerated, "Hm..." She bounced on her toes, her path slightly zigzagging, and cocked her head aside, "Is it bigger than a bread box?"

Luke retorted, "That depends on how big the bread is."

She giggled at him, taking the comment as his polite way of avoiding the subject. He probably couldn't tell her the treaty details, and Kess wouldn't push a subject he couldn't discuss. She felt uncomfortable about it anyway. There was so much he wasn't willing to tell her, but she didn't want him to feel her discomfort about it, so she distracted her own emotions onto something else.

She stopped in her tracks and gave in to the urge of a burst of energy. She bolted for several metres, pounded her feet into the damp sand, and jumped. She flipped hand over feet in one full revolution and landed hard on the ground, sticking her hands out to catch her balance. The moment she realized she wasn't going to fall over in a heap, she arched her back and shot her arms into the air with victory.

Luke smiled at her back as he watched the simple gymnastic feat from his casual stroll. She was prone to bursts of happy energy; be it a cartwheel, a silly joke, or flirting with him regardless of his requests to the contrary. Every day, he tried to bring her head out of childish clouds and make her realize how serious being a Jedi Knight was, but it was becoming more and more difficult to scold her for a quick burst of play.

She turned to walk backwards, two metres directly in front of his stroll. "Let's go for a swim."

"Do you know how to swim?" He didn't want to imagine what she planned for them to clothe in for an impromptu dip in the ocean.

She slowed her walk to let him catch up. Brown eyes twinkled. "No, but you wouldn't let me drown, would you?"

"I guess you won't find that out until you start drowning." He was smiling again and that was only fueling the fire, but smiling wasn't on the dark side, right? He thought again about seriously talking to her about all this flirting, but he just wasn't in the mood for it today.

"Awe, c'mon." She turned around and walked beside him again. "The knight in shining armor not save a drowning damsel in distress? Isn't that part of your job description?"

He watched down the beach, "You are a Jedi Apprentice, not a damsel in distress."

And you are the Usak.

He touched on the Force enough to sense her disposition. An undertone of light flirting was the only deceit in her emotions. Kess was excited about starting training so early in the day and anxious to get started with the first lesson. She was oblivious of the treaty issue that so closely affected her. Whatever was going on, she was completely innocent of it.

"And you spoil all the fun," she pretended to complain.

"This isn't supposed to be fun," Luke insisted, but he couldn't wipe the grin from his face.

"I know that." She hopped along the beach in front of him and did a quick cartwheel. "But it is anyway." Her brown eyes twinkled at him again for a moment. She turned her back to bounce ahead of him along the beach.

He watched her back and shook his head. Not for all the propulsion industry in the quadrant—

Luke stopped in his tracks and closed his eyes with self-scolding. A quick meditation beat back his wandering thoughts. Deciding to get into the lesson before they wandered off again, he put his thoughts to a mugrat burrowed a dozen centimetres under the sand and began to lift it out.

Kess stopped when she noticed she'd lost him. She turned to find him with his eyes closed and one hand hovering over the ground in front of him. A small spot of sand churned like a tiny geyser pushed from underneath and, slowly, a single blob of sand rose from the ground and hovered in the air. The clump wriggled until the sand sprinkled off a slick-furred creature. It lowered gently to the ground and scurried away as soon as Luke released his invisible grip.

He slid his hand back into his pocket and closed the metre between them. Kess watched the animal run towards the dunes and dive headlong into the sand.

"Force Telekinesis," he watched his feet and continue to stroll. "It's part of the Alter category."

She squinted at him and turned to follow. "Don't I have to know Clairvoyance first?"

"You already know Clairvoyance." He strolled right by her. "Instead of knocking on the bathroom door like most people, you've been trying to sense me instead."

She bit her lip and guiltily followed.

Luke jerked his shoulder for her to keep up, "C'mon. Let's move stuff."