Jedova was fully aware of Arya's presence during his spar with Phayeth. As his shields shattered around his mind, things threatened to leak from behind them, from the farthest ends of his mind, but at the same time Arya's feelings seemed to creep to his mind. He felt shock and fright – even such helplessness he did not recall experiencing – as the foremost feelings, but there was something else coming in the wake of those feelings.
As a panic-like reaction, Jedova tried to reform his shields to keep the well-hidden secrets deep inside away from bothering anyone. He was most worried about how Arya would react to them. Right now, he truly had not to mess up. Arya would not leave him at least yet – he hoped so – for he was her only chance to become a Jedi Knight, but there would be a day when she could get someone else to train her to Knighthood if she deemed him... insufficient for herself.
Jedova knew that in the end he may not be the right Jedi to train the Veledosian girl, but he did not want to fail on his second female Padawan either way. The time with Lucian after Jaminere had been enough for the rest of his lifetime, let it be long or short.
When he turned to look at the direction where the two Padawans had both been, he saw the door close behind Arya. The shared feelings disappeared as they both quickly made new shields to protect them and keep them away. Jedova did not want to subject his Padawan to feelings he had hidden or downright refused to acknowledge the existence of for long. He believed the girl was going through enough and did not need any more stress – especially not such caused by him!
However, the returning shields did not erase the fact that a part of the feelings Arya kept hidden had leaked to him and vice versa. He had lost the accidental and unintended access to the flow of thought of the girl, so he did not know if she, too, thought that the mishap had already happened.
At least he thought that she did because that mishap had truly happened. They had to discuss about it later, maybe even meditate on the feelings they had just picked up.
He made a mental note to himself about teaching Arya more about mental shielding to lessen the possibility of this happening again.
If something was his specialty, it was that.
Everything felt like blur around Arya. She let her feet take her towards her destination as she tried to make sense of what she felt now. She did not really understand why she had frozen like that. It had been a sudden shock she had not been able to control, stop or avoid even though she should have been. She was a Jedi in control of herself – she should not have frozen the way she had.
Arya knew that she had to get used to such sight she had seen: her Master lying unconscious, beaten, unable to help her. There was the possibility of a similar scenario happening in a real-life situation. No, not just a possibility, Arya reminded herself. It will happen someday...
The chatter coming from the dining hall made Arya remember where she was. She pushed her thoughts aside and entered the quite full hall. It seemed that most of the Jedi who were at the Temple right now were there at the moment eating lunch – or in someones' case the breakfast – but there was still space for more people. Arya did not see anyone familiar there, so she just went to an empty table and started to eat in silence, hoping that the food was still going somewhere even though she still felt like her stomach had no physical bottom anymore.
The Padawan heard a lot of chatter in different languages; not all Jedi spoke Basic if they could avoid it despite of being able to, after all. She listened to some voices tell about planets far away and species she had never seen. She had heard her fellow Padawans talk about cantinas where they could hear a lot of things they had never even heard about on their lessons.
Despite of that, sometimes Arya thought that she did not need to go to a cantina to hear similar things. She could learn a lot by just listening to the countless conversations in the dining hall of the Jedi Temple. A lot of wisdom, knowledge and information flowed in the Force's currents in those numerous conversations every single hour and day.
It was easier to just eat and leave immediately instead of staying to listen more. There was too much noise to her taste. Besides, she wanted to meditate before going to look for the Jedi artisan Zakfe.
When she left, Arya did not notice a certain Zabrak looking right at her.
/Star Wars (c) Lucasfilm, any characters you cannot find on Wookieepedia, Veledos, Veledosians and their language (c) Me/
