~2~
Rogue Planet
Later, in the still heat of a typical Yavin night colored a milky blue by the moonlight filtering through the thin curtains hanging at his apartment window, Luke tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Mara's deep, peaceful slumber annoyed him. There was something frustrating about the goofy half-smile playing about her lips and the way her eyelids fluttered slightly as she roamed an internal world that only she could see. Cuddled in the crook of his arm, clutching the corner of the quilt in her loosely clenched fist, she reminded him more of a child than a woman. Her sleep was always the sleep of the undisturbed – her perception of the academy as all the kingdom she would ever want to rule made it so. So long as things remained under her control, like the blankets she gripped unwittingly as she sought the unseen in her vast dream worlds, she would be perfectly happy.
Luke had been thus unable to bring himself to tell her about his recent feelings about the Academy, knowing all too well that her reaction would be a typically Mara one. He could just see her, tossing off one of her concise cure-alls as she wrapped her arms cloyingly around his shoulders. "So read a book, lover. You're too sweet to have to worry your pretty little head."
Easy for her to say, this woman who was still able to open herself to him only in darkness with sleepy, mumbled disconnections and dreamy smiles and almost childlike need for the warmth of human contact before drifting away. The future of the Jedi was like her babies – lightyears away. Out of sight, out of mind, graciously beyond her control.
Lilandra hadn't really been able to offer him any viable solutions to his problems either, but he appreciated that she had been keen to listen, even if she couldn't possibly understand. Mara was never one for lengthy discussion, preferring to take immediate action against anything that might challenge her ideals. Lilandra, as a politician, was understandably more talented in the negotiation department, and she actually seemed to enjoy talking things over at great length. More than once he had simply presumed that she liked the sound of her own voice, since sometimes the words it formed were too naïve or idealistic to be believed.
Still, as unrealistic as she could sometimes be, he should've known better than to assume that she would just let his admission slip by her unanalyzed.
He thought this almost at the same time as a soft knock came at the door to his apartment.
He didn't need to wonder who in the galaxy would be still up at this time of night.
*The only other occasional insomniac in this academy,* he thought, bemusedly sliding out from between the covers.
Crossing the room to the hallway, he unlocked and pushed the door aside, and nearly collided with Lilandra on the threshold.
"Couldn't stay away?" he muttered hoarsely, attempting a grin and failing.
"Shh," she murmured, and brought a finger to her lips. "Come with me."
He closed the door softly behind him, and followed Lilandra down the darkened hallway. He noticed that she was fully dressed in light gray pants, a dark blue shirt and string vest, and chunky flight boots, whereas Luke was only wearing his nightclothes: a sleeveless shirt and shorts.
"What is this all about?" he asked, trailing her through the maze of familiar corridors, lit eerily by blue phosphorescent globes hung at regular intervals along the walls.
"No questions yet," she said teasingly, veering towards the hangar bay exit. "Wouldn't want to wake the temple now, would we?"
Luke shut his mouth, warily attempting to disregard the strangeness of the situation, and followed his friend out the smaller personnel door built into the hangar bay door, over the now-cooled stones of the landing pad, and into the jungle foliage. Once he felt the spongy, moist dirt beneath his feet, Lilandra stopped him.
"Okay, now we can talk," she said.
"Whatever it is, you should've mentioned it earlier," Luke countered, yawning. Now that he was out of his room and on his feet, he felt tired enough to drift off again. This annoyed him vaguely.
"Listen carefully," Lilandra began, still talking in a hush, as if afraid of stirring some sleeping jungle creature. There was a hint of excitement in her voice. "I was thinking, Luke, about that question you asked me tonight."
"Naturally," Luke said dryly, crossing his arms. "And you've thought of a sassy answer, no doubt."
"Not quite," she corrected him, raising her index finger. "But I've thought of somewhere we might go to find an answer. An unbiased, perfect, correct answer – "
"Lilandra," Luke interrupted, before she could launch into one of her long, insightful ramblings. "I appreciate the trouble you've evidently put yourself through on my behalf, but can't this wait until tomorrow morning?"
"No," she said firmly. "It's not that there are no more opportunities for adventure nowadays; you've just forgotten how to seek them out. Don't you know that even the most ridiculous of ideas seem fantastically logical in the twilight? Don't deny me the opportunity to feel brilliant, now!"
Luke had to smile at the mysterious quality of her words. She was in one of her inspired moods.
"Now, listen to me. I've studied my fair share of Jedi history since I met you, and it's not exactly light reading, so understandably I only just skimmed the texts."
Luke chuckled, shaking his head. As if that excused Lilandra's hasty treatment of centuries of history.
"But," she continued, grinning also, "I remember reading something a couple of years back about a temple. On this planet. The historians believe it was built by the Masassi, and that it was used by the earliest Jedi as a source of inspiration and wisdom."
"How?" Luke asked. "Prayer? Meditation? Pilgrimage? All of the above?"
"I'm not exactly sure. They claim that there is a lake contained within the temple that connects the surface to the very core of this planet." Lilandra's face broke into a wide, eager smile. "The neatest part was that apparently, if you can stand to open your eyes beneath the surface of the sulfurous water, you find yourself surrounded by a map of sorts. Of the galaxy. Surely you must have heard of this temple before, Luke?"
Luke's heart leapt. Now that he thought about it, he *had* come across it numerous times in the various texts he and his fellows taught from.
"I know of it," he said. "The books called it the Te'am Galatsia or–"
" – The Temple of the Galaxy," Lilandra finished excitedly. "You know where it is, then!"
"I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult to find. I used to teach about it all the time back in the early days of the Academy. I suppose it never really crossed my mind because I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to restore my sense of purpose, or show me a means to the future of the Jedi."
Lilandra thought for a moment, then cocked her head to the side, gazing up at him. "Perhaps, if nothing else, it will remind you of your singularity in this galaxy, Master Skywalker."
Luke actually found himself blushing at her words.
"Besides, I thought maybe a midnight swim would do your circulation some good."
***
The pair wandered through the underbrush, silent for the time being, their feet snagging in the thick moss and lichens that grew along the surface. Luke kept his eyes turned cautiously to the ground, watching for sinkholes and gnarled tree roots, while Lilandra gazed rapturously up at Yavin's twin moons, which lit a dewy path for them through the trees. Light was dappled along the muddy rainforest floor in the ever-shifting pattern of the broad canopy leaves hundreds of feet above their heads. Every so often, they would reach a rocky clearing, and the slice of starry sky that greeted her eyes would momentarily dazzle Lilandra. Then, they would enter the trees again, and it would be back to slipping on damp grasses, looking every which way for another glimpse of paradise.
Lilandra found her heart beating faster as they ventured further into the forest. She knew they were definitely nearing their destination by the pounding of her awareness-charged blood cells in her palms and between her shoulder blades. And then, they broke through a thick cluster of hedges into another cleared stone plateau, and the temple – smaller by far than the great temple, but no less wondrous – appeared, silhouetted by the brilliant round sphere of the moons hanging low behind it.
Lilandra and Luke exchanged a nervous glance, neither one entirely sure of how to proceed.
"Lil, don't you think there's a chance you might have misinterpreted the history texts? You did say you just skimmed them, after all," Luke murmured. "My understanding is that the Temple of the Galaxy was created for the further study of astronomy, not as a means of resolving a lowly Jedi's crisis of faith."
"Do you really believe that though, Luke?" Lilandra asked, placing her hand on his broad back and steering him toward the crumbling stone entrance to the temple. "Inspiring things come in humble packages."
Luke paused before the doorway, dubiously examining the clumsy architecture of the temple. A pyramid in concept, one of the sloping sides appeared steeper than the one opposite it, giving the front of the structure a curiously lopsided look. The temple was constructed from blocks of the same yellow sandstone as the great temple, but this temple had not been as well maintained over the years. Moss and vines had begun to creep up along the doorway and the bottommost portion of the building, and the slightly off-center peak of the pyramid had been lopped off, presumably by years of weathering. The sides were deeply pitted, worn away by the acidic remains of bird droppings, and clearly the long-ago Battle of Yavin had reached even this far into the jungle: the gray stone border of the entrance arch was scored with the long black scars of wayward blaster fire.
"Inspiring things come in humble packages," Luke repeated doubtfully, and proceeded forth through the archway into the temple. There was a disbelieving pause.
Lilandra giggled. "When will you learn that I'm never wrong?"
Contrary to its unassuming exterior, the inside of the Temple of the Galaxy seemed much larger, almost cavernous, and the respect that the place must have garnered in the time of its use was plainly obvious.
The inwardly sloping walls of the pyramid were every inch covered with the intricately carved tellings of a thousand fabulous stories, the stories of a people long extinct.
Awed, Lilandra traced the roughly hewn lines of a particularly detailed tale that surrounded the arch of the doorway. Whoever had immortalized the story had been a talented artist, though they had carved in the minimalist style common to most ancient runes. Long-legged, willowy figures, both male and female, danced across the walls, lent an eerie, fluid motion by the rippling reflection of the moonlit lake contained inexplicably within the temple.
Lilandra recognized a few of the other symbols: fire, represented by elegant, broad curls of flame and smoke that appeared to flicker as if by magic in the half-light; the moons of Yavin, even their craters carved to perfection as though the artist had placed the satellites on a pedestal to copy as he'd worked; and, much to Lilandra's delight, what appeared to be several bars of music. In the reverent silence of the temple, distant voices seemed to echo across the room, raised in joyous abandon.
Alongside the familiar carvings were ones of a more cryptic nature: two braided circles, intertwined and inscribed with the elegant, rounded runes of a long-forgotten language; an upended oblong shape with two diamond points gouging a small valley in its center, and others. Examining the carvings quizzically, Lilandra realized that she was looking at a depiction of a very ancient, very happy occasion: a wedding feast. The circles were the wedding bands, and the runes inside them were the names of the newly consecrated lovers.
"Fantastic," she breathed, tracing one of the circles with her index finger. In response, she felt a small flutter of excitement in the pit of her stomach, as if experiencing for herself the anticipation of the new bride immortalized there. She cast a glance over her shoulder.
Luke, instead of drinking in the human details depicted on the walls, was deeply engrossed with the most fantastic aspect of the temple's interior: the famed Lake of the Galaxy.
Contained within a stone border, upon which Lilandra stood and Luke knelt at the water's edge, it seemed to drop straight down into nothingness, a bottomless pool. The water shone black, and though the surface was barely dimpled with small wind-borne ripples, there was a sound like the sighing of ocean waves heard in a seashell faintly audible in the room.
"I don't know what to make of it!" Luke exclaimed softly, sensing Lilandra's approach from
behind. "It's … fantastic! Impossible!"
"Nothing's impossible. Surely you should know that by now," Lilandra replied, helping him to his feet. "What do you say? Shall we have a look inside the lake?"
"It seems safe enough for swimming … my hand didn't sizzle off when I dipped my fingers into it …"
"It just smells funny," Lilandra commented.
"Sulfur," Luke said knowledgably. "Like rotten eggs, right?"
"Yes. Must be the gases rising up from the core."
Luke glanced at her. "Do you really believe what legend says? That this lake actually reaches down to the planetary core?"
"Well …" Lilandra hesitated. It did sound slightly farfetched. "Maybe not *all* the way down. It seems likely that it might be connected to a series of caves or something far beneath the crust, but not actually extending to the molten core. It may just be a spring. "
"I'm more inclined to say it's volcanic," Luke said. "The terrain just south of here is dotted with low craters, and the water's fairly cool … perhaps this lake is the only thing keeping the magma layer sealed off. What do you think?"
"Why are you asking me?" Lilandra shrugged. "I'd rather remain blissfully unaware of the fact that my local swimming hole could erupt in a fiery inferno at any second."
Luke chuckled and patted her shoulder. He was feeling much more energetic now. He couldn't exactly pinpoint the feeling of nervous excitement he was experiencing, but it might have had something to do with his sudden intense desire to know what secrets lay beneath the innocuous surface of the lake. He looked sidelong at Lilandra – she was already pulling off her shoes and socks.
"Going to take the plunge, so to speak?" Luke asked as Lilandra struggled out of her vest and threw it to one side.
"Going down!" she exclaimed, positioning herself on the ledge in a neat diver's stance. Then, springing forward from her knees, she pushed through the still night air with a childish whoop and vanished beneath the water with an almighty splash. Moments later, her head cleared the surface, along with two hands to wipe away the strands of wet hair that were plastered to her face.
"Do you often go swimming fully clothed?" Luke called teasingly.
"Only when you're in the room," she replied. "Besides, I hear it's highly aerobically effective. Come on in, the water's lovely."
She turned gracefully onto her back and kicked off from the wall, cutting smoothly through the water like a strange, ethereal glider. Her burnished face shone with barely contained excitement as she stared, amazed, up at the carvings that bedecked the peak of the pyramid.
Luke found enjoyment in watching the varying looks of wonderment and awe that fought for control of her angular features. *This is a girl who could wander a storm drain and still be moved by its beauty,* he mused as he dipped a toe into the water to test how his body would handle the temperature.
Lilandra saw this and laughed mockingly.
"Come on, don't be such a schoolgirl!"
"That's it, Ilkhaine – your time has come!" Luke roared, and took the ledge at a run, tucking his knees up to his stomach as he hit the water. Lilandra squealed and ducked her head beneath to avoid the wash as Luke disappeared, replaced by a massive circular wake. Seconds passed, ten, twenty, with no sign of Luke.
Lilandra surfaced, breathless, scanning the lake for a shadow, a ripple, but there was nothing …
Until something grabbed her ankles from beneath, pulling her down. Her scream of shock was cut off by the sudden flow of slightly tangy water into her trachea. She clawed desperately for the surface, kicking aside whatever had grabbed her, and emerged, gasping, to face a laughing Skywalker.
"All right there, Lil?" Luke asked, wiping rivulets of water from his forehead. His thin hair was plastered to his head like a blond blast helmet.
Lilandra half giggled, half choked, giving her head a shake. "Don't do that!" she admonished him breathlessly. Her throat stung slightly, and her pulse had quickened a fair bit, but she was mostly unharmed by his prank. "Remember, we're here for business."
Luke mock-frowned. "Aren't we the serious one?" he scoffed. "Alright then. Let's do what we came for."
He drew a long breath, preparing to push himself back beneath the water, but Lilandra stopped him.
"Wait," she said quietly. "The moment has to be perfect."
"What's 'perfect'?" Luke challenged, though he dropped his voice to a whisper to mimic hers.
"Let the waves die away. We can't be flailing around all over the place. We have to put ourselves in the mindset of the people who worshipped this place in the ancient times. When they were here, they were here to seek inspiration and comfort, as are you. Prepare yourself."
Luke thought for a moment, mostly about how to think like Lilandra, who seemed to have gotten the hang of this reverence stuff already – she was floating on her back, her eyes closed, presumably concentrating on relaxing her body and mind, almost as if preparing for an extended period of Jedi meditation.
"They really understood what works best for the body and soul," Lilandra murmured, suddenly in tune with Luke's thoughts. "What do you expect to find beneath the lake?"
"Water," Luke replied honestly.
"No," Lilandra said, and repeated, more deliberately this time,"*what do you expect to find beneath the lake*?"
It was as if a light bulb had clicked on inside his brain, and before he could even think about his response, he had spoken: "I expect to find answers."
Lilandra smiled at him across the distance she had already drifted, and paddled carefully over to him, stirring the water as little as possible.
"Okay," she said. "Now's a good time."
Taking each other's hands, they faced each other as they drew breath, and kicked down into the unknown depths of the Galaxy Lake.
Beneath the water, Luke could feel the movement of waves against his skin, and he felt a wonderful, soothing impression of cool surging through his veins. Immediately, his shoulders relaxed, and his fingers fell limp in Lilandra's grip. He did not begin floating towards the surface as he normally would, and surprisingly, holding his breath was not a labor. He was suspended in place by whatever magical force had sensed his presence there in the lake.
Spinning slowly, he felt mentally for Lilandra's own mind so that they could communicate. He could feel her, a short distance away, still loosely grasping his wrist, and could sense her astonishment at the impossible power holding her stationary in the water.
*Lil*, he thought to her. *Can you hear me?*
*Loud and clear,* came her response. *Have you opened your eyes yet?*
*No,* Luke replied. *I was waiting for you first.*
*Open them,* she thought to him, and her inner voice sounded dazed, entranced by something he couldn't yet see.
Eager to see what she saw, Luke spread his arms, leaning into the suspension around him, and opened his eyes. The sight that greeted his eyes caused him to gasp, sucking bitter water into his mouth, but he held it there, disbelieving and yet strangely moved.
Laid out around him, in perfect focus, scale, and with finite accuracy, was the galaxy itself. Millions upon millions of known and unknown planets, stars, nebulas, and black holes swam in his vision, held not, it seemed, in water, but in life.
Luke reached out his hand, passing his fingers through the closest star to him, and was almost disappointed to find that it was just that – a vision – no more real than the similar images in the library archives in the Great Temple itself.
Yet there was something more special about this representation of their vast expanse of space and time … something more alive. The way the stars flickered, as though showing the clouds of vapor and gas leaping from their unfathomably hot surfaces at that exact moment as Luke floated there, bewitched. The planets spun in their orbits in thousands of solar systems, just as the whole mass circled slowly around Luke and Lilandra, the locus in the center of the galaxy.
Luke's heart began to pound as familiar worlds jumped out at him, colored as in life in the shades of their environments: the forbidding, pale brown mesas of Tatooine, a sandstorm tearing across its northern hemisphere; the brilliant emerald spheres of Endor and Wayland and the moon of Yavin 4; the muddied hurricane blue of Dagobah, and the vast expanses of turquoise seas that comprised the worlds of Chad III and Mon Calamari.
*Luke!* shouted Lilandra, suddenly clearing the fog that had formed in Luke's mind as he'd drifted there, drinking it all in, in all its scope and miraculous grandeur. *I had no idea! What … what a big place we inhabit …*
*It's fantastic,* Luke agreed, leaning into the vision and slowly easing his way among the stars. He recognized places and their odd significances as he went. *Look,* he said, *there's Nirauan, where I first proposed to Mara, and Corellia, where Han's from … Bespin – I …I met my father there for the first time … Dathomir … Nam Chorios …*
Luke trailed off. There were too many to list, and he'd been to almost all of them at some time or another, often not willingly.
Kicking, he drifted along towards the Imperial territories of Bastion and Muunilist, while Lilandra lingered behind him, still encircled by the innermost core of the galaxy, gazing about her with a look of intense concentration, searching for something. Luke paused.
*You've seen Chad, haven't you?* he asked her.
*Yes,* she replied. *I'm looking for Alderaan.*
Luke stopped himself, placing the flats of his palms against the invisible current to diminish his momentum. She was a smart girl, that Lilandra – perhaps smarter than most people would give her credit for. Only someone with a great analytical thirst for knowledge would've thought to look for Alderaan if they desired to unlock the secrets of such a mystery as this.
*Is it there?* Luke asked, as Lilandra lowered her head.
*No. No ... it's gone.*
That explained much about the properties of the apparition, as Lilandra had evidently hoped it would. It meant that not only did this map show the galaxy, it showed it exactly as it was at that very moment: the stars going nova, the stars being born … so many stars winking out and blinking on again that Luke was momentarily dazzled, and he clawed for the surface, feeling overwhelmed and suddenly conscious of the lack of air in his lungs.
His head broke the surface of the water, and he took a great racking breath, shaking with the effort. The temple looked impossibly small … too small to contain the miracle Luke had observed beneath the innocuous black waters. He was relieved to be back within a space of natural proportions … and yet …
He thought suddenly of all the planets whose names he *didn't* know, of all the planets that were possibly undiscovered, unnamed, unimportant …
He ducked back beneath the water, experiencing potential revelation.
*Nothing's ever unimportant,* he thought to Lilandra before she could ask him any questions.
*That's the spirit,* she thought back, seeming to understand the source of the rather random comment, and he thought he felt her smile.
He swam to join her, allowing the mysterious underwater force to take hold once more.
*Do you know the names of all these planets?* asked Lilandra.
*Heck no. There are far too many,* Luke replied. *Besides, half of these don't even have names. Look – *
His eyes flew immediately to a random star on the outermost point of the Outer Rim territories, around which rapidly circled three planets, two drawn closely into its yellow glare.
The third, however, was larger than its solar brothers, orbiting in a wildly erratic path much farther out in the system than the other two planets, which hugged their sun like a guardian.
The rogue planet almost seemed to be trying to wrench itself from the invisible gravitational grasp of its host sun, as if yearning to carry itself out across the galaxy, affix itself to any other solar orbit but its current one.
The effect was strange – it gave Luke an uncharacteristic feeling of sudden desperation, of a deep, intense longing, which he felt he had to point out to Lilandra, in case she had noticed it as well.
*Look at that one,* he thought. *I don't think anyone's ever cast an eye to that one before.*
*Ooh – it's an independent,* Lilandra joked. Luke took this to mean that she *hadn't* been taken in by the feelings of loss emanating from the lonely planet, but what she said next derailed that theory.
*I didn't think this creation was programmed to feel as well …* she thought to him, her inner voice sounding quieter, more subdued. *Doesn't looking at that tiny little system make you wonder what sort of incredible world one of those planets might conceal? It makes me sad, in a way, that the days of galactic exploration are over … unless you're a pirate, of course.*
*Yes,* Luke agreed. *But I don't know if even a pursued bounty hunter would want to hide on a world so far from … everything.*
Tenderly, he reached out his hand and cupped his fingers around the planet, holding the image for a moment in his palm, the skin lit by its gray iridescence. He felt a faint, warm tingling in his palms, a fleeting instant where he felt he could have taken the world between his fingertips and plucked it from the heavens; brought it home and it wouldn't have resisted.
*Nothing's unimportant,* Lilandra began, her voice quieted by sympathy, but was abruptly cut off from her next thought when something remarkable and frankly terrifying began to happen.
Luke, hovering in the center of the galaxy, was suddenly surrounded by a multitude of stars, rushing towards him at a frightening rate. The little planet whirled beyond his grasp as the underwater suspensions cut him loose, and he felt his arms lift against his will.
Feeling weighted, he fought his way up through the mass of spinning light encircling him as he realized that the map seemed to be collapsing, folding in on itself, returning to the secret place in which it dwelled. He felt Lilandra at his heels, and her confusion washed over him like the waves bumping gently against him under the water, adding to his alarm.
*What's happening?* she thought to him, sounding on edge as she plowed past him for the surface.
*Sulfuric gas eruption,* Luke replied, speaking purely on an instinctive inspiration. *Best make tracks.*
*Aw, gee, * Lilandra thought sarcastically as her hands broke the surface and pulled the rest of her body up with them. *I sort of fancied being boiled alive in a lake of acid …*
"Now is no time to be snarky!" Luke gasped as he also reached the surface, which had become a riot of vapor and vast shimmering bubbles that sprayed the temple with violently hot droplets as they exploded.
Grabbing the ledge simultaneously, Luke and Lilandra rolled onto the wet stones and crawled, snake-like, for the exit.
The lake, which had become a great, heaving mass, suddenly belched an almighty fireball that tore through the temple, the air it pushed in front of it throwing the two Jedi through the doorway and well clear of the pyramid.
Luke landed face-first in the mud some ten feet away from the temple, and crouched low as Lilandra tried to grab the ground to break her fall but caught her shoulder against a sagging branch and somersaulted gracelessly past his head instead, only to land upside-down in a hedgerow at the base of another thick trunk.
Bewildered, Luke sat up and watched, enthralled, as the interior of the temple glowed a kind of greenish yellow for a moment and then faded into black once more, thin strands of smoke and rotten-smelling vapor curling around the doorframe. He heaved a satisfied sigh of relief, and stood.
Lilandra wrestled herself from the clutches of the hedge, and brushed the leaves from her wet hair and clothing. Her pants and shirt were pasted to her body, and her long hair was a tangled mess of mud and twigs, but she smiled as though her entire life's ambition had been fulfilled in the moment she'd been blown from the Temple of the Galaxy.
She suppressed a giggle, and Luke imagined he must not look much better than she did at that very moment.
"That was something else, wasn't it?" she asked breathlessly.
"Your shoes and vest were in there," Luke pointed out, assessing his injuries.
Lilandra shrugged. "There're more where they came from," she said flippantly. "You know, it's amazing how being soaking wet prevents you from becoming a fiery column of death …"
"An experience like that tends to give you a false interpretation of danger," Luke commented wryly, still feeling mightily shaken.
Both his knees had been skinned upon impact with the muddy ground, and his palms were raw where he had lowered them instinctively to break his fall. There was nothing broken, however, owing to the good sense he'd had to roll with his hip as he'd connected with the forest floor, although he suspected he'd have some nasty bruises tomorrow morning, and, miraculously, his limited articles of clothing had remained relatively unscathed. This was a fact for which he was very grateful – the path back to the Great Temple was long enough without having to walk it naked.
"Shall we, then?" Lilandra asked, yawning widely. Luke found it amazing how cool she was being about the entire experience. She had seemed more impressed with the Galaxy Lake than her own evasion of an untimely demise.
"We shall," agreed Luke, most certain that he'd have no trouble falling asleep upon his return to his apartment.
The pair began to walk in silence, not touching, not talking, hearing only the squelching of their feet in the mud along the path, and the soft sighing of waves echoing through the still night air, though perhaps it was only audible to the two of them.
The rogue planet, although it had impressed itself upon Luke's weary memory with its evocative emotional ambiance, was forgotten.