~15~
Dining Out
Cace led the six through the village until dusk began to fall, the steely clouds finally breaking to allow the last dying rays of the sun to paint the sky a gorgeous canvas of crimson and gold. Judging by the clouds already massing at the east mountain's peak, though, the sunset was a false reassurance.
They would have a storm tonight, most likely, but that didn't seem important to his male guests, who had taken advantage of the brief half hour of pure sunlight to wade in the sparkling river with their pant legs rolled up while the girls sprawled on the grassy bank, entertaining Cace with some stories of their own.
He found himself drawn to all four of them – each one funny and fierce in their own way. He thought he could probably grow to like Mara, though her sarcasm startled him. She seemed to be a formidably capable woman, and very proud. Cace knew very little about her from before the exile, but from what he'd heard of her experiences, she had once been some kind of a celebrity, although not the kind she had ever dreamed she would become as a child.
Then there was Jaina, young but wise and irreverent, and with an air of fascination about her. She reminded him a bit of his own sister, Ilsa, with her wide-eyed charm and honest humor, and he was most at ease around her.
Tara, the soft-spoken blonde, also piqued his interest. She seemed trustworthy, if a little emotionally distant, and her intelligence was intimidating, but he liked the playful spirit that lurked just behind her studied, cautious smile.
Of all of them, however, the senator proved to have both captured and confused him the most.
The sight of her beside the ship this morning had nearly stopped his heart, and the bold confidence she had displayed when she spoke to him had caused it to pound. He'd had no chance to test her effect on him, however, as her friends had been making a scene about something that clearly embarrassed her, so he had kept his distance from her, and she from him.
But as afternoon drew slowly into twilight and the air cooled, and the sort of pleasant malaise of evening swept down on them, she had seemed to undergo a change.
She withdrew from the crowd, staying mostly impartial during the two younger girls' heated debates about everything from their lovers to their adventures and choosing to stare around her with insouciant wonder rather than listen to Cace's own explanations about the bathing system down here on the river and the forgery further up the bank where tools and jewelry were made. Something about that both frustrated and intrigued him.
He had found that his eyes were drawn to her again and again, and he had already noticed her quiet determination, her detached awe, the strange expressions she made belying the thoughts that were undoubtedly speeding through her brain. Even more interesting, many of the times that he had glanced her way, thinking she had not noticed his attention, he would catch her looking back at him with just as much curiosity.
What he wouldn't have given to have asked her what she was thinking about when he saw her sitting on the riverbank with her arms hugged about her knees, her posture forlorn but her face alight with childish joy.
She was older than he, he knew, and yet … how much older was she, really, in character? Even Tara's maturity at nineteen seemed to surpass Lilandra's at twenty-six.
Or, perhaps not maturity, but worldliness. For a senator, Lilandra seemed awfully dreamy. She didn't have the same sharpness about her that Mara and Jaina were possessed of, or Tara and Anakin's obvious intelligence of matters scientific, but she had spirit … knowledge of the soul, most incredibly, her own. It was evident in the way she spoke without thinking at odd times, in her unrestrained, loud laughter, in her eyes when she thought no one was looking.
By the time they were trooping back up the escarpment to the village, silent and thoughtful, Cace was beginning to feel very taken with Senator Ilkhaine, and he had barely exchanged more than three or four direct sentences with her all day. But there was more time for that, he knew – over dinner and afterwards.
He made a resolution to find out whether or not the curious affinity he felt for the young woman was in any way romantic, or simply rooted in potential friendship.
Though, as he watched the deliberate swing of her hips as she walked up the bank, ahead of everyone else, and her broad strides, and her soft-looking waist, and the honey-colored hair that fell in loose waves against her shoulders, he was fairly sure he already knew what the answer was going to be.
As night fell on Whilldri, it seemed to come to new, exuberant life.
Lanterns had been hung in the trees lining the roads twining among the dwellings, and as the darkness settled upon the river valley, transforming the distant mountains into the black silhouettes of hulking giants and the river itself into a velvety indigo ribbon, they were lit and bathed the village in soft yellow light.
The bonfire in the huge center circle of the dwellings burned higher and brighter than before, stoked and fed by flushed men, their eyes glittering from the smoke, and the beast that had been carved earlier that afternoon now roasted slowly on a spit among the leaping flames as the massive table alongside the fire pit was cleared and set for a gathering of hundreds.
The Whills emerged from their dwellings, no longer dressed in the mismatching pieces of leather and reclaimed Imperial-issue articles they had all worn in the daytime, but rather had changed into their impressions of finery.
The women wore the same long, white gowns that the watchers Najou and Wedaika had worn that morning, with shimmering gold sashes adorning their trim waists and angular shoulders. Over the gowns they wore loose, long-sleeved robes, also tied at the waist but left open to display the gown beneath. On their feet they wore jeweled wooden sandals, and some of the younger girls had painted their toenails with some sort of dark red substance. It was a charming sight.
The men had more or less remained casual, slipping simple white shirts over their previously bare and tanned chests, and donning thick brown slacks and leather sandals. They too wore robes over their attire, though most had chosen to leave them unfastened and trailing behind them, ghostly white wings catching the breeze.
Even the youngest children wore white and red pinafores over pants that were cropped to the knee, and sleeveless white jumpers. A mother passing with her children in tow had dressed her two daughters' luxurious dark manes with a complicated pattern of elegant braids and white ribbons, and drawn upon each of their temples a symbol that one could only assume represented 'freedom', which, according to Cace, was the central value of the society emulated here in Whilldri, the most beloved relic of the ancient religion.
Indeed, their non-ageist principles were evident as the entire village gathered for the feast in the center circle, whispering and laughing and joking in their rhythmic language or the older ones in plain basic, dancing to the music of the snapping of the fire and the hush of the breeze, under a sky illuminated by a giant white moon and a smaller blue one. It was magical.
Luke had returned from his walk shortly before nightfall, laden with his companions' baggage but looking noticeably more cheerful, and handed things off to his crew.
Inspired by the fact that the Whills had obviously dressed in their ceremonial clothes, the Yavin seven hid behind separate dwellings, and changed into the uniforms of the Jedi – soft, fitted sand-colored robes tied at the waist for the girls and looser robes with deep russet sashes slung across the torso for the boys, with their scratchy brown, hooded, open-front cloaks thrown overtop. The girls donned the flat sandals that were currently fashionable on Coruscant, while the boys opted to keep their chunky black boots on.
Dave, the only non-Jedi among them simply changed into pressed pants and a dark linen jacket.
"The uniform of the commonwealth," he told anyone who asked.
Dinner was a terrific affair. Cace and Ilsa sat with the Yavin crew in the center of the long table, which was somehow able to accommodate most of the alleged two hundred and thirty-five people in Whilldri. The only people not present from the current population were Najou, Wedaika, and Verina.
"She rarely eats with the rest of the village," Cace said around a mouthful of roast beef. "Her role is as advisor."
"She doesn't have to eat?" Tara asked, smirking.
"She does it in private," Cace replied, shrugging. "Don't ask me why."
"Maybe she's a sloppy eater," Anakin suggested, and the group exploded with laughter, not for the first time that evening as sweet berry wine was poured and the meat was devoured on plates of painted alloy and wood.
Mara sat across from her husband on the outskirts of the Yavin group, with the intention of talking to him, but he was being strangely evasive.
"Crisis over?" she asked him lightly, nudging him in the ribs.
He smiled at her. "I'm not angry with Verina anymore, if that's what you mean," he said.
"Oh?"
"I see her as less of a threat now, at any rate. She's got a lot of wisdom, really, but has a trying way of imparting it."
Not that this surprised Mara. Luke was a notoriously forgiving man – his entire character had been shaped around that. Try as she might, though, she could not bring him to tell her what had caused this sudden change in attitude.
After about ten minutes of gentle sparring, she gave up, and turned her attention to a place down the table where a young family sat together, a mother, father, and two boys, the younger of which could not have been more than two.
He was sitting on his father's knee, up to his elbows in a bowl of green mush of indeterminate origin. As Mara watched, he removed great, dripping fistfuls of the stuff, and proceeded to smear them upon his own lap, clearly with the intention of leaving a stain. His father had obviously noticed this, but he did not snap at the boy, or turn him over his knee right then and there to give him the thrashing of his life. He merely smiled, laughing gently as his son piled his food on the table and began to shape it like a hill.
"Mountain," the boy said clearly, and squinted into the teeming darkness towards the rising slope far beyond the valley.
Not a mess. A mountain.
Mara looked away, trying to remember the last time she'd been that patient at dinnertime with Tanya and Nathen. She couldn't think of any sort of occasion. The fact sent a pang of regret through her. Who could know if the last time Nathen had chucked an entire bowl of porridge onto the dining room floor he was planning to turn it into a work of art? He had never made it that far before he found himself sitting in the kitchen sink, having had himself scrubbed pink and wailing more for the loss of his opportunity than his breakfast.
As she watched, the father of the little boy waited for him to finish building his mountain, then graciously scraped the mushy creation back into the bowl and guided his son's pudgy hand to a spoon, whereupon the boy seemed to understand that it was time to eat, not to play. And eat he did – the entire bowl was emptied in ten minutes.
Mara sighed, and picked at her own bowl of green mush. Studied impatience never learned to deal with childhood. But perhaps that was why her children were millions of miles away from her, in body and in spirit.
Before she had an opportunity to really bring herself down, though, the crew erupted with laughter again, and raised their glasses in an enthusiastic toast, drawing her focus from the father and son and towards her immediate surroundings. Mara watched the proceedings with great amusement, noting Lilandra's behavior in particular.
She poked Luke. "Look at Lil," she whispered, smirking.
Luke did, and grinned. "She and Cace seem to be doing some serious eyeballing, don't they?"
Both of them had made note of the way the two individuals, Whill and Jedi, were gazing at each other with devoted intensity as they knocked their wooden goblets gently together, their gestures automatic but their eyes filled with a sort of dewy mutual admiration.
To Lilandra, time had slowed to a crawl. She was aware of her friends laughing around her, and of the advance of her hand towards Cace's to toast the latest joke, but she saw only his face, heard him murmur a very modern "Cheers", felt his knuckles brush hers, sending a shock like liquid fire jolting through her.
She couldn't help but smile, but it was not her usual overbearing beam. It was smile that only he was intended to see, secretive and quiet and proud, its purpose to be representative of the girl she knew she was beneath the girl she had built from nothing to be her outward face. He caught it, and smiled also, though his was devilish, endearing … slightly lecherous. And Lilandra smiled broader.
It was a silent conversation of teeth and lips and it bred the freefalling feeling of space flight in the pit of her stomach, which made her feel dizzy and triumphant at the same time. That is, until …
"Hey, Lil, you can put your cup down now," Anakin bellowed, and the slightly drunken giggles of Jaina and Tara crashed through the barrier of her reverie. The blood rushed into her cheeks, and she set her goblet down with a clatter, looking away.
Cace was laughing too, but not in the same taunting way as the girls. It was a laugh of identification, and this gave Lilandra hope. She braved a self-deprecating smile.
As for Cace, he was stunned.
He'd seen a number of his childhood friends pair off naturally, observed the bashful glances and intentionally accidental brushes of hands that preceded hesitant kisses and the way it all seemed intrinsic, pre-destined, even within the confines of Whilldri.
They made it look that easy … and Cace couldn't help but feel that if it was that natural to find your soulmate among your fellow prisoners, how simple it must be out there in the rest of the galaxy, with so many others to choose from …
And yet, here was Lilandra, returning his admiring smiles, the only one among her friends without a partner present, and she had yet to mention one who might await her at home, wherever that was. But he suspected that it had not come easily to her as it had to her friends, just as, when all was said and done, and his friends married and made plans to perpetuate, Cace had been left the odd one out.
To him, women might as well have been alien beings – he didn't, indeed had never had, a 'girlfriend', nor could he honestly name anyone he considered right for the position, though not for lack of wanting one. He could see that Lilandra, on whatever world she inhabited, felt rather the same way.
Hence their spectacularly bad but remarkably endearing attempt at flirting.
His musings were interrupted by the arrival of a new presence, which stopped behind him and attracted Lilandra's eye to a point just above his head. Cace turned, recognized, and introduced.
"Jiro!" he exclaimed amicably before turning back to the table. "Everyone, this is Jiromie Taggant, village historian and Verina's grandson."
"I'll be running the storytelling tonight," the one called Jiromie said.
He was tall – abnormally tall, Lilandra thought – and blessed with a most unusual mop of curly, dark brown hair, though his long sideburns already appeared to be graying, which meant that he must be about Kerryna's age, at least.
He was a thin man, with narrow shoulders and skinny biceps, but from what Lilandra could see of his legs, she knew he was undoubtedly strong, a runner by nature, perhaps.
His face was kindly; he had eyes that were a startling shade of blue-gray. It was the color of the sea before a storm, when the surface becomes as flat as a mirror before the hurricane winds and reflects the oppressive bottoms of the steely clouds until it is neither blue nor black, but a strange, affecting shade that is something different altogether, both alluring and dangerous at the same time. Lilandra found herself liking him already.
"So you're the guests of honor?" Jiromie asked, looking straight at Lilandra and smiling a crooked but adorable smile. "Introductions! Cace, how were you lucky enough to stumble upon them?"
Cace shrugged. "Only having been exiled to the west field again, no thanks to you, Jiro, you righteous dictator. Jiromie is acting as my teacher," he added for the benefit of the Yavin crew.
"Acting?" Jiromie asked, mystified. "Believe me, it's a full-time job."
To the guests, he explained, "Every child born is assigned a teacher, until such time as they choose to not have one. It's more of a big-brother type system, really. Most children end up choosing their older siblings as teachers anyway, but if you're not lucky enough to have one, you choose someone else."
"Cace is my teacher," Ilsa put in, "but he still has a teacher of his own. It's kind of a hierarchy. Every time Jiro tells him something new, he passes it on to me one way or another."
"How is it that you ended up with Verina's grandson, then?" Jaina asked Cace. "That sounds fairly prestigious."
"I have a soft spot for this kid," Jiromie answered for Cace, placing his palm on the younger man's head.
"We go way back," Cace agreed. "I think it was more Jiromie's idea for me to become his student than mine. I was only three at the time, but I think I'm glad he took the initiative."
"What does he teach you, exactly?" Lilandra asked.
"The Journal," Cace replied matter-of-factly. "And just about anything else that occurs to him."
"I'll explain in the story tonight," Jiromie said gently, noting Lilandra's blank expression. "You've heard of the Journal though, right?"
"Heard of it," Lilandra affirmed. "Many people follow it in the outside galaxy, as I'm sure you know. But I've never read it myself."
Cace was all too happy to enlighten her. "The Journal is the central teaching of the religion of the Whills."
"But you're Jedi, aren't you?" Anakin put in. "When we're at home, we learn from the Holocron – the collective experiences of the Jedi who have come before us."
"The Journal is something like that, only less recent than the Holocron," Cace said. "It is exactly what its name suggests – a journal. It's a diary of the experiences and the prophecies of the very first Jedi, who called themselves Wills before they were known as Jedi."
"Hey, padawan, quit stealing my thunder," Jiromie said good-naturedly, cuffing Cace on the side of the head. "Thinks he's the next prophet, this one. Almighty and knowledgeable."
Cace grinned sheepishly. He couldn't help but feel younger than he was when his teacher was around, and he knew Lilandra had noticed, because she was watching him, her face registering something between amusement and surprise. Perhaps it was because Jiromie always seemed older than he was, somehow.
"You're all coming to the telling, right?" Jiro asked the group.
"Wouldn't miss it," said Jaina, answering for the rest, who nodded.
"Excellent. You might want to go now, though, so you can grab a good log. See you by the fire pit?"
"We'll be there," Cace said.
With a final nod, Jiromie sloped off in the direction of the fire pit, where several other Whills were dragging huge logs that had numerous semi-circles gouged into their surfaces for seats into a circle around it.
"If you're all finished eating," Cace said, "we should go now, as he said. It's very rare that we have a telling in the village, and people will be anxious to grab good seats. Being the guests of honor and unfamiliar with the story, you should be right up front."
"We're good, right gang?" Anakin asked.
"You bet," Dave replied, rubbing his belly. "Superb nosh. Reminds me of the old days."
"We eat well at the academy," Jaina reminded him, looking vaguely affronted. "Jacen is an excellent cook."
"Yes, but everything he prepares is so … organic. It's not proper man-food. Bacon, beans, whiskey, and lard is what we need more of, in my opinion."
"You're such a man, Dave," Jaina scoffed.
"Whoa!" Anakin whooped. "Stop presses! She accused you of being a man, heaven forbid!"
"Which, in our books, is woman-speak for 'animal'," Jaina hissed at her brother.
"Hey," Dave shrugged, "I'm not the one who married one, at least!"
"I didn't marry a 'man', I married Dave. There's a subtle difference," Jaina proclaimed philosophically.
"I'm so not going down that road," Anakin said, with mock-horror, drawing laughter from Tara and Lilandra. "Dave, is there something you aren't telling us?"
"You know, he does look stunning in salmon … and those cheekbones!" Lilandra teased, poking Dave in the ribs.
"Damn you, Lil," Dave laughed. "You found me out!"
"Sacrilege!" Jaina hollered. "And to think we shared a bed this last year! We'll see about this."
With that last, she ended the diatribe by grabbing Dave around the middle and kissing him hotly in plain view of all present, making Dave blush to the roots of his blond hair.
"Yep," Jaina smiled. "Still my Dave."
Cace viewed all this with appreciable amusement, finding that he liked the Yavin crew more and more. They were funny; there weren't many opportunities for joking around on Terapinn. It was all work, eat, and sleep, and you had no choice but to be friends with your coworkers, because there was really no one else to befriend. And since you had friends who understood your work, you might sit around in the evenings and talk about how it was coming along, or how good dinner was, or why you had trouble sleeping the night before, but there was never anything different, never anything out of the ordinary.
Tara and Ani and Jaina and Dave and Lilandra were different. They were unusual, they were interesting, they knew about things Cace had never even imagined before – and some that he had, embarrassingly enough – like space and science and sex and love and organic, non-man food. All these things were commonplace to them; they could easily turn them into an opportunity to start with a funny line and run with it, until they got completely silly like they had just now and wound up appreciating each others' friendship all the more.
"Are you always like this?" Cace asked Lilandra, who had caught up to him as he led them to the fire pit.
"Absolutely," Lilandra smirked, seeming happy that he had spoken first. "Worse, sometimes. It's always Dave and Ani who start it, too – they can't resist the urge to cut up whenever it's prudent. Or even when it isn't, crazily enough." She rolled her eyes at this, blushing. Perhaps she was referring to that morning, when he'd heard them railing away at her for some unknown reason as they were walking up the hill to the village.
"Ah, I love them, though," she continued happily. "They're like my brothers."
"I take it you don't have any siblings of your own?" Cace asked.
"Just one, a sister," Lilandra replied. "She's older, but we're close. I have no complaints."
This was true unto itself, of course, but it only really applied to the last five years.
"Lucky," Cace said, rolling his eyes. "Sisters can be hell."
He jerked his thumb at Ilsa, who was walking with her girlfriends in a tight knot, yakking away in their native language.
"She seems nice enough," Lilandra shrugged.
"Nice enough, but a pain in the arse!" Cace smirked. "Love her dearly, of course, but really. She dances around in her underclothes in the morning and sings into her mirror and yells out her bedroom window in the middle of the night because her best friend lives across the way – that's how they talk, you see – and talks, talks, talks …"
He trailed off, going red. "She's mad."
"I can't say my sister is ever like that," Lilandra replied, and it wasn't a lie. The day Kerryna ever danced around in her underclothes would be the day Lilandra grew a third arm. "And you're telling me you've never romped in your skivvies when no one's around?"
Cace laughed out loud. "No, I can't say I ever have! Why would the thought even cross your mind?"
"Don't know," Lilandra said demurely, also grinning. "I wanted to see your reaction, I guess."
"Do you and your friends often dance half-naked?"
"No, but it wouldn't surprise me if Anakin and Dave decided to stage a peep show one of these days. You know, for kicks."
She had him laughing frequently now; this was a good sign. Cace himself had noticed that Lilandra was looking markedly more relaxed around him now, and he found himself falling under a sort of spell of fascination with her and her strange humor, as though they'd been friends for years and only now was he beginning to even take note of her gender, let alone her fine features and the almost gravitational effect she had on him.
It was for that reason that, when she took a seat on a log near the front, before the wooden podium from which Jiromie would be speaking, he sat beside her, perhaps closer than was absolutely necessary, but was encouraged when she responded by inching her hips closer to his as well until they were almost touching.
Anakin, naturally, noticed this proximity, and seized the opportunity to sit behind them, where he tortured Lilandra by pulling on her hair and blowing cold air on the back of her neck until Tara joined them and pinned his hands to the log with her own. If Cace noticed, he didn't show it.
It wasn't long before the logs began filling up with people, their silvery faces shining in the firelight alongside them. Some of them craned their necks to see the guests of honor, who were feeling very filled with anticipation indeed – this was, it seemed, going to be what they had come all this way for.
When Jiromie appeared at the podium, looking awkward but confident, his unusual eyes alight with an air of secrecy and mysticism, Lilandra felt her pulse beating between her shoulders, certain and definite and excited.
Without thinking – definitely without thinking – she reached for Cace's hand, but was only mildly surprised when he squeezed it back. She smiled into the alternating flickers of dark and light, the lanterns and Cace's dry palm pressed to hers filling her with comfort and reassurance, the expression on Jiromie's face as he surveyed the crowd breeding anxiety and anticipation.
The fire was warm on her back, and, letting her eyes drift happily closed, she had the sudden feeling that perhaps it wasn't entirely a mistake that they had come here and decided to stay.