Chapter 13

"Is this your idea of resting?"

Obi-Wan Kenobi had seemingly materialized in front of her. Valia jumped with a guilty start and looked up from her inventory on the data screen as she sat at one of the outdoor tables. The Jedi padawan stood there smiling at her. "You're not going to hit me, are you?"

Valia smiled and sighed. "No, Obi-wan. Have a seat. I'm really sorry about that." He waved her apology off as he sat in the chair next to her.

"And I'm not over-exerting myself, as you can see. Just catching up on inventory for next week. I'll go home in a little while. Promise."

The tree in the planter was beginning to leaf out, casting thin shadows over them both and the collection of tables. He observed her assessingly as she worked, then satisfied she was as well as she sounded, turned his gaze out on the plaza and its scattering of pedestrians.

Valia seemed to suddenly notice Qui-Gon was absent and how odd it was that his student was without him. "Where's Qui-Gon?"

"Probably sleeping."

"So he sent you to check up on me for him." She guessed the truth accurately, but there was also gentle teasing there.

"Yes, but I...I wanted to see how you were myself."

Valia smiled fondly at him and looked down at the table. "I never did say thank you to either one of you. It sounds a little trite for what you did."

Obi-Wan shrugged as though to lump it into just another day's work. Jedi he might be, the gesture still reminded Valia of her self-conscious teen-aged male cousins or brother, or Ravi a decade ago. Her heart tugged with affection for him.

"We were quite relieved to find you in one piece." A mild understatement, at least from his master's point of view.

"Well, if you hadn't found me when you did, I'm not sure I'd be sitting here wondering how many liantiums to order."

"You were holding your own very well when we got there."

"Thanks, but that silly piece of pipe against a dianoga? I don't think so." She shuddered at the memory of those muscular tentacles.

Compliments and thanks said, they lapsed into silence, not sure what else to say. Valia had rarely spoken to Obi-Wan alone. She sensed something different about him today, an acceptance that hadn't been quite whole-hearted before. Valia played with a fallen leaf frond on the table. "I thought Qui-Gon was really going to chew me out when I woke up. I don't know why. I do know it was a whole series of stupidities that landed me down in that place." She was sure if she had the parachute she'd left down there she'd be able to figure out what had gone wrong with it.

"I suppose all I could think of was the way Tak, my father, would get ready to give us all one of his famous lectures when my brother, cousins and I would get ourselves into trouble. He's almost as tall as Qui-Gon, and he'd puff his chest out and cross his arms and stand right over you, I mean right over you while he was doing it." She demonstrated with her arms and chest and pulled her pretty heart-shaped face into a horrible scowl. "What the blankety-blank were you thinking? No! You weren't blankety-blank thinking! Blankety-blank go off and get yourselves and my blanking unborn descendants blanking killed on that rock! Stay the blank off that blanking blankety-blank hangar! Stay away from that blank-blanking canyon! What the blank did I tell you about blankety-blank climbing around in that blanking cave?"

Obi-Wan was grinning at her impression. "It sounds like you've had an illustrious career already in climbing things and getting stuck in dark places."

Valia rolled her eyes and waved a hand. "I suppose one of these years I'll outgrow it."

"If you're worried about lectures, it's never been Qui-Gon's style to belabor a point with words. His usual method is to carefully stand you in the way of the lesson and let it hit you between the eyes." Or some other choice body part.

Then he looked at Valia and shifted with slight embarrassment. "If I may speak bluntly, I think your father is the very last person Qui-Gon wants you to be reminded of around him."

Valia lowered her eyes and pressed her lips together. How well I know, she thought. She flushed at the memory of that morning in her apartment. Qui-Gon had taken her home with a promise to see how she was doing later that evening. Before he'd walked out the door, he'd extracted her promise that she would rest. And just a couple more kisses. Well, maybe it had been more like three or four. Or five. Undoubtedly just to see if they were as nice as last night's. And to hone his technique. He was really getting good. In the middle of one of them, she'd nearly begged him to take her right then and there. Only biting her tongue had kept the completely wanton request from slipping out.

Obi-Wan reached under his cloak and searched for something in a pouch on his belt as if suddenly reminded of something. "He gave this to me to give to you." He pulled forth a long blade of grass. The middle of it had been woven into an intricately patterned double knot. Valia smiled as she took it.

"I'm getting quite a collection of these, you know. There won't be any grass left at all on Coruscant if he keeps this up." She turned it over and caressed it with a fingertip. She decided this one would be a little more special than the others, after what he'd told her last night.

Eighteen year-old Obi-Wan Kenobi watched her admire the small token from Qui-Gon. His mentor: galactic ambassador, master swordsman, feared Jedi warrior, defender of the Republic; and hopeless romantic, tying love knots out of grass. What else was hiding under that stern exterior? Maybe he didn't know Qui-Gon as well as he'd thought. Still, every part made up the whole of the man, and Obi-Wan carefully observed everything his teacher did through yet-youthful eyes.

Lia seemed to remember he was sitting next to her. "Well I suppose I can take care of business later. I really will be in trouble with Qui-Gon if I don't at least look like I'm resting at home." She closed the screen and folded up her workpad, and tucked it and the grass knot into a pocket of her jacket. Obi-Wan helped her out of her chair and led her across the plaza with a steadying arm. She was walking with a slight limp and didn't seem as sure on her feet as usual. She made a very small wince as the new skin over the bite wound pulled tightly and the fracture point in her other leg reminded her it was still healing.

"Do you want me to call a speeder? How did you get here?" Obi-Wan frowned with concern.

"I'm fine. Thank you, but no. Let's just keep walking. Things will loosen up." She seemed plenty loose already. "I really must tell your master what a gracious gentleman he's taught you to be." Valia leaned gratefully on his arm.

He turned to look at her, his long-lashed green eyes searching her face for sarcasm. There was none. Only smiling sincerity.

"I'm completely serious," she reassured him. Then she reached over and playfully yanked his braid. "Say, have you practiced your juggling?"

"Actually, yes I have..."

From that day on their relationship deepened into a comfortable friendship. And so it was that Valia Traxis was taken home on the arm of a Jedi Knight for the second time in one day. What were her neighbors going to think?