A mini chapter for ya. They'll be short and sweet for a little while so LOOK OUT.

R

"Stop looking at yourself so much."

Jess tosses a pebble into the water trough for the shaaks in the pen outside my family's homestead. Our droid R8-A4 blips and beeps, annoyed by the splash of water it received. I blush, grabbing at my braids. I'm getting close to seeing my 12th cycle, painfully aware of everything about myself.

"I wasn't looking," I protest weakly, "I was...checking to see if the shaaks needed watering."

"Sure ya were." Jess reaches for a barrel of shaak feed to fill up their feeding trough, but I stop him.

"Don't use all of that."

"Why not?" Lanky Jess is in between sizes, too tall for his trousers and too small for his tunic. His hand disappears and it looks like his arm is attached to the feed barrel. If I weren't so embarrassed of myself, I would laugh at him.

I reach for a bag I've been hiding under the water trough. Inside is a collection of ireroots, fat, tube-like vegetables that I've been growing in a box garden on the edge of our field.

"Where'd you get those?" Jess drops the barrel with a thud and takes a root in his hand. Our fingers brush and I snap my hand away, suddenly nervous for no reason at all.

"I grew them."

Jess whips his head around on his long neck. "Where?"

"Not here." I set the ireroots in the trough. "Grab and handful of feed and mix it in."

My mother walks into the yard to fetch our droid, and eyes me. New things make her scared, and I start getting antsy at the thought of her catching us feeding the shaaks ireroot. I slam handfuls of feed before the shaaks, who are now crowded around the troughs and waiting. Jess follows.

"What does it help with?"

"Um…" I wait until she's back inside.

"Mara?"

"Sorry." I exhale. "It gives them more energy. More salt in their meat, I guess, and sugar in their milk, when you milk them."

I pull a book from a hiding place between my trousers and my skirt. It's little, stuffed with stray pieces of paper and tattered.

"Got it from an herb grower on trading day in Anemo." I smile to myself, remembering the old twil'ek's kind eyes.

"Why?"

"She said she thought I had enough balance to use it. Whatever that means." I thumb through the pages, descriptions of growing methods for everything from cash crops like mouraan to the rarest of herbs from the other side of the Galaxy. I hand the book over to a curious Jess, who does the same.

"Balance," he says, "Like the Force?"

"I dunno." I shrug, and reach for the book, Jess playfully whipping it out of my reach. "Jess!" I chase him around the yard, the shaaks braying. He stops abruptly, and I slam into him, falling back into the mud. He laughs.

"Not fair," I whine.

He offers a hand. "Just messing with ya, Mara."

I take it. "You're crazy, Jess Gravian." I try to comb the mud out of my braids self-consciously.

He tugs on one of them, gently, presses the book into my chest. "I don't think I'm any crazier than you."