She sat alone in the dining hall, off in the corner by herself as she stared sadly at the pile of food the cooks had heaped on her plate. She dully considered hurling the plate to the floor, but it would only cause a scene. And, it would show how deeply she had been hurt. She picked at her food, impaling one sliver of a neatly sliced chunk of Bantha meat, which was today's special. She ate it slowly, tasting the muted flavor of wild game perfuming her mouth as she chewed and swallowed. Her stomach was very full, but not with food. The meat tasted rubbery as it slithered unpleasantly down her throat, and she almost gagged. She was most definitely not hungry. Her ears pricked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, and she glanced up. When she saw the small, familiar Twi'Lek in front of her, she almost burst into tears again. It was her friend, Clah'Diam. The Twi'Lek glanced at her worriedly and sat next to her. "Ana? You okay?" she asked softly. "I heard about Master Wathearu. I'm terribly sorry." Underneath her pale blue skin, she was slightly flushed and there were tears in her beautiful eyes. "I know how close you two were."
La'Ana stabbed a piece of meat moodily and stared at it as though it were a Sith itself. "I miss him." she said, surprising herself. Her throat was suddenly very small and hard to speak through. "I keep thinking I'll turn around and there he'll be, smiling at me. Training doesn't do anything either, but it's the only way I can sleep. As long as I'm tired, I can't think." Clah'Diam reached across the table and squeezed her hand tightly, two tears forging tracks down her pale blue cheeks.
"Oh, Ana," she murmured. "I heard about last night. You made quite a ruckus down in the arena. One of the Healers came to see what was the matter, but you were already gone." Ana knew guilt should be stabbing her heart right now, but all she felt was a cloudy kind of primal pleasure. Good, she thought. I hope they had to clean up that mess in the middle of the night. I hope they couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. See how they like it, not being able to sleep. At least when they sleep, they don't have nightmares. They don't see their Master dying over and over again.
"I trashed a training droid," she said after a moment, her dark green eyes on her plate of food. "Totally desecrated the sucker. He got me pretty good, though," she added, reaching inside her robes to finger to angry burn mark on her lower back. Clah'Diam clucked sympathetically and gave Ana's hand one final squeeze. The Twi'Lek arranged the thick tentacle that was draped over one shoulder and gave Ana a sad look.
"Ruining equipment won't do any good. Go to the library and read a bit. If you want, I can recommend a few good books in Ryl. You need to start practicing again. You'll go rusty if you don't speak Ryl constantly." Clah'Diam suggested. Ana's dark green eyes flashed with anger once, a hard bright flare that allowed a tiny bit of the rage she had seep through. She slammed down her fork and flared hard at her only friend.
"Look, Clah'Diam, I don't want to read books in some stupid language I've hardly ever heard of. I don't want to go to the library and I don't want to read! I don't care if I get rusty, and I hope I never speak Ryl again in my life!" by the end of her tirade her voice has risen to a cracked shout. Unaware that the entire dining hall was listening in, she fled, leaving the tray on her table and slamming the door closed behind her. Clah'Diam watched her go with a sorrowful look, then began to eat her Bantha meat.
Qui-Gon scrolled through the digital message for the third time, his sharp blue eyes intensifying as he re-read the message from Master Yoda. It made no sense to him, what Yoda was proposing. Train the girl for a year? What then? According to the message, La'Ana was twenty two, hardly old enough to begin the Trials. She would need far more than a year to get over the loss of her Master. He should know. Three years had eclipsed since Xanantos had turned, and he still wasn't over it. Even now, nightmares still plagued his sleep. He sighed and went over to the window, folding his hands into his sleeves, allowing the sun to warm his beard and face.
It was going to be a beautiful day in Corscourant. The sunlight flirted with the edges of the stark metal buildings, heating the surfaces which had just cooled down only hours ago. Already vendors were setting up trading booths and polishing fruit for their stands, wheeling their carts out to the streets. There was one brilliant, bedazzling flash of sun, and one of the fiery orbs which heated the planet broke free from its tethers and began making its programmed course overhead. He almost closed his eyes against the fiery majesty of it, but the sky was bedecked with all the colors you could possible imagine. Purple streaked the horizon nearest to the ground, painted with overtones of inky black, and red was seared onto the layer on top of that. Orange was burnished into the red, yellow fused into the orange, and finally a white glare overshadowed everything. Above that was a gentle pink that kissed the sky sweetly, and above that was the first flickering of cobalt that was beginning to streak across the sky.
He turned from the window and looked once more at the digi-message. La'Ana, her name was. Twenty two and opinionated, which was how Yoda had described her. He had thoughtfully included a few of Master Wathearu's notes on his Padawan, which Qui-Gon had not yet gone through yet. With a mental sigh, he began scrolling down to the bottom of the message so he could view the notes Wathearu had scribbled about his opinionated Padawan.
I do not know what possessed me to take on another Padawan, but I could not resist this one. La'Ana Shaddem is her name, and I could not take my eyes off of her. She is only ten, but she already has a face and a temper to match those of a twenty year old. Thank the Force I am patient, otherwise I would be at the end of my rope with this little girl. Just the other day she point-blank refused to bow to Master Windu, invoking a rather lusty howl of laughter from my old friend.
La'Ana - or Ana, as she prefers me to call her - has developed a strong bond with me of late. I fear this will harm her in later life, as she already has a crowd of friends at the Academy, but nothing I say will penetrate her obstinate little fifteen-year-old-head. But she is learning quickly, and her grasp and knowledge of the Force is astonishing for a girl her age. She has much to learn of the Living Force and on meditation, but I suppose that will come with time.
In a very short amount of time Ana has managed to drive away her friends except one Twi'Lek which has won her favor in some way. She is now hopelessly loyal to me, and I admit I am quite fond of the little hellion myself. She has a certain bullying charisma that is quite appealing, and makes up for her lack of womanly charms. However, she has been struggling of late with controlling her temper. She has been provoked into three fights in the last two months, and I fear that her volatile temper and quick tongue will forever silence those who care for her.
Qui-Gon put the digi-pad down and rubbed his temples. It was all eerily familiar, all very déjà vu. She reminded him of someone that he couldn't put his finger on. For a strange reason, he wanted to see her. A nagging voice - coincidentally, a nagging voice which had not left his head since Xanantos turned - spoke up in his head, reminding him forcibly of his past failures with his last Padawan. He ignored it with some difficulty and looked once more out the window, hoping for the fabulous color display, but there was nothing but a hard, bright sky of clearest cerulean. An omen or not, he decided on one thing. He would go to the Temple tomorrow and talk to this La'Ana woman. If it felt right, and the Force was with him, he would see about her becoming his Padawan.
It was not until he was deep in meditation before he realized that Ana reminded him almost completely of Xanantos when he was a boy.