Chapter 4: Master Kenobi

The Stinger Mantis touched down in the Tatooine desert, behind some dunes in the aptly named Dune Sea.

Cal unbuckled his seatbelt in the jump suit. He still didn't like taking the Stinger Mantis out on mission, given its high-profile infamy as a ship that had been known to harbor traitors to the Empire, even if it was the only way for them to get off-world from Tanalorr. Should he and Merrin and the Mantis ever be captured, it would essentially be leaving Kata, Greez and now their son, Vunre, stranded on an isolated planet with no one knowing where they were or how to find them.

All this fear, naturally, had been what prompted Cal to let his wife pilot the ship. As Merrin rose from the pilot's chair and began to saunter back to gather her gear, her hips swaying tantalizingly, Cal suddenly poured all of his anxious energy into leaping up and pulling Merrin tightly into him. His beautiful Nightsister had barely widened her eyes in pleasant surprise before Cal was yanking her face close and crashing his lips down fiercely onto hers in a searing kiss. He heard, felt a whimper bubble up in the back of his bride's throat, though she did melt into the kiss and return it heartily, her arms dazedly looping about his neck, playing with the nape of his auburn curls. Cal let his hands wander to grope, feel up Merrin's curved and accentuated buttocks, first one cheek and then the other, and he felt Merrin suck in a sharp breath. The breath quickly turned into a gasp as he now dared to grip the inside of her thigh and bring it sharply up, so that Merrin now helped him raise her leg and curl it about his torso at the back of the knee. Humming, murmuring in pleasure, Merrin now shoved her hips against and into her husband's, her pelvis now cradling where his erection was clearly brushing against the inside of her hiked thigh.

"Ermmmm… Mmmmmmmhmmmmmm….. Mmmm – Mmmmmm….. Cal…." Merrin groaned, breaking free of the kiss and tilting her head back to grant her husband access to the slick sweat gathering on her neck. Cal suppressed a chuckle, though still a nervous one at that – his wife was aroused, her resistance crumbling and anyone had yet to convince him (least of all her) that sex didn't do good for the nerves. "We…. The mission! We…. we mustn't…."

Cal sighed, pressing one last kiss into the soft curve of her neck, causing Merrin to let out a groan. He gentlemanly lowered her hoisted leg to the durasteel and the married couple stepped apart. Merrin's grey lips were flush and kiss-swollen, and though her beautiful, matching pigmentation often made it harder to tell, Cal knew his wife intimately enough by now – after six years of friendship, including a month of marriage - to discern that she was blushing fiercely.

The Jedi and his Nightsister spouse disembarked their ship. Glancing back, Cal discerned that the Mantis was well-concealed enough behind these high dunes. Merrin must not have been convinced, for she now popped a panel open on the bottom hull and flicked a switch, engaging the Mantis's cloaking device. Clever girl.

Cal was worried about someone seeing and possibly recognizing the ship – Stinger Mantis had to be right up there with a ship out of the Lothal system, the Ghost, and a Coreillian freighter that was making trouble recently, the Millennium Falcon – but at the moment, that was actually the least of his problem. Of even more concern to the young Jedi Knight was being able to find the ship again, out here in this desert sea where everything looked the same, but especially now that the ship was under cloaking. Cal decided to trust in the Force, as well as his wife's magic, to help them guide their way back, whether after finding and consulting with this reclusive Jedi Master in hiding or not.

That was about the only information they had, based on the mystery Jedi's clothing observed by Merrin in her dream: a brown cloak that had traditionally only been worn by Masters. As a Padawan traveling with his Master, Jaro Tapal, Cal had sometimes worn cloaks or other slickers on missions, whether to make a fashion statement as a visiting ambassador on behalf of the Council or because certain weather conditions might demand warmer layers. But in and around the Temple, it had been tunics and his Padawan braid for him.

Even then, the clothing clue didn't tell him and Merrin all that much – there had been plenty of Masters, in and around Coruscant as well as scattered across the galaxy, and many of them had worn brown robes. Most Jedi had worn browns, tans or other lightly, earthen colors in their robes as a sign of modesty or respect. The practice had been considered customary, though hardly required – why, Cal could remember Masters like Aayla Secura forgoing the traditional robes.

"Cal? My love?"

He turned to see his wife studying him with gentle sympathy, concern and love. "Your thoughts are spinning, husband."

He nodded. "Just…. unnerved. We don't know who this guy is….."

"Or girl," Merrin chimed in. "It could be a she."

He smirked tightly. "We don't know who this Master is, or where he – or she – is. This is a vast place…" He gestured at the emptiness all around him. "How can anyone find anything or anyone else here?"

He consulted his scanners. There were a couple of small moisture towns in the near, if not necessarily immediate, vicinity: Mos Eisley. Mos Espa. Tosche Station. Someplace called Anchorhead. They'd have to walk to any one of these waystations anyhow – they hadn't any speeder; the Mantis didn't come equipped with one in its storage compartments.

Cal thought back to what else his wife had seen in her dream-vision: the Jedi Master had been riding a beast of some kind, though Merrin hadn't been able to identify what.

"What did the creature the Master was riding look like?"

Merrin shrugged. "A humped beast of some kind. It's back was to me, facing the horizon, so I could not see its face – only its…. hindquarters."

Cal wiggled sharply as he suddenly felt Merrin playfully reach behind him and grip his buttocks firmly in her fist, pinching and goosing him. He nearly jumped a foot in the air in delighted shock, then let out a yelp when his wife dared to smack his ass saucily. Turned on, Cal was almost attempted to caress her own buttocks again but he refrained. Sensing his arousal, Merrin let loose with a smug, satisfied smirk.

"All right…" Cal smiled weakly, shyly at his bride. "Next question: where is he…..?"

"She…."

He chuckled. "She….. hiding?"

Merrin prettily bit her lip. "When you were on missions, and you were ever separated from your Master, did you use the Force to pinpoint him?"

On missions with Master Tapal, Cal had prided himself on never getting lost very often, but on the rare occasion he had…. yes, he had reached out with the Force to touch Jaro's aura and track him back down. Later, when he had been informally apprenticed to Cere, the skill had been even less necessary, for all the danger it could potentially carry, especially while behind Imperial lines. He would never have dared to reach out to Cere's presence through the Force while sneaking through the Fortress Inquisitorius on Nur. Cal wondered if his lover was on to something, and the principle of Force Finding remained the same, even if you didn't know who you were looking for, never mind where.

It could still be dangerous, in these times and especially in a vast place like this. Too much Force concentration in any one area, on any one planet, might tip off the Inquisitors who were left. This Jedi Master – whoever he or she was – might find it less than courteous, even rude, to sense another Force sensitive reaching out for his or her presence and possibly alert any agents of the Empire to come running to this backwater dump.

Cal therefore decided to proceed with caution. He centered himself in the Living Force and reached out, ever so slightly. Images flashed in his mind.

"I see…. a hut. In some kind of….. sandy sea….." He frowned. "The Jundland Wastes," he stated, the name coming to him almost as if through the air. He could feel his beloved's presence, steadfastly at his side, watching him intently and with more than a little fascination. "Hubba Heights," he blurted out – whatever and wherever the kriff that was, although he was beginning to get a general sense of its direction. "I see…. a man."

There was a flash of the Jedi Master in his little hut. A bearded man, the whiskers having turned mostly grey though there was a faint tinge of copper left in them. Suddenly….

A presence in the Force brushed back against Cal, and both he and the other Jedi seemed to jerk, startled by the presence of the other. Cal opened his eyes. He had only caught a glimpse of the Jedi Master's face. Could it be…..?

He turned to glance sharply at Merrin, hardly daring to breathe. He reached out his hand to hers and took it, lacing their fingers together.

"Let's go."

More than once on their long walk, Cal rued the misfortune that the Force had never allowed the Jedi to develop talents in teleportation. If Hubba Heights, the Jundland Wastes was where the energy field said, he and his wife were in for quite a hike.

Traversing the desert took most of the day, and Cal and Merrin were beaten down by the blazing of the twin suns. Husband and wife well may have suffocated from the heat, if not for the canteens that they had had the presence of mind to bring, as well as Cal employing a technique called Force Cooling.

The suns had just about set, making it nearly dusk, by the time Cal and Merrin arrived at what he recognized to be the little hovel. There was a fire going just outside the hut's entrance, with the bearded figure Cal had seen hunched over the flames, cooking what appeared to be a meager supper. His brown cloak was hooded, the headpiece shadowing much of his face.

"You're in the wrong place, Cal Kestis."

Cal strained to place the voice. Accented, the timbre nonetheless sounding weary and old. So old…. Cal knew instinctively how much living on Bracca had aged him, with results that hadn't been all bad. He may have been only 24 year cycles old, and yet his exile had matured him into enough of a man that he had felt comfortable in taking a wife, fathering a child and also adopting another child, than he might have been otherwise, if say, the Jedi Order had not fallen.

But this man….. this Jedi Master seemed to have aged him a lifetime in the span of just… little more than a decade? Not quite a dozen years? Cal wasn't sure how old the Jedi Master was, but he could estimate that by the time the Clone Wars had ended, this man surely had to have been just at the prime of his life, if not approaching middle age.

Cal wished he could get a better look at the Master's face. But the Jedi kept the cloak firmly over his head. He moved not a tick from his cooking fire.

He would have to make do with the voice. Accented…. He tried to isolate the age out of its tones, and once he did, he recognized….

"Master? Master Kenobi?"

The Jedi lifted his head, enough that the flames danced on his copper-gray beard. "Aye, young Jedi Knight. It is I."

Cal broke into a beaming smile of amazement. "Thank the stars! I…. when I heard there was a Jedi here…."

"Where and how did you come to hear this?" From the way Obi-Wan Kenobi said this, it was almost as if he was belatedly asking: Who, me? A Jedi?

Cal sheepishly gestured to Merrin, who stepped forward. "My wife, she saw a vision of you in her dreams…"

Here, Kenobi threw back his hood. "A wife, you say? A Jedi taking a wife is most unorthodox…."

"We live in unorthodox times," Cal replied. "Unprecedented, to be more precise. She and I are bound in matrimony, with the blessing of the Living Force and the authority of late Master Cere Junda, whose spirit married us and pronounced us man and wife."

Kenobi's eyes – still a brilliant cobalt blue, even after his harsh existence – expanded in incredulity. "Cere Junda? She is alive?"

Cal swallowed hard. "She was alive, up until just less than a year cycle ago. She was hunted down and murdered by the Dark Lord Vader on Jedha. Master Eno Cordova also fell there, betrayed and killed by one of our own, the fallen Knight Bode Akuna, now also deceased."

From the shocked and even invigorated (though this was slight) look on his face, Kenobi's head seemed to spinning. "How many more of us are out there?" he murmured half to himself. "How many more of us does he have to hunt down?" There was something about the way Kenobi said 'he' – likely referring to Vader – that oddly seemed to give the aged Jedi almost physical pain, though this passed like a fleeting shadow. Kenobi now instead rose from his crouch and approached circling Merrin judiciously.

"A Nightsister…." He mused, seeming almost tickled, even intrigued. "I have heard your brethren are like we Jedi: almost extinct."

Merrin hung her head in quiet mourning. "I am the last of my people, Master Jedi. For a long time, I was deceived into believing that your kind caused my tribe's eradication. Six year cycles ago, I encountered this man…" she smiled lovingly at Cal. "…. and he taught me to see him – a Jedi – with new eyes. My mind thus cleared, I fell in love and took him as my husband, and have now borne a son, our first-born child, by him."

Kenobi seemed amazed. "A Jedi and a Nightsister…. enemies joining in union to conceive a child…. a Nightbrother youngling with Magick and sensitive to the Force…. Most unusual!"

Cal nodded. "Yes, sir."

Kenobi paused, ruminating on this. "If you have made this Daughter of Dathomir your joyful bride, your lawfully wedded wife, Cal Kestis, do you not believe that the Jedi Order should be restored?"

Cal nodded. "I do believe in the resurrection of the Jedi, Master….. though not in the way that it was before."

Kenobi nodded, seeming satisfied. He turned away from the couple to look out into the near distance. "The time for the Jedi is over…. for now. Maybe in time, a hope will come that shall…" But he did not finish this thought, choosing instead to observe: "You are much wiser than your years suggest, Cal Kestis. Young Nari did not think with such clarity as you do."

Cal vaguely remembered the name: Nari had still been a Youngling, just a couple of years behind Cal and in a different Clan – the Bear Clan, if memory served. By the time the war was over, Nari (as far as Cal knew) had still not yet been assigned to a Master as a Padawan learner. Now the young Knight's head was swimming: was Kenobi suggesting….. Was he implying that Nari had somehow survived? Even come here and found Kenobi to seek help and guidance in rebuilding the Order? Cere had once thought the same way, that the Jedi Order had to be restored – only after Nur had she understood that if the Order was to be reborn, it could not be still clinging to the old ways.

Seeming to sense Cal's whirring thoughts. "He was here, Nari, less than a year cycle ago – about the time you gave your vows of matrimony to this Nightsister, I imagine." He nodded to Merrin, his gaze now overcome with something that may have been regret, even guilt. "He came to me…. and I turned him aside. The Inquisitors found him here and lynched him not long after. It is only by the grace and will of the Force that I myself barely escaped detection."

Kenobi glanced back to Cal. "I remember you. You were Master Jaro Tapal's Padawan when Order 66 was issued."

"Indeed, yes, sir."

"Yet you say you are now a Knight?"

"Master Junda knighted me. She informally completed my training."

Kenobi nodded thoughtfully. "In that, young one, you are luckier than most." He turned away again. "I cannot go with you."

Cal was flabbergasted. "Master, why….?"

"There is a duty I must keep. That is all you need know. The Inquisitors will surely sense our combined presence if you tarry long." He spared the husband and wife Kestis one final glance. "Go back to the town. Or better still, take your mate, Jedi Knight, and leave this planet. I must finish my final mission alone. I wish you Makerspeed, and blessings on you both. May the Force be with you."

Cal nodded sadly. He did not understand Kenobi's decision, but as a Knight showing deference to a Master, he would respect it. "And also with you." He turned away and reached for his wife's hand. "Come, my love."

Hand in hand, Cal and Merrin walked away from the hut on the Jundland Wastes. The fear of Inquisitors swooping into this system, this atmosphere, compelled Cal to use Force Speed to help them travel overland all the faster, and Merrin used her Magick to match her husband step for step.

It was just about night proper by the time they returned to the Stinger Mantis. By the last of the dying light, Cal suddenly drew Merrin close and kissed her.

She kissed him back lustily, and when the spouses broke apart, she was blinking rapidly.

"What…. what was that for?" She sounded almost breathless, even delighted if also baffled.

"For me." He smiled. "I love you, Merrin Kestis, my wife," Cal told her.

She solemnly said it back. "I love you too, Cal Kestis, my husband."

And once aboard the ship, once they were out of Tatooine's orbit and in hyperspace, Cal and Merrin embraced and kissed, the joining of their lips culminating in the joining of their bodies as they made hot, raw love in the bunk they shared.