Private Of Pine, Fungus, and Light

[Efret Farr]

When asked about transportation to their site, Efret emphatically swore off speeders of any variety. She also expressed reservations about luggabeast, musing about the ethics of their creation and livelihood, but also acknowledged that they couldn't carry their supplies out into the middle of nowhere and back without one.

She did refuse to personally ride it though, instead leading it through the desert with a lot of slack. Holding one side of its reins forced her to sign with one hand. She hadn't switched off the small translating unit pinned to the neckline of her tunic since leaving the junker market where they had rented the beast of burden. Regardless of if Elias knew sign or not, she was facing away from him.

The lapel pin projected a constant grid of fine, green lines at her hand to track its movements, then interpreted the signs' meaning in a voice that was warmly but mechanically feminine.

"Billions of years ago, Jakku was heavily forested. The biodiversity was very profound, as evidenced by the amount of fossils already found. There's a large collection of them at the local temple. Have you seen them? One must do a lot of travel to different museums and geological archives if they want to study Jakkuvian paleoecology, since there has been only one, or two if you are of a particular school of thought, species that has been repeated in the currently known record. That's to say, every fossil that has been found so far has been different. Isn't that fascinating?"

Efret paused, looking over at Elias to let him speak or sign should he want to. If he chose to speak, she would read his lips to understand.

Outfit + equipment; lapel translation clip (currently switched on); lightsaber (green blade color)

Elias Edo

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

The sands of Jakku parted around the toes of Elias’ boots as he walked a short distance behind Master Farr. He wasn’t opposed to riding the luggabeasts, but with their companionship in its infancy he didn’t want to risk offending her. The last few months had been hell on his body, making him feel a good ten years older than he really was, but he didn’t mind the trek. It was good to stay active. Walking kept his mind focused, alert.

Jakku wasn’t an overly dangerous world. At least that much was going for them. All the life they’d come to see was long dead, fossilized and buried beneath the dunes. It was the heat and risk of dehydration that threatened them, but they had plenty of water and Elias had donned the poncho that Romi Jade gifted him.

“It certainly attests to Jakku’s history,” Elias remarked, signing with semi-fluency as he spoke. He’d learned a good bit of the language from Tarus Undara when they were Knights, but it turns out that signing wasn’t like riding a bike; there was a great deal he’d forgotten since his friend had passed.

He was just as eager to pick up Lorrdian again as he was to explore Jakku’s biosphere.

“One specimen each, with none repeated?- it’s certainly odd. Lots of implications from such a pattern. What do you make of it?”

​

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret smiled to herself. Seeing someone sign never failed to make her happy. It wasn't something that happened all too often in her chosen life unfortunately, so she never took it for granted when it did. What’s more, Elias was using Lorrdian sign language. That was even more of a treat; she hadn't used it herself in some time, but it was still entirely comfortable to her—using one's native language was like coming home, even when far, far away from the place.

“I’m not a paleobotanist, so I don’t have a proper hypothesis, but I do wonder something,” she admitted. Typically, she wouldn't disclose an idea which was nothing more than a what-if, especially when there were so many equally plausible possible explanations, but a fellow master was asking. "As I’m sure you know, fossilization is a very selective process. Only about one percent of all living things get preserved.

“Still, one would expect species to be repeated in the rock record at least once. The deep-sea sediments of Kamino, for instance, show a long history of mammal and plant life that flourished before the planet flooded. There are many specimens of the same species to be found there. So why not here?

“What I wonder is if the rate of evolutionary change between there and here was different.” Her lips pulled bunched to one side of her face like a purse string, a thoughtful expression. “If old species became new species fast enough, the opportunities for the former to fossilize would have been even further limited. It could explain the pattern.”

Elias Edo

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

“Interesting,” Elias answered. “Kinda scary, too.” The words came faster than he could remember the gestures, but Elias would eventually attempt each sign. Some were choppier than others but still understandable enough for Efret not to feel totally lost.

“Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years to make meaningful progress… entire generations of life should be preserved, even with such a small fraction of them actually forming tangible fossil evidence. Right?”

Elias was by no means a true scientist or paleontologist, but that was the (perhaps redundant) conclusion he’d drawn. It wasn’t much more than an observation on its own, but it did serve well to support Efret’s theory. Elias raised an eyebrow as he contemplated things a bit further.

“Rapid evolution certainly happens, but on a planetary scale? It’s fascinating,” he said after a moment of reflection. It made the objectively dull task of trekking through sand and rock incredibly exciting; if only they could peel back the desert, gather its samples, and tuck the dunes back into place. Not because he dreaded the process, but because he was so eager to see what histories the fossils were waiting to tell.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret laughed in agreement. "Scary for sure," was her only comment until he finished his piece. She did a lot of trance and illusion work informed by Force echoes in ancient objects to imagine, and interact with, the past. It was always an illuminating and humbling experience to walk as the Order's ancestor had, but sometimes it was more unsettling or outright terrifying than it was fascinating.

All knowledge came at a price. If she could pay it even if it was scary so that she could disseminate discoveries to the New Jedi, she very gladly would.

"Yes, I think so. Genetic change that creates something unrecognizable but still the same? Unfathomable. It would require global environmental change to drive it." Efret turned her face up to the clear blue sky, trying to see the possibilities up there. An atmosphere choking with ash or raining fire and bits of asteroid, or swirling with temperate storms. "A sustained pattern verging on atmospheric and geologic catastrophe." She looked back at Elias and smiled shyly. She knew that it sounded improbable, especially when communicated to another. "It's only an idea."

---

A few more minutes of walking brought them to another bend in the wide but shallow ephemeral stream that they had been loosely tracing through the desert. Nothing about this stretch of landscape appeared special, but Efret evidently sensed its possibility as she handed the rein to Elias and all but bounded across the streambed. She approached the steeply sloping ridge of stone on the other side and knelt down in the shadows it cast. She next lowered her back towards the sand, pushed her hands posed in a chevron like a high diver into the grains, and pulled her fingers apart to expose her palm. Silica poured into the bowl she had created. She took it into the air, finer particles already beginning to spill back onto the ground through the seam of her hands, bowed her head, and breathed in.

Somewhere beyond the smell of desert heat and earth was that of a lost narrative she was sure she and Elias would find here should they dig deep enough.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky above their heads, something Elias still wasn’t quite used to yet. Genetia had more ocean than solid ground, and what little it did have was either smaller than one person could stand on and stay dry, or was really just a shallow sandbar blanketed by a quilt of mangroves. The concept of a planet devoid of rainfall and storms, no tidal waves or ocean spray… he supposed it would have been just as strange for a Jakku native to see as it was for him to miss.

He looked to Efret, who was observing the same sky as he, but was reading a much different story.

"A sustained pattern verging on atmospheric and geologic catastrophe. It's only an idea."

“It’s a good one,” he said with a reassuring smile. And he meant it, too; Elias wasn’t one to agree just to make nice with new faces. Efret’s train of thought was sound, and even though he was no expert, he couldn’t suggest a better antecedent to the dunes that sprawled around them.

“A geological event certainly has the potential,” he said, remembering one of the worst of Genetia’s storms. More temperate worlds have systems to name their storms, but such a practice would be impossible on a world where hurricanes are a near-weekly occurrence.

But the one he was recalling now? It most certainly had a name- Te āwhā nui, the Great Storm. Dark clouds blotted out the sun, churning and rolling like smoke. Lightning jolted through the sky. He remembered the ocean, how angry she was, tossing and turning against the metal structure that kept Maataua City high above the surface. He was young then, only a child, but he’d never forget the wrath his beautiful world could muster.

Elias shuddered, solemnly repeating himself. “Yes, certainly a potentiality.”

Luckily for both his mind and his feet, they came upon something that set Efret off in a way that made Elias grin. She was a reserved woman, calm and gentle, but there was something about the sands here that excited her senses. He was trying to remember the signs to ask what she’d found before she was off with haste to investigate. He picked up his own pace and followed, reaching her just as she tossed a handful of loose sands into the wind.

He smirked a bit. “Find something?”

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret set the sand remaining between her hands down of the ground in a pyramid that immediately toppled over as soon as she moved her hands away from it. She nodded excitedly with a smile as she stood. "There's an echo here," she explained, indicating at the ground, "muffled through layers of rock but it's there." She closed her eyes and drummed the fingers of one hand against the dry air in the visual equivalent of a thoughtful hmm. "It feels like..."

The Force didn't offer her a picture but rather a physical experience. A tingling sensation dancing through her fingers brought them to stillness of their own. She opened her eyes.

"...something spiky." Though there were still a few options for what they were looking for was, it was always helpful to have an idea of it rather not, and she wanted to know the truth as soon as possible—without being overbearing. "I'll rope off the dimensions I think the pit should have, but we don't need to start right away if you want to rest from the trek out."

There was also plenty to do wasn't digging. They'd most likely be out here for a few days so among the equipment loaded onto the luggabeast was camping gear. Maybe it would be a good idea to accomplish that setup second anyway.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

An echo, hm? Elias had heard Cailen Corso use that terminology before. He was gifted with psychometric abilities that often proved useful, if a bit dangerous. Efret made only the second person he knew who could relive the past this way. He hoped she could do it safer than the boy did.

“Why don’t you start marking, and I’ll get the camp unpacked?” He figured it’d be much easier for her to judge where the pit was and where the stakes should be without having to relay it to him along the way. He’d be much more useful at being the muscle.

So while his friend surveyed the site, Elias led the luggabeasts a short distance away and began unloading their supplies. He picked a spot against the edge of the ancient riverbank, tucking their temporary home against a rocky outcropping that he hoped would protect them from wind and sand. It didn’t take him long to pitch the main tent before he was moving to the second, smaller one that would serve as a field lab for testing any samples they extracted. All the while, he would glance over to Efret, watching her as she worked. A light smile touched his lips.

She seemed just as at peace as he was when he stole afternoons in the greenhouse on Bogano. It was work, but there was something beautiful in the toil that made it worthwhile.

“How’s it coming along?” he asked her, approaching after finishing the brunt of the campsite. All that was left to do was unload the equipment and amenities. Elias would have moved onto that, too, if most of the technology hadn’t looked far too expensive for him to tinker around with.

He’d unload it all for her, place it wherever she needed it, but when it came to plugging things in? Elias would leave that to the expert.

 

[Efret Farr]

She worked rather slowly but methodically, following a process that had never failed her. One her knees, she shuffled over the sand in one direction until she felt no more tingles of promise in the palm hoovering over the ground. Where her Force detection had stopped, she hammered a nail taken from a pouch on her belt into the sand with the back of a trowel.

By the time Elias had set up most of the campsite, she had finished marking all six vertices of the pit and was beginning to work backwards to complete the uneven pentagon with stringed sides. She looked up as his approach cast a shadow she noticed. "Good," she replied, signing with the skein of twine in one hand. "Let me finish."

She did, then took up all her tools, and followed him back to the camp, where she informed him where her equipment should go.

It all might have been mostly new technology to Elias, but the microscope could have seemed especially strange given Efret's condition. Then again, the fact she had figured out a way to use it effectively with vision loss really just spoke to her dedication to her discipline. Still, she didn't particularly want it to inspire others because it tended to inspire them for the wrong reason.

She wasn't an archeologist in spite of her disabilities; she was an archeologist who happened to have disabilities.

"We dig tomorrow," she announced afterwards before sitting down in a camp chair around the dormant firepit. She motioned from Elias to a nearby chair, inviting him to join her. "I'd be a bad anthropologist if I kept my hands and head in the sand all the time. I'd like to know a bit about you, if I could."

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

“Sure,” Elias said with a smile. He stood back to marvel at the tools of her trade, wiped his brow, then looked to Efret. “What would you like to know?”

He wasn’t known to be shy, but he wasn’t used rk being the conversation topic. Botany? Easy. Jedi history? Done. But himself? What’s there to tell, he asked himself. Before she asked anything in particular, he started with the basics.

“I’m from Genetia,” Elias said. “It’s much wetter than Jakku, covered in oceans as far as you can see.” A grin broke across his face. “I love to surf,” he told her, struggling to make any intelligible signs to accompany his words. He settled on a playful reenactment of a surfer balancing on his board.

“Sorry, I didn’t know that one-“

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret smiled as Elias began to share, her grin growing when he acted out surfing. She was proficient in charades, so recognized what he meant to communicate immediately. “Ahh, surfing,” her clip announced when she made the sign for him. “You know more than most people I come across. Thank you for meeting me where I am.”

It really was refreshing. And humbling.

“We surf on the desert sand on Lorrd. I wasn't very good at it even before I lost part of my sight but I imagine I'd be much worse with it in the water.” She decided at once not to expound on that prediction, especially since it meant admitting that she couldn't swim and she suddenly felt very self-conscious about that fact. That un-ability was completely a product of her culture. Because of her home province's mythos, she had carried its warnings of water out of the oasis to all other bodies. It wasn't that she thought that rivers or lakes or even oceans were gateways into a planet's underworld; she didn't even subscribe to her own people's idea of the Upsa anymore. Earthbound spirits were just stories, but still one she couldn't shake.

Learning to swim felt too taboo, even if no one from her village knew.

Maybe if they became more friendly with time, she'd work up the courage to ask for lessons. But for now, she'd prompt for more of his story. “How did you come to the Order?” she asked. “Or vice versa?” Oftentimes, it happened the other way around.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias nodded along as the translator clip reproduced her signs, but his eyes were focused on her hands. Watching the gestures form and flow was the best way for him to really learn the intricacies of her language. He smiled at the thought of sand surfing, something he wished he could see in person someday - even though the thought of abrasive sand on his skin made him feel itchy. The winds of Jakku alone was enough to paint a good picture of sand-surfing.

Then she asked him about the Order, how he came to be a part of it. Elias’ smile flattened a bit before perking up again. Some parts of his initiation were harder to reflect on than others. “My mother was the one who discovered I had te-Koha, the Gift,” he said, unsure if Genetian words would convey the same. “She was a wise woman. We call them Spinners, because of an old legend that says with enough wisdom and grace, our women can shape the future with the Force - they can spin it like a bolt of thread.”

He shifted his weight to the other foot, scooting a bit of sand with his boot while glazing over the less comfortable details. Still, even with the glimmer of sadness in his eyes, he smiled.

“There are small enclaves all over Genetia, but they all convene at the temple in Matara City. That’s where the younglings go first, to meet the grandmasters and display their talents.” Elias remembered his visit to the capital like it was yesterday. The salty ocean air in his lungs, the breeze in his hair, the warm sun on his skin; not a rain cloud in sight when his mother took him to the temple.

His brother, Edrick, was preparing for his Knight Trials then. Elias remembered waving with both arms when he saw Eddie on the platform above as their ship cruised between the thick metal legs that held Matara above the sea. Those were bittersweet memories, though, and Elias was eager to move past it for fear of drudging up old feelings.

“What about you?” he asked. “How did Master Farr become a Padawan?”

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret smiled sadly as Elias' discomfort, however slight, dawned on her. She was grateful that he shared anyway.

When her question was redirected, she nodded. “It was my mother too, but she didn’t take me to a Temple. She explained to me when I was maybe seven that I was Force-sensitive, and that most boys and girls like me would be sent away, but that our village was the safest place for me.”

Ierran Farr had every reason to fear that the Sith, should they have gotten their hands on her, would not have accommodated her daughter. Efret would have been expected to fend for herself on a playing field that was far from level. Had the Jedi not found her first, she would have probably died very young. Her experience training on Coruscant, and even now travelling from dig site to dig site, was far from smooth and completely accessible, but what barriers there were she either knew how to surmount herself or knew how to ask others for help addressing them.

She continued, “I was born profoundly deaf. Communication on Lorrd is accessible, at least the kinetic aspect of it. Most Lorrdians are not Deaf though. They can speak and they can hear. I didn’t understand until I was older that Mother was very scared that I’d live a life worse than our ancestors had under Argazdan rule: that I would not be able to understand those around me.

“Soon after, a Jedi Recruiter came. He spoke to my mother about her reservations, then stayed with us for some time. He taught me how to lipread, which won over my family, and the elders gave me their blessing to go to Coruscant. I didn't take a shine to archeology until after my Knighting..." She realized as soon as she had said it that she was straying from the scope of his curiosity. He was easy to talk to. "But that's another story."

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias nodded thoughtfully, recalling the numerous intricacies of Lorrdian Kinetic. Tarus Undara had always described it as an almost feline-like usage of muscle movement in the face and body. It began as a way to undermine their oppressors but evolved into a biological trait shared by all Lorrdians - a genetic reminder of the hardships they have overcome. "That sounds like me and herbalism," Elias remarked as he stooped to pick up another armful of equipment.

"I found the craft well after Knighthood, closer to becoming a Master. It was... therapeutic," he said fondly. "Much of my formative years in the Order were lived against the backdrop of the Imperial Order and the Maw. Training happened on the battlefield. I learned much of what I know from the missions I carried out against enemies of the Alliance."

Elias spent so much time on the move, constantly pushing himself harder and faster during the war that when it was over he'd forgotten what it felt like to simply be. No fighting, no running, no defending - just being. He'd lost that, and it was the art of herbalism that allowed him to rediscover his center again. "There's something so calming," he said after a moment, "about nurturing a seed from this little thing into something new and beautiful."

 

[Efret Farr]

“I can imagine.”

Efret gave a small smile, not trying to hide the guilt in it. At least it was short-lived, dissolving as soon as she reminded herself that not every Jedi had to answer the call of every war. If they did, very little discoveries would ever get made.

Still, she had promised herself that the next time that the New Jedi Order found itself at war she would drop whatever she was doing to join the effort. It was about time that she stopped letting her reservations hold her back. Yes, she had physical and metaphysical limitations, but they had never inhibited her from climbing a cliff in high winds or keeping a migrating herd of endangered galva, and herself, safe from a very persistent pair of nuuno. The list went on. There was no reason she would be unfit for a battlefield in a support position, nor a reason that she wouldn’t be able to hold her own against a humanoid opponent.

Her smile came back warmer, like the sand underfoot. “I’m glad you found it. I hope that you’ll find digging calming in its own way too.”

---

The next day, Efret woke an hour or so before dawn when it was still cool out. She took Nirrah from her sleeping perch and exited the tent as quietly as she could. Elias had done most of yesterday’s setup; the least she could do was let him sleep in.

When he rose, surely the colorful, shy rays of beginning sunrise had begun to poke into the tent. An intriguing smell, with a strong coconut base and floral, slightly spicy notes, followed behind. Its allure led to the designated-kitchen table. Arabica and sweet smoke mingled with the smell of breakfast from the pot of caf being kept warm over the dying cooking fire.

Two metal food trays had been set out for the two of them. Each had four fluffy rice cakes, a red vegetable stew, and a white paste. Efret hadn’t touched hers yet, opting to gaze thoughtfully off into the desert as she nursed a mug of caf. She wasn’t able to see details in the distance, but she did see the sun’s colors diffusing through the atmosphere as tie-dye-like shapes.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

The rich scent of Lorrdian cuisine filled Elias with warmth well before his eyes parted to the morning that had come so quickly. He was a habitual morning lark, used to rousing early and preparing for whatever the day presented; this morning, though, his bed felt supernaturally comfortable. Perhaps it was the desert heat or the strain of their journey that bound him to his sheets, but whatever it was, it wouldn’t keep him there forever.

“Good morning,” he said with a half-yawn and a stretch. His hair was down for a change, long and full around his head like the mane of a lion. Elias stretched a hair tie around his fingers and began wrestling his locks into it as he joined Efret at the table.

“This looks… wow,” he said, clearly impressed. “It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten Lorrdian food. This is a real treat, thank you!” Despite his stomach growling quietly beneath his shirt, Elias reached for the unclaimed cup of caf and took a healthy breath of the aroma before sipping. “Been awhile since I’ve had proper coffee, too,” he said with a smile. He took another sip as he peered through the opening in the tent.

The desert sun was slowly rising, its heat shimmering above the sandy horizon in a mockingly water-like motion. He looked to Efret after a few moments and several more sips of caf. “It’s certainly no ocean,” he said with a cheeky grin, “but it’s still beautiful in its own right.”

Elias reached for his cutlery, bowed his head for a brief second, then tucked into breakfast. The moment her cooking touched his lips, Elias breathed a grateful ‘mmh!’

“This is delicious!” he told her before taking another bite. He could almost hear his kuia telling him not to scarf it down in front of a lady. Not that he was, or would; it was just a bit of old wisdom from a kuia who knew much more than he did about almost everything.

He took his time to chew and swallow as properly as his empty stomach would allow before turning his thoughts to the rest of their day. “So,” he asked, “how do we begin? What’s the first step in the process?”

 

[Efret Farr]

Before he said anything, Nirrah clued her into his approach by fluttering from her lap up onto her shoulder.

Efret couldn't help but smile when she saw him with his hair down. Though she was now facing away from the sunrise, she noticed a slight heat in her cheeks. <Good morning. I make breakfast, past,> she signed before glancing down to switch on her interpretation unit. By the time she looked back up at him, he had managed to tie his dreadlocks up, but had not likewise restrained the slight flutter in her chest.

“This is a real treat, thank you! Been awhile since I've had proper coffee, too.”

"Of course," she replied, more that a little relieved that he approved of her choice of cuisine. She set her mug on the table so that she could sign with both hands. "When I was a Knight, my archeology advisor once told me that excavations aren't supposed to be glamourous. And sure, when your trench floods and turns to mud, or you spend two hours trying to plaster a sample properly but mostly plaster yourself it's not, but...affording ourselves some luxuries like fresh food keeps us grounded in the face of such struggles. The more ascetic among us would disagree, but a little dignity and comfort out here doesn't hurt. It reminds us—" Maybe it was best to speak for herself. "It reminds me that I'm civilized when I may not feel like it."

She gave him a playfully conspiratorial look. "It might be sacrilege, but I think I can do slightly more through my people's recipes than I can through the Force. Don't tell the Ashlans."

As he started to eat with the cutlery she was glad she had provided him, she hesitated to begin her meal.

Would he think her strange?

She shook her head a bit, to herself, before reaching to pick up one of her idli, tear it in half, and dip it into the vegetable stew. She began answering as she chewed. "I made a map this morning while the sambar was simmering, so we're good to start excavating. I work ten centimeters of thickness at a time. If you don't think patience a virtue now, you certainly will after we're done here."

She wiped her fingers on the cloth napkin laid out near her tray before leaning over the side of her chair and reaching into a rucksack of tools sat on the ground. When she returned to the table, she set a tube of sunscreen lotion on the table. "Do—?" she began to ask before stopping herself. Heat returned to her cheeks. She was suddenly very aware of the tone of his skin and how it was darker than hers. The hypocrisy of asking this question struck her like a sandstorm. "Would you like some sun protection? I use it even though...my ancestors got on without it. I don't know about yours but too many healers lectured me about protecting my skin before I started listening, so I thought I'd...ask."

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias nodded gratefully, swallowing a bit of sambar-soaked idli before speaking. "My people use a special gel produced by a species of underwater plant that grows in the shallows," he said with a smile. It was quite akin to the sunscreen oil used on planets like Tatooine, Jedha, and, of course, Jakku. Elias always keeps a tin of the clear, green-hued gel with him, but he accepted Efret's lotion happily.

He didn't want to be rude, and besides, he'd offer to share his own sunscreen later when it was inevitably time to reapply. Elias dabbed a healthy amount into the palm of his hand and rubbed it in a bit, applying it first to his face and neck, then to his exposed forearms. He slipped his hands under the sleeves of his tunic, being sure to rub it into his biceps. When he was satisfied, he patted the excess oil onto his thighs and gave a nod to the sun, which had broken the horizon and began to cast a watery haze over the dunes.

"The day is ready for us, and I believe," he said, collecting his empty plate and gesturing to take Efret's as well, "we are ready for it." He gathered his pack and fastened it to his back, smiling with his hands clutching the straps like an eager Padawan scout. "You're the expert, so I'll follow your lead. Show me what do to!"

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret looked away when he first began to apply the zinc sunscreen to finish her coffee and look towards the mesas and hoodoos out past their study area. What literal vision she lacked she made up for at least twice over with her scientific mind and active imagination.

She saw in the sunning landscape the ghosts of a semi-open prairie lush with waist-high grasses bounded by thickets of pine trees. Had she not nursed her mug near her nose, smelling of coffee beans roasted with clove and sherbet berries, she would have smelled the very fertile soil, a dribble of sweet pine tar leaking from a trunk, and the smoke of a brush fire starting somewhere in the green sea.

One of Elias' movements in Nirrah's peripheral vision caught the other master's attention. She glanced over at him to see him rubbing lotion into the skin underneath his sleeves. Oh. Her gaze lingered on one of his upper arms for a few brief moments, shamelessly tracking the rubbing motion of his fingers, then embarrassment caught up to her again and she looked away quickly. When he stood, though, she shyly looked back at him, hoping the light red tints of either flush or sun-kisses—maybe both—on her face weren't too evident.

"Can do. Follow me," she replied before getting her own backpack.

---

They dug up until lunchtime at the unbelievably slow pace that Efret had described: peeling back ten centimeter of this small piece of ground at a time. Their progress was made even slower since they took frequent water breaks under the waning shade offered by one of the camp tarps. Fortunately, the soil itself was mostly easy to dig through. The first layer was the hardest to break, but, once through the desert pavement, the loamy texture of the subsoil was relatively soft, even if well-compacted.

They then repeated the entire process after lunch so that, by dinner, they had excavated a good amount of soil into terraced sections. For all of their digging, they had yet to find any artifacts or fossils. Maybe tomorrow.

Dinner was Lorrdian food again, but not freshly-made this time. Efret had brought many meals in a cooler and selected one to heat up over the fire. As she stirred the palak paneer, she asked him with her other hand, "So, thoughts? Ready for another day of that, or ready to leave?" There was no judgement on her face or manner. This type of work wasn't for everyone.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias was far from the comforts of Bogano, in need of a good shower and fresh oils, but he could sense that they were close to something substantial. He didn't want to leave without seeing her find it. But even if he was wrong, he knew that Efret wouldn't be truly satisfied until they gave it their best. "I think I can handle one more day. I've got a pretty good feeling about our site," Elias said. He was seated comfortably next to the fire, warming hands while the chilly night air cooled his back. "Besides, it's not all that bad. I've certainly excavated much worse than this riverbed." His mind drifted to the time he and Nathan Bloodscrawl explored a Jedi necropolis, or when an ancient Sith laboratory was much more alive than he and Jonyna Si initially thought.

"Yeah, one more day," he said with a certain grin. The only thing to be afraid of here was sunburn and sand in his locs, both of which could be remedied without a bacta tank or therapy. When dinner was ready, he gratefully took a bowl and tucked into the earthy dish. The first bite tasted just like Mama Undara's cooking when he was a fresh-faced Knight, the second tasted like countless missions with Tarus, and the third tasted like the desire to return the favor to Efret for all her kindness. "Do not let me forget to treat you to some Genetian cooking," he said with a warm smile. "I'd love you have you join me on Bogano sometime for dinner and tea in the greenhouse. It's so lovely this season- and, uh, to see our archives too, perhaps?" Elias added posthumously, realizing his offer was beginning to sound like a date. He cleared his throat a bit, trying the proposal again.

"I'd love to catalog what we find here in our records. Perhaps you'd like to visit the enclave and see the archives? I'll treat you to dinner for the trouble, I know Bogano is a bit out of the way." Much better, he thought to himself.