Private Of Pine, Fungus, and Light

[Efret Farr]

She was about to respond before he rephrased.

It didn’t matter to her. The sentiment was the same whatever the word order, and very welcome too.

She smiled at him as she chewed at her own portion then wiped creamed spinach off her fingers on the piece of naan in her bowl so she could sign without flinging bits of food. “Out of the way is my favorite way to go,” she said generally. She had learned some of her most interesting archeological lessons by straying off the beaten path and doing something a little, or a lot, inconvenient. “I’ll take you up on that, Elias. Thank you."

Neither of them could imagine, though, in just what condition she would finally make the journey to Bogano.

---

They had only just begun to dig the next morning when the silence of the desert was broken by an organic exclamation.

“Aaa!”

Efret looked over at where Elias was working. She pointed out a patch of darker soil in front of her with the point of her trowel. “Here. Baked earth.” She placed her tool down to one side and wiped the pads of two fingers over the patch. After looking at them, she turned them to face him. Her skin was smeared with grey clay. “It’s an indicator this probably was a hearth,” she signed after allowing him a moment to inspect it.

“Keep an eye out for associated features.”

They uncovered nothing of the sort by lunchtime. However, Efret didn't seem disappointed, electing to spend her break studying a sample of the baked earth under her electron scanning microscope while nibbling on a handful of cashews. “Quite the lucky break,” she commented as she adjusted the slide with one hand. “There are very fine grains of charcoal mixed with the fire-altered loam.” She scooted back in her chair then angled the display screen towards Elias so he could see it easier. Thin hexagons were stacked haphazardly throughout the screen. “The tiny black dots on the faces. I’ll try to isolate some for carbon dating.”

Her smile widened, gaining a slightly mischievous quality like a toddler who should be lying down for a nap but had her own plans. “At a later date. For now, I’m getting back to digging.”

---

Elias would find the next feature about a half hour later: a circle in the ground about 15 cm in diameter infilled with small pebbles.

"A posthole?" she asked rhetorically, having glimpsed the find from over his shoulder. Shifting on her knees, she came to sit at his side then extended a hand out to touch the feature. Another echo was immediately evident to her. "This was a grubhut," she said without looking at him and instead looking up at the Force's reconstruction of the building visible to only her. "We're getting warmer."

Warmer in terms of the one discovery she was after maybe, but chilled air fell over the desert again as the sun lowered, lowered, lowered in the sky and finally set. She broke from work to warm another prepared meal, serving it to Elias and herself though she only took one bite before gathering up a couple lanterns. She set them near to where she then continued to dig.

Out here in her element, she could be a bad example of how to take care of oneself in the field.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

“It’s a bit cool, dontcha think?” Elias asked, knowing it wouldn’t matter either way. The uncle of lanterns in Efret’s hands were sign enough that the woman had made her mind up, and Elias would have to go along for the ride or slink back I to the tent.

With the choice as clear in his mind as Efret’s goal was in hers, he set off into the night, following her by lamplight back to the dig site. He knew that between the two of them, they could more than handle any nighttime intrusions, but a small part of him nervously ruminated on his first and only night in the Tamarind Wastes on Kirdo III. “You really think we’re close to something significant, huh?” he asked from behind her. “I admit, I have a pretty good feeling about our chances as well.” The baked earth, the signs of a rudimentary hut, the winding channel of a long-dried riverbed; it all pointed to a valuable discovery.

Valuable in the archaeological sense, that is. Elias knew that many in this field searched for fragments of the past so that they could exchange them for reputation or credits. He simply wanted to catalog their discoveries for posterity and remembrance. Efret seemed to be cut from the same cloth, too. When they reached their destination, Elias laid his bundle of tools neatly on the sand and placed one of the lanterns nearby to illuminate their workspace. Ever the amateur, he awaited Efret’s instructions, willing to help but fearful of botching the next step in the excavation.

 

[Efret Farr]

“It’s a bit cool, dontcha think?”

She gave him a playfully incredulous look and set down the lanterns on a nearby tabletop. She'd pick them up again when finished signing. "One word, Elias. Tapas."

When they had returned to the dig site, she got onto it on her knees. "I'm sure there's something else here," she said before glancing up at him and giving a mischievous smile. "You should know I sometimes don't know when to stop chasing my luck."

She leaned over a bit to move a hovering palm over the soil again. Where was that sharp sensation, exactly?

There.

<Found you,> she thought.

She closed her hand, brought it closer to the ground, and tapped her pointer finger to the spot. "It's hiding here." She repositioned her legs underneath her while reaching for one of her tools. "Let me teach you a new excavation technique..."

A few inches dug down into the inside of the food storage hut later, a series of rust red lines pressed into a harder layer of soil, now rock, began to come into view. Switching her finest trowel out for a brush, she dusted fine particles off the surface to see the lines more easily. She gasped then, sure that it was what she had presumed a moment before. "It's fossilized foodstuffs," she declared. When she turned her torso to face Elias, excitement had thoroughly brightened her countenance. She attempted to throw her arms around him in a short hug, bouncing back from it even if successful with giddy energy. "Probably from a cache." She glanced back at the fossil and traced the red lines over the rock in the air directly above them. "Pine, I think. Needles are spiky."

The Force had not led her astray.

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

If seeing Efret so unabashedly excited hadn't warmed Elias up, the way she wrapped her arms around him surely did. It was a short embrace, one she bounced back from and quickly resumed her analysis of the dig after, which was... probably for the best. He didn't have time to reciprocate the hug with his own arms and wasn't sure if that would have been appropriate to do, despite the now-unavoidable thought that he'd have liked to. He cleared his throat softly and stepped closer to see her find. "Impressive," Elias remarked, looking from the woman to the fossil. He was referring to both the discovery and her use of psychometry to locate it. She'd have loved to work with the RJC in its prime, he thought.

When next she looked to him, he signed, <"How we preserve it?"> Finding it, of course, was just the first step. Collecting it, preserving it, transporting it - those are the things Elias was thinking of now.

 

[Efret Farr]

"I'm going to dig further down and try to chip it out," she replied. "I should be able to bring it over to the field tent. The first layer of protection we'll need is Paraloid B-72. I don't think we'll need much. Maybe ten or fifteen grams. Would you mix that up? The introductions are on the bottle by the microscope."

In a few minutes, Efret joined Elias in the tent. She set down the pine fossil, then pursed her lips as she scanned the counter for her favorite sealant brush. When she found and retrieved it, she looked at him. "This mixture," she indicated towards the B-72, "seals together particles and protects them from heat and water." She leaned over a bit to dip the bristles in the liquid resin before touching them to the fossil.

She continued speaking as she began brushing, periodically taking up more product. "There are only a few rules. Brush in one direction. Try to keep the coat thin and even. Avoid trapping debris or hair, but don't worry about bubbles. They oftentimes pop as the resin dries."

She stopped and held out the handle to him with a bright smile. "Do you want to try?"

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Gingerly, Elias took the brush in his hand. With the same precision he'd practiced during years of carefully pruning plants, he set to work coating the fossil as Efret instructed. Light strokes in the same direction, avoiding debris, and ignoring the tiny bubbles that rose through the resin. "This is... kinda fun," he said to her with a smile. Elias kept going, slow but steady, until he'd completed a good amount of the preservation. He didn't want to finish it all, though, knowing that this was Efret's passion. With a satisfied nod, he passed the brush back to her. "I can see why you enjoy this line of work," he said with admiration. "It takes so much skill and precision, but there's peace in the details. I like the way this sort of focus feels."

Like so many other things, it reminded him of gardening. Properly acclimating plants to life in the greenhouses on Bogano was a tedious task, but when done well, it yields a profound sense of accomplishment and wholeness that Elias struggles to replicate anywhere else in the galaxy. Except, perhaps, right here and now. He watched Efret's hands as she worked, admiring the way she cared for the fossil as if it were alive. In a way, he supposed it was. Her psychometric link to the object likely spoke to her like an old friend or a faded memory. He wished he could experience that for himself one day, but for now, watching her felt just as good.

 

[Efret Farr]

"Right?" she asked rhetorically when he assessed that painting on the protectant was kind of fun. She took over when he returned the brush. A few more seconds is all it took to finish this side, then she moved over to the small mobile sink basin to wash out the brush. This layer needed time to dry before she could flip the fossil over to treat that side, and she didn't want the excess B-72 to likewise set in the bristles in the meantime.

Once she laid the brush down on the tabletop to air dry, she turned to Elias. "Would you be willing to take this to Bogano?" she asked again, this time expecting an answer. "There's more analysis that can be done in an indoor laboratory, and I'd like to finish this project together." She smiled through a minute amount of worry that might have come off as too eager to see him again. Yes, she did actually want to unravel the mystery of these pine needle impressions, but her motives were not entirely non-ulterior either.

"With as much recent instability as the Core has seen, I would also feel much better if a specimen like this," she motioned to the nearby find, "was kept in a vault on the Outer Rim."

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias nodded, smiling as he overlooked the subtle self-invitation. He was, of course, more than willing to house any artifacts she discovered, but he also wouldn’t protest a reason to see Efret again. “Absolutely,” he said. “The Bogano vault is impressively difficult to get into. It’ll be safe for sure there with us.” Elias presumed she was familiar with Zeffo astriums and other similar keystones, no doubt having encountered them in ruins and sites in her expeditions throughout the Outer Rim.

“There’s already an existing collection of Outer Rim artifacts, as a matter of fact. When Dagobah fell, I brought as much of our archives with me.” His smile was sad this time, the feeling of loss both emotional and material apparent on his face. “We lost a great wealth of knowledge that day, but a steady stream finds its way to us on Bogano. We do our best to preserve what survived until such a time when the Outer Rim Jedi return and require their history.” It was a small gesture but one Elias was proud to perform. He personally curated a large portion of Dagobah’s collection, traveling to enclaves around the Trade League and beyond to gather as much information as they could offer.

To preserve it was to honor the Coalition, its enclaves, and every Jedi who sacrificed everything to defend the Outer Rim from the Sith. It was everything.

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret frowned at Elias' sad smile. "You do them a great service," she said, using you in a broad sense to refer both to him but also to the rest of the Jedi at Bogano who were likewise involved in the preservation. "Knowledge loss is rarely thought of as...ideal, and in ways it's not, but in others it provides opportunities to rebuild. Sometimes in the process of rediscovering, rewriting, or recreating what used to be but no longer is, progress is made." She reached out to touch his upper arm, hoping to impart some amount of comfort.

She continued, "I don't know when I'll be able to get out that way. I've been following rumors of a megastructure, apparently floating out in The Unknown Regions. It was nice—" When she smiled widely, her eyes squinted in amusement. "—to be a little obsessed with something else for a few days, but now that we're effectively done here I need to return to the trail."

She glanced at the fossil. "I'll stay up a bit longer to finish with the Paraloid. We can pack up tomorrow. Before we leave, I'll need to log the site with the local enclave and return their equipment." Most of the scientific instruments and materials were borrowed. "Perhaps they'd be interested in digging further.

"You can join me for that if you want, but I can put away my own toys. I'm very happy you came out here to be with me and learn a new skill. Thank you."

Elias Edo​

 

[Elias Edo]

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Tags: Efret Farr
Location: JAKKU

Elias quite enjoyed the warmth of Efret’s touch on his arm, and certainly felt a coolness at the thought of their project coming to a close. She had a trail to follow, though, and Elias knew just how powerful the call of an unsolved mystery could be. He had his own rabbit trail in the Outer Rim, one that grew colder with every passing day, but there was always something pulling his attention every time he tried to get back to his search.

Perhaps, he decided, some mysteries were not meant to be unraveled. He smiled at the thought of being okay with letting go, even though he knew a part of him would always be looking for leads. His smile grew bigger as he listened to Efret.

“I wouldn’t leave you to handle all this alone,” he said warmly. “We set it up together, and we’ll take it down together.” It was the right thing to do, never mind it extending his time with her - even if it was in the desert. Elias nodded at her thanks. “And thank you, for giving me the opportunity. I’m not sure I’ll ever be as good with this line of work, but I’m very glad to have been here to witness it done so well.”

 

[Efret Farr]

Efret's smile got lost as she lowered her head shyly. A blush didn't quite rise to her cheeks but she felt like it had. "You flatter," she said, not able to help wondering if such was his way with fellow Jedi or if he was flirting with her specifically.

If it was the latter, she was very grateful that they had most of another day together.

"Sleep well, Elias," she added after she was able to gather her bearings up again. "And sleep in. I plan to. We'll need the extra energy to get everything packed up and ride through the desert."

Elias Edo
Exit thread​