Where do you go from here? [Stali]

[Avalore Eden]

Ossus
Jedi Temple
Entrance Steps

This was as far as Avalore Eden got.

It had been some time since she'd lain eyes on the Ossus Temple, and for the life of her she couldn't figure out how she'd forgotten just how many stairs this place had. The young woman had last departed this place as a Padawan and Healer-in-Training, and here she stood a fully fledged Knight with no honor to her name or Jedi to her self. She felt severely misplaced.

Avalore stared blankly at the steps before her.

It was a metaphor, right? Every step signified the arduous struggle she would need to make in order to get her life back in order. Step 1: Get Over Yourself Sweetheart. Everyone has struggles, everyone has a story, everyone loses sometimes.

Yeah, right.

With a despondent sigh and a short glance around, Avalore slowly turned on her heel and let her weight slowly settle onto that first step and showed it what she really thought. Elbows on knees, toes curled in her shoes, she cradled her head in her hands and just stopped.

What are you doing here Avalore?

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

What are you doing here, Stali? Aren't you supposed to be on Tython?

His need to see his cousin somewhat regularly was hard at odds with his Guardian training a little more than half a galaxy away. He was plenty occupied, and finding the time was getting harder and harder, and it was distracting. Particularly so over the past several days. He'd gotten wind that her master had passed from the land of the living, but not until after the memorial and he needed to make sure she would be alright. She may have been able to look after herself, but as his only real family, he could not help being concerned for the state of her heart and mind. They understood each other in ways few others could - the feline connection, they sometimes called it - but the line was clear. She was his cousin. And he loved her as family should.

But she was not here. He checked. That was the trouble with surprises - sometimes they didn't pan out. So, upon discovering that his darling cousin Mara was not even planetside, Stali had went for a familiar run through the jungles, circling back to the front of the temple. At which point he saw something that was more rare than one would think - someone bummed out on the front steps. Most dejected apprentices tended to sulk in their quarters. Curiously, he approached the steps, and stood, hands in the pockets of his shorts, his shadow cast over her under the warmth of the doubled stars.

"You alright?" And immediately he laughed at himself, casting his eyes upward at the sky, then settling them on [member="Avalore Eden"], again. "Of course not. Allow me to try again - what's the matter, if you don't mind my asking?"

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore didn't move much at the approach of a stranger. Several people had passed her by in the last hour or so she'd sat there. No one recognized her and no one said anything, which was just as well. She wasn't much up for conversation with others while she was so involved conversationally with herself. The Jedi had the sort of look on her face, when she did glance up, that suggested the internal dialogue was not going well.

A tense sigh flared her nostrils as she continued to cradle her head in her hands, fingers splayed over her scalp, "...do you have all day?"

Everything was wrong. Absolutely everything. Where should she begin?

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

He'd seen facial expressions like that before, and it made his brow knit in some concern. One hand, the right one, disengaged from the pocket it was stowed away in, and went to his hair, raking through it and resting on the back of his neck. He wondered if this was some 'will of the Force' thing, or if it was merely coincidence, but the reason why things were lining up in the here and now didn't matter. The fact that he did have the time...

"As cheesy as this sounds, my schedule just cleared," he admitted, sans humour, "I came here to spring a surprise visit on my cousin after the passing of her master, but she seems to not be here at all."

He hoped, wherever she was, that she would be alright. He dropped the hand from the back of his neck, and held it out to [member="Avalore Eden"].

"Come on. You talk, I'll listen. Maybe find something to drink?"

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore blinked up at the man.

"Your cousin's Master?" she couldn't help it, curiosity was one of the few things she had a hard time saying no to. A drink was one of the others. The Healer untangled her hands from her hair and wiped at her face, pushing the tousled pieces back before reaching up to take his hand. She stood, feeling heavy with fatigue and sadness.

"Wouldn't happen to be Mara, would it?" It was a shot worth taking she supposed. Avalore hadn't a chance to really form a friendship with the woman, but they had a connection between them to be sure. Dealing with the loss of their Master had certainly seen to that. Certainly the Jedi didn't lose a Master regularly, and Avalore wasn't aware of any others who had died recently, so we put 1 and 2 together to get Mara.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

Once she was leveraged up onto her feet and off the stony steps, he slipped both his hands back into his pockets. At her first question, more rhetorical than anything, he nodded, but the next one made his eyebrows go up at little, and gave his tail a little twitch where it had been utterly relaxed and still before.

"Ah, yes..." he gave her a slight grimace of a smile. "...that's her, and I'm Stali."

Again he disengaged the same hand that he'd used to pull [member="Avalore Eden"] up from the pocket it occupied and proffered it.

"Meeristali Peradun. She may or may not have mentioned me."

 

[Avalore Eden]

"Not have," Avalore replied grimly, glancing away for a moment. Was she supposed to have interacted with her Master's other students on a more frequent basis? Were they supposed to be friends? When she looked back his hand was there again, waiting for her. Avalore shortly thought of giving it a good, friendly low-five slap.

Instead she reached out and tempted fate with a bit of normalcy and shook it. The Healer gave a sniff at his accent. Yep, definitely related to Mara.

"'m Avalore. I was another one of Diana's padawans," a frown pulled at her face. Speaking of Diana in past-tense was hard. She covered up the lump in her through with a cough, "but I only saw Mara a few times on account of being the size of a planet and ready to pop out a kid. I didn't really ... share any lessons with her or anything. We don't have any kind of connection that some other Pads seem to share with one another - you know, like how they just seem to always know where the other one is, never-see-one-without-the-other kinda thing. I," Avalore itched at her head with a grimace, "I don't even know her last name or why she talks funny or if she likes sugar in her tea. I can't even tell you what she specialized in for training but I'd be willing to bet she's better at Jedi than me. Force I'm a terrible person, it's like I don't even care or something."

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

At her admission of being one of Diana's other padawans, an apologetic look flashed up on his features, but as she was not done, he said nothing. He listened, just as he said he would - you talk, I'll listen - and she talked, as he had invited her to do, and took in her words, her concerns for consideration, thinking on what he might, what he would say in response. When she finished, he turned, and gestured up the steps, putting his right foot on the first one. This was definitely going to be a conversation that could do with a little less sobriety, and perhaps a touch of levity. But first...

"I'm sorry for your loss," he said, sincere in his words, the memory of Mara's voice every time she grieved a loss whether through death or other means bolting through his mind. It wasn't something he could smile at, but it was something he could understand, in his own way. "And I doubt you're a terrible person. I've just met you, so the jury is still out on that. So if you don't mind, I'd like to make up my own mind on that account, while we go find ourselves that drink."

He held a hand out to Avalore again, this time for the ascent, a small, honest smile on his lips. Whether she took it or not, he would begin to climb the steps when she would.

"Unless you've changed your mind? If you haven't, on the way I can tell you that Mara 'talks funny' for the same reason that I have a tail, tea isn't her favourite drink, and it's likely she's specialised in something rough, knowing her..."

His smile changed to something that was vaguely playful, and his voice dropped a tad with his next words.

"...but we'rrre herrre to talk about you, yes?"

[member="Avalore Eden"]

 

[Avalore Eden]

Hand.

Avalore blinked at it.

The last time I held a man's hand I wound up pregnant.

A daunting sort of reminder for such a simple, innocent thing. Yet when her eyes shifted to the stairs before them and moved slowly upwards to the grand Temple entrance, suddenly the whole world seemed really, really big. Avalore wasn't ready to take on the Temple on her own again yet, but in the company of a new friend with the prospect of a few drinks? It was certainly worth the risk.

She reached out and took his hand, momentarily looking as though she wasn't sure what to do with it now that she had it. A gentle squeeze was all the reminder she needed. Been so long since someone just lead the way, sometimes you forget how to follow. Just hold on, Avalore.

One corner of her lips twitched upwards in a fleeting, wary sort of smile. She followed him, one foot in front of the other.

"No, drinks are ...great," she said finally, falling silent to listen to him speak with an odd glance back at the tail that trailed behind him. Funny, she never noticed it until just then. Had she ever noticed Mara had a tail? Avalore wasn't sure - so much of her pregnancy had been spent in a self-centered bubble it was amazing she remembered much of anything that didn't directly involve herself. The Healer cracked a rough chuckle at his final words, lopsided grin stretching at the profoundly wondrous accent, "that's a shot-glass conversation. I suppose that's why I'm such a cheap date."

They stepped through the temple entrance and already Avalore had forgotten they were holding hands. Really, she didn't know her way around this place so it was simpler to be lead anyway.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

[member="Avalore Eden"]

He looked at her as they passed through the temple entrance, and laughed lightly. Perhaps relaxing the consistent control he had over his voice could go a ways to helping set her more at ease.

"Shot-glass converrrsation, hm?" He queried rhetorically, leading her through the wide open hall at the forefront of the temple's structure to the opposite end where the corridors lead to living quarters. "I've got just the thing. I'll just need to fetch it from my quarrrterrrs."

He looked back at her, the realization of what one might think of where he was taking a woman he had just met not at all lost on him.

"Beforrre you think it, I don't move that fast," he said with a slight grin, "Usually."

Then he looked ahead again. A few more steps and they were in front of the door to his quarters, at which point he let go of her hand.

"Wait herrre, follow me in... up to you. We'rrre going out into the jungle once I fetch a bottle, anyway."

With that, he opened the door and went into his quarters.

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore followed him through the doorway, brows lofted quizzically at the slip of his accent. She smiled faintly at it, finding enjoyment in the unique affair of his r's as they rolled off his tongue. How fun. How different.

She really had to get out more if this sort of thing was at that level of fascinating.

Standing just within the door, Avalore took a quiet moment to look around. Like most Jedi, it wasn't overly complicated or decorated. Tidy - perhaps a bit ... militant? She noted the perfectly pressed bed, a skill that she'd never been able to pick up. Superfluous possessions weren't a common thing within their halls, and so it came as no surprise to the somewhat barren display. It was nice, though, to know that at least in that way she was living up to the Jedi doctrine.

Not like she had too many things left to call her own anyway.

Brown eyes landed on the man as he went about getting the required conversational pieces. They followed the outline of his physique and ended, abruptly, at the tail casually tick-tocking at his backside. She openly stared at it.

Tail.

"...jungle?" she blinked, breaking her gaze from the visual metronome to look him in the eye.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

Militant, indeed... and if at any point she tired of discussing herself - which he would now not let her get out of doing - she might learn about why that was. His quarters were as strictly tidy as he had left them: snugly sheeted bed, not a single thing out of place; some habits die very hard, if they died at all. He went to the closet, and fetched a pair of clear glasteel bottles from the shelf above the modestly filled hanger rod. Then, turning around with one bottle in each hand at the neck, he held them up to her eye level, his vibrant orange eyes settling squarely on hers.

"Amber..." he said, reining in the heavier notes of his Felacatian accent, "...or clear?"

He didn't specify what each one of them was, but it was obvious each was hard liquor. From there anyone with enough knowledge could extrapolate what each could possibly be... but if he she asked, he wouldn't withhold the information. Whether she cared enough right now to know was the question and in that, he was very curious as to her response.

"And yes, jungle. If the conversation is of the shot-glass variety, then perhaps it's of the 'out of earshot' variety as well."

[member="Avalore Eden"]

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore stared at the bottles for several moments, thoughts not so much on the choice but on the fact that he wasn't rolling his r's anymore and that saddened her just enough to frown. Slightly.

"Is both an option?"

She looked back up at him, itching absently at her arm, looking for all the world as innocent as possible. A meek smile filtered in there somewhere. I'm not an alcoholic I swear, I just like the taste.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

At that, a grin grew, stretching from ear to ear.

"I like the way you think," he said, head tilted down to look her in the face, "makes me think therrre must be something beautiful between those earrrs of yourrs."

He straightened up again, and glanced past her into the corridor.

"Onwarrrd, to the jungle..." but then, he had another thought which caused him to fix the vibrant orange of his eyes on her face again, and drop his voice in volume, "...unless you'd rrratherrr stay herrre?"

Just what was he thinking, letting her do the driving? Did it matter? Probably not.

[member="Avalore Eden"]

 

[Avalore Eden]

The Healer's initial reaction was to stick to what she knew. Stay in that comfort zone of the neat and tidy and militant. She watched him before giving his quarters another glance. Avalore opened her mouth to declare these thoughts until the voice of others passing by in the hall behind her gave her pause.

Come on Avalore, when was the last time you were in a jungle. Never, that's when.

"No," she said finally with another look around before stepping back through the doorway and motioning with a nod back out, "jungle sounds great."

Avalore you don't know the first thing about jungles.



The jungle.

Somehow they'd reached it much faster than she expected, but - Avalore supposed - when the temple sat surrounded by it how far did you really have to go? The Jedi paused at the brink of the looming forest, staring up into the tangled boughs with the chorus of jungle fauna calling to her. Her eyes traced across the scene, following the form of Stali as he picked his way towards a lightly beaten path. She followed, ducking through vines and low branches.

"Where....are we going?" this was a bit more difficult than she thought. Jungles...not the same as Corellian pine forests.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

He lead the way, his mind on the fleeting look in her face as she had almost decided to stay, but then something had changed her mind, and so here they were in the jungle, as per his original suggestion and intent - him clearing the softly trodden path, and her tailing him... pun possibly intended. He'd taken a moment to grab a sling backpack to carry the two glasteel bottles of liquor, a couple durasteel shot glasses, and some other small items that might or might not aid in improving moods and providing amusement, before they had set out. It was only a matter of time before she would...

"Where....are we going?"

...and there it was. That question brought a smile to his face, and he was half-tempted to tell her it was a secret and say no more, but the other half was aware that he could say something better than that, without giving it entirely away.

"Somewherrre that makes beating thrrrough this jungle entirely worrrth it," he said, pushing some hanging vines out of the way, holding them back so she could pass as well, "Marrrakai and I discoverrred many things durrring ourrr patrrrols."

He moved ahead of her once again, to continue leading the way, glancing back as they moved on.

"I think you might like it," he mentioned.

The sound of crashing water could be faintly heard.

[member="Avalore Eden"]

 

[Avalore Eden]

"Patrols?" Avalore asked after him absently while carefully stepping over a downed log. She certainly wasn't the embodiment of grace or strength. Unlike most, Avalore did not make an effort to attend the gym or work out. Her morning run through the suspended towns of Cato Neimoidia was typically enough. After that came a walk to the local Hospital where she spent most of her day running around helping the Doctors and Nurses, healing patients, doing what needed to be done. Sometimes she performed these duties off world, when the Council saw fit to call in their brigade of Healers.

Green Healer robes made excellent camouflage in a jungle, she discovered. All she'd have to do was leap into the foliage and remain still.

She stopped by a tree, looking around as if curious to what they would have need to patrol for. Ossus was Jedi-central, from what she'd seen. Especially now after the loss of Coruscant. With security on High Alert, was there really much to patrol for? She supposed she really didn't know anything about any of this stuff. Healers weren't privvy to the warriors agenda, only the wounds they resulted in.

With a deep breath and a curious note on the sound of moving water, Avalore pushed off from the tree.

"So are you training to be a Warrior then, like Mara? That's what I assume she was with Diana for. She had the lightsabers already when I first met her. Always did wonder why they put me with Di, it's not like I was capable of learning her trade."

The very thought of lightsabers made her twitch. Too close to fire, and fire was a big no in her book.

Up ahead the banks of a small river came into view. Birdcall sounded over the song of rapids. Such a pleasant thing - she'd have to venture out into the wilds more often if this is what she was missing out on.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

"Yes, patrrrols," he confirmed, "the averrrage jungle is harrrdly serrrene orrr safe. Parrrticularrrly one as this, terrrrrraforrrmed in parrrt by Vong prrrocesses."

He paused a moment, considering his words. How much he had learned about this world, for his time on it. Time that was less and less as the specific path he was meant to take in the Jedi drew him elsewhere.

"Ossus was devastated at least once in its past," he informed, stopping when she stopped to rest against a tree, "virrrtually barrrrrren, orrr so I'm told. The prrresence of Vong florrra perrrsists."

When she pushed off, they continued on, the river that was their destination starting to come into view.

"I am learrrning to become a differrrent kind of warrrrrriorrr, Avalorrre," he admitted, "from what I was beforrre. The life of a soldierrr was my life, prrriorrr to this."

A thoughtful smile appeared on his face, as they approached the riverbank, spotted by sunshine where it was not shaded by the many trees and shrubs along its length.

"I would suppose I'm lucky, to have a masterrr with a backgrrround not to dissimilarrr frrrom my own... though, the experrrience of spending time with someone differrrent frrrom what we think we need can give us invaluable concepts we might not have otherrrwise acquirrred."

[member="Avalore Eden"]

 

[Avalore Eden]

Avalore paused at the riverbank, eyes scanning the broken surface, distant with thought.

"Yeah...suppose you're right."

So what had she learned from Diana? It certainly wasn't how to handle a lightsaber, or how to assess and take down an enemy based on visual weaknesses. It wasn't how to blast apart a contingent of soldiers with her mind, or how to do lightside sorcerers frippery. It wasn't, even, really how to be a Jedi. Diana had openly admitted to not fitting in, to not being an ideal Jedi. She'd admitted to doing things against the code, things she believed to be justified for the greater good of innocent lives.

The Healer's eyes pulled tight as memory chased after memory.

Diana had taught her the meaning of honor, of bravery, of standing up for what you believed in. She'd taught her the essential necessities to being a good person and a kind soul. Diana had attempted to teach her how to be strong in the face of disparity, though it wasn't a lesson well-learned, she feared. Avalore wasn't to know that it was due to Diana not being a fully strong individual herself. The Jedi Master had hidden her demons and her depression well.

The sting of death threatened to set free all that bottled up emotion, so Avalore gave a sharp sniff and shoved her hands in her robe pockets, "This is a really nice spot. Is this...it? The place I mean." Frown, "...will Mara get moved to your Master to finish her training?"

Avalore was not aware that Mara had also been Knighted.

[member="Meeristali Peradun"]

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

He shook his head.

"No, she's a knight, now," he informed, unslinging the backpack from about himself and moving to seat himself on a long, reasonably undecayed log, "though I'm not surrre if that explains why I haven't hearrrd from herrr in longerrr than usual."

He shrugged, looking to [member="Avalore Eden"]. He patted the space next to him on the log as he sat and settled the pack between his legs.

"Now, come on and sit," he insisted, unzipping a secondary pocket on the pack, pulling out two shot-glasses and holding them up in one large hand, a slow, easy grin returning to his face, "We have some drrrinking to do if I'm going to get you to talk."