Star Wars - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Especially Jedi ❯ 3/6 ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

By: pronker

The young Jedi in the pool felt his circulation stopping. The two females were calmly sitting down on the bank to talk confidences, and from what he knew of Bant's and Siri's chats, they were as likely as not to perch there until he slipped into the Force without so much as one sock on his ten water-logged toes. He was conscious of a cramp beginning in his left leg. His shoulders trembled. He had to be motionless, as well, and that was another hardship. The least movement might betray him, for the ladies sat quite near and Edna was facing him. Thanks to the thickness of the leafy hiding place, she could not see him, but he could see her plainly, and she was well worth looking at. Her gown was made with the same economical amount of material as her aunts, but on her, the gown, as gray as as an artificially-induced bank of fog crafted by Coruscanti technology, snugged feminine curves as well-planned by Nature as the quadratic bezier curves of the beguiling waterway in which he currently shivered. Her hair was parted in the center and skinned back over her ears, but there the resemblance with her aunts ended. Despite the severely straight brushing, her hair waved and it glinted red-gold where little flecks of sunlight filtered through the branches of the greel trees to caress it; along with the pink bloom behind her left ear and another at her throat and a pair of gray boots that peeked out from the hem of the gown, she presented a charming picture.
Obi-Wan looked closer. She had an oval face with flushed cheeks and beads of perspiration at her temples, her eyes sparkled: oh, well, the young Jedi gave up cataloguing her attraction and summed her up as a stunningly pretty girl. Then he tried once more to shoo that pesky midge and wished to the stars that they both would go.
"When our dear mother died, we four girls were quite young," began Aunt Randii, pausing to smooth her ebony gown, and the young man in the watery prison fought despair. She was starting out like a bard. Soon she would break into a warbled lament.
"Your Aunt Dolpha was eighteen Standard, your Aunt Georgette and myself sixteen, and your poor, deluded mother fourteen. Our father, child, married again six days after the Primary Year of Mourning, and so you see, our acquaintance with the duplicity of men began at a very early age. Of course, we refused to live with a stepmother or countenance her occupation of our own dear mother's home. We four left as a group to live with your Great Uncle Potor, a widower of upright character.Hewould neverthinkof remarriage." Aunt Randii sniffed prodigiously as she had before. Obi-Wan wondered if the heat were affecting her sinuses.
"Caring for our own responsibilities at such a tender age, it behooved us to conduct ourselves with the strictest propriety, and I am most happy to say that we passed triumphantly through the trial. Naturally, we being great beauties in our day, my child,greatbeauties, many young men fluttered about us, and some really made quite favorable impressions upon us. There was one in particular ..." Here Aunt Randii paused for a sigh and fixed her eyes in sad reminiscence upon a little clump of ferns that waved incessant salutes at their reflections. "He was seven years older than I, a long, thick, brown, erm, head of hair, a nose that ..."
"Sithtake the story of her life!" muttered the miserable youth in the pool. HIs teeth chattered like the small furry creature's noisings, which it delivered from a higher branch than before. Obi-Wan envied the fur on its wiry body.
"Do tell, Aunty!" cried the eager Edna.
Aunt Randii fanned herself. "Well, child, they were all alike. Having insinuated themselves into our confidences by agreeable manners and by their really indisputable attractiveness and there was one, in particular, whose voice could have meltedanygirl's resistance ... erm, what was I saying? Ah, yes ... having aroused tender emotions, what did these young men do, one and all? Why, instead of waiting until the acquaintance had ripened into mutual undying affection and then falling gracefully to their knees withhonorableproposals of marriage, they chose what seemed to be favorable moments and strove, by cajolery or stealth or even the Force, to kiss us. To kissus!"
"Stang!" exclaimed Edna. "Jedi!"
There was a moment's silence. The member of the Jedi Order could feel his short Padawan crop rising along his neck, trying to warm his puckered scalp. His Knight's tail dripped icy drops and he shivered harder.
"Though it might not have been so very dreadful," finally commented Edna, after a thoughtful sigh.
"Edna Mara Egglim!" cried Aunt Randii. "I am astounded!"
"I can't help it, Aunty," said Edna. "I can't make it seem so terrible, no matter how hard I try. In fact, it , it seems to me that it would have been, well, nice."
"Edna!"
"But, Aunty, didn't it ever seem that way to you, sometimes?"
Aunt Randii was shocked and silent for seven shivers, then over her cheeks, which rarely saw the sun, crept a pinkness. Obi-Wan wondered if his original judgment of the materteral group as "elderly" could stand correcting. In this light, Aunt Randii looked comparable in age to Master Qui-Gon.
"I'll not deny," she presently confessed in a hesitant voice, "that if we had not had each other to rely upon for firmness, we mightperhapshave been deluded by some of these young scapegraces. Truly, they were appealing at times, with their bright blue eyes. There was one in particular ..."
Again, Aunt Randii became lost in meditative trance. The man in the pool swore under his breath, even though he perceived the tear that trembled upon the lady's eyelash. It was impossible to be sympathetic while something slithered between his ankles.
"My mother must have thought the way I do, I am sure," persisted Edna. The remark brought Aunt Randii out of the past with a jerk.
"Jan-Elaine had the most pitiful experience of all, child," she replied. "She married. Shortly after you were born, she died, thankfully spared all knowledge of your father's faithless fickleness. Edna, he, too, married again! You, Edna, were too young to protect yourself from a stepmother, but we came to your rescue. Your Great Uncle Potor had just died and left us this fine estate, and here we are, trying to shield you from the wiles of the Destroyer, Man!"
"Some men must be nice, or so many, many girls would not want them," reasoned Edna. She looked sidelong at her aunt. "The holomags exist forsomepurpose." Obi-Wan marshaled arguments in the defense of his sex. It made a pleasant distraction from the midge buzzing over his ear.
"I'll not deny, dear, that someseemquite nice," admitted Aunt Randii with a sigh as soft as a baby's cheek. "There was one in particular ..."
The nek dogs interrupted at this moment with a raging struggle for some white trailing article.
"Nowwhat have Milo and Gloria got?" cried Edna, jumping up to give chase in a healthy and delightful burst of speed.
The man in the pool realized with a grimace that Milo and Gloria had his missing outer tunic. Obi-Wan's teeth were pounding together now as loud as the hubbub in Coruscant's spaceport. Edna returned, flushed to the color of a red summer rose by the exercise.
"I couldn't catch them," she panted. "My stars, but I am warm! There is plenty of time for a plunge before dinner. Just wait, Aunty, until I run for the swim suits," and she flashed away again.
As Aunt Randii reached around to undo the top button of her gown just under her knot of graying hair, the hidden Jedi grew so warm that his shivers stopped. Obi-Wan's dilemma was unspeakable and unsolvable, seemingly, but suddenly it was solved for him. Milo and Gloria came back.
The tunic had been shredded and they sought fresh diversion. After cordially barked invitations for Obi-Wan to come out and play, they went in after him. Gouts of water splashed as high as King Frane's head as the neks struggled and shrilled some more. Presently a muscular bare arm pulled aside the green branches and the face of a damp Jedi appeared to the astonished gaze of Aunt Randii.
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TBC