Private All We Are

[Starlin Rand]

Community Meditation Room
Silver Rest, Kashyyyk

Starlin didn’t think he much liked meditation. Don’t get him wrong—it could be peaceful and relaxing. But for the most part, Starlin was an active person who needed to be moving around and doing things, not just sitting alone with his thoughts.

But his master had given him the task of meditating for longer than a few minutes, which was the usual length of time he could go before he simply had to get up. He hadn’t been there for long, and already he was itching to stand, stretch, wiggle his toes, whatever. Anything at all but sitting here on this cushioned blob.

He risked a peek around the room, opening one eye. There were a couple of people seated on the other mediation pads, looking much more relaxed than him. What was up with him, seriously? It wasn’t like he was hopped up on caf or some other substance. He didn’t drink that stuff. He’d given up the drugs a long time ago, and he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. Why was he so wired? It almost felt like something was about to happen…

The door to the meditation room slid open. Starlin shut his eye and held himself perfectly still, hoping the newcomer wouldn’t notice his agitation.

Xian Xiao

 

[Xian Xiao]

Her own master had sent her to learn how to meditate. One person she had met had suggested she try to focus on something that made her comfortable. Sometimes going through certain actions and whatnot helped this other woman the ability to meditate. She had asked Xian what she liked to do and that was to cook. Not the cooking you most often find with a processor, but actual cooking with the real ingredients to accomplish this. Now she had been sent to a meditation room and the teen was at a loss. Letting out an exasperated sigh, she opened the door to the room waiting in front of her.

The girl was wearing a nice and traditional robe that fit her perfectly. Since she had joined the Silvers, she had let her hair grow a little though it was still dyed red and she would keep it that way. In tribute to a lady that had rescued her and taken her to where she had grown up on Coruscant. There was no lightsaber at her side but that would come in time. Right now, she needed to focus on the basics and meditation was just one of them.

Hardly wanting to draw any attention to herself, she attempted to find a spot in the corner of the room and sat down. Noticing the Master at the front, she nodded and then closed her eyes. All of a sudden her leg started itching. Reaching a hand down to take care of that issue, it wasn't long before another body part decided to join in making her itch.

It almost seemed like neither her mind nor her body wanted to just sit peacefully. Almost growling under her breath, her eyes popped open, and hoped her actions weren't being noticed by those near to her.

This just wasn't going to be a strength of hers. Wanting to get up and move, the Padawan closed her eyes again and changed her tactic. Thinking about cooking, her hands moved up in front of her and she mentally started going through the motions of cooking food.

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

Xian Xiao

With his eyes still closed, Starlin sensed the movement of the newcomer as they made their way to a cushion. Things went quiet again for a little while, but then he sensed more movement again, coming from close by. Repetitive motions, like somebody was waving their arms around…?

Cracking one eye open, he risked a peek. It was a girl around his age, a curtain of dyed red hair hiding her face from his view. Her hands were moving in a ritualistic fashion, as though she were performing some specific action. Starlin stared at her in bewilderment, trying to figure out what she was doing. At first he thought she might be pretending to play a musical instrument, then he thought she was folding imaginary laundry. Finally, it clicked. Cooking. There’s the pan on the stove, she put the food in. Now she’s taking a pinch of salt and sprinkling it over the food. Picking up other bottles of spices and adding them…

Smirking, he leaned toward her. “Pssst,” he whispered. “Can I have some of whatever you’re making?”

Once he grabbed her attention and she looked right at him, the smirk faded, replaced by wide-eyed confusion. Her face was familiar to him. Whatever memories were tied to that face were buried deep in his subconscious. Mid-childhood, probably, though he still couldn’t quite place a name to her face. Eyeing the Master overseeing the trainees, Starlin turned back to the girl and softly asked, “Hey... do I know you from somewhere?”

 

[Xian Xiao]

For probably one of the first times in her life, Xian had just found some sense of peace in the meditation exercise. As her hands fell to her sides in a relaxed manner, a whisper cut through into her mind asking for the food she had just imagined making. Opening her eyes, she was startled and she looked at the person that had spoken to her.

Another teen that was slightly older than she was and looking at her with some confusion. Returning the look, she started nodding. Leaning closer to him, her dark eyes scanned the room to find the Master teaching the class. Her eyes were still closed but Xian sensed she was somehow paying attention to what was happening in the room.

"When I actually make it, yes..."

Giving him her full attention, the confusion wrote more strongly in her features.

"From my childhood. After my parents died. I went to live on Coruscant. I think we met there."

Her face would be the same or close, a few years older but otherwise similar to what it had been when she was younger. The red hair might be different though. While she had been sporting this for a few years now, they could have known each other before she had started.

"I'm Xian Xiao."

Hearing the clearing of a throat, she turned her attention back to the front of the room and saw the Master looking right at her. Coloring a little, but not even trying to resume meditation, she attempted to lead Starling out of the room. More by motion than grabbing him, but if he didn't get the message, then that grabbing would occur.

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

Xian Xiao

Starlin made a face at the Master glaring at them, then tiptoed out of the room and into the hallway. Once the door slid shut behind them, he replied, "That makes sense. I've lived on Coruscant since I was nine years old." Though he frequently stayed here at Silver Rest and various other SJC sanctuaries, his family remained on Coruscant, and he considered it his true home.

Xian definitely rang a bell, but he still wasn't quite sure what the circumstances of their previous meeting had been. He mulled over it, then realized he hadn't even properly introduced himself yet. "I'm Starlin Rand. I think... you may have stayed with my mother at one point. Her name's Jen. She used to let strangers spend a night or two with us, people who didn't have a place to stay otherwise. Usually it was kids around my age." He scratched his nose thoughtfully. "Did you used to have trouble reading when you were a kid?"

 

[Xian Xiao]

The message was picked up and the two of them soon found themselves outside of the classroom. Digging the tip of her foot into the hallway for a moment, Xian looked up when Starlin mentioned his mother. Though she hadn't gotten the name of the woman before, the situation seemed familiar.

"I spent nights at various places after the Sith destroyed the area I lived in. So I might have stayed there."

When he asked if she had trouble reading, she let a breath out through her nose and nodded. As he scratched at his nose, she gave him a closer look. They were close to the same age. Just a couple of years difference so...

"It makes total sense then. Nice to meet you...again? Yes, reading is not something I'm good with. What I can do is cook though. Do you want me to fix you something to eat? C'mon, there's an area not far from here where we can cook and hang out."

Barely waiting for him to reply, Xian started taking a few excited steps away and then turned around to look at him again.

"We don't have to if you don't want to. I seem to always be hungry! Are you the same?"

Moving past or trying to the subject of reading, she attempted to change it back to cooking.

"If you don't know how to, you can learn."

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

"I spent nights at various places after the Sith destroyed the area I lived in. So I might have stayed there."

“Yeah,” Starlin muttered. Jen had been a drug addict back then, but war brought out the best in her. She met his stepfather not long after and finally got clean.

Xian didn’t seem all that happy about him bringing up her reading problems. “I uh, didn’t mean anything by it,” he blurted, starting to backpedal. He didn’t want to seem rude. “It’s just that, I think I sort of remember you, and that’s… one of the things I remembered.” As if her difficulty with reading was her only memorable trait. Great, Starlin. Smooth operator.

He was grateful when she changed the subject to cooking. “Oh, yeah. I love food. Food is great. I’m very hungry, actually.”

It was true; if he had stayed in the meditation room any longer, his stomach would’ve eventually started growling. Right about now was his usual lunchtime.

He followed her down the hall, noticing the shift in her attitude with relief. So he hadn’t offended her, good. If there was anything in the world he hated, it was getting off on the wrong foot with somebody. Especially girls—it was hard enough for him to interact with the opposite sex without coming across as a complete dork, though he tried to just be natural with everybody. Xian seemed a bit awkward too, or maybe she was just excited.

"If you don't know how to, you can learn."

“Eh, I can cook,” he replied. “Kind of.” His dinner last night had been microwaved Spaghetti-Os with freshly grated Parmesan on top, but that had more to do with his being tired and lazy and not wanting too much fuss before bed. “I'm open to learning more, though.”

Xian Xiao​

 

[Xian Xiao]

Of course, he didn't mean anything by saying she couldn't read. When Starlin said he sort of remembered her, that was the one thing that came to his mind. Rolling her eyes but keeping quiet about it...

"It's something I'm working on. Reading that is. Cooking is actually really good for that since there are recipes I have to read."

Attempting to drop the subject, it was still present in the conversation. However, taking the lead to where they could get food helped provide the distraction.

As if she could read his mind and thoughts, Xian turned her head to look behind her before speaking what she felt from him.

"I'm not offended, Starlin. Admitting one can't read well in this day is hard to do. Think of it this way, much like cooking. One can learn to do both and I am getting better. Though I've always been really good at cooking. Just following my intuition there, that doesn't work as well with reading."

Even though she was talking about a sore subject, her attitude remained high, happy, and hopeful as they walked together. Looking ahead now, her steps got a little faster as the smell of cooking food filled her nose.

"We're almost there. What do you mean, kind of?"

Rounding the corner, she had taken him to a room that looked like it was part of a Home Ec class. Maybe that's what it was but she was comfortable here. Luckily Starlin wasn't the only boy there and she hoped he wouldn't be uncomfortable.

"What do you want to eat?"

Picking a station that was empty, the teen opened the door to look around at the food offered.

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

At least Xian was still happy and bubbly. That must mean he was okay in her eyes.

"I usually don't bother to really go all out when it comes to food," he replied. "It isn't like I can't cook, I just don't have the time to make something that isn't a pre-cooked frozen meal or something you can dump out of a can and toss in the microwave."

He shrugged, his eyes glinting with mischief. "I've made a few ignorant blunders, of course. Putting tin foil in the microwave. Trying to heat up food in a glass bowl on the stove. Being too lazy to grease the pan first. But I survived it all, and now I know what not to do."

Assuming he could even figure out what to make in the first place. Starlin looked inside the cabinet and was instantly paralyzed by indecision. There were so many choices, many of them unfamiliar to him. He wasn't exactly a gourmet; the diet of a typical street kid on Coruscant consisted of Huttburgers, chicken nuggets, and Mom's spaghetti.

"Uh... uh... I dunno. Why don't you pick? I'm sure whatever you make will be delicious."

Xian Xiao

 

[Xian Xiao]

Listening as he spoke about his lack of cooking skills, Xian laughed a little. Not at him exactly since that would just be mean but she did find it humorous that for once she was better at something than another person.

"Oh! But it doesn't usually take long to cook something from ingredients. Usually, it takes longer to bake than it does to get it together."

Tilting her head at some of his comments, she didn't quite understand all of them. Starlin was an interesting person and she wanted to provide him with something more to remember her by than her poor reading skills.

When he asked her to pick out what to make, she shrugged and elbowed him out of the way if he hadn't moved already. Taking a few spices down, she took out some meat as well and set a selection of vegetables out on the counter in front of him.

"I'll pick the meat if you pick the sides. Then I'll show you how I cook and next time you can try...if you want."

Again her confidence started failing her and Xian felt like a young girl with him. Trying to hide her feeling, she unwrapped the meat and put it on a plate to get seasoned.

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

"That's true." Most of cooking was waiting for things to heat up. "Like I said, I usually just don't have the time."

She seemed a bit confused when he described his mistakes. "If you put anything metal in the microwave, it bursts into green flames," he explained further. "Something about the way it heats things up doesn't react well with metals. It'll poison the food. And heating up a glass bowl on the stove will cause it to shatter. I tried to make a cheese sauce one time as a kid, and there were no pots or pans clean, so I used a glass bowl and... well, let's just say it's a good thing none of the glass shards hit me in the face, or I could've gone blind. Not greasing the pan will cause the food to stick to it, it's a pain to clean up and you lose some of the food. But of course, you don't know about the consequences of such silly mistakes because you're a culinary genius." He gestured with a chef's kiss, grinning.

Glancing over the vegetables, he pointed to something that looked vaguely like asparagus. "Let's go with this. It's... green." He pointed to another vegetable that looked kind of like broccoli, except it was blue. "And this. Those two will go together, right?" He looked at her sheepishly.

Xian Xiao​

 

[Xian Xiao]

Having made up her mind to focus on preparing the meat, just going through the motions might look similar to what Starlin had noticed earlier. Even though the teen was working on getting the meal ready to cook, she did listen to what he was saying.

"Most of my cooking was done on the streets. Where we cooked with whatever was at hand. Rarely was anything baked for us but it's something I learned by watching bakers."

Not mentioned the thieving she had done to some of those cakes, Xian looked at the vegetables he had selected. Pulling them over to her, she put a few shakes of seasoning on them and placed them with the meat.

"I'm glad too. I mean that you didn't get hurt with the glass."

Selecting a sturdy glass dish to cook the meat in, she put it all together into the oven next to them.

"You know...We could heat this up ourselves. Do you know how to do that? It saves time in cooking and we could be eating in just a few minutes instead of the hour."

Bending down to take the dish out of the oven, she hoped he would miss the blush she had on her face.

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

"Most of my cooking was done on the streets. Where we cooked with whatever was at hand. Rarely was anything baked for us but it's something I learned by watching bakers."

"I was the same way," Starlin said. "I mean, my mom would cook really basic stuff with cheap ingredients. There were a few times where we didn't even have that, and we wound up having energy pills for breakfast. Mmm, tasty."

Xian seemed satisfied with the vegetables he had picked out, thankfully. He watched her season them and put them in the glass container with the meat.

"I'm glad too. I mean that you didn't get hurt with the glass."

"I'd prefer to keep my original eyes, definitely. No offense to all the cyborgs out there." He almost joked about his eyes being too beautiful to lose, but he didn't want to sound vain. People had complimented his eyes before, so he guessed they looked nice, but there were plenty of blue-eyed people in the galaxy. He was nothing special.

Xian asked him if she knew how to heat the food up without using the oven. "Oh, you mean like Pyrokinesis?" Grinning, he snapped his fingers, sparking a small flame which floated above his thumb. "Being apprenticed to the Flame Geist has its uses. Probably shouldn't try to heat it up this way in a glass container, though. Unless... uh, I've never tried just producing heat instead of flame, but I could try?"

Xian Xiao​

 

[Xian Xiao]

The girl couldn't help but shudder a little at the thought of taking energy pills for a meal. Though she had been there before, she wasn't going to admit that to Starlin. Then again maybe she should...it would just be another way they could find common ground and a connection.

"I've done that before too. Better than getting good out of the garbage of a restaurant. Sometimes those scraps were just nasty! Ugh. I hope I never have to go back to that lifestyle."

Putting a few finishing touches on the food, she chuckled when he said he would like to keep his original eyes too.

"I like them. Cybernetics can be creepy too. No emotion in what they look like. At least the mechanical parts. The rest you can see just fine."

Xian suddenly felt like she was almost babbling and closed her mouth to listen to his answer. Nodding when he said Pyrokinesis, she motioned to the food in front of them.

"Exactly that! I took a lesson...unneeded I might add at a hotel and got free food from it! Watch!"

Instead of producing flame, the teen focused on just cooking the food.

"You see it's not exactly flame but simply heating up the food. It's sooooo easy. Once in a while, it is nice to actually allow it to cook naturally. I'm hungry now though."

Crossing her arms in front of her, she watched the food in front of them heat up through the Force. After a few long minutes, it started to look like it was almost done. Pointing to one of the cupboards, she asked Starlin if he could get them some plates down to eat with. When she sensed the food was done, she took out a large knife to start cutting it up.

"You can try next time if you want. I'm sorry I just took over. We can eat now!"

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin knelt on the floor and peered over the edge of the table, watching the food cook. "Food, glorious food," he sang when she said it was done, hopping back onto his feet. He waited somewhat impatiently for Xian to place his serving on the plate, picked it up, smelled it, cut off a bite-sized piece and touched it to the tip of his tongue, blew on it to cool it off, and finally tasted it.

"Mmmmm. That is tasty." He took another bite, chewed and swallowed. "Woo! Xian, you've done it. This is the best food I've had in a long, long time."

Several of the other students in the room with them turned to stare. He shot finger guns at them, then sat down to quietly and peacefully stuff his face.

One of the others turned to his friend and whispered, "I'll have what he's having."

Xian Xiao​

 

[Xian Xiao]

Laughing at the reaction of Starlin, the teen felt wonderful and happy. Pulling the plates to her, she took out helpings for each of them and put his plate in front of him. Noticing he smelled the food and complimented her, she smiled across at him. When the other kids around them wanted some for themselves, she shrugged her shoulders and turned her attention back to Starlin.

"Cooking is the easy part. Getting the flavoring down is harder. Don't want to put too much or too little spice in. I'm glad you like it."

Sticking her food with a fork, Xian took her first bite and closed her eyes as she chewed on it.

"Next time, you try!"

Leaning forward to be a little closer to Starlin, she finished her bite before glancing at the door.

"Do you think we're going to get in trouble for skipping that meditation class?"

Starlin Rand

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin stopped in mid-chew, looked at Xian with wide eyes, then quickly checked his chrono. Sure, they had skipped meditation class, but he wasn't in there because he had to be. He did, however, need to be in a lightsaber combat class in about...

Chewing and swallowing his food, he said, "You just reminded me - I have to be in another class in seven minutes." Returning to his plate, he devoured it with relish, eating as fast as he could without choking. It was like watching a dog eat, and roughly as noisy. A group of girls seated at another table giggled amongst themselves at the sight.

When he had finished (and licked the plate as well, it was just that good) he stood up. "Well, Xian - it was nice seeing you again, and eating your food." He found her hand and shook it. "If I could afford you as a personal chef, I'd hire you, because you are a very good cook. I... um..." Unable to think of anything else to say, he blurted, "... Bye!"

With three minutes to spare, he bolted out of the Home Ec room and headed for his lightsaber class.

Xian Xiao​

 

[Xian Xiao]

When Xian mentioned getting into trouble for skipping class, she hardly expected him to eat and run. With hardly another word shared between them, she watched as Starlin wolfed down the rest of his food. Shaking his hand in some confusion, she was left in stunned silence.

"It was nice to see you again too..."

Saying this to the empty spot left by him, she gathered up the plates they had used and finished washing the area up. Nobody else approached her and she quickly left to figure out what she wanted to do next.