Private Art

[Iris Arani]

When was the last time she stopped to paint something? Not just a canvas, but a wall. A large, beautiful canvas to cover in all sorts of colors. At least this time she got permission. The scarred Padawan unshouldered her pack as she found the wall in question. Clinking cans hinted at just what was inside the pack, and without a moments delay she pulled out one of the spray cans. Paint, simple and pure. She didn't have to think about anything when she painted. No wars, no doubt, no hate or anger. Missing friends.

Just paint.

Minutes bled to hours. She could never say how long it took her to finish her art, but as she stepped back covered in paint, she was smiling. Different shades dripped from her fingers as she dropped another empty can in the growing pile. She wiped her brow, casually adding more stains to her hair without a care in the world. It was done.

"There."

Cale Gunderson

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

Aleksandr was astounded by the seemingly endless trove of Jedi artifacts and knowledge to be discovered at the temple on Ilum. Cale just seemed happy to show him around. They had been exploring the Jedi stronghold when they came across the girl and her wall full of colors.

“This place is more than I ever could’ve imagined,” Aleks admitted as the pair rounded a corner. “It could use a little more color thou-”

Oh.

That was when he saw it. A mural made up of vibrant blues and deep, crimson reds. There was verdant green, rich, royal purple, and yellow that burned with the brightness of a star.

And then there was her.

The girl that must’ve been the creator of the expansive painting. She had dark hair that seemed brown in the overhead light, though it was streaked with this color and that from her reckless and constant switching between the many hues at her disposal.

That’s a real artist. Aleksandr decided silently. A real artist’s only focus was their craft, and Iris Arani seemed completely and totally saturated in her work.

He would’ve left her to her painting, but the reaction that escaped him was completely involuntary.

“Beautiful…” He whispered into the haze of the evening. His lapse of focus caused a footfall to be misplaced, and suddenly he sent one of the girl’s empty spray cans clattering to the floor. He quickly moved to reunite the can with its ilk, but the damage had been done, he had probably broken whatever focus the girl had been mustering.

“Sorry,” He muttered out an apology. “It's beautiful. Your piece, I mean. The way the colors work in tandem yet never explicitly mix. That’s just really unique.”

“I’m Aleks, by the way. Aleksandr Stirsea.”

 

[Cale Gunderson]

"Yeah, they're impressive places kid. This is a newer one, I'll show you Tython one day, s'where I grew up." Cale wasn't sure he'd ever spoken about his childhood to Aleks, if he had it certainly hadn't been intentional, but whatever had changed in him now made Cale question if it was such a bad idea. What did a little nostalgia hurt anyone? Coruscant was a different matter, one he was not sure he had the strength to face, though he knew he would need to one day. But for now, the promise of showing Aleks more about his life than just the horrific parts seemed promising.

When Aleks didn't answer, Cale realized the kid had stopped to gawk at a girl's work. It was expansive, colors splayed out in every direction, meeting and moving and repeating. Given the number of paint tags Aleks had left across his ship, and the places it took them, it was hardly a surprise it grabbed his attention. The painter herself had something familiar about her, though Cale couldn't quite figure out what as he came back to Aleks' side to look over the fresco.

He let his learner babble and introduce himself to the girl, and let his eyes take in the piece whole. A small smirk tugged at his lips, and a chuckle escaped into the air.

"They 'lettin you do this or is it just worth whatever chores they'll charge 'ya for it?" He asked aloud, turning his gaze to Iris Arani . She must've been the first person to share Aleksandr Stirsea 's little hobby that they'd come across in years, and on the boy's first time inside a Jedi temple, they stumbled on someone of an age with him doing the same exact thing.

"Why don't you ever paint me something nice like this huh kid?" He teased his learner with a sidelong glance before returning to the artist herself.

"Cale Gunderson." He introduced himself quickly, adjusting the long scarf hanging over where his right arm ought to have been, and unintentionally calling attention to his lack of the appendage.

 

[Iris Arani]

At first, Iris didn't even realize they were there. Too off in her own world, watching the colors of the Force shift and swirl around her to make sure they matched up with the colors she'd put to the wall. Even as Aleksandr Stirsea knocked around one of her cans she was just, off. Then finally realized she wasn't alone. Not from either of their voices, just the new colors they brought to her world.

She blinked, turning her head to glance between Cale Gunderson and his Padawan. Iris paused, then glanced back to her art. Oh. Right. There were other Jedi here.

"What do you feel when you see this?" She raised a heavily scarred hand, motioning to the mural. Scars that traveled up her arm, to the lower portion of her face. All of her right side, really.

".. Oh. I got permission." As if finally realizing the two had talked to her, she turned her gaze back and smiled. "I'm Iris."

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

“It makes me feel like I’m discovering something,” Aleks decided. “About myself. The little prisms on the bottom, they’re almost suffocated, like they’re prisoners to their own magnitude. It’s like someone looking to their place in the world and knowing they could be more. And the larger shards- the ones on the outside- they’ve grown into their own potential, and now they stand proud, because they’ve earned it.”

His gaze passed briefly over Iris Arani 's scars, and he felt the strangest sense of kinship to her. It made his mind wander to the marks he carried, his right hand that had been burned so heinously by the Dark Lord Vulcanus, and the scar that ran from his chin to his cheekbone from the inquisitor. She seemed very different to him, but in some ways, it was clear they were similar.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Iris.” He said with a faint smile.

Cale Gunderson

 

[Cale Gunderson]

"I feel like that's a lot of paint." Cale's answer was about as cultured as he was, but Aleks would've come to expect such crude interpretations from him a long time ago. He'd liked art once, a long time ago, but it just didn't mean all it used to, not anymore. He saw the colors, and they said something but as always he felt too tired to really know. What he did know were scars, and hers made something inside him twist. Sometimes he forgot that he'd started doing all this when he was just a kid, at fifteen he'd come to build weapons on this world so that he could fight in a war, if he'd been anything other than a Jedi that would've been a damned war crime.

But they were Jedi, weren't they, and they all had the scars to prove it. Cale's most vicious one ran up his stomach to his collarbone, and he didn't even really remember where it'd come from, or who'd given it to him. It was all just a blur of blazing sabers those dying to them. But that was all this galaxy had for them in the end.

"Smart call then. Good to meet you." Cale looked between the two of them and smiled, it was far past time Aleks met someone other than Cale or Hector that knew to force. Expanding who he knew would give him perspective, and that made all the difference in the end.

"You here to make your saber, or is your master just rotated back this way?"

Aleksandr Stirsea | Iris Arani ​

 

[Iris Arani]

"There is a lot of paint, isn't there?" Iris nodded slowly before crouching down to start cleaning up the spent cans. Tucking them away in the paint covered pack she used to carry her various art supplies. And thought about what exactly Aleksandr Stirsea had said. There was a lot more thought behind what the other Padawan said than she even thought about when she put the paint up. Maybe she should've?

She shrugged.

"Passing through. I like the crystal caves here. The colors they give off is good for my art."

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

“So, do you tag a lot?” Aleksandr inquired with genuine interest. “I haven’t met another spray painter since-” He thought to say Atrisia, but realized the name wouldn’t bear much meaning without context. “Well, not since I was very young.” He settled on. He didn't have many of his tagged items on his person, but there was his blaster, the Thunderer. Painted with a navy blue and gold color scheme that crisscrossed in vertical and horizontal stripes.

This Iris Arani girl seemed a little… whimsical, Aleks had resolved. Perhaps it was a product of her Jedi training, or her connection to the Force. Maybe she had just been born that way. He wasn't going to hold it against her.

Cale Gunderson

 

[Cale Gunderson]

"I imagine. Lots'a vivid colors." Cale conceded, the caves had always been important to him, they held some of his few good memories, and now a few more. He sighed, and listened to Aleksandr rattle off about his own painting antics. It was something he'd never understood, and to say he fostered it would be dishonest, but he'd never condemned it either. Yet now, not an hour into his return he'd found some other kid who did the same?

Maybe it'd been selfish to not face down his past for so long, maybe Aleks had needed this place.

"You taught Hector how to do it, 'dunno if that counts." Cale tried to lighten the mood, to draw away from the pain that had defined Aleks early life, and if he were to hazard a guess, Iris' own youth as well. He wasn't quite sure what to say, the two had a deal in common, but neither was particularly talkative.

"I've been...away for a while, Aleks here's never been to a temple at all before, found him out on the Rim, so I'm trying to help him get acquainted. You mind if he asks some questions? You might know better than me." That'd get them both talking, hopefully.

Aleksandr Stirsea | Iris Arani ​

 

[Iris Arani]

"Mmhmm! I used to tag more, before I realized it was kinda illegal." Yeah, that was something she learned more recently, much to her embarrassment. She scratched at her cheek, which only added another layer of the still fresh paint to her face. Then blinked. Glancing towards Cale Gunderson . Answer questions? She hummed softly, tilting her head. Thinking. Could she actually answer any questions?

Maybe.

"I'll answer what I can, but I'm not the best for it."

Aleksandr Stirsea

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

"The keyword is kinda. They can't put you away if they can't catch ya." Aleksandr joked with a grin, but there was unpronounced bitterness to the jest. The thought of law enforcement being the biggest threat he had to deal with harkened back to a time long passed for the padawan. A time that had been simpler, before he knew of the Force, the Jedi, and their evil Sith counterparts.

“So, the temples. Are they all like this? It just feels… a bit empty.” Bar the meeting of Iris Arani - and, unwittingly - her master Valery, Aleks had encountered very few Jedi since his arrival on Ilum. He hoped this temple was an exception, and not the rule.

 

[Cale Gunderson]

"Yeah, you'd know all about getting caught. you just had to tag that parts dealer's shop after we took that component for the hyperdrive." Cale teased his apprentice, recalling not long after their stint on Rhen Vhar where Aleks had felt theft was the only viable solution to the predicament that they'd found themselves in. In fairness, he was right, but Cale liked to remind him given the number of bounty hunters they'd had to deal with as a result of it.

Ilum was sparsely populated, it always had been, and Cale wasn't shocked that even when it was the nexus of Jedi operations, it wasn't a terribly busy place. But he saved his snide, sharp tongued remarks, and left it to Aleks' fellow learner to answer that question while he thought up another one of his own. He remembered the pack, how they'd all trained together, been raised up together, fought and bled together. He missed them dearly, and wondered if that legacy extended to today.

"Are there other padawans around? Back in the day we used to travel in packs I swear." He chuckled softly, recalling time now long past.

Aleksandr Stirsea | Iris Arani ​

 

[Iris Arani]

The temple was kind of empty, wasn't it? Iris turned her gaze around, looking through the colors to see if there was anyone else really around. Not many, not many at all. "There's a lot of us in the other temples. New Cov has one that was just rebuilt and a lot of us helped out. Padawans. It's.. Yeah, a pack." Briana Sal-Soren had called them a pack once. Was that a normal term for Jedi? She hummed, turning her gaze back towards Cale Gunderson and Aleksandr Stirsea . Thinking. She'd answered both their questions, but there was something Alek said that was still on her mind.


"I got caught once for tagging. Was almost sold into slavery for it."

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

"Slavery?" He echoed with a low whistle. "What did they catch you tagging? The Hutt Cartel flagship?" And though he was only joking Aleks wondered if he wasn't far off the mark. There were only so many places in the galaxy that would enslave you over a bit of aerosol.

"I can kinda relate though," Aleks commented. "I tagged a guy's shop once - just a little piece to remember me by, y'know - and he sent an actual bounty hunter after me. Not just one either." He laughed a little at the absurdity of it all.

Iris Arani

 

[Cale Gunderson]

Cale gave Aleks a glare, but one that softened as the boy did his best to show a hint of understanding. Slavery was a vile disease, one he hated more fiercely than most for it explicitly hunted the weak and vulnerable. He wondered how old she'd been? He wondered what vile things they'd meant for her. Exploitative work, or tasking so physically grueling she wouldn't survive a year? They'd fought their kind before, and that was one of the few things Cale truly enjoyed.

"That's horrible. I'm glad you found your way here." He jabbed Aleksandr Stirsea with a sharp elbow to remind him of his manners and hoped that'd suffice in place of a full apology.

"Might have to show 'im this pack of yours then, can't have him following me everywhere." Cale joked, giving a roll of his shoulders as a smirk traced his features.

Iris Arani ​

 

[Iris Arani]

"Bounty Hunter?" Iris tilted her head. It wasn't a term she was familiar with, despite how common they were in the Galaxy. She'd just never actually met one, or someone with a bounty for that matter. She hummed in thought, trying to figure it out on her own. Which only had her space out for a bit. Gaze back to her art, more or less forget the two were there for a couple seconds. At least it was only a couple seconds. Before she could go minutes forgetting she was in the middle of a conversation.

She blinked, turning her gaze back to Cale Gunderson and Aleksandr Stirsea .

".. Oh, yeah. I can introduce him to some of the others. They're all really nice. Mostly."

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

".. Oh, yeah. I can introduce him to some of the others. They're all really nice. Mostly."

Aleks thought on the offer a moment. Did he even want to meet other padawans? Did he deserve to? An image of Hector Vale swam into his vision, and he reminisced on the only best friend he had ever known. The one he had let walk all those years ago. There wasn't a day that passed where he didn't regret not fighting to make him stay.

If he met new padawans, allowed them to grow close to him, would the same fate befall them? Would they vanish into the unknown as Hector had?

Maybe they would, but Aleksandr had to believe that wasn't the case. He could form bonds again, and he was stronger now, he could make his relationships stronger, too. Strong enough to outlast the turmoil that had torn them up before.

"That uh. That sounds great," He finally settled on. "I'd love to meet your pack, wherever they are." His eyes sought Iris Arani 's foggy blues.

"If they're anything like you are I'm sure they're great."

Cale Gunderson​

 

[Cale Gunderson]

Cale stifled a laugh and simply rubbed his temples with his fingers and sighed. They'd clearly kept him too far away from kids his own age. But still he smiled, maybe these two would get on well, and he could sleep easier when thinking about the grand decision he'd made for his learner without any input from him. Cale felt a twinge of guilt about that, but he tried to convince himself Aleks would thank him later.

"Yeah, uh..." Cale noticed a familiar rumbling in his stomach and recalled memories of the meals he had once savored. "Where's the grub? I can leave you two to uh, talk about tagging or whatever. Or come with, I don't care."

Iris Arani | Aleksandr Stirsea ​

 

[Iris Arani]

"They're either on Coruscant or New Cov. .. Hmm.." Iris retreated into her mind, pondering just where her friends might be. Some were certainly on New Cov. But what about the others? She ran through an internal checklist, getting the details on what she could. At least until her own stomach rumbled and Cale Gunderson asked about food. She blinked, glancing to him, then back to Aleksandr Stirsea . Then smiled and nodded. Food. Food sounded good. She turned, motioning for them to follow along.

"This way to the mess hall."

 

[Aleksandr Stirsea]

Aleksandr had been so occupied with the learning and exploration of the temple that he’d forgotten how much time had passed since they’d set out in the morning. Hours had elapsed, the sun had already almost risen and fell over the horizon. All that remained were the scattered colors of sunset, slowly melding into the deep blue that was Ilum’s sky.

He hadn’t eaten since they left the ship, and his body finally noticed it. He wondered what kind of food the Jedi prepared for their dining facilities. Brain foods? Force foods? Was that even a thing? Probably not…

“So, your padawan friends. They’re on the Jedi temple on Coruscant?” He asked as he moved to keep pace with Iris Arani . “Or, where was the other place you mentioned? New Cov?” The way he said it made it clear he was not familiar.

Cale Gunderson​