Private Homecoming

[Milya Vondar]

The starport smelled of cold stone, engine wash, and something beneath both that Milya could not immediately place. She stepped from the boarding ramp and slipped into the flow of foot traffic without breaking stride, entering the unfamiliar space as though she already knew exactly where she was going. It was an old habit. Hesitation was visible, and anything visible invited attention. The bag slung over her shoulder was light. She had packed as she always did, for function and contingency, with the assumption that she would not be staying long enough to need anything she had left behind.

Milya did not generally go anywhere without knowing why. There was always an objective, a contact, some problem she could work against until it gave way. Eshan offered her none of those things. There was no mission waiting for her beyond the starport doors, no one expecting her arrival.

She had come because it was time. It was the closest thing to an explanation she had managed, even for herself. The corridor opened into the main concourse, pale stone rising overhead in clean, precise lines. White and silver dominated the space, ornamentation sparse enough that what remained seemed deliberate. She had spent most of her life among Jedi temples, surrounded by places meant to inspire reverence or contemplation, but this felt different. Familiar somehow, though there was no memory attached to the feeling.

She had known what the Echani looked like, obviously. She had known what she looked like. They were facts so ordinary that she had never thought much about either of them. For most of her life, white hair and silver eyes had made her immediately recognizable in a crowd. People noticed; sometimes they knew what those features meant, sometimes they did not, but she had grown accustomed to being one of very few in any room.

Here, nobody looked twice.

At the edge of the concourse, she stopped.

Her first instinct was to reach for the terminal map she had already memorized aboard the transport, but tourists checked maps. Instead, she let her gaze wander naturally across the space, reading exits and movement, marking security stations and the paths people favored without appearing to study any of them. Beyond the transparisteel, the city stood pale beneath the morning light. Towers climbed in clean lines; nothing seemed wasted. Even the ornamentation appeared to have some purpose beyond simply being beautiful.

She had studied Eshan before coming. Its cities, history, customs, politics. Everything she could reasonably learn before setting foot on the planet had been committed to memory. None of it had prepared her for actually being here. Milya adjusted the strap over her shoulder and headed for the exit. The doors parted, and cold air swept across her face carrying the faint bite of winter.

She stopped at the top of the steps. Milya drew in a slow breath, silver eyes fixed on the city ahead while her expression betrayed nothing of what was moving beneath it. Anyone watching would have seen only a woman arriving somewhere she had been a hundred times before.

That was the idea.

​

TAG: Quinn Varanin

 

[Quinn Varanin]

//: Milya Vondar //:
//: Attire //:

Reaching out to bring Echani home was a risk. She had been advised against it, since it would mean welcoming home people who might not have been ideal for what Quinn wanted Eshan to become. But the woman had a soft spot for those who had been ostracized, or removed from Eshan for various reasons. Already, it was a struggle to sweep the planet of the Jedi's influence, to keep the Mandalorian values at bay, and establish the Eshan her mother had grown up on.

At least the people liked her, but she wondered if it was because they liked her sister and her mother and expected her to be something of the same. Quinn looked at her hand as another advisor lectured her on the choices she was making. She turned over the hand and gave it a squeeze — a reminder of who she was, what she was. The advisor finished as he looked down at one of his tablets.

"Your guest has arrived, Your Majesty." His voice was short, as he didn't quite enjoy a religious leader coming to visit the Queen, in particular a Jedi. Quinn stood up and removed the heavier cloth tunic from her lithe shape.

She planned today's meeting to be more traditional. They would speak like Echani; they would see each other at the core of their being and have that understanding.

Quinn wondered if the woman had expected it, or if this wasn't kosher for what they were going to discuss. Quinn looked at the man and nodded; that was enough for him to realize he was unwanted in the small training room. Quinn continued to prepare as guards and other officials went out to fetch the woman she had summoned.

There had been good things spoken about her, written about her — but like Quinn was to Milya, Milya was unknown to her.

Time passed, and the doors opened, giving Milya a full vision of the training room of the Palace. Mats and banners were strewn along the room; nothing spoke of Sith or Jedi — everything was purely Echani, and even so, the woman who waited in the middle of the room spoke nothing of the Force. Only someone trained in the art of the small would sense the channeling the young Echani Queen was doing.

A smile etched on the young woman's face as she nodded her head.

"Thank you for seeing me, Master Jedi Vondar." Quinn had done her research; this woman was the first step into building the Eshan and reuniting the six sisters.

"I hope you're alright with us discussing things like proper Echani. If speaking would be easier for you, we can also do that instead."

Her smile widened.

"But I have been looking forward to testing my skills against a proper Echani Jedi Master."

 

[Milya Vondar]

She had done enough research on Quinn Varanin to know the Queen was unlikely to insist on all the ceremony her title afforded her, but she still had certain assumptions. An office, a private audience chamber, perhaps somewhere overlooking the city where they could sit across from one another and discuss whatever had prompted an invitation from the Queen of Eshan to a Jedi Master who had never set foot on the planet until today.

The guards escorting her through the palace had steadily dismantled those assumptions.

By the time the doors opened, Milya understood why. Her eyes moved across the training room before settling on the woman waiting at its center. Whatever Quinn wanted from her, she had chosen the ground carefully. Milya stepped inside, and the doors closed behind her.

She had changed after leaving the starport, though perhaps not into what one expected of a visiting Jedi Master. The dark wraps and fitted clothing she wore were closer to the training attire she preferred at the Academy, leaving her free to move without the weight or interference of robes. Her lightsaber remained behind with the rest of her belongings. If Quinn Varanin intended to kill her, Milya supposed there were considerably less elaborate ways of arranging it.

The thought almost earned a smile. Instead, she approached until a comfortable distance remained between them and inclined her head.

"Your Majesty."

The title came naturally enough, though her silver eyes remained on Quinn as the younger woman explained what she had in mind that earned the smile.

"I wondered why your people were so insistent that I dress comfortably. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

Milya rolled one shoulder, then reached across and tightened the wrap around the other hand. Of all the ways she had imagined this meeting beginning, this had always been a possibility her parents had made certain of that.

Some of Milya's earliest lessons had been Echani ones. Long before the Jedi had refined her reflexes or taught her to reach into the Force, her parents had taught her to watch the body instead of the face, to recognize intention in movement and answer it with her own. They had given her the language, even if circumstances had eventually carried her somewhere it was rarely spoken.

Milya knew the Echani arts. She had practiced them throughout her life and folded much of what her parents taught her into everything that came afterward, but she had not lived them as Quinn had. She had not grown up on Eshan surrounded by people who understood a feint, a shift of weight, or the placement of a hand as readily as another culture understood a change in tone.

She knew how to speak, but Quinn had spent a lifetime speaking it.

"I should probably warn you that I may be a little out of practice."

There was amusement behind the admission as Milya stepped farther onto the mat. She slipped the bag from her shoulder and placed it neatly against the wall before turning back toward Quinn.

"My parents taught me. Quite thoroughly, as I remember." Her smile pulled a little farther at one corner. "I just haven't had many people to practice with who understood it."

She approached again, and this time there was something subtly different in the way she carried herself. Her attention settled fully upon Quinn, no longer merely looking at the woman but reading her, watching the placement of her feet, the position of her shoulders, the small movements that preceded larger ones.

"As for speaking..." Milya considered her for another moment. "I came here because there are some things I don't think I'm going to understand from a conversation across a table." It was rare that she offered things freely, but it seemed appropriate given what Quinn was offering.

"So, no. I think I'd rather do this your way."

Her feet shifted across the floor, and Milya raised her hands. The stance that emerged was Echani, but her Jedi training became evident immediately. Decades among the Jedi had left their fingerprints on the way she balanced herself, how lightly she carried her weight, and how little tension remained in her body. There were other influences buried there as well, accumulated over a lifetime of fighting and learning. But beneath all of it was what her parents had taught her. Milya settled comfortably into her guard, silver eyes fixed on Quinn as her smile returned.

"Besides, it would be terribly rude to come all this way and refuse the Queen on such a simple request."

​

TAG: Quinn Varanin