Make No Assumptions - Experimentation

Legs crossed in the 'lotus flower', hands on knees, palms up. Eyes closed, back straight, breathing slow and full. One can meditate from virtually any position, but this is the one that comes to mind first. It isn't at all suitable for long 'sleep' or 'stasis' trances, for deep healing, for making each and every muscle relax without a massage. For those instances, one might as well lie prone and pretend to sleep. The holocomedies are right in this much, at least. It can make your legs very stiff.

However, this position, the one taken by the Jedi in holodramas and documentaries, works well for almost all the other meditations. For scrying the past or trying to piece together the myriad possible futures. For watching what is happening far away, for speaking with distant people, for influencing dreams, for trying to forge a connection with another. For becoming oblivious to one's body, for resting in a sleeplike state, for becoming acutely aware of each and every event in one's body, for enhancing one's short-term memory, for various other uses that always slip my mind when I try to list them.

None of those purposes were mine, just now, although I've tried all of them with decidedly mixed results. No, just now I was trying for the secret that I had only rarely seen mentioned even in the oldest of the archives, the one that Kreia had taught to me. The 'recharge', the drain. The state which would allow me to sense and influence the energy patterns of everything around me. I can't reach it unless I've stopped moving completely; the drain is yet another of those skills that I can only barely use.

When I was fully in that state, I was only barely aware of my body. Moving during this trance would be unwise, so that's just as well. I "saw" and "heard" and "felt" and "tasted" my surroundings in an interesting way, bright and rich with currents and burning sources of power. Glowing as brightly as ever, Malak knelt at my back, a solid presence. I could feel and almost taste the thick, strong pulsings of his heart and lungs, the weaker sour note of the infection on his back as it slowly gave ground to his immune system, the constant twinge of neurons firing, the rapid, interesting patter of his thoughts. A moment's concentration and I would be able to "hear" them... no, no, I didn't want that.

Resolute, I turned away, although his brightness burned appealingly. He was my friend; it's not right to probe or drain friends. No matter how bright or interesting. And no doubt he would need his own energy.

I turned away from the nearby soldiers, too. They were tired, and they were allies. The distant blazes of Mandalorians were tempting, very tempting, but I turned away from them. Mine was humbler fare. Humbler, but it wouldn't burn me out or make me take on shreds of a victim's personality.

The ground, to be exact, the earth beneath me and spattered on my robes. Microorganisms and worms and such within it. I could feel the energy of heat and gravity, but I did not touch it. Pull from the creatures in the dirt and they would have some portion of their energies siphoned away. Pull too much from them and they die or at least become severely weakened. Pull yet more and I hurt myself. Pull at all from the magnetic field... well, actually, I don't know if I can affect it in the least. My drain ability is really very weak. But Kreia did tell me that if one of truly great ability pulls too hard at a planet and everything on it, it becomes barren.

Thankfully, I didn't have to worry about that, only about twisting minute threads of power up and into myself without weakening the things it came from or hurting myself by taking too much too quickly. That is actually much easier with simple lifeforms; with more complex ones I start to feel the desire to just take, and take, and take. With the primitive creatures in the muck, I was able to stop as soon as I felt 'full', and I returned to my body, to my normal "awake" state, with a clear conscience. Unconsciously my body had been shunting that energy to the minor traumas it had suffered, soothing them away with an accelerated form of natural healing.

The stockade was quite a bit darker than it had been when I'd started. I blinked in the light of early evening, pulling myself to my feet with a groan for stiffened muscles. That took a lot longer than I wanted it to. I could have just eaten and gone to sleep, and had the same result with a lot less wasted time. I licked my dry lips restlessly. Now, of course, I'm fully awake and not hungry in the least. All charged up with nothing to do but idle. Which means, doubtless, that by the time Ve'vuut wants me I'll be very much under peak condition. I can't recharge for several more days... this was not the brightest idea I've ever had, even if all the scrapes and bumps I just picked up are fixed.

The area where I was, just outside of Tanaab's tent, was deserted. I couldn't blame my tentmates for abandoning me; I must have been under for hours, with no sign that I would come out of it any time this week. Stretching out my senses, I found them a good ways away in a knot of other sentients. Probably a meal.

Malak would doubtless sense that I was part of this world again and come to find me. I stretched languidly and found that my hair was now a solid mass on my head, tightly braided into concentric circles and forming a neat cap that stayed close to my scalp, although there was a short "tail" of sorts that ventured a few centimeters down the nape of my neck, and another in front of each ear. Afraid to snag the thing with my prosthetic's claws, I found no uneven patches or escaped hairs with my right hand, only a sort of cleft running down the center of my skull. Even when I shook my head vigorously, it remained in place, although I couldn't find the rag ties that had to be in there... somewhere.

"That's just ridiculous," I complained out loud, knowing that I sounded whiny and not really caring. "He can't possibly have learned this in a few weeks of 'Telbun Boot Camp', no matter how intensive. Someone must have helped him. I must look like a Senator."

Despite myself, I smiled at the image. Right. A physically active Senator coated in dried mud and sweat, with mismatching prosthetic limbs, marked with scars and concealing a wealth of "potential weapons". The latter part is probably true of any representatives who aren't absolute idealists. Those debates are cutthroat, and the assassination attempts almost as much so. But the rest? Ohhh, I would love to see a Senator more interested in action and results and lives than credit balances and political divisions and reelection. I really would.

Absurdly elaborate though it was, I actually liked the design of this braid. It was very tightly woven- things might snag, but my hair wasn't anywhere near my eyes, nose, and mouth. It was the kind of thing I might wear under a helmet as cushioning. I'll bet if I can get it unbraided I'll have a head full of wafty ringlets, though. And this will be hell to clean, absolute hell. The ribbing I'll give Malak will be worth it, though. Oh yes.

Putting that thought aside, I reached out with my senses again. Malak and the others were still clustered together. I was distracted by the presences of several Mandalorians just outside of the stockade. It seemed that they were standing apart from each other with their backs to the stockade walls, watching for escapees. They weren't happy about it. Hmm... I wonder. Kreia did allude once to using the Force on others to learn their language... nothing ever came of it, though.

Still, I was wide awake and perfectly energized after the drain. Might as well try. I walked towards the wall and the closest guard. Maneuvering so that I stood just behind him with only a few tree trunks between us, I put my hands up, splaying my fingers over the wood at just about head height. Closing my eyes and dimming my hearing, I reached for him. Slowly.

His thoughts came first as flickers of sensation, accompanied by fragments of emotion and a murmur that steadily became clearer as I pressed harder. When the murmur became words, I knew immediately that this particular Mandalorian didn't think in the same dialect that Ve'vuut used. It was the dialect that I already knew, and he was silently resentful about the glory-less task of being a guard. I pulled back and stepped away. No, not this one.

In the end, I tried two more guards, one of them female, before I found the one I wanted. I pressed myself slowly, quietly in, subtly enough that he felt nothing. I tasted his thoughts, feeling the meaning of them as well as the shape and the sound. I pressed deeper and knew that his name was Bendak, formerly of Clan My'rd, now of Clan Tar'kyram- of Starkiller. In a flash, I tasted his plans and ambitions and secret longings, and forgot them just as quickly. Deeper. Deeper, into the part of him that knows the meaning of these words.

I found it, found the part of his mind that I wanted, cut a tiny piece away, and drew the part towards me. A small part; the Mandalorian would never miss it, it would restore itself within heartbeats. Just enough that I wouldn't be fumbling to understand simple phrases. Enough that I wouldn't have to compare a word I heard to similar-sounding words in the dialect I knew, and then translate that; a time-consuming process that sometimes went wrong. Slowly. Carefully.

I drew that tiny fragment of Bendak's mind to myself and pulled it into me.

And immediately staggered back, blinded with pain, clapping both of my hands over my temples, fingers digging deep into my braid and my scalp. My head throbbed like a Wookiee wardrum, lances of agony reaching from my temples all the way through my brain and out the other side of my skull. A strangled whimper escaped my lips, but it was nothing next to the astonished cry of pain that I felt and heard from the Mandalorian on the other side of the stockade. My pain - or perhaps Bendak's - rose until a white haze obscured my vision.

When it cleared, I found myself on my knees, elbows together, spine bent, as other Mando'a dragged Bendak away. I spent a moment worrying- what had just happened? I'd only peeled away a tiny piece of his mind; he shouldn't have felt that. Was he marginally Force-Sensitive? Would the other Mando'a associate what happened to him with the stockade, and punish its occupants?

"Shabla! This is useless," I grunted to myself, standing up. "If he's worth his beskar'gam he'll shrug it off." The blood whooshed softly in my ears, accompanied by a strange sensation. As if I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, missing out on something vastly more important. It didn't feel anything like my precog, so I shook my head violently, and it faded back.

Did it work? Aggh... How in the nine Corellian hells would I be able to tell that, anyway? Hmm... all right, what is the Mandalorian word for 'Corusucant'? Corusucanta? Ahh, hells. They may be two completely different dialects, but there has to be overlap. Fine. I'll assume that it didn't work, and I just wasted more time and energy trying something that I can't do.

Something liquid and hot dripped down onto my right wrist. I blinked, then registered the thin blood and pinched my nose off, tilting my throbbing head back. And on top of that, I overdid myself and have to ride out an overextension headache. With a nosebleed. Well done, Revan. I haven't overextended myself enough for a nosebleed since I was fifteen. Eleven years of careful self-regulation broken on an impulse. Good thing Malak's not here. He'd bring it up over and over like a kath hound with a bone, and for good reason. Stupid, stupid, stupid...

---

Unlike yesterday's bout, this time I came to Ve'vuut. I was summoned, and escorted to her. According to the Republic captives, this only happened when one of them attracted a great deal of interest. Mostly it had been high-ranking individuals, but now and again one fighter proved tougher than his or her fellows.

This flashed in and out of my mind as I stood, legs braced, waiting. This circle, out somewhere in the Mandalorian camp, looked just as rough as the one in the stockade; essentially nothing more than a bare space, although this one was at least blanketed by dead grass. It had rained last night, hard. The circle in the stockade had transformed into a sea of mud. I can fight in a sea of mud- frankly, with my training I can fight in a sea of mud filled with bloodsucking parasites in zero gravity- but I'd really rather not.

I glanced up at the sun, hiding above menacingly dark clouds, and then down at the Mandalorian who had come and fetched me. I did not ask where Ve'vuut was. I knew that he would just stare at me through his visor and tell me to wait. That's what he did the last two times. I can take a hint.

Precog only kicked in when I considered jumping my guard and making a run for it, at which point it told me with an extreme unsubtlety that that would be a Very Bad Idea, particularly since there were at least five other Mandalorians within sight. Still, I toyed with the idiotically bold idea, prodding at my weak precognition in the same way that I used to wiggle loose teeth or poke at bruises. It hurt, but I kept at it.

I'm usually very good at waiting, I mused to myself. I stood outside in freezing rain for three days with no food or chances to rest once, while a celebratory feast went on inside of that damned mansion, and I had no problems with that, other than the obvious. I must be slipping. That, or these Mandalorians are affecting me somehow. They aren't a patient people.

The imprecations of that thought were starting to make me uneasy when I sensed Ve'vuut at last. I saw her walk into view. Without her armor. She paused just at the edge of the circle, giving me the perfect opportunity to get a long look.

Taller and broader than me, with thick limbs, largish hands and feet, and a facial shape that didn't fit perfectly into either gender, my eyes were briefly tricked. Male? Female? It was a rare thing, but on occasions the sense of "male" or "female" in the Force doesn't match the individual's body. I blinked. Female. She wore a sort of yellow-olive body suit covering her from just beneath her chin all the way to her wrists and ankles. It looked thicker and stiffer than the material bodysuits are usually made of, and it was a bit less clingy, but it was clear that she was not only a large woman, but also thickly muscled. Decidedly more so than I am, anyways... hold on, am I jealous?

As if she knew what I was thinking - not hard to do, since she had probably seen where I was looking - Ve'vuut smiled broadly, almost mockingly. Wrinkles on her face folded and smoothed out as she composed herself, and I found myself trying to guess her age. Definitely older than me, and incredibly scarred... makes sense; you don't get to be a clan leader without experience. Forty? Fifty? That hair is graying, but that doesn't tell me much. And she's got one of those facial types that doesn't show age very clearly... I almost missed it when she spoke.

"Surprised, jetii? You didn't think that you could lose to an old woman?" Without the distortion of a helmet, Ve'vuut's voice was a deep alto, surprisingly rich and dry with humor. That humor was replaced by hard-edged challenge in her next sentence. "Or did you think that I wasn't going to fight you without armor?"

Mouth suddenly dry, I had to clear my throat before answering. "No, of course not. You said yesterday that you would spar with me without wearing armor. To make it more fair." Why am I tongue-tied? I fought her yesterday, and this isn't to the death or anything. It's just... an honor, to be one-on-one... focus!

Ve'vuut clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "The universe isn't fair, jetii Rhevan. A true Mando'ade is never without armor. To us, the word means far more than protective plating. You wouldn't understand."

"Try me," I offered, looking her in the eyes. One, set in a long, healed gash, appeared to be artificial; the iris and pupil gleamed more brightly than the eye that appeared untouched. "You might be surprised."

"I might," she allowed, faintly amused again. "I might. But I do believe that we have a previous engagement." Her hands came up and I registered that she held a greatsword in each one, greatswords identical to the ones we'd sparred with yesterday. The muscles in her arms, faintly visible through her bodysuit, bulged as she raised the swords, but didn't quiver. Knowing just how heavy the damn things were, my right arm and the short length of my "real" left arm began to ache.

Still, I stepped forwards and took one's hilt in both hands, left higher than right. It was exactly as heavy as I remembered, not a milligram more or less. This time I used the Force straight away, strengthening my body by a small increment. Without consciously deciding to do so, I shifted my grip on the hilt, wrapping two clawed fingers above the crossguard. Immediately something in the weight or the balance of it eased subtly. I blinked, realizing that the hilt extended past the crossguard in both directions.

Glancing quickly at the grip that Ve'vuut took, I saw that she held her blade in the exact same way. So that's how you do it. I wonder why I didn't pick that up before? My eyes were then drawn to her fingers - several seemed to have been replaced by softly-gleaming mismatched prosthetics, while others had joints capped by metal. It takes a lot of hard living to need only a few fingers or a joint replaced at a time...

I flicked my eyes back up to her face and the faintly mocking smile it bore. Something about that smile, about the way the Mandalorian's cheeks pushed back into it, about the way her eyelids crinkled, bothered me. It was oddly familiar in a way that I couldn't quite place. I took a step back.

"Are you ready, Rhevan?" Ve'vuut asked, more softly than I had ever heard her speak before. A hastily-repressed shiver ran through me as I nodded once, and we began.

*****************************

What felt like years later, I fell into a sitting posture on the ground inside of the stockade and rubbed the bridge of my nose with my stiffened right hand. In response to Malak's question, I exhaled through pursed lips and made the extra effort to focus on a reply.

"No... no, I'm good. That was... that was fun. Much better than yesterday." I grinned upwards in his general direction, still heady from all the exercise. My view was impeded somewhat by the escaping wisps of hair that were flinging themselves into my eyes; it turned out that the elaborate Senator-esque braid was more impractical than it had seemed at first. And Ve'vuut hadn't seemed to care for it, either, but I wasn't going to say that. "I got whupped. I got whupped good, but I gave almost as much as I got. That was great; I can't wait to go again tomorrow. Ve'vuut hesitates a little on the downwards thrust, you know. I can use that."

"I don't think much of your idea of 'fun', Alderaan," Tanaab said, a slight warning tone in his voice. "And there could be trouble if you say that around anyone else. Those 'sparring sessions' are called a lot of things, but 'fun' is not one of them." I looked more closely and was sobered by the old, greenish-yellow bruises overlaid by darker fresh contusions that discolored the boy's skin. I'd managed to bruise myself up a good bit too, but then, I wasn't a young Republic soldier. Or an older one, for that matter. They might think I was making light of their problems. None of them would last a day in Jedi combat training... but then, they don't have to.

"Sorry, Tanaab. I didn't mean anything by it - I'm just high off of the endorphins." I watched him nod, marginally placated. I'll have to work on that... Drawing my legs under my body, I made a minor production out of hauling myself up and brushing off. I still felt good, despite the reminder that I wasn't the only one who got battered.

"We should get you in out of the rain," Malak muttered, then shook his head and repeated the suggestion in a firmer voice. I looked up and had my eyelids spattered for my trouble, belatedly realizing that at some point the cloudy skies had opened up. Not all of the liquid on my robe was mud or sweat, so it must have happened a while ago. Glancing from Malak to Tanaab and back, I decided that both looked much too serious for my current mood.

"I could use an adrenal stim right about now," I announced in my best fogged-by-exhaustion voice, forcing my legs to carry me away from the stockade wall.

Automatically my best friend had a rebuttal. "No, you couldn't. That's what those kidney implants are for." Tanaab narrowed his eyes, trying to see where this exchange was going.

"Yeah, Dantooine, but the adrenal implants never give out a boost," I half-whined. Come on, take the hint, take the hint... you don't want me to think that you're worried, and I don't want you to be worrying...

Bright as he was, Malak picked up on my intent quickly. I could feel him hide a smile that didn't show at all in his voice. "A boost. A boost. Oh, certainly you could call it that. Just like putting starship engines on a swoop bike makes it faster. Not to mention dangerous."

Poor Tanaab failed to suppress his curiosity. His emotions showed on his face with a painful clarity that must have been his undoing at any kind of gamble. Turning so that he could watch both of us, he finally asked, pitifully, "Dangerous? What are you talking about? Adrenal stims are safe for most humanoids, unless you overdose. Or get addicted. I've taken them myself."

"Most humanoids. Not all. Oh no, not all. Not Alderaan here." Malak's expression had taken on the solemn quality of one who was delivering Very Bad News.

Like a small child being told a story, Tanaab asked, completely oblivious, "Why? What happened?" I stepped in then.

"Hey, it wasn't that bad," I protested, just as if we hadn't done variations on this routine countless times before. "I just got ... jittery for a few days and had some trouble sleeping."

Malak cast a look of supplication up at the overcast sky. "'Jittery', she says. 'Trouble sleeping', she says. Sure." He rounded on a startled Tanaab as if desperate. "Three and a half days. Three and a half days, and not only is she wide awake and shaking the entire time, she's jumping at every shadow and puff of wind, flinching as if she's been covered in myrmins."

I tilted my head back and snorted derisively. "All right, it was that bad. My body doesn't work well with that particular set of stims, and I ended up with the runs..." I could feel Tanaab getting suspicious of the 'argument'. Might as well see how long it is before he interrupts... "After which point I found Dantooine here lurking about the girl's refresher, and proceeded to teach him-"

"-Exactly why every surface in a 'fresher is tiled. Easy cleanup of sticky liquids." He maintained his expression of long-suffering patience, and I fought down a laugh that would have ruined the act.

"Hey, if I'd known there was going to be so much blood, I would've knocked you into a shorter sink. Head wounds, yetch." I injected a great deal of condescending pity into my voice. "And you wonder why I try to avoid them."

Tanaab, shuttling his eyes between us, finally blinked and blurted, "Oh, I get it! You're like an old married couple!"

"What?!"

The gullible-looking kid grinned like a furkit in the cream. "Or twins or something. Absolutely crazy and comfortable with each other. I have a pair of maiden aunts like you back on Tanaab..." His face fell slightly, but he pushed on. "I know how it is... I have KP duty... again, since I don't spar often... right about now. You carry on." With an obnoxiously cheerful little wave, Tanaab spun on his heel and walked away.

Malak blinked. "One of these days, that boy will get himself into trouble," he told the air, then shook his head and looked back at me. "You're sure you're all right?"

And I thought it had worked, too... "Yes, I'm fine. This time I definitely got the impression that Ve'vuut was trying to teach me... she's a very hard teacher, though, at least as hard as Nemo was when we were Younglings. Maybe harder. It makes sense... she is a Mandalorian, and a clan leader at that."

"She? Hold on... Ve'vuut is female?"

"You didn't pick that up in the tent?" I asked, rather surprised that he hadn't. Then again, I'm a lot better at 'reading' people than he is... he's lucky if he can sense a well-practiced lie.

Echoing my thought, Malak told me, "You know my 'intuition' doesn't work that way. I pick up on events, not people. How's this- you start at the beginning and tell me what you picked up."

I did so, going through each of the impressions I'd had in the camp, including the odd, subtle feeling that told me that while these Mandalorians were a hard people, I could trust them. I'd only consciously realized that I was feeling it part-way through the duel; this had distracted me and I'd earned a slap with Ve'vuut's sword, so I remembered it now.

I told him about using the Force to try and understand their language, although I did not tell him that I had actually tried to pull the language out of someone's skull. It had worked, after all; when the Mandalorian who fetched me shouted to his Clan Leader during the fight I was able to pick up the gist of what he was saying, although I couldn't seem to translate clearly. Understandably Malak was not happy about the risk I had taken, but I had one more thing to say.

"Ve'vuut makes me uneasy somehow. I'm not sure - it's not that she's a Mandalorian or anything about her personality, or at least I don't think it is. It's - she reminds me of something, and I don't know what it is." I waved my hands helplessly.

Malak frowned, fine lines settling through his skin. He's getting older, I realized with a start. And so am I. We're both still in our physical primes, and as Jedi in this day and age we'll still be in our physical primes, more or less, when we hit fifty. Neither of us is even thirty yet. But we are getting older. He interrupted my musing, driving the question of age clear out of my head.

"That sounds like it could be important... I don't mean to quote Master Vrook or anything, but it could be that your body or your emotional state or... something ... is making it hard for you to figure out just what it is. I think... I know you hate it, Revan, but I think you should show me."

"Oh, no," I said, hearing my voice rise, childlike, with dismay and something akin to pleading. "I hate image-sharing, you know that!" He just looked at me, patiently. I realized that I probably wasn't going to be able to figure this one out myself(not quickly, anyway), and capitulated reluctantly. "Fine. You win. But not until we're in the tent, out of the rain. I hate image-sharing."

Much more quickly than I would have preferred, we were in the tent, and the rain was nothing but a steady patter on the worn canvas. I looked about for Tanaab; unfortunately he was still out on KP duty(whatever that was), so I couldn't use him as an excuse.

"Let's just get this over with," I sighed at last, unable to find an excuse. There was no ribbing, and this topic had never been made into a subject of banter; it was one of those things that just didn't work well in a mock-argument, and so I never became desensitized. Malak just nodded; he didn't like image-sharing either.

We took the position that seemed to work best, Malak in a sitting position, me kneeling at his back. We both did our best to shield. He closed his eyes and I felt him slip into a trance, waiting. I sucked in a deep breath, allowed myself to be distracted briefly by the half-healed sore of his tattoo, and called up the events of the past few hours.

Most vivid, and thus easiest to transfer or 'share', was my first glimpse of Ve'vuut without armor. After that were several instances of her during the fight, mostly while she was on the offensive. Particularly one moment when our greatswords had been locked and our faces had come very close - the Mandalorian's face had been twisted with a kind of savage, exultant joy that lent her a strange sort of beauty. I had seen, in that moment, that her eyes were a steely gray, and one was a very high-functioning prosthetic; shinier and unveined but otherwise impossible to distinguish from her "natural" eye.

Naturally some of my other recent memories leaked through in a watered-down distorted way; of the fight, of living in the stockade, of being captured, of having a left arm fitted onto my body, of waking up in the medbay, of the ambush in the jungle. I didn't know if my attempt to pick up Ve'vuut's dialect made it through to Malak, but if it did he kept silent, perhaps trying to sort through it all.

I felt his recent memories and thoughts and emotions pressing at me- in more than one sense we were too close for image-sharing to go only one way - and did my damn best to resist them, with mixed success. Image-sharing, another of those things hinted at in the Archives, was not something Kreia had taught me, but something that me and Malak and a group of others our age had come up with when we were all ambitious Younglings looking to get ahead. Like most of the techniques we'd cobbled together or invented, image-sharing was highly flawed and only seemed to become more so as the years wore by.

I was able to hold back the mundane details, but more vivid memories, colored by emotion, seeped past my control and began playing in my head. As with all the other times I'd tried image-sharing, they felt strange and alien at first, and slowly swam into focus. I tried not to pay much attention, but it was difficult. Mostly they seemed to be of Malak seeing the Republic captives and silently complaining about the weather and his tattoo as things got into it and had to be picked out; evidently he thought in somewhat stronger language than indicated by his speech. But I also caught him with a frustrated, helpless feeling that applied to the entire situation; he had watched me sleeping and seen glimpses of me fighting Ve'vuut the first time. Clearest and most disturbing was the image of me floating, eyes closed and unconscious, in a kolto tank, accompanied by a flood of roiling emotion; dread, hope, futile anger, fear...

I yanked my eyes open, jerked my head back, and shook it viciously, momentarily disoriented by details like the weight of my hair and the slightly different colors that my eyes saw. I shuddered convulsively and scooted back a bit. This is why I hate image-sharing. I always end up off-balance, as if my body doesn't quite fit me. If I don't adjust quickly, I could be in real trouble next time I 'spar' with Ve'vuut.

As if the thought had snapped him out of that trance, Malak rubbed his forehead with one hand and exhaled slowly. "You know, Revan," he said rather suddenly, "I think your eyes are a bit sharper-"

"Than yours?" I paused and made some comparisons. "I think... I think you're right. And you definitely have a wider field of view than I do. Huh. I've picked up a slight color difference before-"

Malak half-turned to face me. "Same here. Your eyes adjust faster to light, too. And-"

I couldn't help myself, the thought just sort of burst out of my mouth. "How could you possibly call this climate 'hot'? It's humid and a bit warm, yes, but you were carrying on as if it was-"

"Because it is sweltering. Maybe you're perfectly comfortable-"

"No, I- wait, we're not finishing each other's thoughts again..." I waited.

"Are we?" Malak finished. "Without any teachers to annoy with it, too. And now I feel like my legs just telescoped... That's why you hate image-sharing, isn't it?"

"It makes things so much more confusing." I resisted the urge to rub my own forehead. Well, at least I'm not feeling phantom lekku this time... "Now, about Ve'vuut."

"About Ve'vuut," Malak agreed, scrutinizing my face and allowing his eyes to unfocus for a moment, evidently going through the memories I'd shared, frowning slightly. I sat back and waited, trying to readjust to my own center of gravity.

"She looks like you," he told me, coming to that conclusion rather quickly. Correctly interpreting my expression, Malak continued hastily. "She does! Sort of. You're a bit smaller and not as solid-"

"Thanks a lot, 'Lak."

"You're welcome. Anyway, you're built along the same lines, you have the same sort of high cheekbones, and largish hands and feet... similar complexions and voices and eye color, even. I wouldn't be surprised-"

"It could be a coincidence, you know," I offered, half intrigued by the notion, half repelled. "None of those traits are particularly unusual."

"Not by themselves, no. But together? You don't spend much time in front of mirrors, so you probably wouldn't have noticed. That's why she makes you uneasy; you're aware of the similarity but you can't quite figure it out." One corner of his mouth twisted upwards wryly. "Besides... you know that point when your faces were really close and she was smiling? You look a lot like that when you're challenged; when you're about to get into a contest. She looked like you did that time you saw Bolook slip away, just before you started chasing him."

"Huh. I guess you could be right..." I leaned back to consider this, but Malak wasn't done yet.

"When she locked blades like that, why didn't you do that ankle-sweep pattern-dance move you were so proud of last year? Sure, it would be a lot harder with such a heavy sword, but it still would have worked. Ve'vuut wasn't braced properly; she'd have gone down on her rump."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You can't know that. I don't think you picked up more than a flash of it."

"Even so, you should have tried one of those pattern moves. Why didn't you? You can't have forgotten them; they were certainly drilled into us enough when we were kids..."

"I don't know..." I said, realizing that this was true as I said it. "I really don't know. It's as if I forgot all about it; it wasn't even a reflex. Strange."