The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter Seventy-Three: Ready To Start Trying

LUX BONTERI

Lux's father's face was just as it had been in the hologram, but somehow it seemed older in person.

As he ushered the kids out of the White Saber, which was dropping them off en route to Alderaan, Lux took the opportunity to study him for anything different.

Enarion had aged well. Even at seventy, his greying hair was still holding fast to its original dark brown, and his complexion darkened from years in the sun was healthy. His bright green eyes were still as sharp as they had been when Lux had first met him, and analyzed everything that crossed their path for future reference.

Lux put down Anakin, who was in his arms, and let him run with his siblings to hug their grandfather. They didn't get to see him much, and that was partly Lux's fault. The only real motivation he had to come see his father was that the kids deserved to know the only grandparent they had left. Without them, he probably wouldn't visit at all, unless Jani made him.

"Oh, look how you've all grown!" Enarion exclaimed jovially, hugging the four of them tightly. "Alux, you look so like your father – and Aeja, you're the spitting image of your mother. Oh, adesh'leri Enarion, you've been blessed with both your parent's faces, but I think I see something of you in me, too!"

Lux almost bristled as his father called his son 'boy-of-my-honor', the term in his native tongue for a child that had been so named to pay homage to a beloved relative. But the reason he had wanted to name one of his sons Enarion still stood fast, and he would not disrespect his father by showing sign of regretting it now.

"Father, I would speak with you," he said, careful to keep his voice level and calm as the soft tones of Common Onderonian, which the children had not yet learned, flowing from his tongue.

"Surely you can give an old man a few hours more to dote on his grandchildren? After all, it's practically suppertime, and you'll all need something to eat after your long journey," Enarion replied, and Lux felt a twinge of embarrassment – his own accent sounded rusty with disuse in comparison. "There will be time to talk later."

"Daddy, Grandpa, what are you saying?" Aeja asked, her pretty mouth pulling itself into a pout. "You know we can't speak Onderonian yet."

"Then you will have to learn – it is part of your heritage, after all. But for now, what your father and I say will have to remain a secret," Enarion told her, before turning to address them all. "Now, come along. I had my cook prepare an enormous akul steak for you, and it would be a crime to let it sit there any longer. Let's go eat."

Lux watched the tiny nu'up birds flitter this way and that as he walked into the terrace, admiring the bright flashes of rainbow their iridescent wings cast on the low marble walls as the fading light caught on them.

The whispering rustle of the Iziean willows; the perfume of a thousand flowers; the distant roar of waves from the Inland Sea washing against the rocky shores to the west... Lux felt like he was drowning in memories.

Absentmindedly, he reached out to brush the petals of a small yellow and red flower that grew clustered in pots along the low wall that marked the edge of the terrace. The petals felt like crushed velvet under his fingertips.

"Mother," he murmured.

"You can just feel her, can't you?"

Lux turned around, offering his father a brief nod in greeting. He didn't even have to ask whom he was speaking of. "Yes."