DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc and 20th Century Fox. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
He stepped back and looked at her body as thoroughly as she had looked at his. Unlike him, Shmi blushed at the scrutiny, but her embarrassment drew a friendly, crooked grin from him. Framed by his long, wildly disheveled hair, the expression made him look very young, and made her feel equally young. An answering grin rose to her features without thought, as if there was some wonderful secret they both knew.
Before she had time to chase that notion, the Jedi had stretched forward to lie on the sand, with his knees bent and feet held exactly together up in the air. He rested on his elbows and twisted back to look at her.
"Come," he said, pointing at the platform his huge feet made. "Sit."
Shmi's grin faltered. What was this? But the Jedi's face still wore a boyish smile inside its curtain of long, loose hair.
//He doesn't look like an eeopie anymore,// Shmi thought. //Not unless it's a sly, cunning, wickedly funny eeopie.//
Shmi took a deep breath. She'd come this far.... She sat down sideways across his feet and twisted to look at him, but the Jedi had flattened himself almost completely facedown in the sand, his hands splayed open next to his head. As she watched, muscles in his upper arms, shoulders, and back began to shift.
He began to roll forward into a headstand, but his feet stayed perfectly level in the same place, her seat completely secure -- until it began rising.
Startled, Shmi clutched downward around the sides of his feet. She peered down, and he was indeed slowly bringing his weight to bear on his neck and shoulders, carefully lifting and straightening his legs to raise her.
He lifted her off the sand to his full height, and then kept going-- Shmi stole another glance down, and saw that he was rising onto his hands, his long hair coming off the sand and draping downward in a straight line below him. It made her the tallest thing in their small, flat landscape, and she laughed.
"Stand up," he said. There was no sound of strain in his voice.
"All right," Shmi said. //This is already crazy; why not?//
Very carefully, she brought one foot then the other up, until she was crosslegged on Qui-Gon's feet, then kneeling. Finally, very carefully, she stood up, her feet across his.
When she was bold enough to look down again, she gasped: Qui-Gon Jinn was supporting them both on the fingertips of a single hand. His body was now tilted at an angle to balance his extended arm, its fingers also splayed, but lightly, as if they were barely touching some invisible wall.
This far off the ground, the night breeze was enough to pull her hair out from her head, and she spread her arms and tilted her head back to let it flow through her hair, just as Qui-Gon had done. Her platform never wavered and the moment expanded and expanded-- and then she was flying -- upward! Faster than her senses could process, Qui-Gon bent his knees and launched her into the air, fully as far as she had been atop him. She shrieked and looked down, and saw that the Jedi was already on his feet, waiting for her, still smiling. In a mere instant she was caught lightly in his arms and lowered to the ground in a single fluid motion. Qui-Gon held himself above her on outstretched arms, looking down into her face.
"There, Mistress Skywalker," he said, warmth inflecting his voice. "Jedi training."
He rolled over to settle down on his back beside her in the sand. "When I was a young boy, I did that with my Master," Qui-Gon said. After a pause, he added. "Just the once."
Shmi glanced over and saw him smiling at the memory.
Master Yoda often sat atop various portions of initiates whose physical morphology permitted, asking them to move him, taunting them for their enormousness and saying "a pebble am I..." It was part of the "size matters not" lesson. How an 800 year old being could retain such a streak of whimsy....
"I often thought he chose me as his apprentice simply so he could go on tormenting me about my great clumsy size."
They lay quietly for a bit, shrugging themselves deeper into the sand, staring up at the stars companionably. Shmi broke the silence.
"How many of them have you been to?"
"Hundreds." He thought. "Thousands, perhaps. Do they have names here?"
"Oh yes," Shmi chuckled. "Good ones. That is the Bantha--" she pointed at the constellations, "there is the Mynock, Sand Worm, the Six Jawa Sisters...." She pointed to a globular cluster. "That one's called Jabba the Hutt, but not to his face." They both laughed, and Shmi continued, "where is your home?"
"Coruscant," he said, bringing his hands up under his head for a pillow. "Most Jedi come and go from Coruscant."
"And you never stay anywhere for long?"
Qui-Gon stared into the sky. The question was deceptively simple, but he did not want his answer to be. A mission could mean years in one place, yet... "We go as the Force bids us," he said carefully. //And the Council,// he added mentally.
"And you are so sure of what it says?" she asked. In themselves, the words could have been challenging, but instead sounded compassionate, spoken with her characteristic soft lilt.
Qui-Gon smiled slightly: it was a Padawan's question, yet also a Master's -- Yoda's "so certain are you?" said to Qui-Gon so many times, at every stage of his life. But he didn't have to give a teaching answer here, had no responsibility to help shape the being who was asking him now.
"Very often, yes," he said, more plainly than he would generally say to Obi-Wan. "Even when there is not perfect certainty, there is often a path, an opening .... or perhaps only the certainty that there *will* be such a path, so that it is certain that one must be patient and mindful until the path becomes clear."
//Today,// his thoughts echoed. //I told Obi-Wan reflexively 'I'm sure another solution will present itself.' I had already seen the boy, but did not yet know that he was the gateway to that new path. Still, I sensed that there was one.//
"Your son," he said aloud. "He has this quality. It, too, is a Jedi trait."
"Annie believes he will travel the stars," Shmi agreed.
The Force stirred lightly, like calm water touched by a breeze.
"You believe it also," Qui-Gon said. It wasn't a question.
Shmi didn't answer.
This time the lovemaking was unhurried, delicate, deeply personal. Qui-Gon Jinn and Shmi Skywalker dallied, murmured, learned each other's bodies in a kind of affectionate detail. It was as if they shared a belief that even though they would never have such a night again, this was a passage between two spirits as well as two bodies.
And this time the boy was not between them, neither in the Jedi's sense of the living Force, nor in the mother's desire to understand this man who was the walking incarnation of her son's fondest dream. They played and kissed and slid in the sand, laughed and nipped at each other, marvelled at the sparkle of each other's bodies when sand grains reflected starlight momentarily as they moved.
At last she lay on top of him, wrapped in the long arms again, no part of her touching the sand, her head tucked in under his chin with his beard barely scraping her forehead. They lay this way as their hearts slowed again, feeling the press and release of their bellies against each other as they breathed, her black hair falling down to tangle into his gray hair, his breath puffing pleasantly across her forehead. They stayed that way for a long time, lapsing into their separate thoughts.