TITLE: Natureboy

AUTHOR: Briony

(Hippediva@aol.com)

ARCHIVE: M_A, WWOMB, my site, all others just ask

DISCLAIMERS: George own them. I'm just playing...no cash...

PAIRING: Oh....I'll never tell....well, Qui and somebodies....<G>

CATEGORY: I dunno...canon with a twist?

RATING: NC-17

FEEDBACK: is always treasured..(.please use the AOL addy).

SUMMARY: A young Jedi wanders off. This Samhain offering is dedicated to my wonderful Padawan, Hellsmouth. Special thanks to Tem Ve for the luscious picture that inspired this story. <Evil Grin>

Natureboy 1: Into The Woods

by Briony

Qui-Gon shifted his weight and tried to find a comfortable place to stash his long legs. His Master was deep in conversation with Count Merna and he struggled to keep his head from nodding and his eyes from closing. Outside the long, arched windows, Thurasa's landscape beckoned, its fields plowed under as the harvest neared its end. There would be a huge banquet and festival tonight celebrating the end of the growing season and the start of dark winter. He had arrived with Master Dooku two days earlier to finalise the trade terms between Thurasa's noble elite and the Republican Free Trade Association. They were guests of honour for the celebration and Qui-Gon's initial flush of pride and accomplishment had faded into intense boredom as the formal speeches droned on and he was relegated to a nodding puppet at his Master's side. For two days, it had taken every bit of the restless young man's discipline to reign in his curiosity and energy and make himself appear every inch the very proper and respectful Padawan.

Forty-eight hours with little or no exercise, half-asleep with boredom and feeling weighted down by too much over-rich food had worn his patience to a nub. He shifted again with a stifled sigh, dropping his eyes as his Master glanced at him disapprovingly. He felt his cheeks grow hot and bit his lip, trying desperately to release the cramp in his left leg into the Force.

// Padawan, stop fidgeting like a crecheling. //

Qui-Gon nodded imperceptibly and wished to every deity he knew that he had the skill to will away his blush. He was twenty and, although at the top of his classes in most things, certain humanoid emotional responses were still beyond his ability to control. He made a mental note to attend his lessons in involuntary motor control and stared at a cobweb in the corner as it wavered and trembled in the currents of fireheated air.

Twenty minutes later, the cramp was intolerable and he shifted again.

This time his Master spoke aloud.

"Padawan, perhaps you would like to go for a walk."

It was not a question and Qui-Gon felt the tips of his ears burning as he quietly rose and retrieved his robe, trying to leave as silently as possible. The Fates were laughing softly as his numb left foot turned underneath him and he stumbled gracelessly out the curtained door.

Cursing under his breath, he shook his half-asleep foot and studiously ignored the chortling servants. Finally stamping the last of the pins and needles out of it, he hunched forward as he always did when embarrassed and fled the castle's dim recesses for the outdoors.

The weather was crisp and cool and he stomped his way through the courtyard, taking in long draughts of clean air. It smelled sweet, of distant chaff-burnings and wood-smoke, of ripe fruit and drying herbs drifting from the kitchens. For a moment, he paused, closed his eyes and simply breathed in the welcome scent of a place free of enviro-generators, hovercars, plasteel
and forced air.

Qui-Gon Jinn hailed from a planet as green and unspoiled as this, although he remembered nothing of his home consciously. Like most exceptionally gifted infants, he had been tested by the Jedi Seekers at a mere 3 months and brought to the great Temple on Coruscant to be raised in the Creche. The imprint of his verdant home was less than a memory and more; it was a signature line to his very soul. Though raised in the Temple's high plasteel corridors, he had instinctively discovered the many gardens and hydroponic bays as though guided by a spirit untamed by the Jedi. For Qui-Gon Jinn was a child of the Living Force, an anomaly among Force-gifted humanoids. His heart and soul heard the call of the wild power that governs the winds and the waves, that sends mountains crashing and creates oceans where once baked
desert floors.

It made him a strange child, apt to drift away on a sunbeam and just as likely to explode with emotion like a thunderstorm. His years in the creche would have been sadder and more difficult had not Master Yoda, ancient and inscrutable, discovered him in a corner of the tropical garden crying his heart out because, at five, there is no greater sorrow than that of being different from
one's playmates. Yoda had taken the awkward boy under his wing and made sure he knew that at least one of the great Jedi Masters understood the voice that called so insistently in his small, dark head.

As the years went by, he'd discovered other species that shared his gift and had been taught to balance the frenzied whispering wildness of the Living Force with the measured calm of its Unifying counterpart. Always struggling to contain the emotions that ran so powerfully through a body growing too tall too quickly, he thrived like an over-energised weed in a hothouse. All his
instructors, most of all, Master Yoda, were well-pleased when he had been chosen by Master Dooku as Padawan at a mere nine summers old. Dooku, a brilliant scholar and swordsman, one of the great Renaissance men of the Order, was particularly attuned to the logic and mathematical perfection of the Unifying Force. All were sure that his instruction would help to balance young Jinn and lead him to great heights of physical and mental prowess.

They were correct and Master Dooku proved a wonderful teacher and mentor to the youth, able to channel and train his extraordinary physical abilities as well as challenge and control his wildly curious, questing mind. At twenty, Qui-Gon had just achieved Senior Padawan status, the youngest in many generations to wear the coveted red bead in his dark braid, and had begun to grow out the Knight's tail. In truth, he thought the stubby little ponytail sticking out behind his rather pointed ears looked silly, but he bowed to convention and kept his laughter to himself and the mirror.

He passed through the courtyard gates and continued down the broad road at a fast pace, enjoying the walk and stretching his long legs to his heart's content. His robe billowing behind him, he strode passed farmhouses and animal pens, where young workers stopped slopping hogs to stare after the tall young Jedi. He saw threshers in the yards amid clouds of chaff, nodded to housewives stirring foul-smelling pots of soap and dye. It was so homely, so rooted in the timeless circle of season and husbandry. Ordinarily, all this pleasant activity would have roused his avid curiosity to help and understand how each task was accomplished.

This day, his restlessness kept pushing him further and further and the road became a narrow cart-track as the farms disappeared, replaced by fallow fields whose fences struggled halfheartedly against the twining underbrush that threatened to take them back into the great forest.

The afternoon sun was high and warm and he paused to take off his robe, bunching it up and tying the sleeves around his waist. His Master often reproved him for such actions, but there was no one here to see him and he did not feel very much like hampering a tramp through the woods with full Jedi dignity. Just to his right, a little path meandered away into the leafy distance
and he smiled, his blue eyes beginning to sparkle. That voice in his head, the one he now knew was the call of the Living Force mimicked a stage whisper and he grinned to himself broadly. An adventure with Nature was just what his caged spirit needed!

"A lovely day, is it not, young stranger?"

Qui-Gon whirled around to stare at the old man leaning on the fencepost behind him. He had not even sensed another's presence and furrowed his brow at his own negligence. His Master would have called it woolgathering.

Bright eyes beamed at him under a tattered, floppy hat and the old man smiled toothlessly.

"I say, nice day, don't you think?"

"Yes. It's very beautiful. Where does that path lead?"

The old man smiled again, empty gums glistening with saliva. "Down into the Greenwood, boy. Don't you know?"

Qui-Gon shook his dark head. "I'm a stranger here, sir."

"Ah." He was mesmerised by the light gleaming off the threads of spittle in that ruined, aged maw. The bright eyes reflected the green of the man's worn cloak.

"A nice enough day for it, lad. But don't go in there, you know. Don't go to the Greenwood. Not at Year-End."

The young Jedi stared down the leaf-strewn path with sudden longing. The Living Force's voice rose a little, prodding him forward with an almost physical push.

"But why? It's a worn path, others have gone there."

"Aye, young sir. Others have gone." The old man turned abruptly and began to walk away up the cart-track.

"Why?!" Qui-Gon called after him.

"Others have gone, but have they come back?" He heard the old man's laughter fading up the road, the quavering voice fading with it. "Beware the Greenwood, boy."

For a long moment, Qui-Gon stared after the stooped figure until it disappeared around the bend. Then he turned back to the little path, where the sunlight danced on brown patches of leaves and the late-fall insects whirred a tune to the wind.

The smell of loam and softly rotting bracken, rich and full of promise for spring, was stronger as he brushed past branches wound with twisting vines and ducked beneath fragrant pineboughs, startlingly dark green in a world of red and gold and russet browns. The sunlight slanted through the high trees, dappling the soft ground with shifting leopard-spots of brilliance. He moved slowly now, winding his way along the tiny track until it suddenly turned out to a small, wooden bridge that spanned a slow-moving brook whose waters danced and rippled in the light.

Qui-Gon paused on the bridge and looked up through the tangle of branches at the sky, patches of soft blue blinking through the rustling leaves. Further down, the stream gurgled and giggled and the sounds of the underbrush in its dark recesses made him whirl around and stare into the waters, eyes searching the shadowy bracken. He lifted his young face to a patch of sunlight and let it warm his cheeks, gilding his lashes and touching him like a caress. He smiled into the warmth of it and let the murmuring, living world around him speak, his heart reaching out to embrace it like a lover.

The brook laughed softly and, through the waving boughs, the eyes that watched him smiled.

Part 2

All around him, the air felt charged, almost electric with an anticipation he could neither miss nor explain. Qui-Gon shook his dark head and plunged across the little bridge to follow the tiny track. The vines snaking around gnarled tree trunks flamed scarlet as they were lost in the sighing branches of gold. Late autumn was in full dress and there was scarcely a hint of green to
the wood. All was decked in radiant glory and jewelled with light that poured down through the trees to spotlight a bit of moss-covered rock, a half-rotten branch black amid the leaves.

There were small sounds all around him, birds twittering and chirping in a tangle of wild grape, plucking the last of summer from its depth. A pair of squirrels chased each other up a sapling, diving into the branches of vermillion and umber, chattering their laughter. Qui-Gon moved quietly for all his height. He paused on the path and bent down, scrabbling in the damp for a few moments, then knelt, holding out an acorn in his hand. Shy and wary, one of the squirrels barked from the branch in low warning, while the braver sniffed forward, standing up on its chubby haunches to rub tiny paws together, then inching forward a little at a time until it could grasp the offering from the big human hand and dart away to safety.

Behind him, beside him, the breeze laughed softly and he stopped, listening intently. The leaves rustled and the brook murmured but he was so sure he had heard something else. He straightened up, laughing at himself and whistled an imitation of the nuthatch high up in the dark pine above him.

The path seemed to wind its way close to the brook but never far from it. He stopped a dozen times to watch a bird in a nest, a rabbit peeking up through the catkins, the slither of a snake disappearing into the clear water that corrugated the sandy bottom into endless waves. The sunlight glanced through a clearing and tickled the back of his neck like the soft feel of tumbling
hair. Low boughs caught at his tunics and leggings like small, clever fingers seeking entrance, slipping beneath the fabric to touch softly at his flesh. There was laughter that echoed the brook's quiet soliloquy and through the russet leaves, he thought he saw a slender shoulder, a drift of flame-kissed hair, a pair of eyes that slanted through the dim, as clear and transparent as
the murmuring water.

He stopped beneath a great arching oak and sat down, closing his eyes, breathless as the sunlight touched his lips, so warm and soft and real. No beam of light could kiss thus, lips as elusive as a dream but every bit as desirable. He didn't dare open his eyes, hardly dared to breathe. Tender touches along his neck made the hair rise up and he drew back in a shuddering gasp. The soft lips claimed his again, and he whirled away, lost in the sensations that seemed to envelope him in a cocoon of golden warmth.

There was no time for all had stopped in the still of that sunshot afternoon hour. When Qui-Gon opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, looking up through a gauzy shroud of russet and ruby into a pair of eyes that might have been the cloudless sky or a tide pool in a shallow rock, so bright and clear were the depths that danced into his, first blue, then green, then grey as a rainy sea. His vision seemed to melt at the edges and the filmy veil over his face caught the sunlight as if spangled with mirrors. A tumble of tawny hair fell forward, tickling his eyelids like the caress of a gossamer web and the rose-soft lips claimed his once more.

His hands fumbled up along slender flanks, their sculpted muscles quivering against his touch. The warm flesh flowed into his arms and the lips traveled soft down his neck to kiss the hollow of his throat. More laughter in his ear and a pointed pink tongue hop-scotched its way toward his lobe, delicately licking its way around to nip gently.

He opened his eyes again, wonderingly watched the lithe body above him arch and flex like a cat as the skilled lips moved down to touch nipples rising hard as though shivered by a sudden chill. Above him, golden leaves created a new sky of light and colour into which the beautiful creature kissing him seemed to melt. The air was pleasantly cool against his skin and, braver now, he reached up to run his hands through the mane of russet hair that slid through his fingers like silk.

For a moment, Qui-Gon simply stared up at the boy, if boy it was, whose eyes were timeless pools that laughed into his. One slender finger touched his lips, a shadowy smile, then the lovely thing stretched out over him, waves of sunset- coloured hair falling over his neck as the lips moved to kiss him once more through the siena-shaded veil.

Lust stabbed at him like a sharp stone in a shoe, and his hands grew rough against the satin skin, pulling the slender body close, inhaling the scent of desire and sunlight. More soft laughter echoed in the golden bower and the clever fingers wound their way down to flutter delicately against his straining hardness, like butterflies dancing around the twitching head, diving beneath to cup and caress his scrotum, lower still to push gently between his tensed buttocks. Those sunlight kisses rained onto nipples hard as small rocks, while the fingers teased and stroked, pulled and petted. His knees flexed, legs splayed open, he stared up at the leaves, eyes dilated nearly black as one finger trailed across his anus, making it twitch and pucker. Another breath of laughter and he made his first sound, a strangled groan of sheer pleasure.

His mouth trembling, fingers clutching at the slim arms, he felt the body shift above him, the slender hands still teasing. Another groan echoed in the still bower as his aching cock was engulfed in a sheathe of warmth, the long hair swinging about his face as the creature perched atop him, surrendering completely as Qui-Gon's mind fractured and his only intent was to drive
himself inside that pulsing heat to the root. His eyes were filmed over, and he stared sightlessly beneath the veil that prisoned him as he was enveloped, welcomed into the warmth of the beautiful body yielding to him.

At the very last moment, when he could feel his balls tightening and knew that the wash of desire would plunge him over the edge, the veil fell away, his face was surrounded by that ruddy hair and his lips were claimed in a kiss that ravished his soul as he speared up into the hot depths of the boy. Faintly, he reached up to gather the slender form in his arms before the deathless eyes smiled down into his and he fell away in the loves' undertow to senselessness.

END PART 2