Hunted

XIV. The Festival

The two weeks following Kylo's visit passed treacherously slow for Serela.

Everyday she woke and went about her chores and errands, teaching the children, tilling the garden, preparing the food and consuming it, and everyday she looked around every corner hoping that when she id Kylo would be back early and ready to kiss her again.

She still flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and excitement when she recalled the kiss. Based on what she had been told by Lana and other village girls, the one they had shared was quite chaste. Knowing this still didn't stop her from fantasizing about repeating the act, the thought leaving her with an unfamiliar warm, tingly feeling all over.

Reha still avoided the topic of Kylo in general as much as possible, offering her opinion infrequently unless asked for it. In many ways, life had resumed the same as it had been before.

That morning he had left with Serela she'd watched from the window the entire time, from the door shutting and them taking a path through the ferns, to her daughter finally, thankfully returning an hour or so later, her face still red.

She had been so worried, watching Serela walk off with him, knowing what her daughter had told her, but still knowing even deeper in her heart that she could not foresee the future. While her daughter might be possibly the purest Child of Light in existence, she could still be a fallible human being, blinded by her emotions and the brown eyes of a cute boy, regardless of his obvious unsuitability.

Serela walked around the cottage and her surroundings in a dreamlike state, flitting from place to place with the air of someone so overwhelmingly happy it permeated her every action.

Her lessons with the children were now filled with questions about him.

"How is Kylo?"

"When is Kylo coming back?"

"Will we see Kylo at the festival?"

She answered these same questions over and over again, always amused that the children were almost equally as excited about his return as she was.

As she and the young women of the village rehearsed their steps, her steps, the importance of the festival took on new meaning for her. This was her chance to show him her home, and all the people in it, for him to see her planet and her people as more than untamed pioneers in a vast forestland.

"Someone must be excited for the festival in a few days," the women teased good-naturedly. Word spread fast in a village of this size and children are terrible at keeping in exciting news. By the time Kylo had flown off the morning after meeting the children everyone in the surrounding area had already known he was there.

Hoping to give him more anonymity in a sea of rustic folks, Serela had scrounged up some old clothes of her father's to help him also blend in on his infrequent visits. His Senator's robes would have been too auspicious in a place where most families had three sets of clothing to choose from, and upon his death her mother had packed the few shirts and pants she'd kept for him and put them in a box up in the barn, out of sight now that they were out of use.

Serela had uncovered the box, blowing the years of dust off the top before opening it to pull out the plain brown work clothes worn by so many men of Takodana. She held up the garments, trying to guess if they would fit Kylo. Her father had not been nearly as tall as him, and Kylo stood almost a full foot taller than Serela herself.

An old memory surfaced, of her hugging her father on his last visit here before word reached them of his death. It had been her 16th birthday and he'd managed to get away for two whole days, giving his wife some unknown excuse for what could call him away from his work and family for that long, but it had worked.