YOUNG BLOOD ( A. SKYWALKER ) [1]

VII.

"Stay still, Ani. Let me clean this cut."

The young Padawan girl rolled up the blonde boy's sleeve carefully, her dark brown eyes fixated on the small cut on Anakin's forearm. The boy suffered the small wound earlier today while he was working on his Podracer, which seemed to be running and in excellent condition.

She was incredibly happy that his creation seemed to be working perfectly, and she was a bit ecstatic that Ani finally showed her his Podracer, which he did promise to show her a little while ago.

As she used some clean cloth to clean Anakin's cut, the young boy tilted his head and looked up at the infinite number of stars shining in the Tatooine sky at night. He had a small smile on his face as his bright blue eyes took in the marvelous view that could only be seen at night, and took a moment to attempt to speak to the young girl.

"There are so many!" Layna glanced up at the boy for a second, brown eyes meeting blue once again. She stopped rubbing the cloth on his wound for a little while, looking up at the velvet sea of stars shining above them. "Do they all have a system of planets?"

Anakin hasn't been on any other planets other than this desert, and Layna understood his curiosity very well. She had the same thoughts around two years ago, whenever she looked up at the Corellian sky at night. She had always wondered what it was like out there, outside Corellia, outside the world she grew up knowing. She would always find herself looking up at the stars, dreaming of the time when she would finally leave Corellia and explore the various star systems out there.

Layna knew that ever since she was a tiny child, that she wanted a chance to explore the galaxy and cross out as many of those systems as possible from her list. She always has been such an adventurous girl, craving new adventures like this one every now and then.

"Most of them," she replied, looking back down at Anakin's wound, cleaning it off once more. She then began to use disinfectant on it, hearing the boy wince a little bit due to the stinging pain but it soon faded away as he began to ask another question.

"Has anyone been to 'em all?"

A chuckle sounded from the girl's lips, as a huge grin broke out onto her face, causing the boy to pull his attention away from the stars and onto the beautiful creature sitting in front of him instead. "Probably not," she answered, crinkles appearing right by her eyes as she gave him a rather genuine smile. "Okay, I seriously don't think anyone's been to all of the star systems. There's like more than a thousand of them out there!"

Anakin was sporting a huge grin on his face as he announced, "I wanna be the first one to see them all!"

Layna felt warmth seep into her chest as another laugh escaped her lips, her chocolate brown eyes twinkling as she took a small bandage to place on the boy's wound. "If you plan to do so, please take me along. I do love a great adventure."

"I wouldn't go without you," he admitted, and the brunette raised her dark eyebrow at the smiling boy who tapped his fingers on his thigh. "It wouldn't be any fun if you didn't come with me anyways."

Layna was touched when she heard her friend utter those words, and her huge smile grew even more to the point that her cheeks started to hurt. "Adventures are more fun when you're with someone you're close with," the Padawan nodded, recalling the thrill she got whenever she had adventures with Master Sola. Anakin nodded in agreement, opening his mouth to say something but was cut off by the sound of his mother calling his name. "Ani, bed time!"

Layna then plastered the bandage onto Anakin's arm, placing the bload-soaked piece of cloth to the side. Her gaze wandered to the boy's face, which was pretty close to hers this very moment. She slowly leaned away, her cheeks turning a bright pink due to their close proximity and cleared her throat. "You should get to bed, you wouldn't want your mother to get mad."