Waves on the Sand

Chapter 4

Perhaps an hour, or closer to two later, they returned their surfboards to the rental stand, and strolled back inside, casually holding hands. A couple of shutters clicked, but they ignored them. Lux lead the way through the marble-floored reception to a cluster of tables under a palm tree. Waiting for them at a reserved table were two elegant racks of plates. One rack featured baked products and preserved fruits, along with butter, while the other featured a wide variety of spiced, preserved meat and fish.

Despite her species, Ahsoka still enjoyed tea, and grinned when she saw a pair of bone china teacups waiting for them, with the associated materials that told her this was an 'Afternoon Tea'.

The food was, as Ahsoka had expected from the smell, delicious. Each of the meat and fish products had a different, rich flavour. Lux's scones and finger sandwiches were similarly luxurious, with melt-in-the-mouth scones, crisp cucumber sandwiches and baked-to-perfection dainties. The tea, served without milk, was near-perfect, with floral undertones and an aroma reminiscent of toast and honey.

They lingered over the tea, while waiting for whatever vehicle Lux had hired to arrive. Ahsoka's eyebrow markings rose when she saw the same Rolls-Martine, complete with tuxedo-clad driver, rolling almost soundlessly up the gravel drive.

"How long did you hire that for?" Ahsoka asked, visualizing the value, adding in the driver, and then combining the two for a large number.

"The entire length of our stay." Lux replied.

"Lux..." Ahsoka said, almost too calmly. "That must be costing a thousand credits a day."

"It's worth it." Lux replied. "They've got one they're willing to let you drive, Miss Wrecker of Starfighters."

"That was one time!"

Lux raised an eyebrow. Ahsoka replied by vacuum-sealing her lips to his, before pulling him towards the luxury landspeeder. She bundled her boyfriend into the backseat, nearly bowling over the chauffer in the process. The man swiftly sidestepped the oncoming Jedi, in a way that seemed much too familiar to Ahsoka. She filed it to deal with later.

The landspeeder's seats were as sinfully comfortable as Ahsoka remembered, silken black leather providing the perfect level of support. It was like sitting in an anti-gravity field, except for the glorious sensation of the leather. To her guilty surprise, she realised that both of them were still wearing their wetsuits, despite feeling perfectly comfortable in the heat. With a press of a button, Lux opened a small compartment, which contained a pair of flat-heeled sandals, perfectly sized for Ahsoka's feet. She slipped them over her bare feet, before sitting back as Lux extracted a pair of his sandals.

With lush green jungle on one side of the road and cream sand bordered by cerulean sea on the other, the drive was beautiful. At one point, Ahsoka spotted a groundcar, with a rutian twi'lek standing next to it, commlink to her ear and irritation visible in her posture. Before she had time to pull over the speeder, a van pulled up, and then they swept around the next bend in the road and lost sight. There was a flicker of something on the outer fringes of her sphere of responsibility, before the moving speeder took her out of range of whatever she'd been picking up.

Their destination was one of the planet's wonders: A circle of stone heads, each weighing close to one hundred tons. They were carved in the shape of an unknown humanoid species, speculated to be the original inhabitants of the planet. Several scholars had posited species ranging from Celestials to the Rakata to the ancestors of the human species. What was known, however, was that they were carved from an igneous rock, had been on one headland for about twenty-five millennia, and were somehow protected from erosion by the shape of the cliff.