Cat on the roof (D0 Night)

[Mir]

A solemn figure sat on the side of the veranda, his feet dangling. Beneath him was nothing but darkness, with the lights of the city gleaming in distance. Ears twitched as Mir subconsciously scanned the surroundings. Not that he really expected anyone to get here at this time, but old habits died hard.

[Zanja]

A few quiet scrapes from the soft soles of Zanja's boots disproved this assumption. The sounds stopped for a few breaths as Zanja, realizing she wasn't alone, stilled her own movements... but the mobile, pointy ear-silhouettes standing out against the backdrop of the endless city lights made it easy to identify her fellow youngling at the edge of the veranda.

"Hey, Mir."

[Mir]

She had only partially managed to surprise him, his ears twotching towards her direction the moment she spoke. "Ah, Zanja." Mir sounded almost relieved - he almost felt like he should not have been here. "You couldn't sleep either?" A paw moved to pat the stone railing on which he sat on.

[Zanja]

"Not tired yet is all." There was a gravelly hint of defensiveness in her voice as she shrugged and padded closer, slouching against the railing. "I was looking around the Hall of Knighthood. I dunno why, I've seen it hundreds of times. Just wanted to, I guess."

[Mir]

"I came here for the same reason. Kinda. You know to see the legends again." He nodded at the tower behind them. Mosaics, heritage tapestries and towering memorial statues of the most revered Jedi laid within, suspended on repulsorlift pads. "Remind myself of the story of Master Svag. See the tapestries of the code. The statue of Master Wei Mingming. You know. Deep stuff." The farghul boy explained.

[Zanja]

"Yeah. Right." That was all a bit more articulate than Zanja could manage. "It's all so... old. And huge." She slung her backside up onto the railing, drumming one heel on the stone support below.

[Mir]

"Yeah. Makes me wonder if one day there's a tapestry with my face on it." he nodded at the tower. "Would be neat, eh? Here be master Mir, famous for... something cool."

[Zanja]

"Something cool and not at all fatal," Zanja suggested, waving a finger thoughtfully. Plenty of the old legendary dead Jedi had ticked both 'legendary' and 'dead' off their to-do lists at the same time, after all. "Though either way, they'd wait till after you kicked off to make a tapestry of you, I guess."

[Mir]

"Pfft." Mir huffed, curling his paw into a fist. "If I have to die for the cause, so be it. People here don't know how lucky they are." he waved in the general direction of the city. "Though, perhaps living long and not ending on a tapestry would be better." He wasn't suicidal, at least. However Mir's past made him rather fatalistic. Sometimes people just died. "Everyone's tad nervous. Can't blame 'em, really. You think they'll drag us to some backwater planet for the trials? Have you talked to the masters about theirs?" his blue eyes sought for an answers neither of them likely had.

[Zanja]

"Nope. If we're supposed to know something special in advance, they'll tell us." Zanja shrugged. "I figure. There's not gonna be some secret answer we can find out and memorize." The nervous energy of her body--jiggling foot, tension in her deceptively slouched shoulders--belied the calm words somewhat. "I heard sometimes people go off-planet. If they want us to do any solo stuff, Coruscant's not exactly a, uh, controlled environment." She jerked her chin in the direction of the lights below, and the depths below that. "Outside the Temple, that is."

[Mir]

"Mhhmm..." Mir murmured, turning to look at the city again. "I haven't heard anything either." His cloak shuffled as his tail curled closer to his body as he tensed. "I guess some solo stuff could be involved. Facing our worst fears or some such. Or that is how the legends tend span it out."

Mir sighed and his ears flopped. "I guess there is not much use mulling over it. As much as I'd like to feel more prepared."

[Zanja]

"Control the elements you can, and trust intuition for the things you can't," Zanja paraphrased one of their instructors, adding with a bit of sarasm, "And if intuition kriffs you over, that probably means you wouldn't have made much of a Jedi... eh. You're sharp with a lightsaber, anyway. That's one thing you can be sure they'll test."

[Mir]

"Takes Moore than that to pass I think." He did sound bit doubtful. "That's just because I lilke sparring." Mir slid his paws out of his robes, letting them dance through the basic form of shien. High guard - parrry down - catch the saber - and strike! Mur snapped his paws down as if to deliver a crippling blow to an enemy had had exposed himself.

"Say they make us run from Rancors." Mir chuckled as he squinted his eyes at Zanja.

[Zanja]

"Oh, yeah, but you know it will be part of it, at least." Zanja reached up to scratch gently around the base of one of her horns, then tugged on a strand of coarse straight hair. "Climb a tree? Do rancors climb? They don't look built for it." She left off fiddling with her hair and shrugged. "They won't plan anything that's likely to get someone killed, I figure. Maybe make us suffer a little, though," she added with a gravelly chuckle.

[Mir]

"They look like they could tear down a tree if they wanted." Mir piped in. "Those claws look wicked." His eyes followed her hands, more out of instinct than actual curiosity. "Better just run fast I wager. Nothing that big can be quick." Confidence of youth speaking. "Well. That's nothing new to me. You know that sone students complain when they have to brush floors? Even when we get free food and clothes? Just how... how clueless they are?"

[Zanja]

"I don't care how much food it comes with, cleaning floors is never going to be fun," Zanja pointed out, swinging her legs at a more relaxed tempo than before as the conversation unwound. "Some of the others are sheltered, but nobody here is really that spoiled. Critical difference, if you ask me." She grinned wryly. "Still might be a handicap for them if we have to do something dirty for our Trials. We'll see, hey?"

[Mir]

"Better than digging through mountains of scrap for your food." Mir noted pointedly. "A lot better. Maybe not fun, but better than being owned." his paw moved to brush against the mangy hair on his neck. "Eh, I think there's plenty of spoiled kids. Everyone who grew here's spoiled. They just don't know it."

[Zanja]

"Pfft. Spoiled is people thinking they're owed something better than everyone else just for existing. Just not having a boot on your neck and having enough to eat isn't being spoiled." Zanja squinted out at the city lights again. "Everybody actually does deserve that." She stuck out her tongue, making an ew face accentuated to near-demonic proportions by her pale skin, horns, and the light from below. "I've cleaned Spoiled's shoes. It's not the same at all, if you ask me."

[Mir]

"It is." Mir insisted. "To think you are suffering when you are made to mop floors is naive. Some out there have to wade out in freezing temperatures to get fed or to avoid get beaten. Some just get beaten for no good reason what soever." the farghul explained, frustrated. "They don't even know what punishment looks like."

"Deserve." he shrugged. "We are all lucky to have this much." he patted his robes. "Or I think I'm lucky." Her demonic features were lost to him - the 'devils' in farghul folklore were gigantic hyena-like beasts that laughed and laughed. The real devils looked more humanoid, Mir had come to understand.

[Zanja]

"That's way too all-or-nothing." Zanja threw up a hand for emphasis, though without too much heat. Most likely it wasn't the first time this had come up between them, and as usual she wasn't the best at actually articulating her convictions. "Forget the floors for a tick. You don't seriously think there's no difference between younglings who grow up safe and have enough to eat, and some corp heiress who expects somebody to wash her feet every night. Yeah, we're lucky, because we're kriffing Jedi." She shrugged. "But having food and clothes and stuff is just baseline for being treated like people. The fact that didn't always happen for all of us is the only part that's kriffed up."

As a smaller and even less articulate person Zanja had expressed these opinions through... more direct means of redistribution. Using her words about it instead is a work in progress.