Jedi Academy

The best time to study new things was last thing at night, before bed, but that didn't mean first thing in the morning, feeling fresh and awake, was a bad choice. The previous day's sub ride had been just an appetiser, and Eir was starving. An aquarium wasn't the best substitute to seeing sealife in its natural habitat, but it did let her get much closer to the various creatures and plants native to Auratera, and eliminated the random element of spotting wild creatures.

Corvin was an up bright and early sort. And a stay awake patrolling sort. Really, he was one of those "when does he even sleep" sorts. Still, he seemed cheerful enough on a Corvin scale this morning.

He grunted, following Eir as she lead the way. He wore one of his usual brown and green traveling cloaks. "Aquarium, huh?" He grunted again, nodding. "Good choice."

The girl tried to keep her excitement down under wraps, unconsciously mimicking Corvin's stoic demeanour. Past the giftshop, visitors could choose left or right, and Eir headed left to the Coastal exhibit, where the first tank featured a kelp forest, sharks and turtles swimming amongst the dense, leathery plants. "Thank you for yesterday."

Corvin shot her a quick glance. "Sure." He said, smiling just a little. "I figured you'd like it. And..." He shrugged. "I guess I like that someone else knows him, too."

He along to the kelp forest, his expression lightly interested.

Eir leaned on the railed in front of the transparisteel wall, reading the placards that had been placed there and looking for the described creatures within. "Knight Corvin," she carefully scrutinised the kelp forest, not looking at the gruff man, "how did you get injured?"

Corvin, too, leaned against the rail, his face stony and silent. For a time, it seemed as though he might not answer at all.

"A grenade." He finally said. "Launched, not thrown. There's only so many pieces of shrapnel a lightsaber can deflect at once, I guess." He studied a shark as it swam by, eyeing them coldly.

"It was a Mandalorian team. Hired by the Sith." He added.

Eir nodded slowly, it was hard to have a beef with a grenade. "Do you suppose they feed them? At night, when everyone's gone? The tank seems small for a closed system," she changed the subject, admiring a turtle as it glided by in the opposite direction to the shark, seemingly without a care in the world.

Corvin glanced at Eir, then back to the tank, a hint of a smile on his lips. "Probably. Maybe even when it's still open. I think aquariums like to do that, if they can."

After a few moments, he glanced back at Eir. "You're an interesting one, Eir." His tone was warm enough that it was probably intended as a compliment.

Intended or not, a compliment was how she took it, smiling at Corvin’s reflection before practically skipping to the next wall of plastisteel, with its new placards and different vantage point. For some time she was content with companionable silence. There weren’t many other guests this early and, as they descended into the tunnel that let them walk beneath the ocean denizens, there was considerable space between them and the next group of patrons.

“I think I know how it feels,” she said softly, almost as though she was addressing the manta ray passing overhead, “to lose everyone you once knew.”

Corvin was quite content to have a conversation while studying wildlife. He, too, tracked the motion of the enormous manta ray as it passed by.

"... yeah?" He said. His voice was rough, but there was enough sympathy in it for an invitation.

When building the aquarium, the designers had been mindful of the children that would visit, and so the artificial sea floor was only three feet higher than the bottom of the tunnel that passed through it. Still, Eir pushed up on her toes to watch as the ray came to settle one a relatively bare patch of sand.

Then, with all the drama the petite teen could muster, she turned and slouched against the handrail, giving an exasperated sigh. “I keep trying to work out if it even matters, I do fine on my own, no one talks about it. The past is passed, right? Like, so what if you didn’t have parents. I mean, some people have extra parents, some people have none.”

"Huh, look at that." Corvin muttered as the ray shifted colors, blending in impressively well with the sand underneath it.

"You do." Corvin nodded. "And so do I." He was silent for a few moments. "How much something matters... I don't know. That's up to us. Some things..." He shrugged. "But other things matter very much." He looked at her, his eyes dark, curious.

"Like?" she asked, "what matters most to you, Knight Corvin?"

The question seemed to give Corvin pause. He stared out into the water, scratching at his stubble with one hand.

"I don't know." He finally admitted with a grimace. "I feel like I used to, but..." He shook his head. "I just try to do the right thing, day by day. Maybe that's enough." He chuckled darkly. "It used to be fighting the Sith. But times change."

She studied his handsome face with a wry smile, and turned back to the aquarium. The tunnel looped back on itself, emerging on the other side of the kelp forest tank, but here there was no floor-to-ceiling transparisteel, but open tanks that simulated tidal pools and shallow beaches. Crabs scurried back and forth, pausing occasionally to wave their pincers at each other in a swaying dance. Non-stinging jellies and miniature rays drifted idly, while starfish and sea urchins clumped near the rocks.

A sign invited guests to touch the small critters, with some cautions not to take anything out of the water, and Eir fearlessly approached, dipping a clawed hand into the water and brushing the back of her fingers against a ray. It was apparently accustomed to such things, flapping the tips of its wings slightly, but otherwise unbothered.

Corvin gamely followed along, his stride as quiet as ever. He, too, peered into the tanks, although he didn't reach into them himself.

A little bit more silence, and he grunted. "Well? You know I'm gonna turn that question around, don't you?" There was the barest hint of a smile on his lips as he looked at her.

Eir ran her fingertips over the ray's skin for a time, then shifted her hand so that one of the jellies bumped into her cupped palm. "What matters to me?" the half-arkanian frowned, plunging her other hand into the tank so that the jellyfish bounced against her skin several times. "I read that, to work out what really matters, you should ask yourself what would you do if you only had one day left to live." She released the bumbling jellyfish, drawing her hands out of the water and tapping her claws on the handrail, "but I think I would live selfishly, if I knew I had that little time left."

"Oh?" Corvin crossed his arms, leaning casually against the rail. "There's selfish, and then there's selfish. Some's bad, some..." He shrugged. "Some just is."

He grunted. "So... what would you do, then?"

Poking around some starfish, "I dunno, I'd have dinner with T'ame, read a good holonovel. Go to the zoo one last time and see all the cool animals. I guess I mean that I wouldn't spend my last day volunteering at the soup kitchen. Not that I don't enjoy that, because I do."

Corvin snorted softly. "See, that's not so bad. I think that if someone knew they had one day left to live, they could be forgiven for spending some time to themselves, or with friends."

Pulling back his sleeve, he finally did reach into the water then, letting the ray come to his hand. "Jedi don't always get to choose, of course. But maybe that's not so bad."