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Christophsis, Crystal Forest, 12 BBY
They had spent less than a full local day on Christophsis, yet the crystalline planet had still made a strong case for ranking as Cal’s least favorite place in the galaxy. Greez got a rash from a plant he had collected, he and Merrin had been attacked and almost eaten by a kyaddak, and everyone had spent the better portion of the trip complaining about how gross the humid air was. The only ones who didn’t seem to hate Christophsis were Cere who was as unflappable as always and Trilla who was now the proud owner of a new lightsaber.
Admittedly, it would be nice to no longer have to lend out half of his saber every time they ran across a few Imps, but Cal is ready to get off this terrible planet all the same. Which is why, when Cere sends him off to find Trilla so they can leave as soon as possible, he’s more than happy to comply.
He finds her in a clearing, surrounded by the weird crystalline trees that grow here with the kyaddak she had, for lack of a better word, befriended—the very same one that had tried to eat him and Merrin—lurking nearby. He expects her to maybe be going through some basic stances and forms, but if that’s what she’s doing, it’s not any style he recognizes. In fact, it almost looks like-
“Are you dancing?”
Trilla seems to have already been aware of his presence as she neither falters nor halts her fluid movements and the kyaddak doesn’t make a second attempt on him. Cal’s glad she doesn’t stop; it’s mesmerizing. The refracted light that’s filtering down through the glassy leaves is causing miniature rainbows to bounce and flow over her body as she moves. He’s particularly fascinated by the brief second her face is nearly to the ground and her legs parallel to the saber in its double-sided form that she holds perfectly vertical before her raised leg arcs back down and she finishes standing straight with a single blade held in front of her.
Cal’s still processing what he witnessed when Trilla deactivates her saber and grins wildly at him. There’s a sheen of sweat on her face, her eyes are bright, and the humidity and movement has made her curls frizzy and wild. His mouth goes dry.
“Like what you saw?” She drawls at him.
Cal snaps his mouth closed—he hadn’t even realized it was open—and reaches for anything to say that isn’t complete gibberish or something stupid like ‘I always like looking at you.’ He’s already survived one near death experience today; he doesn’t think he’ll be so lucky a second time.
“So purple, huh? You a big fan of Master Windu’s?” Cal’s pretty sure the kyaddak doesn’t understand anything he just said, but he knows it’s judging him all the same.
Luckily, Trilla is in a good mood—new lightsaber and all—so she mostly ignores the second question. “Blue and red make purple.”
Cal recalls an offhanded comment about her first saber being blue and nods in understanding. He knows her new hilt is made up of bits and scraps from her Second Sister hilt, Cere’s old one, and whatever odds and ends they’ve managed to collect over the last two years; it makes sense the blade would reflect that. Reflect her.
“Balanced.”
“The Force is all things, and I am the Force.” Trilla responds. “You never answered me earlier. How did it look?”
“Oh.” He looks for a word that won’t completely expose him and settles on, “good.”
She narrows her eyes a bit and irritation edges her voice. “A ringing endorsement.”
Cal backtracks and tries to make up for the apathy he thinks she’s interpreted from him. “I mean it! It was- I’ve never seen anything like that. Did you come up with it yourself?”
That seems to placate her somewhat. Warily, she answers, “No, they had stopped doing them a long time ago, but Jedi used to do ceremonial dances along with ceremonial fights. I picked it up as a youngling.”
Cal finds himself smiling a bit. “So you mastered dueling so quickly, you decided to revive a dead tradition in your spare time?”
Trilla surprises him with a laugh—a short one that’s more of a huff, but a laugh nonetheless, “I was a terrible fighter when we started combat training, probably the worst of all my creché-mates. I was tall and gawky, couldn’t keep my hair out of my face.”
He finds that description hard to reconcile with the woman standing in front of him, the woman who he spends a lot of time—probably too much if he’s honest—thinking of as the paragon of skilled and graceful fighting, but Trilla rarely shares anything about her time in the Order, much less willingly, so he doesn’t say anything.
“Master Yaddle recommended I speak to Jocasta Nu about holos that might help me get more comfortable in my own body and she directed me to the ceremonial dance holos.” Trilla shrugs and her face transforms from the wistfully nostalgic expression to the forced casual one that occurs whenever she gets close to talking or thinking about the complicated matter of her relationship with Cere. “It’s what I did for my third trial.”
She doesn’t elaborate on how that connects to her becoming Cere’s padawan—Cal can draw his own conclusions—just clenches her jaw, and her focus, sharp as ever, returns to him. “Are we leaving soon?”
The cool tone in her voice and the abrupt change in topic reminds him of his reason for being here. “Right. Yes. Greez wants to leave as soon as possible. Something about never wanting to see another kyber crystal again.”
Trilla rolls her eyes and spends the next few minutes bidding farewell to the kyaddak’s multiple heads. Cal—wisely, by his assessment—remains as far away from it as possible.
On the short trek back to the Mantis, she tells him, “You’ve been projecting this weird feeling at me since the clearing, like curiosity. Why?”
Of all the things he feels about Trilla for her to pick up on, he’s glad it’s that one, so he answers truthfully, “Ancient lightsaber dancing and bonding with giant, sharp-limbed Force bugs just aren’t what I expected from you.”
For all Cal’s sensitivity when it comes to reading an object’s past, he has no natural talent when it comes to using the Force to read people in the present, but Trilla’s smugness at defying his expectations rolls off of her in waves even he can feel.
“Keep watching, Kestis. You might learn a thing or two.”