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Qui-Gon finds Obi-Wan in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, radiant in the early morning light.

At eighteen, he's finally settled into himself, age tempering the wildness of his youth, the bright, brash mycelial explosion that characterised his earlier years. Now, fully fruited, his natural cycles are smoother, quieter. Deeply rooted enough as to be close to invisible, if one didn't know what to look for.

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon both come from the same system, share the same roots. Stewjon produces a very specific type of sentience.

So Qui-Gon knows what he's seeing in the golden shafts of Coruscant morning that penetrate through the glass above — that faint particulate halo around Obi-Wan's meditating form that isn't dust, isn't a Force manifestation. Tiny and buoyant, rising from his bared skin in fractalline whorls — his Padawan is sporulating.

It's a biological imperative, of a sort. Not in a way a mammal would understand, nor any of the non-mammalian aquatic species that inhabit the temple alongside them. Master Yoda comes closest, of all the Jedi — it's part of the reason it's his lineage which they were folded into, all those years ago.

With a sigh, he settles himself next to his Padawan on the grass, feeling the fleeting touch of spores against his skin even as Obi-Wan's Force presence brushes up against his in a quiet hello. Qui-Gon brushes back against him, lighting up their bond in a spangle of pinks, greens, blues.

He lets himself slip into a light meditation, drinking in the sunlight as it streams down atop the two of them, drinking deep. They have no pressing engagements today, they can indulge in a quiet morning together.

The temple gardeners will be overjoyed — between Obi-Wan's spores replenishing their mycelial stock, and Qui-Gon finally staying still long enough to fruit and seed, the kitchens will soon be glutted. Everyone will be eating milk cap confit and lilly pilly jam for months.

Outside of their home system none of their offshoots will grow, of course — not properly. Not in the way that would let either of them reproduce. Their spores and seeds, here on Coruscant, produce plants, not people. The mycelium twined deep around tree and shrub, the roots and branches reaching towards the noonday sun, they carry the echoes of Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, but nothing more.

Safest for the sanity of the temple, Obi-Wan had joked when Qui-Gon explained the intricacies of their reproductive process. Imagine the chaos a third of our kind would cause.

(On the other side of the galaxy, a young succulent wrinkles his nose at the sand surrounding his house and sneezes. When he looks up, he dreams of the stars.)

Notes:

Me, writing yet another plant-based weird biology fic: smh I have to do everything myself around here