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A'Sharad did not like Coruscant. Hell no, he hated it! It was full of people – horrible, weak and useless with a settler mentality – and droids – owned by settlers! – and lots of noisy, ugly things that awfully disgusted him.
He did not like Coruscant, and he did not like his life here. Master Ki-Adi was kind and took him with him to Cerea whenever he visited his wives and daughters – A'Sharad liked Cerea very much, there was no desert but it was full of nature and the Force was pure there too – but they did not go often.
It was not that the people were mean to him, but they were not a Tribe. They were... indifferent. They were not a cohesive unit, their lives and paths crossed without touching, and that was something he found hard to accept. He had tried to make friends, but people were embarrassed that he kept his Tusken mask on even though he was a Jedi Padawan now, he had noticed that it created a distance in their minds even though his attitude was perfectly polite. He felt alone, and being alone... was not good for someone like him.
A Tusken fighter lived for his community, and without a community to protect or feed, he was useless.
Tusken with that mindset usually did stupid things. Really stupid. Like that guy about thirty years earlier who threw himself into the Sarlacc to see if he could kill it from the inside. Now the Sarlacc was still alive and the Tusken still had not come out.
A'Sharad had not gone to such extremes yet, of course, but he had started going into the lower, darker levels of the planet to attack criminals and take them to police stations. It kept him busy. Master Ki-Adi did not know, because if he told him, the Cerean would disapprove. What he did not know did not hurt him, and he was very busy during the day with meetings of the Jedi High Council.
And when he was not out dispensing justice through kicks in the face, A'Sharad could usually be found in a garden. The Temple was beautiful, or so he supposed, but he was not a man who liked that kind of massive, imposing, permanent architecture. He had been born and brought up in tents, so he did not care much about the height of the walls or having a stable shelter for the night.
He had only been in the library for his visit and had never been back, the same with the Healing Halls, he had had "compulsory vaccinations" and left.
Even the classrooms did not see him. He did not care to know the history of the Republic over the last two centuries, and finally, after long discussions – rather one-sided – with his Master, he was excused from compulsory attendance at classes.
It has to be said that when he got fed up, he spoke in Tusken, a language no one understood, so his Master cracked before him, always the conciliatory Jedi who was sympathetic to his difficulties. He was quicker to bend than A'Sharad, and he was a little disappointed at how easy it was, if he was honest. His father would not have let him off the hook so easily.
Suddenly, a door – THE door – to the garden was slammed shut and A'Sharad blinked, surprised, in fact now a little more awake, and sat up from his reclining position on a fake stone tree, his legs dangling over both sides of the branch he had been slumped on.
This garden was in a very strange style, all pebbles and sand strangely organised in patterns on the ground. He loved it. Plus, nobody came here, A'Sharad had literally left his handprints in the dust that covered the door the first time he came, even the droids did not come here.
A thin figure finally appeared, stomping angrily on the ground, and A'Sharad rolled onto his stomach to take a closer look at the little Twi'lek with strangely dull skin, a sort of greyish sand colour, he had never seen that sort of colour on a Twi'lek. Weren't they supposed to be a more vibrant, showy colour?
... Oops. Was it racist to think that?
No... it was ignorance, but not malicious, just curiosity.
He watched with amusement the way the girl silently raged. Clever, she was not attracting attention.
"That dirty... damned ignorant moron... son of a rancor!" He perceived, smiling wider and wider beneath his mask.
She seemed to have quite a temper.
Suddenly, she stood up straight, looking as if she had gathered more determination than A'Sharad saw in most of the Jedi he had met until then, and turned back, this time closing the door gently.
He let himself slide to the ground and landed softly, moving towards the door just in time to see the Twi'lek run past him without seeing him. Further on, he saw a boy holding his cheek, sulking, while an Iktotchi girl of his own age checked him out.
An argument between two young people, the boy was a Padawan, he had the braid, but for the Twi'lek, A'Sharad did not know.
It was so complicated with the Jedi. Back home, his clothes would show when he was not yet a Warrior or that he was one now, but the clothes of Initiates and Padawans were the same, and more generally, everyone wore the same clothes, even Knights and Masters.
He wondered if he would ever see her again, perhaps someone a little more combative than the average person would not be scared of him?
All he had to do was look for her to find out who she was.
Fortunately, A'Sharad was patient and knew how to hunt.