Avar Kriss was at his side; they had left Stellan Gios behind at the dedication, deep in conversation with several Council members. Elzar and Avar walked along a path through one of the garden modules on the Starlight Beacon: a huge transparisteel bubble, through which a long spiraling walkway had been built. The base of the sphere was filled with the native soil of a world called Qualai, a small, low-gravity planet on the edge of the Outer Rim.

From that soil grew trees, tall and thin and elegant, reaching all the way from the module’s base to its top, some three hundred meters above. Descending from the bright-blue branches of those trees, a drapery of vines, rippling ribbons stretching from crown to ground. These were varied shades of red and orange, graceful gradients running their lengths. Air currents stirred the vines, so they washed gently back and forth, their fragrance like incense.

The spiral path let one walk through these vines as they swirled and parted, tiny insects and birds bright with bioluminescence flitting between like sparks, each tree its own ecosystem.

At the center of the garden, with space looming beyond the transparisteel, the effect was something like standing inside a campfire, looking out at the night.

“Yes, it is,” Avar said.

“And all ours,” Elzar said. “No one else seems to have found it yet.”

“It won’t last,” Avar said. “I’m sure people will leave the party and find their way here soon enough. Couples looking for quiet spots to be alone, probably.”

“Then let’s enjoy it while we’ve got it, eh?”

They kept ascending, the sound of the flame-ribbons washing through the chamber.

“Look at us, huh? Just a couple of Jedi Masters, taking a quiet moment together. Can you believe it? Sometimes I never thought it would happen.”

Avar smiled at him.

“I knew the Council would promote you eventually,” she said. “Was never a question.”

“Easy for you to say. You made Master a few years ago.”

“Hey, the Council knows talent when they see it. When will it happen?”

“Soon, probably. I’ll need to stand before the Council, back on Coruscant. It feels like a formality, really. I can’t imagine my life will change as much as it did at the last elevation.”

“True. The jump from Padawan to Jedi Knight…that’s where it all really sinks in. The choice of it…” Her voice trailed off.

Elzar suspected they were both thinking about the same thing. Shared moments as Padawans, tolerated and understood and even common—but things to be left behind once one ascended to become an adult in the Order.

They hadn’t discussed those moments, not in a very long time, and never with more than an oblique reference, but they were never very far away from the other’s mind, especially when they were together.

Those times, many years in the past, seemed very present just then.