wor·ry v. 1. To feel uneasy or concerned about something; be troubled.

The Padawan remained huddled in her alcove among the roots of the gigantic tree, watching silently as Merry and Pippin investigated a platter of food near to them. What she would give for some fresh food, and not that dried and powdered nutrients stuffed into the capsules at her waist, created only to provide energy and not a full stomach. Adai closed her eyes and envisioned one of the green, shiny fruits in the silver bowl. She focused hard on it, and reopened her eyes, reaching out an arm in the direction of the comestible. Slowly it rose in the air, and she had to focus hard in order to guide it shakily towards her. Twice she only barely lost focus and it dropped to the ground, but soon it was in her grasp and she hungrily snatched it from the air.

Later the Padawan snuck out from her bedroll when the Fellowship wasn’t looking, and stole off into the trees. She reached out with her mind, trying to sense if there were any presences of sentient beings nearby, and there were none, so she continued until she found the most secluded spot that she could. It was a clearing in the trees, with the forest floor blanketed with a short green growth that was soft under her boots. It was quiet, it was peaceful, and it was devoid of any potential intruder for a nice radius. Adai settled down in a cross-legged posture in the middle of the clearing, closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and began to meditate. A slideshow appeared in her mind’s eye.

A stark, sparsely furnished room.

A classroom.

Children. All her same age.

Growing older.

The first lightsaber.

Her first burn.

Stones being lifted into the air.

Holos of famous politicians.

Mala.

Brown robes.

Boots echoing down a corridor.

A control panel.

Fingers nimbly passing over the buttons.

Space.

Stars.

Planets.

Explosions.

Federation vessels.

Explosions.

Planets.

Planets.

Crash.

Adai jerked herself out of the daydream, and swallowed in shame. Her mistress would not have approved of such mental wandering. The Padawan knew she was capable of extreme focus, capable of completely emptying her mind of any thought, any impulse. Why… how come she was suddenly starting to lose everything that she had learned? Everything that, through repetitive, sterile conditioning, had taken her entire life to learn? The Padawan closed her eyes again and made comfy on the ground. After a few minutes of slow, deep, steady breathing, everything fizzled away and her mind was blank.

By the time that Adai came to, it seemed to be late morning, which meant that she must’ve been meditating for several hours at least. She looked around at her surroundings, and nothing seemed to be different than it was from several hours earlier. She felt incredibly calm and well grounded… yet, as she examined her state more, she seemed to be a bit numb and lofty. It would take another good ten minutes before she was feeling normal again.

Adai looked down and picked at her fingernails, swallowing hard. Her throat tightened up and she fought back sudden tears that threatened to spill. What was wrong with her?

She was determined.

She had a high midicholorian count.

She had been readily accepted into the order.

What if she wasn’t doing all the she could? What if she was just a bad Jedi? Force! Three days on this planet and she was already starting to be undone. The 16-year-old Padawan choked down a sob and continued to pick at her nails. What if… what if, she could never pass the Trials? Of course that was many years into the future, and her Mistress had much more for her to learn… but what if she couldn’t do it because she just wasn’t born to be a good Jedi? No proper follower of the order would have ever done something so brash as what she had done that got her here in the first place. The girl suddenly envied Anakin Skywalker, and Master Obi-Wan, and Adi Gallia, and Master Fisto, and Aayla Secura, and the other Jedi who were so much more disciplined than she was, so much more in tuned with the force. Master Windu and Master Yoda were others too, even though their level of connectedness with the force was one that she could never hope to reach. Adai swallowed down a bubbling anger that rose up from the pit of her stomach and scolded herself.

“The others would never think like this,” she whispered, and closed her eyes to calm herself.

Then, just as abruptly as the mood came over her, she felt a solid determination to improve her own skills during her stay here. No proper Jedi would let himself waste away in idleness ever.

Adai Seth inhaled deeply, and exhaled just the same, eyes scanning the area for a stone, or a stick, or… something. She spotted a rock about three hands across about ten feet away from where she sat, and focused on it. Holding her hand out and taking another deep breath, the rock began to loosen from the soil. She unconsciously stood up and focused more on the stone, closing her eyes. She felt the Force flowing through her like never before, and felt powerful. The Jedi taught that power wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they did teach that it should be kept in check, and to never abuse it in any way. And that’s exactly what Adai nobly did as she stood there, lifting the rock from the living earth. She opened her eyes and stared at the thing as it hovered in the air. The knights would indeed be proud. As she looked all around her, she noted other stones in the grass, and reached out with her mind to them, lifting them into the air just as she did with their larger brother. Soon the air about her was filled with pebbles and stones as she held them up with the force. After a moment in this empowering stasis, she maneuvered them so that they all stacked stop each other to create a rickety tower of stones, large and small. She held them there with her own calm will.

But her exhilarating exercise was suddenly interrupted when she felt two beings within the vicinity. She held the rocks until they came closer, yet at the same time, reaching out and trying to determine who the intruders were. She was startled to find that it was Merry and Pippin, and after a moment, heard their hushed voices speaking in tongues she didn’t understand.

The Padawan was amazed to find that it was so easy—too easy, even. She raised her hand in his direction and pulled him from the solid ground beneath his feet. He let out a yelp when he realized that he was no longer on the ground, and Adai couldn’t help but giggle to herself. That’s what you get for interrupting me, she thought in their minds, and set Pippin down gently. The Padawan set her most powerful weapon back at her side –her hand- and went to greet the Hobbits.

The two diminutive males looked up at her with astonishment, and she just smiled at them.

Interrupting what? They nearly thought in unison.

Training.

They both gave her questionable looks, so she turned the other way and raised her hand, lifting a stone into the air with it, and gently lobbed it away. The hobbits gasped and stared at the stone in awe.

Merry looked up at her, still stupefied, and pointed at her, and then at the stone. Adai laughed and nodded. The two spoke to each other excitedly, and she was sure that even if she did know their language, she still wouldn’t understand a single thing they said. However, in between their tireless chatting, she felt two other presences. One was only vaguely familiar, and the other was, bizarrely enough, Anessen. Though she felt he was not close at all, it surprised to be able to sense him when not even focusing on it. But that other one… she was determined to figure out who it was.

The hobbits seemed to notice a slight change in her demeanor, so they excused themselves and walked off; she assumed they assumed she wanted to train some more in peace. As soon as they were gone, Adai proceeded to investigate the presence. There was nothing malicious about it, as she felt for it with the Force. The Padawan crept around between the trees, following what her instincts were telling her, drawing her near to some secluded hills and gulches a ways off. He was there. She knew he was. She reached out with invisible arms and gently probed his troubled mind, and what she found there disturbed her.

There was hate, jealousy, anger, a deep, smoldering anger, as well as fear, and a feeling of loneliness. Who was this that was dwelling on such horrible things? She crept closer to the rocks that broke the soft surface of the earth, and stealthily proceeded through the small gully. She knew he was up along the top, and peered up from behind a rock, curious at this man and his strong, sorrowful emotions that she knew could be little less than tearing him apart. She knew that thought the Jedi could be emotional people at times, especially the humans, they were trained from early childhood to avoid acting on them nearly all of the time. This, obviously, was something that she needed to work on.

But as she looked at this man standing some eight feet above her head, she couldn’t help but peer into his mind a little more. What she saw there were dark, jumbled images of power, of destruction, of the illusion of justice. She saw a fleeting thought of something gold and shimmering, something even she felt drawn to for the same fleeting moment. Then it was gone.

Adai wanted to settle his mind. She wanted him to be at peace, even if it was for only a while. She thought hard for the most peaceful image she could conjure, and after deciding on the best one, gently placed it into his mind. She opened her eyes and peered up at him, and his mood seemed to change for a little while. She saw him close his eyes and heard him sigh, but for some reason his peaceful trance was broken, and he drew a long, dangerous-looking blade from his side, and held it out defensively, turning around. He knew she was there. Just as he was convinced that he was alone once again, and had loosened the grip on his weapon a bit, Adai reached out and gently tugged the blade from his hand, suspending it in midair in front of him, and over her head. He gasped in surprise, reached out to grab it, but recoiled, thinking better of it. He looked around, and after a moment, he saw the Padawan behind a rock beneath him. With a patient movement of her arm, Adai set the sword on the ground next to his feet and gave a shy smile. She waved to him and was about to go, satisfied that she’d taken his mind off of whatever was deeply troubling him for a moment, but he halted her with an alien syllable before she could take two steps. The man leapt down from the ledge and stood in front of her, scratching his chin idly and with the curiosity of his mind betrayed by the lines of his face.

After studying her for a moment, he began to speak, but caught himself when he remembered, once again, that she couldn’t understand him. A second later he grabbed her hands in his surprisingly rough ones and placed them on the sides of his head, and gestured for her to do her thing.

Think to me.

Boromir nodded. How do you know to do that with a simple wave of your hand?

Years of training and special prerequisites I was born with.

She read a simple feeling of understanding from him.

And was it you who placed the vision of clouds passing in my mind?

Adai blushed beneath his aged scrutiny, however still nodded. Padawan were taught early how to hold someone’s gaze.

Though I have never heard of a wizard taking on the guise of a maiden such as yourself, might you by any chance be one?

Her face scrunched up in question. No, I am not a wizard.

Then who are you and where do you come from? Where might be such a place that teaches Men such powers?

Adai swallowed. It’s an institution very far away from here.

There was the faintest glimmer of something in Boromir’s eye that she did not think she liked much. He suddenly removed her hands from his head and stepped back, looking down at her again with arms crossed over his broad chest.

I see, he thought to her.

The Padawan wasn’t so sure she liked Boromir quite as much as she had before. There was something marginally upsetting about his character, and from then on she would be sure to not pay him any more visits by herself. Something told her he had the potential to be a very violent man, and he was so physically oriented and alpha, that he had little capacity for passivity. This breed of male was something she was not normally accustomed to dealing with, especially considering she had spent most of her life within the vast halls of the Jedi Temple.

I should leave, she thought, and turned from him. But a large hand found itself on her shoulder and kept her from leaving for a second, but let go. Boromir muttered something, and Adai quickly walked away. Part of her said that this man, no matter what assortment of tranquil thoughts she lent to him, wouldn’t find complete peace for a while.