Rating: NC-17, just to be totally safe.
Warning: Major Squick Alert since feminine personal hygiene is graphically depicted. You have been warned!
Time: Old Republic
Disclaimer: The Jedi are George's.
As I stepped off the transport onto the Temple's landing platform, I was near, but I wasn't home yet. Not until I saw it.
I adjusted the weight on my back, feeling every gram of each piece of equipment I carried. The laz-rifle slung over my back; the vibro-shiv tucked into my boot; my empty literjon; spare, but now drained, power packs; my bedroll tucked under my backpack; a coil of carbon rope; my mess kit; what was left of a cake of soap; my commlink; my datapad still working yet with the cracked screen; my dental brush; the rebreather mask hanging from my neck along with my electro-bionoculars; a few dactaries; a comb; spare clothing; a static hologram of my family; and, of course, my lightsaber.
Despite the ever-present mud, the vermin, the sheer filth I had endured, it wasn't clean that I wanted more than anything else, it was to be naked. I wanted nothing more than to be free from of all the things I had carried for so long.
Equally laden, my padawan followed.
I wondered if she even noticed my signpost, my welcome home. Now replaced by fresh troops from the Temple, we were sent back home. Back home to Coruscant, back home to the Temple, back home to our families.
The war was different in only one aspect, it was the aliens attacking humans. Usually, it was the other way around.
Aliens. This word never ceased to seem strange to me. Aliens. There was us, the humans, and then there was this other group, the aliens. One word for a group as disparate as Hoth was from Tatooine. Mon Calamari, Hutts and Wookies all were aliens.
Otherwise, the war was just the same as all others. Beings began to feel that they were different than others, special. This led to them to believe that they were better. The logic that follows from this is that others must therefore be lesser. So, you could imprison them, enslave them and wage war against them with a clear conscious.
The AT-AT's, which is what the sauropod Hesi were nicknamed even though they were bipeds, were intent on driving the human population off the planet. The humans had lived there for centuries. That was enough for a war.
As the transport lifted off, the wind swirled around us and our rough-spun hooded cloaks swirled. If there was an item that came close to vying with a lightsaber for usefulness, it was our robes. I've used mine to warm me when it was cold, shield me from the sun, hide my tears or laugher when protocol necessitated, carry injured as a make-shift stretcher and then there was this mission.
We were the only women in the cadre.
The latrine was merely a fetid pit.
My padawan would shield me with her cloak and I did the same for her.
The flying insects sent away with a small concussion burst of Force, she had placed her feet carefully on each side of the hole and squatted down be hind my covering curtain of cloak. Removing her sanitary napkin, she held the bloody pad by the clean sides. She was distressed for if she deposited into the hole the others would see it when they eventually came to make their own deposit.
I told her to wait while I held the cloak up with the Force. A lightsaber has no equal in disintegrating items.
I straddled the hole with her and instructed her to place her hand on my head so she could follow my use of the Force for herself when necessary. I warned her to prepare for a dull ache. I placed my hands on her abdomen and guiding the Force, finished sloughing of the lining of her uterus as I widened her cervix just enough to allow the bloody flow to exit quickly.
"It would have much easier to have been born a man," she said as we walked back. I agreed, though we both knew we preferred being women. "What would you do if one day you woke up and were a man?" she asked.
"You mean with a penis?" I asked her while I smiled.
"Yes, just for one day."
I mused for a bit. "I would walk about my quarters following my husband around and constantly poke him with it."
She laughed. "I would whap it from side to side." She moved her hips back and forth to illustrate.
I had laughed. "They do that don't they."
Leaving the landing pad, we reached the tiled courtyard and I found it.
Long ago, when following my master, I had seen this particular tile for the first time. It had been cracked. Over the years, the crack had widened and spread, finally eroding into chunks. Then one day, a few years ago, while returning from a mission I had noticed it had been replaced. Clean, fresh grout surrounded the replacement tile and it stood out dramatically. Now weathered, it looked identical to all the many others. Except to me.
My padawan's attention was elsewhere on the floor. I followed her line of sight. "What has your attention, padawan?"
"Nothing, just a cracked tile."
I smiled. She had found her own.
