Prelude to Eternity - Chapter 8 (part two)

Trelna smiled at him again. "Please, sit down," she said, pointing towards a couch in a far corner. "I'll be right back." Having instructed him thus, she disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door after her.

What's she gotta do in there? Xicanti wondered. She's probably makin' sure I didn't do anything to her precious dress, or changin' it since it's been soiled by the touch of a 'bumbling idiot'! He let out a small laugh as he went over the couch and plunked himself down.

Now that he was solidly planted, Xicanti took another look at the spacious chamber. From his vantage point, he could tell that the bathroom was easily as large as his whole living room, with a large bathing tub positioned right in the center. I'll bet Leia's got one a those, he thought. She seems to have this thing for baths, so it'd be perfect for her. He found himself wondering how hard the tub would be to steal for Leia if she didn't have one after all, then laughed aloud at what he'd been contemplating. "The old saying seems to be true," he murmured aloud. "Once a thief, always a thief!"

The young thief, (who had decided by now that he still was a thief, and so undeserving of the title 'former'), spent all of ten minutes simply exploring the room with his eyes, never really wondering what Trelna was off doing. Observation soon became tedious, however, for the eyes of thieves are trained to take in all, and can do so in a relatively short space of time. Xicanti soon turned his attentions solely to the door to the bedroom. He'd always been very good at watching doors, which was considered a test of patience, and didn't want to loose this ability. And so he sat and watched the door, his mind far away from what would happen once it re-opened.

It didn't stay that way for long.

Roughly five minutes after he had begun watching the door it reopened, and Trelna stepped out? naked.

Xicanti was yet again in a position where he did not know what to do. He gaped at the Lady, unable to remove his eyes as she slowly made her way across the room. He noted that her hips swayed slightly as she walked, causing her to look even more appealing. His experience with women in a sexual sense being minimal, her actions were not fully understood.

After an eternity, Trelna completed her walk to the couch and sat down on Xicanti's lap, seemingly intent on making herself comfortable. She wrapped her arms about his neck, and brought her face very close to him, her eyes staring deep into his.

Not trusting himself to speak Xicanti merely watched her. Trelna found this to be amusing. She let out a small giggle, giving him a smile as she removed one of her arms, allowing the other to hold her closely against him. Still smiling, she lifted her pointer finger up to the side of his face and drew it down lightly. "You have beautiful eyes," she whispered as she repeated the gesture. "Very beautiful indeed."

Her hand moved from his face to his hair. "And these curls! So thick, and such a lovely, coppery red!" She snuggled herself down against him, still looking up into his eyes.

Seeming to change the subject, she asked him, "Do you know anything of the planet Regin? It's a wonderful place, filled with crystalline pools and delicate trees. You'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful area.

"My estate is among the most beautiful of all, if I do say so myself. I keep only the best there. My gardens, tended by the finest gardeners money can buy, rival even the Imperial Conservatory's grounds. I decorate my mansion in nothing but the finest of silks and satins, with each and every bit of furniture being the work of an impeccably skilled craftsman. My chefs are artists in their own right, my personal attendants works of art." She smiled almost shyly at him. "I would have you be one of those attendants.

"I have several already, although none of them come close to you in physical perfection. None are the sorts I'd like to take to my bed, either. You are." She pressed herself closer still to him. "What do they have you doing here in the Palace? Sweeping floors? Fixing 'droids?" She glanced ruefully at his hands, which were not entirely clean. "Come be a part of my household, and you'll never have to do that again. You'll spend your days attending upon me in whatever ways I may need, and the nights -" she blushed, just a little "- the nights will be something else entirely!"

Xicanti could feel the blood pounding into his face and his lower regions in equal measures at her suggestion. Trelna laughed in delight as she saw this. "Are you a virgin?" she asked almost conversationally. "It doesn't seem too likely - who would've been able to keep their hands off of you? - but I'm entitled to my little daydreams, aren't I?" She drew back a little, so as to be able to see his face better. "Will you come with me?" she asked pleadingly. "I would love to have one such as you in my household."

Now, Trelna was, without a doubt, a beautiful woman, and likely not much over twenty. Xicanti, however, found that he really and truly did not want to become a part of her household. I'd probably be paraded around like a prized Nerf, he thought indignantly. I don't want to live like that. I wouldn't be able to train as a Jedi if I went off with her, either. It wouldn't be fair for Jacen and Lowie to have to endure their punishments for what I did, while I get out of it all and get to sleep with a beautiful woman, besides.

He would really and truly have liked to take Trelna up on her offer of a different bed for the night, if not the slavery part of it, yet he shook his head in reply. He carefully reached up and took her hands away from his around his neck. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, "It's not that you're ugly or anything. It's just that I've got lots of prior commitments that this would get in the way of." Being especially wary of putting his hands on her, he lifted her off of him and plunked her down beside him on the couch.

Trelna was evidently displeased. "But... why?" she asked him crossly. "You would have been such a wonderful addition! And I wouldn't have treated you badly at all. Perhaps I would have even had you as my formal consort, eventually."

Xicanti shook his head again. "It's not that simple," he told her. "I have things to do, things that I want to do, that take precedence over this." He shook his head for the final time. "The answer is still no."

Seeing that her final hope had been torched, Trelna nodded curtly. "I think I understand," she replied angrily. "But I don't have to like it!"

Xicanti smiled sadly at her. "How many of us really like what happens to us?" he asked softly, speaking more to himself than her. He got up from the couch and walked over to the door. Hearing a strangled sob behind him, the thief turned around. "I won't tell anyone about this," he offered.

Trelna nodded angrily. "Of course you won't!" she snapped. "The 'droid mechanic has no intention whatsoever of telling all his friends about the noblewoman who offered him her bed for the duration of his exquisite beauty!"

Although Xicanti was far from happy about being used, he was so pleased with being called exquisite that he didn't steal a thing as he left the room.

Reaching Xepher's room was not as time consuming as Xicanti would have expected. He reached the place only scant minutes after leaving Trelna's chambers. Without even bothering to knock, he opened the door and slid inside.

Predictably, Xeph was still asleep, half in and half out of his bed, snoring peacefully.

Xicanti had to grin as he saw his brother. "He's never been an early riser!" he commented to nobody in particular. Seeing a wonderful opportunity to do something very nasty to his brother, the young thief crept up to the sleeping one as quietly as only a thief could have managed. Putting his face very close to his brother's ear, Xicanti took a deep breath and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Xepher, the whole room's filled with whores who wanna have you as a client!" It was exactly the sort of thing Xepher would be desperate enough to believe.

Upon having it screamed into his ear, the other awakened, if such a graceful word could be applied to his rising. The sleeping thief leaped to his feet, seeming to go right from lying in the bed to standing upright on the floor with no movement in between. "Where are they?" he cried, looking around the room anxiously, "Show me to them, and I'll be a great client! Of course, I can't pay, but I'll make it fun for them!"

It took Xepher a few moments to realize there was not a single whore in the room. Scowling, he turned to Xicanti. "You're evil, you know?" he asked his grinning brother with a scowl. However, once he had realized that it was, in fact, his brother, Xeph's face took on a whole new look. "Xic!" he shouted happily, running forward and nearly squeezing the life out of his brother.

"You're alive!" Xepher cried. "How'd you manage it? Leia couldn't find you anywhere! We looked all over, too. At The Hero's Conquest, in all the various cellars and stuff, those sorts of places. Where were you?" He held Xicanti out at arm's length, examining him, "Wherever it was, it must have been really clean there. You ain't half as dirty as you were before, and you look like you took a really good bath."

Xicanti grinned at him. "It's a fairly long story, but if you're willing to listen?"

"I am!" Like his twin, Xepher had always enjoyed stories of any type. And so Xicanti spent some time relating the whole tale to his brother, starting at his decision to leave the palace and ending at the time he'd gotten into the room, omitting the parts where he wept in the elevator and everything that had happened with Trelna. She may not have taken it seriously, he reflected, but I told her I wouldn't tell anyone, so I won't.

Xepher shook his head back and forth. Xicanti noticed that his brother had had a haircut. The redness now hung down to about Xeph's shoulders. "You've had some time!" he exclaimed. "Why didn't you ask me to go with you? I'd have gone in a second." He let out a strange sound. "It's nice here and all, but it's not home."

"That's what I thought at first," Xicanti replied. "But when I went back, I found that I wasn't too sad about coming back to the Palace after all. Rettar's a very selfish person, you know. He dumped me down with the man-eaters just because I didn't bring him anything!"

Xepher nodded. "I don't know how we missed noticing that factor all those years we lived in the cellar."

Xicanti shrugged. "We were probably focusing so much on the good things that we sort of shut out the bad."

The two boys didn't dwell on that for too long. Their conversation was interrupted by Jacen N., who had been sent to tell Xicanti that it was time for his training session to start. "You'd better get down there quick, too," the little boy advised. "Mara's got you first, and she'll kill you if you're late. Or at least get real mad at you. She always did with Lowie."

Xicanti took head of Jacen N.'s advice and hurried off to his first training session, saying a quick good-bye to Xepher.