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pronkerThis is the holiday and this is the fic.
Title: Gift of the Blarney
Author: pronker
Rated: T
Era: AU circa 15 BBY, except there was/will be no BY, read further to find out why!
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fanfiction set in George Lucas' Star Wars, using its characters and settings as they were taken over by Disney. I do not own Star Wars and am neither George nor Walt. Just wait until my next life, though.
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Luc(retia) Skywalker-Kenobi, Donald Skywalker-Kenobi, OC
A/N: This is part four of the Mudverse slash saga. Any plot point questions cheerfully answered. The upshot is that Anakin and Obi-Wan and their five year-olds now live when post-Clone Wars financial concerns require the Jedi Temple to be partially self-supporting, because the heating and air conditioning bill is astronomical.
IOIOIOIOIO
In the wake of the Clone Wars, Supreme Chancellor Bail Organa pushed diplomatically for Vice Chancellor Amidala to use her warm feelings for her former significant other Master Yoda to persuade the revered troll to cut costs. In particular, the Jedi Order needed to 'help out' the secular administration by supporting its Temple thirty per cent. Master Yoda eased himself wisely towards retirement at this point, and the task of implementing such monumental changes to the monumental Temple fell to Master Mace Windu, formerly Jedi High General Master Mace Windu. Mace proved exemplary in applying military techniques to haul the Temple up by its pecuniary bootstraps. Some functions which had been solely for Jedi now brought in funds from non-Jedi appreciators of its style and facilities. Many of them had fond memories of the defunct Jedi Temple Annual Picnic and Open Temple Tour of pre-war vintage.
To show our appreciation of his managerial expertise, all of us contributed our slim earnings and presented him with a solid aurodium flimsiweight for his sixtieth Lifeday. We crowded into his cubicle to present it. He glared at it and at us for a moment, and then it struck me that spending all our ready cash on sentiment was an ante-bellum thing to do.
I had been selected for spokesJedi, and I hurried into a modest speech which I had been preparing for a week.
It made a hit. It was full of puns and limericks which brought down the house. Old Mace himself actually grinned, and the rest of us took our cue and roared.
My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past ninth hour on that morning.
For weeks afterward my fellow Jedi fanned the flame of my self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, old boy, and carefully explained to me the point of each of my jokes.
Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. From me something pithy and provoking was required; I was expected to crack wise about Senatorial goings-on and Temple gossip. Others could be sane and sober in discussing approaching deadlines and revolving credit statements with fifteen per cent penalties, but if I failed to show a bi-monthly inventory readout from Quartermaster K'aki without a killer joke, my fellow Jedi were disappointed.
By degrees my fame spread. The Galactic Enquirer often quoted my sayings. At social gatherings I was indispensable.
I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for banter. I strove through profound meditation to tone down my natural sarcasm and replaced it with a kinder, gentler style. Others saw me coming and broke into smiles, and I had a cheery word ready to turn smiles into laughter.
One day I received a comm from the editor of a famous weekly publication. She suggested that I write a humorous essay to fill a minute's scrolling length on a portable reader, hinting that it could become regular work. I did this. Two ten-days later, she offered me a contract for one year at a higher rate of pay than my between-missions temp work at the Quartermaster's offered.
I was filled with delight. His curly head in the clouds, Anakin already had me accepting the Nova Award For Journalism, and we toasted our future with Nabooan blossom wine that night. I talked over the matter very seriously with Anakin, swirling the Nabooan vintage in my glass and thinking of Padmé and Anakin, how I came to be Anakin's significant other, and how much I wanted to remain so. We agreed that I must devote myself to humor.
I resigned from K'aki's employ. The speech from my farewell banquet was printed in full by the Galactic Enquirer. The next morning I awoke and looked at the chrono.
"Late!" I exclaimed, and Anakin threw my robes at my head. He reminded me that I was no longer a slave to K'aki's unreasonable punctuality, which was the curse of many a tentacled race. I was now a professional humorist.
After first-meal, he proudly led me to our minuscule pantry. Dear man! There was a fold-down table amid puffpackets of muja juice, plus a fold-up chair, mini-comm-station, and a little bag of Latli's signature bonbons to nibble between inspirations. Dear man!
I sat me to work, staring at last year's holo-calendar. It was patterned with trapezoids, or arabesques, or paisley. Upon one of the swirls I fixed my eyes. I thought of humor.
A voice startled me --- Anakin's.
"If you aren't too busy, sweetheart," it said, "come to lunch."
I looked at the chrono. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the scythe of Time. I went to eat.
"You mustn't work too hard at first," said Anakin. "Duron Qel-Droma --- or was it General Grievous? --- said five hours a day is enough for mental labor. How about taking Luc and Donald to the play gardens this afternoon?"
"I am a little tired," I admitted. So we went to the play gardens. I watched my little boy and girl jump in a pile of autumn leaves and thought how I could not fail them.
But I soon got into the swing. Within another ten-day I was turning out copy as regularly as I once replaced lost Jedi robes at K'aki's Quartermaster station for six credits a pop.
And I found success. My minute's worth of jocular scrolling in the weekly edition made a stir, and critics called me 'fresh' and 'inimitable.'
I picked up the tricks of my new trade. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning eight credits if I came up with three more. With a feathered domino on, the idea would dress up as a quatrain, doubling its monetary value. By adding a cape and buccaneer boots, you would hardly recognize it.
I began to save up ten per cent of my adjusted income credits every week, and we ordered hand-knit antimacassars and a customized tantalus to salivate over. My laurels rested for a brief shining time upon my unlined brow.
The roaring winds of Splanch turned months later to the computer-regulated heat waves of Umbrot. The spontaneity seemed to depart from my humor. Quips no longer fell carelessly from my lips, and the deadly deadlines found me scrambling for material. I garnered ideas from my friends' conversations and sometimes I gazed at the outdated calendar's swirls for hours trying to build up some unstudied fun.
And then I became a veritable Anzati to my acquaintances. Fierce as the Maw Cluster when it inhales hapless spacecraft, I was after their every bright saying or witty simile. I turned aside to sneak notes down in my ever-present padd.
My friends regarded me in sorrow, because once I had furnished them entertainment and now I preyed upon them. I told no new jokes. They were precious. I could not afford to squander them as they were the means of my livelihood.
Nearly everyone avoided me and I even forgot how to smile. At Master Yoda's farewell banquet as he retired to Ragoon VI, Mace intoned a fair-to-middling speech yet I scarcely gathered its meaning, so occupied was I with wordsmithing: Mace spake golden years and I extracted golden-molten-melting-years-tears-ears-beers-deers. I was busy correcting deers to its proper plural on my padd when the present rushed in on me and I found myself alone in the banquet hall.
My own home burned to the ground, metaphorically. My Anakin is a singular creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once his conversation was my delight, and his ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked him. He was an aurodium mine of amusing but lovable inconsistencies.
I marketed those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched our own home. I encouraged him to talk and he, all unsuspecting, laid his heart bare.
I offered it in the marketplace of literary slavery, a minute's worth of scrolling confidences and follies dressed in bangles, whirling like a dervish for all to leer at.
Darling Anakin! I have bent over him as he slept in deepest trust beside me under our mauve duvet, cruel as an akk above a newly-birthed nerf. I hoped to catch a word of his nightly mutterings for my next day's grind.
There is worse to come.
Stars help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of whimsical sayings of my little children.
Luc and Donald were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches. This brand of humor sold like flatcakes, streaming to various publications as "Whimsical Fancies of Childhood." I stalked my son and daughter as Togruta stalk their prey, hiding behind sofas, lurking on hands and knees behind bushes in the play gardens, becoming a nasty spy. I had all the qualities of a good parent except remorse.
Once, when I was barren of ideas and the deadline loomed as insurmountable as the razored cliffs of Braehiin, I took a leaf from the book of Togrutan camouflage and covered myself in a pile of leaves in the play gardens. I cannot bring myself to believe that Luc was aware of my hiding place, but even if she were I would be loath to blame her for practicing her new skill of Force-enhanced firestarting. She destroyed my new set of robes, nearly cremated a parent, and proved once and for all the efficacy of the Temple's combustion suppressant foam.
Soon my own children shunned me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon them in ghoul-like mood, I would hear Donald say to Luc: "Here comes Papa," and they would gather toys and scurry away. Miserable wretch that I was, I was doing well financially. Before the first year of the contract guttered to its melancholy end, I had saved one thousand credits, and we lived in as much comfort as Jedi ever allowed themselves.
But at what cost! I had no friends, no hobbies to amuse, no enjoyment of life. Sacrificed upon the altar of Employment was the happiness of my family. I was a honeydarter, sucking nectar from life's fairest flowers, dreaded on account of my sting.
One day a Jedi spoke to me, with a friendly smile. Not since the rainy month of Viltonn began had such a thing happened. I was passing the undertaking chamber of Potor Lumnaber. Potor stood in the doorway and gestured me inside. I stopped, wrung to the heart by his greeting.
Outdoors, the day was chill and spattered with hail. We Jedi wore extra sets of undergarments whenever Mace's new Temple rules declared a No Extra Heating Day and so we went into the back room, where a stealthy fire burned smokeless on a small grate, ostensibly a Tribute To Our Force-Dwelling Departed. A non-Temple customer came, and Potor left me alone for a while to warm my hands. Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me --- a sense of beautiful calm. I looked around the place. There were rows of shiny caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes for gualaar in Nabooan corteges, mourning armbands and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was true peace. Here were grave reflections. Here, on the brink of life, pervaded the spirit of eternal rest.
When moments passed and I blissfully did not wrest a humorous idea from those somber trappings, my mind stretched itself on a comfortable bier which was covered in padded velvetar, and from between my brows the line that Anakin loved to kiss eased away.
Moments ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philospher who had found refuge from humor, from trotting after the quip, from galloping towards an a propos joke, from steeplechasing while pursuing the repartee which sold well.
I thought he was fully human, but I had never known Lumnaber well: he was not in my creche, my Initiate Halls clan, nor was he my agemate for Knighting. He was someplace between me and Master Qui-Gon, an indeterminate age for an indeterminate personality. When he came back I let him talk, fearing that he might be a jarring note in the harmony of his establishment.
But no. He chimed as truly as a tuning fork. I sighed happily. Never have I known such a man. No wit marred his words. Trite sayings as plentiful as sweesonberries flowed from his lips, no more stirring than last week's weather report. Trembling with need, I tried him with one of my best pointed jokes. It fell back with the point broken. I loved that man from then on.
Three evenings each week I would steal down to Lumnaber's and revel in his back room. That was my only joy. I began to awaken before even Anakin and hurry through my work to spend more time in my haven. Nowhere else could I throw off my habit of extracting humor from my surroundings. Potor's talk left me no openings.
I began to improve in spirits. It was the rest from one's work which everyone needs. I surprised a former friend by throwing her a smile and a cheery word as I passed her in the halls. Twice I dumbfounded my family by relaxing long enough to tell a knock-knock joke.
I had so long been sucked dry of true humor that I seized my hours of holiday with a Besalisk's zest for life.
My work began to suffer, as it was not the burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my fold-down table, and wrote with more fluency than before when I was not sneaking off to the Humorist's Message Boards on my mini-comm station. I grew impatient, each day as anxious to be off to my retreat as a spice addict to their connection.
My Anakin had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I thought it best not to tell him, as I later regretted, but at the time thought that his sort of personality does not understand these things. Poor man! --- he had one shock out of it.
One day I brought home an aurodium coffin handle for a flimsiweight and a fine, fluffy Nabooan hearse plume to dust my office niche with.
I loved to see them on my mini-comm station, and think of the beloved back room down at Lumnaber's. But Anakin found them, and his jaw dropped with horror. I had to console him with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in his eyes that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at double-quick time.
One day Potor Lumnaber laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his records, and explained that his business was increasing rapidly due to the surge in non-Jedi clientele. He had thought of taking in a partner with some cash to expand his solemn inventory. He would rather have me than anyone he knew. When I left that afternoon, Potor had my thousand credits, and I was a partner in the mortuary business.
I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of doubt. I was ambivalent about telling Anakin. But I walked on air. To give up writing humor, once more to enjoy the succulent muja fruits of life, instead of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops of juice to make the public snicker, snigger, and smirk --- what a boon that would be!
At the supper table, Anakin pointed me to our major comm station which had five incoming message lights flaring. Several of them showed the dread red strobe of rejection. Ever since I first began going to Lumnaber's, my stuff had been coming back with alarming frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and articles with the greatest fluency. Previously I had labored as if in a spice mine, slowly and with agony.
I opened a comm from the editor of the weekly edition with which I had a regular contract. The funds for that minute's scroll were still our main dependence. The comm ran:
"Dear Master Jedi:
"As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present month. While regretting the necessity for so doing, we must say that we do not care to renew same for the coming year. We were quite pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted a large proportion of our readers. But since the month of Viltonn ended our third financial quarter, we have noticed a falling off in its quality.
"Your first work showed a spontaneous, natural flow of fun and wit. Lately it is labored and unconvincing, giving painful evidence of hard toil and grudging mechanism.
"Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions viable any longer, we are,
"Yours sincerely,
The Editor"
I showed this comm to my Anakin. After he had read it, his face grew extremely long and there was sheet lightning in his aura.
"The fool!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "I'm sure your pieces are just as good as they ever were. And it doesn't take you half as long to write them as it did." And then, I suppose, Anakin thought of the funds that would cease coming and what the Temple would do without my income. "Obi-Wan, what will you do now?"
For an answer I got up and began to gavotte around the dining table. I am sure Anakin thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore off after me, squealing with glee and emulating my steps. I was now something like their playmate as in olden days. Luc clapped her hands and capered solo, but Donald grabbed my thumbs to gavotte with me.
"The theater for us tonight, little Don-Of-The-Jedi!" I shouted as I danced with my son. "Nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable herglic ice cream float for all of us at the Elfin Sprite Restaurant!"
And then I explained my joy by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous mortuary establishment, and that written humor might go hide its head in Tatooine sand.
With the editor's comm on his mind to justify the deed, my Anakin could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on his obtuse inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Lumnab--no, of Lumnaber & Co.'s mortuary establishment.
To sum up, I will say today that you will find no Jedi in the Temple District as well liked, as jovial and filled with merry sayings as I. My jokes are again featured on Entertainment Coruscanti Style! and once more I take pleasure in my Anakin's confidential chatter without a mercenary thought. Luc and Donald play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to stalk them, microphone in avaricious claws.
Our business has endured and prospered. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Potor attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a right jolly affair.
IOIOIOIOIO
The End.
IOIOIOIOIO
a/n Written in remembrance of an acquaintance whose first job after years of dependence took over her life to the detriment of all other aspects of existence. Secondary remembrance is to me, because I am a technopeasant of the lowest sort. That must be why I am so happy.
Title: Gift of the Blarney
Author: pronker
Rated: T
Era: AU circa 15 BBY, except there was/will be no BY, read further to find out why!
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this fanfiction set in George Lucas' Star Wars, using its characters and settings as they were taken over by Disney. I do not own Star Wars and am neither George nor Walt. Just wait until my next life, though.
Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Luc(retia) Skywalker-Kenobi, Donald Skywalker-Kenobi, OC
A/N: This is part four of the Mudverse slash saga. Any plot point questions cheerfully answered. The upshot is that Anakin and Obi-Wan and their five year-olds now live when post-Clone Wars financial concerns require the Jedi Temple to be partially self-supporting, because the heating and air conditioning bill is astronomical.
IOIOIOIOIO
In the wake of the Clone Wars, Supreme Chancellor Bail Organa pushed diplomatically for Vice Chancellor Amidala to use her warm feelings for her former significant other Master Yoda to persuade the revered troll to cut costs. In particular, the Jedi Order needed to 'help out' the secular administration by supporting its Temple thirty per cent. Master Yoda eased himself wisely towards retirement at this point, and the task of implementing such monumental changes to the monumental Temple fell to Master Mace Windu, formerly Jedi High General Master Mace Windu. Mace proved exemplary in applying military techniques to haul the Temple up by its pecuniary bootstraps. Some functions which had been solely for Jedi now brought in funds from non-Jedi appreciators of its style and facilities. Many of them had fond memories of the defunct Jedi Temple Annual Picnic and Open Temple Tour of pre-war vintage.
To show our appreciation of his managerial expertise, all of us contributed our slim earnings and presented him with a solid aurodium flimsiweight for his sixtieth Lifeday. We crowded into his cubicle to present it. He glared at it and at us for a moment, and then it struck me that spending all our ready cash on sentiment was an ante-bellum thing to do.
I had been selected for spokesJedi, and I hurried into a modest speech which I had been preparing for a week.
It made a hit. It was full of puns and limericks which brought down the house. Old Mace himself actually grinned, and the rest of us took our cue and roared.
My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past ninth hour on that morning.
For weeks afterward my fellow Jedi fanned the flame of my self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, old boy, and carefully explained to me the point of each of my jokes.
Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. From me something pithy and provoking was required; I was expected to crack wise about Senatorial goings-on and Temple gossip. Others could be sane and sober in discussing approaching deadlines and revolving credit statements with fifteen per cent penalties, but if I failed to show a bi-monthly inventory readout from Quartermaster K'aki without a killer joke, my fellow Jedi were disappointed.
By degrees my fame spread. The Galactic Enquirer often quoted my sayings. At social gatherings I was indispensable.
I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for banter. I strove through profound meditation to tone down my natural sarcasm and replaced it with a kinder, gentler style. Others saw me coming and broke into smiles, and I had a cheery word ready to turn smiles into laughter.
One day I received a comm from the editor of a famous weekly publication. She suggested that I write a humorous essay to fill a minute's scrolling length on a portable reader, hinting that it could become regular work. I did this. Two ten-days later, she offered me a contract for one year at a higher rate of pay than my between-missions temp work at the Quartermaster's offered.
I was filled with delight. His curly head in the clouds, Anakin already had me accepting the Nova Award For Journalism, and we toasted our future with Nabooan blossom wine that night. I talked over the matter very seriously with Anakin, swirling the Nabooan vintage in my glass and thinking of Padmé and Anakin, how I came to be Anakin's significant other, and how much I wanted to remain so. We agreed that I must devote myself to humor.
I resigned from K'aki's employ. The speech from my farewell banquet was printed in full by the Galactic Enquirer. The next morning I awoke and looked at the chrono.
"Late!" I exclaimed, and Anakin threw my robes at my head. He reminded me that I was no longer a slave to K'aki's unreasonable punctuality, which was the curse of many a tentacled race. I was now a professional humorist.
After first-meal, he proudly led me to our minuscule pantry. Dear man! There was a fold-down table amid puffpackets of muja juice, plus a fold-up chair, mini-comm-station, and a little bag of Latli's signature bonbons to nibble between inspirations. Dear man!
I sat me to work, staring at last year's holo-calendar. It was patterned with trapezoids, or arabesques, or paisley. Upon one of the swirls I fixed my eyes. I thought of humor.
A voice startled me --- Anakin's.
"If you aren't too busy, sweetheart," it said, "come to lunch."
I looked at the chrono. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the scythe of Time. I went to eat.
"You mustn't work too hard at first," said Anakin. "Duron Qel-Droma --- or was it General Grievous? --- said five hours a day is enough for mental labor. How about taking Luc and Donald to the play gardens this afternoon?"
"I am a little tired," I admitted. So we went to the play gardens. I watched my little boy and girl jump in a pile of autumn leaves and thought how I could not fail them.
But I soon got into the swing. Within another ten-day I was turning out copy as regularly as I once replaced lost Jedi robes at K'aki's Quartermaster station for six credits a pop.
And I found success. My minute's worth of jocular scrolling in the weekly edition made a stir, and critics called me 'fresh' and 'inimitable.'
I picked up the tricks of my new trade. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning eight credits if I came up with three more. With a feathered domino on, the idea would dress up as a quatrain, doubling its monetary value. By adding a cape and buccaneer boots, you would hardly recognize it.
I began to save up ten per cent of my adjusted income credits every week, and we ordered hand-knit antimacassars and a customized tantalus to salivate over. My laurels rested for a brief shining time upon my unlined brow.
The roaring winds of Splanch turned months later to the computer-regulated heat waves of Umbrot. The spontaneity seemed to depart from my humor. Quips no longer fell carelessly from my lips, and the deadly deadlines found me scrambling for material. I garnered ideas from my friends' conversations and sometimes I gazed at the outdated calendar's swirls for hours trying to build up some unstudied fun.
And then I became a veritable Anzati to my acquaintances. Fierce as the Maw Cluster when it inhales hapless spacecraft, I was after their every bright saying or witty simile. I turned aside to sneak notes down in my ever-present padd.
My friends regarded me in sorrow, because once I had furnished them entertainment and now I preyed upon them. I told no new jokes. They were precious. I could not afford to squander them as they were the means of my livelihood.
Nearly everyone avoided me and I even forgot how to smile. At Master Yoda's farewell banquet as he retired to Ragoon VI, Mace intoned a fair-to-middling speech yet I scarcely gathered its meaning, so occupied was I with wordsmithing: Mace spake golden years and I extracted golden-molten-melting-years-tears-ears-beers-deers. I was busy correcting deers to its proper plural on my padd when the present rushed in on me and I found myself alone in the banquet hall.
My own home burned to the ground, metaphorically. My Anakin is a singular creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once his conversation was my delight, and his ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked him. He was an aurodium mine of amusing but lovable inconsistencies.
I marketed those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched our own home. I encouraged him to talk and he, all unsuspecting, laid his heart bare.
I offered it in the marketplace of literary slavery, a minute's worth of scrolling confidences and follies dressed in bangles, whirling like a dervish for all to leer at.
Darling Anakin! I have bent over him as he slept in deepest trust beside me under our mauve duvet, cruel as an akk above a newly-birthed nerf. I hoped to catch a word of his nightly mutterings for my next day's grind.
There is worse to come.
Stars help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of whimsical sayings of my little children.
Luc and Donald were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches. This brand of humor sold like flatcakes, streaming to various publications as "Whimsical Fancies of Childhood." I stalked my son and daughter as Togruta stalk their prey, hiding behind sofas, lurking on hands and knees behind bushes in the play gardens, becoming a nasty spy. I had all the qualities of a good parent except remorse.
Once, when I was barren of ideas and the deadline loomed as insurmountable as the razored cliffs of Braehiin, I took a leaf from the book of Togrutan camouflage and covered myself in a pile of leaves in the play gardens. I cannot bring myself to believe that Luc was aware of my hiding place, but even if she were I would be loath to blame her for practicing her new skill of Force-enhanced firestarting. She destroyed my new set of robes, nearly cremated a parent, and proved once and for all the efficacy of the Temple's combustion suppressant foam.
Soon my own children shunned me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon them in ghoul-like mood, I would hear Donald say to Luc: "Here comes Papa," and they would gather toys and scurry away. Miserable wretch that I was, I was doing well financially. Before the first year of the contract guttered to its melancholy end, I had saved one thousand credits, and we lived in as much comfort as Jedi ever allowed themselves.
But at what cost! I had no friends, no hobbies to amuse, no enjoyment of life. Sacrificed upon the altar of Employment was the happiness of my family. I was a honeydarter, sucking nectar from life's fairest flowers, dreaded on account of my sting.
One day a Jedi spoke to me, with a friendly smile. Not since the rainy month of Viltonn began had such a thing happened. I was passing the undertaking chamber of Potor Lumnaber. Potor stood in the doorway and gestured me inside. I stopped, wrung to the heart by his greeting.
Outdoors, the day was chill and spattered with hail. We Jedi wore extra sets of undergarments whenever Mace's new Temple rules declared a No Extra Heating Day and so we went into the back room, where a stealthy fire burned smokeless on a small grate, ostensibly a Tribute To Our Force-Dwelling Departed. A non-Temple customer came, and Potor left me alone for a while to warm my hands. Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me --- a sense of beautiful calm. I looked around the place. There were rows of shiny caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes for gualaar in Nabooan corteges, mourning armbands and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was true peace. Here were grave reflections. Here, on the brink of life, pervaded the spirit of eternal rest.
When moments passed and I blissfully did not wrest a humorous idea from those somber trappings, my mind stretched itself on a comfortable bier which was covered in padded velvetar, and from between my brows the line that Anakin loved to kiss eased away.
Moments ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philospher who had found refuge from humor, from trotting after the quip, from galloping towards an a propos joke, from steeplechasing while pursuing the repartee which sold well.
I thought he was fully human, but I had never known Lumnaber well: he was not in my creche, my Initiate Halls clan, nor was he my agemate for Knighting. He was someplace between me and Master Qui-Gon, an indeterminate age for an indeterminate personality. When he came back I let him talk, fearing that he might be a jarring note in the harmony of his establishment.
But no. He chimed as truly as a tuning fork. I sighed happily. Never have I known such a man. No wit marred his words. Trite sayings as plentiful as sweesonberries flowed from his lips, no more stirring than last week's weather report. Trembling with need, I tried him with one of my best pointed jokes. It fell back with the point broken. I loved that man from then on.
Three evenings each week I would steal down to Lumnaber's and revel in his back room. That was my only joy. I began to awaken before even Anakin and hurry through my work to spend more time in my haven. Nowhere else could I throw off my habit of extracting humor from my surroundings. Potor's talk left me no openings.
I began to improve in spirits. It was the rest from one's work which everyone needs. I surprised a former friend by throwing her a smile and a cheery word as I passed her in the halls. Twice I dumbfounded my family by relaxing long enough to tell a knock-knock joke.
I had so long been sucked dry of true humor that I seized my hours of holiday with a Besalisk's zest for life.
My work began to suffer, as it was not the burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my fold-down table, and wrote with more fluency than before when I was not sneaking off to the Humorist's Message Boards on my mini-comm station. I grew impatient, each day as anxious to be off to my retreat as a spice addict to their connection.
My Anakin had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I thought it best not to tell him, as I later regretted, but at the time thought that his sort of personality does not understand these things. Poor man! --- he had one shock out of it.
One day I brought home an aurodium coffin handle for a flimsiweight and a fine, fluffy Nabooan hearse plume to dust my office niche with.
I loved to see them on my mini-comm station, and think of the beloved back room down at Lumnaber's. But Anakin found them, and his jaw dropped with horror. I had to console him with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in his eyes that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at double-quick time.
One day Potor Lumnaber laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his records, and explained that his business was increasing rapidly due to the surge in non-Jedi clientele. He had thought of taking in a partner with some cash to expand his solemn inventory. He would rather have me than anyone he knew. When I left that afternoon, Potor had my thousand credits, and I was a partner in the mortuary business.
I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of doubt. I was ambivalent about telling Anakin. But I walked on air. To give up writing humor, once more to enjoy the succulent muja fruits of life, instead of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops of juice to make the public snicker, snigger, and smirk --- what a boon that would be!
At the supper table, Anakin pointed me to our major comm station which had five incoming message lights flaring. Several of them showed the dread red strobe of rejection. Ever since I first began going to Lumnaber's, my stuff had been coming back with alarming frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and articles with the greatest fluency. Previously I had labored as if in a spice mine, slowly and with agony.
I opened a comm from the editor of the weekly edition with which I had a regular contract. The funds for that minute's scroll were still our main dependence. The comm ran:
"Dear Master Jedi:
"As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present month. While regretting the necessity for so doing, we must say that we do not care to renew same for the coming year. We were quite pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted a large proportion of our readers. But since the month of Viltonn ended our third financial quarter, we have noticed a falling off in its quality.
"Your first work showed a spontaneous, natural flow of fun and wit. Lately it is labored and unconvincing, giving painful evidence of hard toil and grudging mechanism.
"Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions viable any longer, we are,
"Yours sincerely,
The Editor"
I showed this comm to my Anakin. After he had read it, his face grew extremely long and there was sheet lightning in his aura.
"The fool!" he exclaimed, indignantly. "I'm sure your pieces are just as good as they ever were. And it doesn't take you half as long to write them as it did." And then, I suppose, Anakin thought of the funds that would cease coming and what the Temple would do without my income. "Obi-Wan, what will you do now?"
For an answer I got up and began to gavotte around the dining table. I am sure Anakin thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore off after me, squealing with glee and emulating my steps. I was now something like their playmate as in olden days. Luc clapped her hands and capered solo, but Donald grabbed my thumbs to gavotte with me.
"The theater for us tonight, little Don-Of-The-Jedi!" I shouted as I danced with my son. "Nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable herglic ice cream float for all of us at the Elfin Sprite Restaurant!"
And then I explained my joy by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous mortuary establishment, and that written humor might go hide its head in Tatooine sand.
With the editor's comm on his mind to justify the deed, my Anakin could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on his obtuse inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Lumnab--no, of Lumnaber & Co.'s mortuary establishment.
To sum up, I will say today that you will find no Jedi in the Temple District as well liked, as jovial and filled with merry sayings as I. My jokes are again featured on Entertainment Coruscanti Style! and once more I take pleasure in my Anakin's confidential chatter without a mercenary thought. Luc and Donald play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to stalk them, microphone in avaricious claws.
Our business has endured and prospered. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Potor attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a right jolly affair.
IOIOIOIOIO
The End.
IOIOIOIOIO
a/n Written in remembrance of an acquaintance whose first job after years of dependence took over her life to the detriment of all other aspects of existence. Secondary remembrance is to me, because I am a technopeasant of the lowest sort. That must be why I am so happy.
