Date 16: Alliance Senate Offices, Yuliska Isle, Procopia

Senator Skywalker turned away from her office window to address the opening door, but changed her planned greeting almost immediately to: "You're back already?"

Vanya looked down at herself, back up, and answered cheerfully, "Trick question, milady. May I borrow your 'fresher? The waves were higher than expected, and I've got a faceful of salt."

"Certainly, of course." Padme gestured the padawan impatiently toward a discreet entryway to her desk's left. "But what happened?"

Shrugging out of her robe, Vanya rolled it carefully inside-out before placing it on the least expensive-looking corner of a rug. "We had to ask the pilot to come back at top speed. Davish got a priority summons to head into work, do not spare the fuel rods, get here ten minutes ago. I guess when they turn the thing all the way up, the boat kind of bounces. And it quits moving with the swells so much. It was a lot like riding on a skipping stone, actually," she finished in a reflective tone. "I'm surprised Master Skywalker hasn't taken to it."

"Force forbid," Padme muttered. "It's bad enough that he hares off on those lightflyer excursions over Davla."

"Yes, milady," Vanya answered politely; it was the only thing one dared to say when that tone of voice surfaced. Padme sighed. "I'm sorry that your visit was disrupted, Vanya. That seems to happen with the two of you rather a lot, lately."

Vanya scrubbed water off her freshly-rinsed forehead with a now-hopelessly-wrinkled towel. "I appreciate that he's showing up at all. He was absent for so long, that first year and change, I had decided he wasn't interested."

The Senator frowned thoughtfully. "Where are you two going, do you think?"

One quick swipe of the sink, and Vanya was satisfied that she'd cleaned up her mess as well as could be managed. "Nearest coffee shop, probably. Anything more complicated that we plan seems to just result in a more complicated interruption. Master says I can't outwit the Force, but there's no point in tempting it, either."

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh. Umm." Stepping out, Vanya carefully gathered up the bundle of her robe. Padme wasn't quite certain whether Vanya was stalling for time to think, or trying to avoid an intrusive question; neither would be permitted to work. "I take it you mean in the long term."

"Exactly. Is this a dalliance? Or are you building something that will last?"

Vanya spent a moment gazing across the office, out Padme's window. The remains of the day's sunlight glittered off adornments on the Star Bridge, and beyond it the impressive edifice of Vorhartung Castle on canal-laced Estalle Island.

"We're probably doomed," she confessed in good-humored resignation. "Our religions are important to our definitions of self, and for him to be with me, he'll have to choose. He can meet me in the light side of the Force, or he can try to balance my preference for the light ... which isn't going to bode too well for either of us. So, yeah, eventually: doomed." She smiled crookedly at her former master's wife. "Right now I trust that, when we get to that decision, we'll have the grounding to part as friends and wish each other well. I seem to have an inclination to pick out these eventually-incompatible romances." She thought about that for an instant, then shrugged it off: "Fun getting there, though!"

With a hasty bow, she headed for the door. "Thanks for the sink, milady; I'm going to go wheedle the building maintenance into letting me borrow their laundry, before the salt sets too far. You should probably poke around at what the Galactics are up to all of a sudden, that they pulled Sir Tam in for!"