Bankor

“Hm? Normal I guess. Was only here for one day. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time really. People seem pretty desperate now though... Was much more relaxed when I came.”

"Oh. I agree; it is hard to form definite impressions of a place in so short a time." She shrugs one shoulder. "I'll have to keep looking for other offworlders with a longer perspective. Though I'm still interested in your experiences, if you care to share them." She cocks an eyebrow and regards Delmi with polite curiosity.

“Umm what experiences would you like to hear?” She asked as she thought for a moment.

“I mean... My life in 10 seconds is... Dad was a Republic vet. Got kicked out for something he didn’t do. Trained me to fight. Died when I was 14. I’ve been killing ever since to make a living... probably not a life a Jedi is too impressed with.”

Tethys raises her eyebrows. "That's a hard life. You had no one else to take you in?" Shaking her head slightly, she adds, "I actually meant your experiences of Bankor, but the ambiguity was mine. I apologize if I've made you uncomfortable."

"Not a problem.. Sorry I didn't answer the right question... Guess I've gotten used to everyone asking what my story is since I got here."

"It's natural for people to be curious about the comrades fighting by their sides," Tethys suggests. "The Republic soldiers know one another, and so do the Resistance, but between the two groups there is still much to learn. Not to mention all the freelance irregulars who've been drawn to the conflict." She opens a hand toward Delmi, an obvious example of the latter.

She nodded, "I don't take any offense. And I don't really got anything to hide. People are gonna think what they want to think. I feel being straightforward is the best way to go about getting to know someone."

She then tilted her head, "So what's your story? Been training since you were a baby?"

"Not quite," Tethys says, the corners of her lips turning up a little. "I went to the Jedi when I was, oh... probably younger by a few years than you were, when you were first on your own. Before that I'd grown up in a small settlement. The first time I went to a proper city was to take the technical schools exam with a lot of other children, and there were Jedi there. I'd never seen one before." She shakes her head slightly at the memory. "They asked my family to release me into training, and eventually I did go. But I had to catch up with other children who had been in the Temple since they could walk."

"Do you have to like compete against the other students? Are there like grades or something?" She asked innocently.

"Not really." Tethys shrugs one shoulder. "The younglings do the standard computerized general education courses, and those are scored. But most teaching is individual, or quite open-ended. Learning to understand the Force is intuitive... or sometimes counter-intuitive, but they are not as different as you might think." She cocks her head, her expression growing slightly distant as she thinks back to those early days--given that she looks somewhere between about twenty-two and twenty-four now, it would have to have been a good ten years ago.

"There's no way to truly measure yourself against other students, you can only measure against yourself. Quite different from what I was expecting when I applied to technical school as a child, to say the least."

"Sounds... different. There like different ranks and stuff right... like a Knight or a.. paddlefoot?" Demli asked while straining to think.

Tethys's lips quirk. "Padawans are Jedi who apprentice to a master to complete their training. Some beings call Jedi who have passed their trials Knights, others just call us Jedi."

"So you're not a pada..one anymore then?" She asked.

"No. I was one not so long ago, but time has a way of passing," Tethys says, with a brief laugh like a creek flowing over stones.

“Cool.” Delmi replied kind of awkwardly.

“Did you have like a party or something when you graduated?”

"Not exactly?" Tethys seems surprised by the question. Come to think of it, graduation parties are quite common in many educational systems... "Master M'ralo and I did go out for iced noodles. But we often did that while on Coruscant."

“Sounds pretty extravagant.” She replied with a smirk.

“I hear iced noodles lead to the evil side.”

"News to me. I'll have to be on my guard." The Jedi almost... almost smirks.

She tilted her head forward and to the right slightly and smirked, “You better. It’s pretty serious stuff.”

"We're all safe for now, unfortunately. I don't expect to find many iced noodle shops in this oven of a place," Tethys says a bit wistfully. She tilts her cup to see inside... still some liquid in there, but she's lost all desire to drink the rest of it. "It's been a pleasure getting to know you a little, Ms. Koor, but it's getting late. Might we continue our conversation another time?"

She nodded, "I'll be around... 'less I'm not cuz of something that happens in the fighting. Be safe out there master jedi."

Tethys rises to her feet. "The same to you, Ms. Koor. Until then." With a slight smile, she sweeps out of the rec hall, pausing to plop her cup into a waste receptacle on her way out.

/exit