A metaphysical Something sneezes and a person appears in the air, ten feet above a grassy field.
A steady wind blows towards the crisp red sunset. The field is perfectly flat, interrupted only by a stone shed a few hundred feet away.
The 'other Jedi' just finished changing out of a colorful multilayered costume with more jewelry than he's seen in his life, total, and into a simple robe with a very tricky braided belt, and now he needs to hold still some more so the belt can be worked loose again and his new clothes removed. Time for scrubbing! And a soak, apparently that's important.
The musicians follow behind, sit by the wall, and resume playing.
(Eilha's harp is made of stone. The strings will go slack with the humidity but she can adjust the shape of the nut to compensate.)
Huh, fancy. Also less private than he was expecting; he's not shy, exactly, but he will ask about nudity taboos before he strips - some planets have them, he explains, without expanding on whether his does.
"Nah, go ahead." There are shelves for clothes on the wall.
Some species care about it, including the breeders he resembles, but none of them are here... Is he worried about a cross-species nudity taboo? Does that happen? Does his home have multiple species? If they don't have breeders and species magics, how?
She can ask later if she wants, right now he's taking a bath. He's reasonably efficient about it, though he does spend a little time examining the pool and sneaks a moment of meditation in while she isn't looking to cement the memory of the text from earlier in his mind.
"Are there different clothes I can use?" he asks, as he's starting to finish up. He's been careful not to get too sweaty since he's been here but he wasn't planning on this when he hiked out to the cliff face yesterday. "The ones I have are okay if not."
The pool is set most of the way into the floor and made of even dark blue stone with a slightly rough texture. Away from the entrance, the floor is wavy, with tiny holes in the low spots. There are two spigots, a large one capped off with solid stone and a small one that continuously trickles hot water.
The ledge for holding flame is higher up than in the hallway and curves irregularly. The walls have the same rough texture as the floor, in various dark colors. Near the floor, there are small patches of writing and pictures.
Perfect.
"Do you know when the other Jedi will be here?" he asks Mirana, when he's done figuring out how it goes on.
They're going to have to tell Rafiik about the war, so how does the 'other Jedi' fit into that? Obviously, he can't be supporting the Freedom Democracy. He also can't be supporting the Lei, because then why haven't they won already. They want to set an example of staying out of other people's business, but with the possibility of recruiting Rafiik later, so the 'other Jedi' should also not be passionately committed to neutrality or working with the Allheart Alliance.
So he's a wanderer of some sort. Who doesn't do very much, just observes. Doesn't really care what's going on.
Which means that the prepared lie that now makes its way to Mirana is:
"It's about 25? There are 30 hours in a cycle. When the time is 0 and 10 and 20 hours, someone walks by the rooms where people sleep and plays music really loud." She mimes playing some sort of glockenspiel. "They don't do that where your room is, but they could do it if you want that? Oh, and I think they know when to play music because a bowl of water fills up from a small spigot."
"Huh? Oh, at home your planet spins? This planet doesn't." If he's from the past, which she's not at all sure of, it must be the really distant past!
"A cycle is the amount of time where it feels good to sleep once each cycle."
"Yeah, most species like to live on planets that spin." Several points in the 'someone's secret project' bucket, why would you pick a tidally locked planet if you weren't hiding from absolutely everyone. "That's probably the same as the cycles at home, the species here look similar to [foreign-]humans in the Force and my home planet has a [foreign-]human type cycle."
Oup, dangerous subject. "That must make things complicated. Do you want to walk more? Do you want to go up to the surface?"
'most species'!? So what else besides 'humans' then? And they don't have species magic? What... are they for then?
"I might want to do that later, I want to go back to the room and talk to you about something right now. Alone," he adds, directing it at the musicians, "but thank you, the music has been very good."
That's kinda concerning.
On the upside, he's probably only upset with her in particular, not anyone else.
He's not in a hurry, on the way back, and carefully keeps his concern out of his body language.
When they're back in the room, he sits crosslegged on the bed and gestures for Mirana to sit as well. "How much do you know about your Jedi? Do you know why they're here? Do you know how many there are, or if they have other people working with them?"
She bounces on the chair nervously.
"I don't know much. He's been here for a long time, at least twelve years. He walks around and sometimes sings or tells stories. He's probably walked all the way around the planet several times, but I don't know for certain and I don't think anyone does - he's hard to find.
I think there's only one, but I guess there could be more than one and I might not know? I don't know what he looks like, other than kind of like you.
Probably lots of musicians would like to follow him around, but I've never heard of that happening."
Lots of... musicians? ...oh, because she thinks the Force is music-related. And/or the guy has a coincidental hobby. That's not the weirdest part, though. "He walks?"
"That's what people say, since he doesn't have a bicycle or anything? But I suppose he might use the Force..."
"No, the Force isn't good for that." It's not surprising that she doesn't know much, with most likely only one Jedi on the planet, but what she's saying doesn't add up at all. "Do you know anything else about him? Anything at all - something strange is going on here and I'm trying to figure out what."