Star Wars - Kenobi

few opportunities to travel. But the city was always out there: a magnet drawing the starships she occasionally saw high overhead. It had inspired her young imagination.
    Images she had seen depicted Mos Eisley as a knotted web of crowded streets separating dusty domes, used and decaying. She hadn’t wanted to believe the pictures. Those vessels in the sky hailed from cosmopolitan places with shining spires. Why would they visit Tatooine at all, if the city weren’t something special? She’d looked forward to finding out for herself.
    When the day came, it was one that already ran high with expectations: her wedding day. After the raucous sendoff from their friends, Dannar had surprised her by steering Orrin’s borrowed landspeeder past Bestine and continuing east. As the kilometers sped by, the young bride’s anticipation only grew. Spacecraft that soundlessly soared in the oasis sky rumbled and gleamed here, all heading to or from the steaming mirage on the horizon. For a few wonderful minutes, Annileen had allowed herself to imagine that her surprise honeymoon included a trip on one of those starships. To the Core Worlds, perhaps. Or better, to one of the wild places shown in the university safari brochure. Reaching the streets of Mos Eisley, which turned out to be as shabby and hectic as the pictures had shown, did nothing to still her hopes. Her sights were set higher.
    Dannar had pulled the vehicle up to the Twin Shadows Inn, an acceptably clean—if far from posh—establishment off Kerner Plaza. The stay was the gift, all that a rural shop owner starting out could afford.
    But even with her stellar hopes dashed, Annileen soon realized that if she was looking for an exotic locale with strange creatures, Mos Eisley easily sufficed. Kerner Plaza was a relatively upscale neighborhood, with clean showrooms alongside outdoor bazaars. Located near the Republic travelers’ aid office, the streets were safe enough to walk at twilight without blaster in hand. And Dannar had even taken her to dinner at the Court of the Fountain, where she had marveled at every sight. Only a Hutt-owned establishment was rich enough to use water for decoration.
    Mos Eisley was a violent, congested mess, but it was also exciting and surprising, a doorway jammed half open to another dimension of adventure. If Mos Eisley wasn’t the next best thing to going to the stars, it was still several steps closer than anything else on Tatooine. To this day, Annileen remembered every moment of the trip.
    She and Dannar had never made it back to Mos Eisley together; some store emergency always interfered. But Annileen had returned several times since Dannar’s death; usually alone, but once with each child individually. She and Dannar had always talked of bringing the whole family here at some point, but the chance had never come.
    Now she walked the streets of the city with both children at once—and, for the first time, with a new companion. Ben walked behind the group, his cowl pulled low over his head. He stepped quickly to keep up with the Calwells, saying little. They looked like any other family, out on the town—only with a son unhappy to have his father along, and a father who wasn’t too thrilled, either.
    “He could have waited at the repair shop,” Jabe said as the group turned a corner.
    “It was going to be five hours!” Kallie said.
    “I wouldn’t have minded,” Ben said, pleasantly. “There was a chair there.”
    “It had an engine manifold sitting on it,” Annileen said, shaking her head. Jabe’s annoyance at their hooded tagalong hadn’t lessened since the testy ride in from the desert. The boy started walking faster through the crowd, ahead of his mother and sister. “Slow down, Jabe,” Annileen said. “Stay with the group.” She looked back at Ben and smiled. “You, too.”
    Ben gamely followed, but Annileen could tell wandering a busy city wasn’t his first choice for a good time. Strange—he had seemed so well traveled to her. Well, maybe she could change that.
    Turning the corner into Kerner Plaza, however, the foursome encountered a different form of traffic. Dozens of hammer-headed Ithorians thronged the open space, stomping their tree-trunk feet and jubilantly waving sound-makers and silver tassels. Within a second, the crowd of brown-skinned giants engulfed the human visitors.
    “I think we’ve wandered into a wedding,” Ben yelled, straining to be heard over the din.
    “They have a lot of