Ayli didn’t know how she’d been caught. The chance that Nix would take them to the one planet, and one the bio-dome out of the tens of thousands where people were likely to be waiting in ambush for her should have been a statistical impossibility. As her breath was crushed out of her, she briefly wondered if Nix hadn’t been a secret plant all along, carefully designed to lure her into this exact moment.

“Ayli! You’re back! How are my niece?” Gewla asked, or really growled, out in Shryiiwook.

Ayli patted Gewla’s arm three time to say ‘I can’t speak, you’re crushing me’. That wasn’t a part of Galactic Basic or Shryiiwook because most Wookies didn’t need to be reminded that their adopted niece was far more squishable than they were.

Fortunately for Ayli, she hadn’t been go so long that her Aunt had forgotten their shared language additions.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just so happy to see you,” Gewla said and then noticed Nix who was climbing out of the shuttle with a bemused look in her eyes.

How Nix could tell that Ayli wasn’t under an actual assault, Ayli wasn’t sure, but from the general surprise and confusion in Nix’s body language, Ayli had to discount the idea that she’d been a secret agent in Gewla’s employ.

Probably.

Humans were so difficult to read with their absence of the sensible lekku Twi’leks possessed. Though to be fair, Ayli had to admit that lekku or no lekku, Nix was open in a way few people Ayli’d known were. Or at least she was for Ayli. She had tricked Sali pretty thoroughly. Ayli wanted to ponder that further, but more pressing matters were at hand.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” Ayli said. “You know how it goes though. You get a paper to write, which gives you a lead on a new discovery, and that leads to another lead, and then a dead end, and then another lead and somehow a couple of years have gone by.”

Ayli had been tempted to explain in Shryiiwook, but her ability to pronounce things properly in Gewla’s home tongue was mediocre at best. Also the growling left her throat raw after about five minutes of trying it. 

“You two know each other I take it?” Nix asked, as though there was any other explanation for what she’d witnessed.

“Nix Lamplighter, may I introduce Archivist Gewla, my aunt,” Ayli said. She didn’t add the ‘adopted’ part. It was obvious and an unimportant distinction as far as she was concerned. “Aunt Gewla, Nix Lamplifter, my…” she paused trying to decide what the right answer was for the unspoken question of who Nix was to her. “My ship’s engineer.”

Ayli kicked herself. That wasn’t the right choice. Nix was more than that. Wasn’t she? But even if that was true, did Nix want to advertise that? Especially to Ayli’s family who might have expectations of her?

They probably needed to talk about that Ayli decided, but not until they were alone.

Gewla snapped clapped her hands and a small droid hopped up onto her shoulder.

“A pleasure to meet you Nix Lamplighter,” Gewla said in Shryiiwook. The droid repeated her words in Galactic Basic.

“A pleasure to meet you as well Archivist Gewla,” Nix said, keeping her eyes on Gewla rather than the micro-protocol droid, something far too few people seemed to think to do.

“What brings you to the Library? Have you eaten? Come, Vromno will have your favorite meal almost ready now,” Gewla said, grabbing Ayli’s arm to ‘encourage’ her to follow along.

“You knew were coming?” Ayli asked.

“No. This is a wonderful surprise,” Gewla said.

“How will Uncle Vromno have Bosnin Berry Ryyk Supreme ready then?” Ayli asked.

“He’ll start making it when we get there,” Gewla said, ignoring two hour prep and cooking time the dish required.

Ayli glanced back at Nix to see Nix looking to her for guidance. 

This clearly hadn’t been Nix’s idea since she seemed to have no idea how to respond to Gewla’s offer, or even Gewla in general, but from her nod she seemed to be willing to follow Ayli’s lead. Whatever that turned out to be.

Fleeing from Gewla would have been possible. Ayli knew any number of white lies which could have covered her, from something as elaborate as needing to make an appointment to view a private collection on the other side of the planet, to something as simple as needing to secure a room and some sleep after a long hyperspace trip.

The promise of Bosnin Berry Ryyk Supreme though was a difficult one to pass up. 

Not to mention that she knew she should spend some time with her adopted family. They’d been good to her when the galaxy hadn’t, and she didn’t want them to ever think she wasn’t grateful.

“Uncle Vromno doesn’t have to go to all that trouble,” Ayli said. “We can treat you two to something if you’ll let us.”

“Nonsense,” Gewla said. “You’ll eat with us. That will be our treat.”

Ayli could have predicted that response word-for-word but her objections had still been worth making. 

“You’ll let us help prepare the Ryyk?” Ayli asked, again making an honest offer that she knew would be refused.

“It’s already prepared,” Gewla said. “Vromno just needs to scale it, bone it, and make up the marinade.”

And probably go to the nearest market and buy it as well, unless Ayli missed her guess.

“Then we can sit and talk with you,” Ayli said, which was, of course, exactly what Gewla wanted to hear.

Gewla and Vromno’s house had an entirely different set of random relics and unlabeled artifacts scattered around it than the last time Ayli had visited them, but that was consistent with every other time Ayli had come home.

As one of the “first lines of defense” against the flood of random trash that was submitted to the Library for “archival purposes”, Gewl and Vromno always had a wealth of fascinating treasures they were evaluating for formal submission to one of the specialized bio-domes (or submission to the nearest trash compactor, depending on the piece’s actual value and uniqueness). The rooms and rooms they had which were full of the stuff was nothing like Ayli’s childhood home, but the years she’d spent with them had lent their dwelling the same sense of belonging that her families home had possessed.

“Your engineer is very pretty for human, is she not?” Gewla tapped the mini-protocol droid so that it wouldn’t translate that and added. “How long have you been together?”

Gewla wasn’t one to tease Ayli about her relationships, few of them as there’d been, but there was an undercurrent of “is this someone we should have met long ago” to her question.

“We just met a little over a week ago,” Ayli said. “On Canto Blight.” She didn’t know why that seemed like an important detail. It certainly wasn’t going to keep Gewla from asking even more questions.

“I needed a job and Ayli’wensha needed a mechanic. It was quite fortunate,” Nix said, apparently not having guessed what Gewla’s first question had been.

“That sounds wonderful!” Gewla said, allowing the droid to resume its translation. “Vromno and I met by serendipity like that too.”

Ayli knew Gewla had always hoped Ayli would find a mate as loving and supportive as Vronmo was to her, even well after Ayli had abandoned the notion that such a person existed. She forgotten how lacking in subtlety on the subject Gewla was though. If Nix wasn’t already married to her, Ayli would have been terrified of her Aunt scaring Nix off. As it was though, Nix’s answer was almost more worrisome in the other direction.

“Really? I’ll have to hear that story. It’s always good to know how successful relationships are put together.”

Was that…did Nix want…well, yes, she’d said exactly that. But that had been the Santo Nectar talking…no, Ayli couldn’t pretend that was the case. Still. It was…nice? Or terrifying? Both. What Nix was suggesting was both.

“What brings you to the Library?” Gewla asked, obviously seeing her niece’s plight and choosing mercy for a change.

“Research,” Ayli said, which was admittedly the least helpful of all possible answers. The only reasons anyone came to the Librarium Nocti was for research. “There’s an ancient religious order that I’m trying to track down.”

“And what sort of treasure did this ancient religious order leave behind?” Vromna said as he entered the room with a pitcher of Apri nectar and some freshly defrosted Luni Plums.

It was funny to hear the translation of his words come from the same protocol droid that Gewla was using, though the droid had at least been equipped with multiple vocal patterns to distinguish who it was translating for, so the Basic version of his words held the same deep resonance as he actual voice.

“It’s not about the treasure Uncle,” Ayli said.

“It’s always about the treasure,” Gewla said. “The trick is noticing when you’ve found it.”

She gestured to the widgets and detritus which filled the room, seven of which were in the middle of being evaluated on her work bench.

“Some treasures are easier to recognize than others,” Nix said, a comment which Ayli simply refused to evaluate at all. “That’s an actual overload break from the second Death Star not a replica, isn’t it?” Nix pointed to helix of badly scorched golden and silvered metal which was in the ‘To Be Worked On Soon’ pile beside Gewla’s table.

“That’s the claim,” Gewla said. “We’ll need to perform conductivity tests on it to be sure, but the chain of ownership supports it originating in the Endor system.”

“If it’s real, it’ll have a 256 character ID code etched into the inner coils,” Nix said.

“How do you know that?” Ayli asked, more curious than surprised by Nix’s oddly eclectic knowledge.

“The Emporor ‘liquidated’ the company that made them after they delivered a sufficient supply for the second Death Star. I guess he didn’t want anyone making a rival battle station or something. The few that weren’t blown up go for a lot of credits, not because anyone wants to make another Death Star but because they let you amp up the output of your hyperdrive by a factor of 2.5 without worrying about blowing it out or exploding. It’s a really efficient part. It had to be to support the load of the Death Star’s main laser.” 

Nix looked like she could have gone on longer but silenced herself out of habit from a lifetime of people being uninterested in what she had to say. The could not have been less true of Gewla and Vromna, who were hanging on her every word.

“Oh, I think we need her,” Gewla said. “You can find another one, right Ayli?”

“Hey. No. Hands off. She’s mine,” Ayli said and immediately regretted the outburst.

Coming home sucked. People knew how to push her buttons too easily.

“What can you tell us about the religious order you’re looking for?” Vromno asked.

“They claimed to have found the secret to Eternal Life, or it could have been Eternal Youth, the source text is in Shadow Vyllandi and they use the same term for both,” Ayli said.

“Shadow Vyllandi? Are you looking for the ‘Children of the Storm’?” Vromna asked.

“Yeah. Wait, how did you know? Have you heard of them?” Ayli asked.

“Not until last week,” Gewla said. “There was a shipment of artifacts that came in from Beta Narsus which had the strangest Phrik coins. We were going to send them out to the Cyberiad Metal Concern for analysis but there was a Nun who was giving a seminar on Phrik based religious paraphernalia so we went to see if she could provide any information on the Phrik coins.”

“Did she? Or, was she able to?” Ayli asked.

“Yes. She identified them as being minted by the Children of the Storm. Said she’d been doing research on them for ten standard years now,” Gewla said.

“Do you know where she is now?” Nix asked. “We’d like to talk to her if we could.”

“That’ll be a little tricky,” Vromna said. “The last I heard, she was in solitary confinement in one of the orbital prison cells.”