#tholme

Quinlan isn’t part of the same clan as Obi-Wan, but they have a few classes together in the gardens, now and again. It’s important, the crèchemasters say, to meet more of their fellow Jedi than just the ones in their own clans. Having classes—really, it’s playtime, where they get to look for bugs, but it sounds so grown-up to say it’s a class—in the gardens is a great way to learn and meet other Jedi!

At the end of the part where they’re supposed to be learning, the masters give them permission to go play by the ponds, and those who are semi-aquatic are allowed to go swimming, like Bant and that one nautolan girl from the other clan.

The rest of them need to get floaties. Obi-Wan lines up obediently with the rest of his clan to get some swim shorts and armbands.

Quinlan Vos, he notices, is just taking off his shirt, and untying the fur that was wrapped around his waist.

“Hey, hey,” Obi-Wan says, running over and tugging on his arm. “We gots to get floaties!”

Quinlan looks at him like he’s crazy. “I don’t.”

“We gotta!” Obi-Wan insists. “Bant doesn’t, and she’s a baby—”

“You’re a baby,” Quinlan says.

“—but she breathes—hey! Am not!”

Quinlan laughs at him. Obi-Wan is offended. He’s not a baby, he’s not.

“I don’t need floaties,” Quinlan says. “I’m not human.”

“Oh.” Obi-Wan lets go of Quinlan’s arm. “What are you?”

Quinlan grins, whips the fur up and over onto his back and transforms.

The creature—Obi-Wan doesn’t even know what that is—winks at him, and then galumphs into the water.

Quinlan’s a really good swimmer. He looks so smooth, too.

“Master, Master!” he runs up to his crèchemaster and tugs at her sleeve; she’s kneeling down to help someone, so he can reach. “What’s Quin?”

She looks up from the floatie she’s attempting to clip together, and then over at the other Master.

The other Master smiles kindly. “Quinlan is a Sel-Kiffar. There are two near-human species on Kiffu, the Kiffar and Sel-Kiffar. The Kiffar look human always. The Sel-Kiffar have two forms: Selkie, the seal, and Kiffar, the near-human.”

A seal. That’s what the animal is called. Obi-Wan ignores the call to come back and get his own floaties, instead of running back to the water’s edge—he only stumbles a bit, and that fall was on purpose—and calling out, “Quin!”

The boy in question pops out of the water, at an angle that brings him quite close, but also splashes water all over Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan yelps and falls back on his butt.

“Mean!” he accuses.

Quinlan laughs. Probably. Obi-Wan thinks that’s what he’s doing.

Obi-Wan huffs. “Anyway. Are you faster than Bant? ‘cuz she’s a baby, but she’s always ready to swim, and you need that thing.”

Quinlan barks, and twists back over himself into the water.

A bit later, Bant and Quinlan are racing, along with the other semi-aquatic Jedi.

Obi-Wan is pretty sure Quinlan is the coolest person he knows.

He can change shapes!

--

Two hours later…

“Can I try?”

“Sure!”

…the Masters have to pull Quinlan and Obi-Wan apart in a panic.

As it turns out, Quinlan is the only person allowed to wear his own sealskin. If Obi-Wan manages to get it on, nobody will know how to get it off, and that would be a bad thing.

Obi-Wan thinks it would be cool.

“Seals can’t have chocolate,” Quinlan tells him gravely. “I can’t have it unless I’m human-shaped.”

Never mind!