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Hego Damask was looking through the bars of the handrail. He changed his position slightly to squat more comfortable on the corner of the rug, then tried to measure the intervals between the bars with his hands. His slender Muun frame made him still small enough he could slip through the handrail if he wanted, although he had been growing over the last year a good deal. The last year, the first year in Rugess Nome's house. It was a big house, not only to a child's scale – yet little Hego would never think of referring to himself as a child. Children, that were the others. He was not like them. Like Rugess Nome was not just a Bith designing star ships.
Joyful laughter swept up from the lounge under the gallery. This spacious room was all white walls, and dark floor and ceiling, and windows with black tracery almost touching both. A selection of seats, comfortable for different species, dotted the room. Their white was only a shade darker than that of the walls, but still lighter than the colour of the thick, soft carpets whose sibling above at the gallery served the young Muun as a perch. The few tables present came from the same dark wood like the planks of the floor and the ceiling. On the wall under the gallery, Hego knew, were hanging several circular mirrors on raw ropes to multiply the images of starship parts decorating the room.
It was an overcast night and before the windows lasted compact darkness. If it would be day, the windows would display surroundings as regular as the inside of the house - a well-trimmed meadow, not unlike the carpets but green, and a line of dark trees, straight and planted in regular intervals like the bars of the handrail Hego did squat behind. Every time when the wind moved either trees or clouds, random lights of neighbouring estates or stars twinkled. The journey from the place he was born to the place he would grow up had been Hego Damask's first in hyperspace and the ship had had the same choice design like this house.
Another joyful laughter swept up to the gallery and Hego let go of the imagination he was a hero in disguise, travelling with his starship in a dangerous mission. He changed position to get a better view through the handrail at the lounge. Every now and then Nome invited people for gatherings. The constant repetition of these events was the only indication of a formal nature. Compared with the meetings Hego Damask's father presided over, back at Mygeeto, they were far too relaxed to be related to business. Not that Hego understood a word the Bith and his guests exchanged - he lacked even the Galactic Basic to do so. But the feeling, that something important happened, something he must see, let him many nights ignore the order to stay in his room and sleep.
Idly Hego plucked at the plushy pile of the rug he was squatting on while his eyes followed Rugess Nome. The Bith chuckled with a Gran over what seemed a good joke, then turned to a Twi'lek to talk animated. While talking, the two of them walked through the room until they happened to cross paths with a group of humans. The group opened, allowing them in, but Nome left after a moment and summoned aloud a droid carrying a tablet with refreshments. When he ordered the droid to serve guests sitting on a bench under the windows, Hego thought a sharp gaze from black orbs hit him. He ducked and retreated from the handrail to the middle of the rug. He even averted his eyes, looking straight at the carpet, as if that would keep him from being noticed.
The carpet was soft and silken. And while it had no actual pattern, the yarn differed slightly in thickness and colour. Like the wind moves the grass of a meadow this way and that way, like clouds form and dissolve or like the light playing over an ice wall, at first sight it appeared random. Until one understood the forces driving it. Hego dragged his fingers through the irregular pile, feeling its pliancy and the hidden grid of sturdy canvas beneath. He compared the fabric under his fingertips with the pattern of how the guests spread throughout the lounge, how groups found and lost themselves, and how their host navigated between them. Short strands of fluffy yarn, Hego discovered, were fastened with a certain kind of loop to the regular and orderly threads of the backing. Actually each piece was wrapped around a single one of the lengthwise threads and then passed under its neighbouring threat. Every row of such knots was followed by two rows of the same hard and straight strings used for the lengthwise threads.
Curious the Muun boy tried to unfasten one of the knots. When he realised his small children hands were almost too big, he instinctively harnessed the Force to support his efforts. Not every strand came out nicely. Some ripped apart. Disregarding such incidents Hego worked fast. He only stopped once for a longer period to decide he would make bundles of the yarn, sorted according to colour and size and thickness. The broken strands just collected on a heap. Hego Damask was so engrossed in reversing the knotting of the carpet, he missed how the talk under the gallery faded with the last guests leaving. He looked up not before the shadow of Rugess Nome cast over him.
The Bith did not say a word. Neither did Hego. For their communication he knew, he must not resort to his meagre Basic. The first time they met, there was the same spontaneous rapport he had with his mother - and to a smaller degree with his father too. Hego pointed at the empty backing of the carpet: There is the plan. Then he pointed at the bundles of yarn: The subjects, the supporters... the ones to be removed... and weak-minded bystanders.
The Bith still didn't react, as if he had to consider something deserving careful evaluation. But suddenly yellow flames danced in his black eyes and he opened his arms wide: You learned a lot about our handicraft today.
Hego buried his face in the rich, dark folds of a heavy cloak when he returned the embrace. A smile flitted over his features. Perhaps their understanding was even deeper than that between his mother and him had been.