A Bad Feeling

"I have a bad feeling about this."

Light pours in serene cascades over the archives. Jewels sit, full of wisdom, on the high dustless shelves. The boy scuffs the polished floor with his mud stained boot.

"You fear learning, Padawan?"

"Of course not."

The Master's voice fills this inorganic place with the smoothness of ebony velvet - faintly sad. "Then it's my own moral integrity which troubles you? You think I'm not strong enough."

"No!" The boy - he is a young man really, gawky lines slowly disappearing into adult gracefulness - calls echoes from the long galleries. Heads turn at his cry of faith. "No, Master. It's just... I don't..."

Onlookers' distant frowns fall short of touching the pair, as the man rises, reaching out to take the ancient holochron from his apprentice's reluctant hands. Tall though the boy is, the Master is taller, and he stands close, - a cloaked shape of reassuring majesty. "Is it not the worst sort of tyranny to call any knowledge 'forbidden'?"

"Yes. But," Eyes clouded, the boy struggles to put instinct into words - the stir of danger in his blood inarticulate, unreasonable. He cannot find an argument. "I...it just feels wrong."

Softly, the man's chuckle runs beneath the bookcases, a rare sound in this solemn place. Fondness laces his rebuke as he pockets the heretical text - the teachings of the Jedi's ancient enemies. He ruffles his padawan's spiky hair, and smiles. "You worry too much, Qui-Gon. I'm hardly likely to become a Sith, now, am I?"

Note, I don't know who the artist is who did the picture of the Jedi Library. If you see it here and it's yours please get in touch - I need to ask you for permission to use it!