#i like the notion of thorn being the sensible one until and unless someone dares him

[rooksunday]

“We’re going to have to go to the Temple.”

The answer came in a resounding thwap. Non-verbal, yet decisively negatory.

Fox rubbed his hand through his hair. His curls were limp and defeated. The ends drooled on the collar of his undersuit and made him shiver.

“Do you have an alternate suggestion?” he asked. He rapped his knuckles on the rim of the durasteel drum that the patrol team had rolled back with them. “This is barely big enough. And I think it last held something toxic. My lips are tingling.”

Another thwap. A third. More urgent? Emphatic? Fox hadn’t been offered the tentacle interpretation module in flash training.

Ha. ‘Offered’.

Fox sighed and propped his chin on the rim of the barrel, squinting into the dark water and its occupant. Deep red-brown tentacles with lurid green suckers curled over the rim of the barrel and plipped carefully across his pauldron in a noise like tearing flimsi. Shiv had one of the shinies in bed recovering from sucker-to-skin contact; not dangerous to anything but dignity, apparently, but if Fox started singing Coruscanti opera, he wanted to be sober enough to hit the high notes.

He patted one of the tentacles. “I know, I know, but maybe next time you’ll think twice before letting a shiny double-akk dare you to drink the mysterious bottles they find on patrol. We’re all getting another one of Shiv’s lectures thanks to you.”

A mournful blorp and another caressing plip over Fox’s cuisse followed by a bloop as Thorn retreated beneath the water. Dadita taps on the barrel indicated Thorn’s acceptance of his relocation.

Fox called over his shoulder. “Stone! Bring over the lid. We’re rolling this sucker to the Temple!”

And if Thorn managed to thwap a Jedi or two while he was there, well, Fox had plenty of storage on his bucket cam.