[b][right]Lannik Dig Site, Neutral Camp[/right][/b]

As the shuttle hobbled and bobbed through the air on ancient thrusters in dire need of maintenance, Miarhi sat with her back braced against one crate and her feet up against another. There had been no passenger shuttles set to depart from Palesia to the dig site for another day at the very least, and none of the available speeders within her price range had seemed like something she wanted to take through treacherous terrain, so paying for a very uncomfortable spot on a supply shuttle had been her best option. It would have been almost tolerable if not for the fact that Miarhi was currently torturing herself to make a friend happy.

She had her datapad, an excessively elaborate model Ashyn had given to her as a gift after hearing that she'd passed her trials to become a Padawan, propped up against her knees in order to read the drivel currently filling the screen. It had been a very thoughtful gift, meant as a way to keep in contact with each other through the Holonet even when they were half the galaxy away from one another, but it had come loaded with an insidious trap: a trove of romance novels that Ashyn wanted her to read. When the painful novel recommendations had come one by one they were fairly tolerable, but now she had a veritable library of the things at her fingertips. Ashyn was Miarhi's best and oldest friend, and she so loved having someone to talk to about her favorite genre of novels, so there was nothing Miarhi could do but suffer through the things to make her friend happy. She just wished some of them had at least a speck of realism to them. The current read, a horrid thing called [i]Dawn of a Knight's Dream[/i], told the outlandish tale of a rogue Jedi and a Mandalorian warrior fighting off pirates and developing a romantic relationship along the way, and it didn't even have any horribly exaggerated sex scenes to provide some amusement. All the author names blended together, but Miarhi had a strong feeling she'd read some of this one's work before, and they were definitely among her least favorite if her memory served her correctly.

A sudden lurch signalled the shuttle descending toward the camp. Or perhaps it was just the shuttle finally dying after what seemed to be many years of service without any work being done on the poor thing. Normally one would expect panicked yells from the pilot in that case, but the man had been so gruffly taciturn that Miarhi would be surprised if he gave more than an annoyed grunt at the prospect of hurtling to his fiery demise. She braced herself harder against the crates, just in case, and after a minute a hard bump followed by stillness made it clear they had in fact been landing rather than crashing. Miarhi pushed herself to her feet and stretched out her cramped muscles, grumbling at her cloak as she fought to untangle it from her legs. She still wasn't quite used to having the long garment to wear atop her simple tunic and trousers, but it was part of the attire that marked her as a Jedi so she wore it proudly. She just also maybe cursed at it now and then when it got in her way.

When she finally clambered out of the back of the shuttle, Miarhi found the pilot coming around to ready it all for unloading. She gave him a smile and a respectful nod. "Thank you for your assistance." He just grunted at her as expected, so she sighed and hurried on her way rather than trying to make conversation. She'd carefully examined every piece of information she'd been able to find about the neutral camp of the Lannik dig site, and thanks to that (and the obvious signage) she was able to find her way to the cantina that was apparently the central hub of activity in the place. Her plan was to ask around to find the whereabouts of her new master, but as she stepped through the doors she felt something unexpected: another Force user nearby. She was no master of using the Force to sense her surroundings, but she was certain someone in the building or nearby was definitely trained in the use of the Force. Given all the talk of Sith possibly being in the area, Miarhi was very careful and as covert as possible in her surveillance of the large, open room that made up the majority of the ground floor of the cantina. Her fear subsided when she finally spotted the Miraluka sitting at one of the tables, but it was quickly replaced with a mix of anxiety and excitement in equal measures that were hard to suppress.

Miarhi took a minute to calm her breathing, without much success in translating that external calm to into internal calm, but it would have to do for the moment. She marched over to the table and cleared her throat twice before managing to get any words out. "Uh, Jedi Knight Airus Vel Aath? I've been sent by the Council. This datapad should explain it all, but, um, I've been assigned as your Padawan." She pulled the mentioned datapad, a much simpler model than her personal one, out of a pocket and set it on the table in front of the Knight. "Oh, and they said I should introduce myself because they didn't sent word in advance. I'm Miarhi Gako, I just passed my Padawan trials six days ago, and I... don't know what else to say. Um, I think they said they put my records on the datapad?" People at the nearby tables were staring at her by this point, and Miarhi flushed with embarrassment as she realized that a fairly crowded public place was [i]probably[/i] not the best place to introduce herself, but it was far too late for such considerations. "Uh, sorry." She quickly sat at one of the chairs across from Airus and made herself busy with staring down at the table and trying to predict just how fast she'd be sent back to Tython for being an utterly useless Padawan.