The shadows lengthened as the Ossian afternoon waned into evening, half an hour before dinner in the Jedi colony of Sanctuary One. For most of the camp, from younglings to masters, it was free time, an opportunity to relax after a rigorous day of training and study. On an ordinary day, Reverend Solomon would have spent the time walking in the afternoon sunslight, seeking some quiet copse or meadow where he could spend a few minutes in prayer and meditation before supper. But something had come up.

Four younglings stood before him with drooping heads and shamed faces, and with them was Kestra Martel, a stocky teenage human Padawan who had been assigned as a junior chaperone for Rancor House. Her motherly face was equal parts angry and terrified, and he didn’t doubt she was equal to the task of meting out discipline where it was needed. Solomon didn’t need to be the voice of judgment now. He simply needed information.

So he kept his face and his voice calm as he asked, “Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me what happened?”

The ringleader of the group was Tyler Bran, a freckled eight-year-old whose impulsive behavior had landed him with interviews like this on a regular basis, but to his credit, he spoke up first. “We were on our way to meditation class after lunch, and we saw Eela sitting under the big tree by the sparring circles,” he said. “We went over to see what she was doing. She had a big beetle in her hands, just running over her fingers over and over.”

Solomon nodded. “And did you say something to her?”

Tyler swallowed nervously and looked toward Nivelle, a tall Mirialan girl who looked older than she was. “We tried to talk to her,” she said. “But she just ignored us. She kept looking at the beetle. Like we weren’t even there. So finally I asked if her friend would like to learn to fly. And I made it float out of her hands.”

“We started passing it around, you know, using the Force,” Tyler said. “And Eela got upset and tried to grab for it. We made it float higher so she couldn’t get it.”

“I was passing it back to one of the others, but we dropped it,” Nivelle continued. “And Eela tried to snatch it out of the air, but she ended up squashing it between her hands.”

“We all laughed, then,” Tyler said, looking shame-faced at the ground. “She started crying and ran into the woods. We thought she’d get over it and come back, but she wasn’t in mediation, and she wasn’t in maths or even biology, and she never misses biology. I ran back to living quarters, and she wasn’t there, either. No one’s seen her since.”

Solomon looked from Tyler to Kestra, who now looked more fearful than angry. “They came to me, and I brought them straight to you,” she said. “Eela’s always running off to be on her own, but she’s never been gone this long before. What should we do?”

The preacher considered the waning light in the sky and took a deep, bracing breath to help him order his thoughts. "Send these children to supper," he said. "And alert security to keep watch for Eela on the perimeter. I'll call a meeting of the knights and organize some search parties. The more people we have looking, the better. Don't worry, Kestra. We'll find her."

The padawan forced a brave smile, nodded, and scurried off with the younglings in tow.

The next thirty minutes saw Sanctuary One engulfed in a maelstrom of activity. At once several off-duty Alliance scouts were aloft on utility speeder bikes to begin sweeping the immediate area surrounding the colony, and Solomon and the other knights summoned volunteers from the work crews, the Gossam, the Cizerack Jaani'saari, and even Suriyesh Rajinaathra's retinue of droids, and together they mapped out a grid search pattern that could continue into the night. Several more aircraft lifted off into the evening sky as the assembled crowd dispersed into their respective parties, but Solomon had eyes for one Padawan in particular.

"Kazahan, come with me," he said. "I want to trace Eela's trail from the beginning, and I'm going to need your tracking skills."