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Aubade: A lover’s song to the dawn, regretting that the new day means they two must part.

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I wake before the light touches the top of his hair. And I watch him sleep. The light moves gentle toward him, as though it too were reluctant to disturb him.

I recline, facing him, leaning on one elbow. His face is toward me, though he lies on his stomach, and his eyelids twitch rapidly. “What do you dream of, my Obi-Wan?” I whisper faintly.

He does not awaken, and I would have it so. I watch the early dawn light creep over the pillows toward his perfect body, like a Bafyon tiger on the prowl. His braid is thrown back over his shoulder, draped across his back. This is the last time I will ever see it so of a morning, the last time he will be in my bed because custom decrees it.

After the Trials, he will leave me. Go off into the wildness of the new-Knight training that is his first solo mission. For one year I will not see him, not hear of him, not speak with him. For one year I will be alone and he will be alone, without the comfort of our bodies and minds entwined.

Ah, dawn, could you delay a little longer? Let me watch my Obi-Wan in the faint morning light just a little longer?

The dawn is inexorable, marching steady over his back now, lighting it up, every firm vertebra of his spine revealed clearly to me. His face glows like an angel’s and his hair is filled with tiny lights.

He is the most beautiful being I have ever seen in all my long years as a Jedi, and he is no longer mine. The rising sun tears him away from me.

Suddenly the sight of him asleep is not enough. My hand reaches out to touch and I stroke lightly across his back. He stirs, awakes, and glances up at me quizzically.

“Master?” he asks, the muzziness of sleep fading from his eyes as he nuzzles into me.

“I love you, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” I whisper. And I kiss him.

He smiles up at me, confident. “And I love you,” he says. “Nothing can change that. Nothing ever will.”

He pulls me down into his embrace, laughing. And a year doesn’t seem so long, if he is waiting for me at the end.

The light still marches across the room, conquering all before it, but I smile.