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Beru places one hand against the doorframe to steady herself as she sticks her head out into the midday heat.
“Leia!” she calls, voice carrying across the sand.
Nothing.
Beru sighs and tries again. “Leia! Lunch!”
She scans the land around the homestead, but there’s still no sign of her niece among the dunes. Beru shakes her head before ducking back into the entryway. Her face is burning, even from such a short time under the suns. She hopes Owen is on his way back—she doesn’t need him catching sun sickness this early in the season.
Leia must be out with her friends, hopefully just making nuisances of themselves in Anchorhead, rather than making targets of themselves in the Wastes. Knowing Leia, though, there’s little chance of her not causing some sort of trouble.
Not for the first time, Beru wishes Leia was more mechanically inclined. That way, she could be out in the field with her uncle, working on the vaporators and fine tuning the droids. There’s only so much trouble a person can get into on a moisture farm, if one doesn’t count the Tuskens. Instead, she’s more likely to use her larger-than-life, I’m-a-born-leader charisma to talk her friends into causing trouble, and to pick fights with Owen. She’s got the best mix of her parents, from what Beru remembers of them, and all she can use it for on this planet is silly pranks and turf wars that ultimately mean nothing.
Beru starts back down the stairs into the homestead proper, hand trailing along the rough pourstone wall. She can still eat, even if no one else in her family has the good sense to.
She’s most of the way through her lunch before Owen appears, grubby and red-faced. He kisses her cheek while wiping his hands on an old rag, then ambles over to the stove.
“No Leia?” he asks, ladling a helping into his bowl. It’s not the most exciting meal Beru has ever cooked—they need to do a supply run soon—but Owen doesn’t complain as he sits and begins to eat.
Beru shakes her head. “She left this morning before I woke up.”
Owen grumbles into his bowl but doesn’t outright complain, for which Beru is glad. She’s tired of them being at each other’s throats like krayt about every little thing imaginable.
He doesn’t linger long after his meal is finished. With another kiss he leaves to check the machines west of the homestead, and Beru is left to find some new way to entertain herself that isn’t cooking or knitting with the bantha yarn Raura Darklighter gave her last week.
Fortunately for Beru, not long after she starts half-heartedly tidying the back room Leia comes tumbling into the courtyard. Beru can hear her from halfway across the house, banging against furniture and cursing up a storm with words she must’ve learned from smugglers she met in one cantina or another.
She sighs and sets aside the misplaced wretch she’s holding in favor of going to find her niece.
Leia is, as she expected, covered in grim and sporting what will be several impressive bruises, come tomorrow. She’s trying, valiantly, to wipe a bloodstain out of her tunic without wasting any water, and she curses when she notices the large tear close to the hem.
Beru waits in the shadows at the edge of the courtyard, her arms folded. Now that Leia is sixteen and mostly finished growing, they need her clothes to last . They aren’t made from the cheap material reserved for young children and teens, and the fabric that most adults wear isn’t easily replaced.
“Leia,” Beru says. She lets her disapproval color her voice.
Leia glances up, sheepish. It takes her a moment to spot Beru, but when she does, she smiles brightly.
“Hey Auntie Ru,” she says, trying to use that charisma to charm her way out of this. Beru raises an eyebrow, and that’s all it takes to make Leia slump. “Sorry. I’ll fix it.”
Beru steps out into the suns’ light and crosses the courtyard. Up close, she can see the ragged ends of Leia’s hair, which is inches shorter than it was when Beru saw her last night, just long enough to cover the curve of her jaw.
She reaches out and holds a chunk of it between her fingers. “You cut your hair again. Your uncle won’t be pleased.”
Leia snorts and shrugs. She mutters, “Who cares what he thinks.”
Beru lets that one slide, because Leia already knows what she has to say about those types of comments.
“Why’d you cut it this time?” Beru lets the hair fall.
Leia ducks to hide the flush creeping up her cheeks. “It got in my way when we were shooting rats earlier.”
Which means Leia snuck one of Owen’s rifles out of the house, as well as herself. If he finds that out, he definitely won’t be pleased.
“So you chopped it all off with what looks like a vibro-knife?” Beru can’t keep the amusement from her voice. Leia is certainly the looks-before-she-leaps type. “Didn’t the wind blow it into your eyes, if you couldn’t secure it back?”
Leia hesitates in the way that means she’s trying to think of a lie. Beru’s seen it a thousand times. She considers waiting to see what Leia will come up with, but discards the idea just as quickly.
“C’mon,” she says, pulling Leia into a hug. Her niece rests her head on Beru’s shoulder, allowing herself to be held for several seconds before she squirms out of Beru’s arms. “Let’s get you cleaned up before your uncle gets back.”
She doesn’t have an explanation for the bruises, which shouldn’t come from shooting womp rats with a rifle from a distance, or for why Leia thought it would be a good idea to take Owen’s gun, but at least that’s all she’s doing. Leia may be a hellion, Beru thinks to herself as they walk together toward the kitchen, but at least she hasn’t discovered an interest in other beings. Stars help them all when that day finally comes.