And now for something completely different. This is a (slightly crackish) plot bunny, err … dragon that grew out of SamuelthegreatOO's comment on the "friendly Krayt dragon taking up residence at your door step" from Ch. 17. Let's call it … an Easter egg. 😉

It all really started the day Luke found the egg.

Or maybe the egg found him, falling into his lap almost literally, so that Luke only had to stretch a little bit to keep it from smashing on the rocks near one of Uncle Owen's vaporators. An Urusai screeched overhead, enraged that it had been cheated out of its dinner, but Luke only held the egg tighter. It was surprisingly light to the five-year-old, for something about the size and the shape of his head, but then it was a living thing, not a rock, even if looked like one.

It was a baby, really, and since Luke had just recently found out what "orphan" meant, he instantly resolved to take care of the lost little creature.

And so he did. When a cautious query if he could have a pet in the near future had netted a resounding "No!" from his uncle, Luke hid the egg, but with a determination few would have expected in a little boy, he made sure it was kept in a place that was warm but not too hot, and with enough solid stones around it to keep the warmth of the sun long into the icy nights. When the shell became worrisomely dry, some days later, Luke scraped moist sand from beneath every vaporator he could reach and piled it around the egg.

Five and a half weeks later his efforts were rewarded by the emergence of a stubby, mottled lizard the length of his arm, that promptly tried to eat Luke's fingers when he picked the remains of the shell off its head.

"No!" the five-year-old told it firmly, tapping it on the ridiculously oversized snout for emphasis, and went to search the nearby vaporators for sandflies. While the lizard eagerly devoured the sandflies, Luke tried to figure out if his new friend was a girl or a boy and finally named it "Terry" when he couldn't work it out. With the bias of being a young boy himself, he quickly assigned a male pronoun to the reptile, however.

For the next few weeks, Luke spent every free minute either feeding Terry or scrounging up food for the rapidly growing lizard. At first, Terry had meeped pathetically whenever his foster parent got out of sight, so Luke had taken to just carrying him along, clinging to his shoulders or waist under his overtunic. Aunt Beru had had to mend a lot of undertunics in those weeks, wondering how her nephew had managed to shred them so thoroughly while barely scratching his overtunic.

After two months, however, Terry had grown too heavy, too active and too curious for playing backpack, and too large for feeding on sandflies. Luke was troubled about the situation for a few days, until he found Terry happily pounce on and devour a scurrier, and from then on, food was no longer an issue.

Nor were any kind of vermin around the farm, incidentally, which turned out the deciding factor when the day came – inevitably – when Uncle Owen finally found out what Luke had been hiding all this time. "That's one ugly-looking dune lizard" was less than complimentary towards Terry, but with the grumbling blessings of his uncle, Luke could at least play fetch with Terry out in the open.

The lizard absolutely loved to grab (and shake, viciously) everything Luke threw for it. It was so much fun, apparently, that Terry had even figured out by himself that he could get more of it if he brought the projectile back to Luke afterwards to throw again. Except if it was small stones. Terry ate small stones. Luke had been shocked the first time, had even tried to get his friend to spit it out again – and Aunt Beru had nearly had a heart attack when she found her nephew with his arm halfway down a gullet fringed with vicious triangular teeth – before his aunt had explained to him that some lizards needed to do that. They couldn't chew their food properly and so the stones in their stomachs did that for them, and, why, that was even how dragon pearls were formed. Luke was happy with the new knowledge, Terry was happy with anything thrown in his general direction, and Aunt Beru was happy once Luke had promised her not to put any limbs of his into Terry's mouth ever again.

Time went and Terry continued to grow, easily outpacing his master. Luke went from "Dune lizards are so cool pets!" to a tentative hope that he might have acquired an oddly colored dewback by chance. One who didn't much care for vegetables, compared to his more omnivorous brethren, but eight-year-old Luke could empathize with that. The important thing was Terry was looking to get large enough to ride on, even if his back was too bumpy to do so comfortably. Terry didn't like anyone to try and get on his back, either, but since he was generally well-behaved otherwise, and smart enough to listen to his name and follow simple commands, Luke was confident that he could convince his friend over time that dewbacks were meant for riding.

Time went further and Terry grew spikes all over his back that put a serious crimp in Luke's riding plans, but the preteen was confident that he could engineer a solution around that and then he would have the coolest ride ever! He never rechecked his mental image of 'dewback' against the realities of Terry's changing body shape until it was Krayt dragon mating season again, the haunting calls of the wild dragons echoed down from the mountains – and Terry called back.

Luke sat down hard. His friend's voice was still too high-pitched to get taken seriously by any adult dragons, but it was unmistakably a Krayt dragon's call. His friend who now head-bumped him curiously, who listened to "Terry", liked to get scratched above the eye-ridges and the occasional belly-rub, and who absolutely loved to play fetch, was a Krayt dragon.

Luke swallowed heavily, threw his arms around the triangular head before him – avoiding all of the nastier spikes by long habit – and whispered "Coolest pet, ever!"

Oo oo oo oo oo oO

And that is the story how Luke Skywalker – and by extension, the remote Lars moisture farm – came to keep a tame Krayt dragon for a pet. His name is Terry, and if you can spare a few creds, he's always very happy about a new frisbee. 450 mil durasteel washers are his favorites – they tend to last at least a few days.

A/N: Completely incompatible with the rest of the story, of course.
With a Krayt dragon for a pet, Luke wouldn't need rescuing by old Ben, would get home much sooner, and a troop of stormies getting head-bumped by 10-ton Terry begging for a frisbee-throw would probably be glad to accept the reassurance of said dragon's master that he had no idea that those droids were contraband and "Have a nice day, officers." ;)