Moving the stack of power convertors, Beru frowned. She replaced it, moved the next, jostled some datafilms loose, but still, there was no sign of the driver she had been looking for all morning.

It was needed to access the input terminal to take a readout of the successful harvests from the outskirts of the farm, which needed to be cross-checked before Owen could make his way into Anchorhead, or even as far as Mos Eisley, to start trade again.

Without it, there would be a delay which could cost them a significant amount, so she was searching, had been since dawn.

In the yard outside, Owen was rattling around with the towering central vaporator, doing the best he could with the tools he had, occasionally swearing under his breath when the ancient piece of machinery refused to co-operate with his instructions.

With a fond glance out of the open doorway, Beru shook her head. He would never learn that shouting at the machinery would do nothing to help, but it seemed to make him feel better, especially when it had been leaving his knuckles scraped and his temper frayed.

She turned her attention back to her task, exhaling a quiet breath. She didn't even have to look up when there was a shuffle of footsteps moving from sand-scattered steps onto the smooth floor of the kitchen.

"So you finally decided to get up, did you, sleepyhead?" she said, placing aside the last stack of datafilms before turning and smiling at her fostered child, who was standing in the doorway, rubbing his blue eyes, his hair tousled, his slight body draped in one of Owen's oversized shirts.

"I had to carry real heavy things yesterday," he said solemnly. "My arms wanted to sleep more."

Beru tried to hide a smile when she glanced at him. "Your arms wanted to sleep more, did they?" she said, sifting through the shelves. "Are you sure it wasn't you that wanted to sleep more too?"

Luke blinked up at her, all innocence. "Uh-huh! I wanted to get up and help, but it was my arms!"

Laughing, his aunt approached and squatted down in front of him. "Well, let me see these lazy arms of yours then," she said, taking one of his hand and lifting his arm up. Luke covered his mouth with his other hand, giggling, as she tickled her fingers along the bare skin. "Ah... yes, I see... these arms are very lazy."

"Told you!" Luke squeaked from between his fingers, his eyes dancing.

"And would these lazy arms be too tired to help your not-lazy-mouth eat breakfast?" Beru asked, tilting her head and giving him a serious look. "Because if they are as lazy as you say, I guess I'll have to feed your breakfast to the sand beetles..."

Luke looked horrified. "I'll make them wake up!" he exclaimed. "They're hungry too!"

Straightening up, Beru smoothed his hair with a smile. "I thought you might," she said, giving him a gentle push towards the table in the centre of the room. "You sit down and I'll see what I can get for you to eat."

Scurrying over to the table, the four year old scrambled up onto one of the chairs, kneeling up and slapping his hands down eagerly on the table. "Is there tona bread?" he demanded, eyes alight. "I like tona bread!"

Beru made a great show of raking through the refrigeration cabinet, then turned, bearing a plate and a pale white jug.

"And I think there might even have some gother nectar!" she said, unable to smother a chuckle when Luke squealed and clapped his hands. The sweet, transparent gold syrup was one of his favourite breakfast treats, especially poured on a cake of flat, soft, tona bread.

Unfortunately, both items were among the more expensive foodstuffs available in Anchorhead, so they could only indulge in them perhaps two or three days of a month, if things weren't going too badly.

Setting the plate down in front of the blond-haired boy, Beru glanced to be sure Owen was occupied as she poured the syrup over the chilled bread, putting a finger to her lips as she added an extra trickle of the syrup. Biting on his lower lip, eyes wide, Luke pressed his own finger to his lips and nodded.

Winking, Beru replaced the jug in the refrigerator cabinet and left Luke to tuck into the sweet and sticky breakfast with great relish. His spoon was clattering on his plate as she knelt down and started looking under the kitchen cupboards.

"Any luck?"

Both women and child looked around as Owen re-entered the kitchen, looking more than a little frustrated. He was wiping oil-stained hands on a scrap of cloth, one of his knuckles bleeding from a deep scratch.

Beru shook her head. "I've tried on top of everything," she replied. "I'm just starting to look under it all."

"Look for what?" Luke piped up, around a mouthful of bread.

Rubbing his brow with his capacious sleeve, Owen gave his nephew a look. "Have you been playing with my tools again, Luke?" he growled.

It had been known before. A borrowed hydrospanner had been used to adjust the household power convertors, leaving them baking in the middle of the day and freezing in the middle of the night, while the vaporators shut down entirely.

A week's worth of water had been lost, which had resulted in a drastic drop in income, and for a time, Beru had been forced to divide her own food between herself and Luke without complaint, to ensure the boy something to eat.

Frustrated and tired, Owen had turned on Luke angrily and the boy had hidden behind Beru and whispered that he was only trying to help, before promising never to touch his uncle's tools again without permission.

This time, the boy blushed deeply, shaking his head. Owen folded his arms, gazed down steadily at him. "Are you sure?"

"You got mad last time," Luke mumbled, poking at his plate with the spoon.

Owen sighed, then nodded. "Yes, I did," he agreed quietly. He circled the table, mussing Luke's hair in passing. "You know better now, don't you?"

"Yes, uncle Owen," Luke nodded, looking timidly up at his uncle. "What did you lose?"

Tilting one of the moveable cabinets and glancing under it, Owen didn't even look at the boy as he replaced the small container stack on the floor. "The driver for accessing the data panel on the central vaporator."

"It's there."

Beru and Owen both turned to see Luke pointing at the two lockers Beru had been looking under, his eyes oddly unfocussed.

"What?" Owen snorted.

"I've looked there, Luke," Beru said more gently, giving her husband a chastising look.

She could understand why he was agitated. If they were even a day late to the Mos Eisley water-trade market, it would reduce their profit and they had already had enough problems trying to keep all of them fed on the income made at the last sale.

"Nuh-uh," the boy said, still pointing. "It fell down. It's in the middle."

Shaking her head, Beru eased her fingers between the gap separating the two cabinets, pushed them apart, then went still. "Did you see it fall down here, Luke?" she asked, her voice suddenly soft with confusion.

The boy looked up. He had returned to the pleasantly sticky task of squashing his bread into the syrup and blinked at her, clearly bemused. "Huh?"

"Did you see the driver fall down between the cabinets?" Beru repeated, straightening up with the delicate driver held in her hand. She hastily crossed the floor, handed it to Owen, her eyes imploring him to let her wheedle the situation from the boy.

Luke shook his head and licked the spoon, before frowning thoughtfully. "I just knowed it was there," he said with a shrug.

Again, Owen snorted, starting back towards the doorway. "How could you just know it was there?" he demanded, halting in the doorway. "Did you knock it down and not tell anyone? If you did, that was lying."

Luke looked like he was about to burst into tears at the accusation. "I didn't tell lies!" he protested, staring wildly from his aunt to his uncle. "I just knowed! I thinked 'where would it be?' and-and-and… it felt like it would be down the middle!"

"It… felt like it would be in the middle?" Owen echoed, his eyes darting from the boy's worried face to Beru's. Her hands were clasped together in front of her and she hurriedly moved to stand behind the boy, gently wrapping her arms around him.

Luke was still staring up at his uncle, his lower lip trembling. "Uh-huh…" he mumbled. "I didn't tell lies."

Beru could see that her husband wanted to push for more information, wanted to know how the boy had done what he had just claimed to do, but she could also tell that Luke was afraid of getting shouted at again.

"Owen," she said softly, shaking her head. "The vaporators. See to them. We can talk about it later."

He hesitated, then nodded, though when he withdrew into the yard, his eyes were still warily fixed on Luke's face. The boy sniffled, bowing his head over his food, prodding the sticky mass around the plate with his spoon.

Kissing the top of Luke's head, Beru drew a chair close to his, sitting down beside him, her arm still around his shoulders. She was unsurprised when the child dropped his spoon and climbed over onto her lap and wrapped his arms around her neck.

"He's mad at me again, isn't he?" he mumbled, his voice trembling.

Embracing him, Beru kissed his brow, his temples, lifted a hand to smooth his hair. "It's not you, Luke," she said tenderly. "Uncle Owen is just worried about the harvest this year. The farm is taking a lot of work and he thought he had lost that driver." She sighed. "He's just worried we won't have enough credits to have enough food."

"But he thought I done it," Luke whispered against her shoulder and she could feel the sticky warmth of his cheek against her neck, hot and wet with barely crushed down tears. "I just telled him where the driver was."

"I know, little one, I know," Beru crooned, gently rocking him. "Uncle Owen is just very tired today. It's been a long month and he wants to finish the data today so we can all get some rest." She sat back a little, waiting until Luke turned teary eyes up to her. "You want to be able to go out on the speeder with uncle Owen more, don't you? You want to go and see the wild bantha herds on the dune sea?"

Sniffing, Luke nodded. "I just don't like it when he gets mad," he mumbled.

Beru wrapped her arms more snugly around him and rested her cheek against his unruly, sandy hair.

"I know, Luke," she murmured sadly, remembering a time when Owen had been less burdened by the hardships of the farm, when the market was better, when there was less competition, when they were both younger and more carefree. "I don't either."