Warrior ◊ Star Wars

chapter twenty-one; destination painfully reached

"Can you walk?" Mara asked, shining the lantern directly in his face to see his reaction. This only made Poe groan as shut his eyes, the brightness too intense after being in the darkness for awhile.

They both decided moving fast instead of waiting for sunrise was best in order to get to the base as quick as they could. Their water was running low and they had no idea when the wild monsters would get hungry again. So Mara had climbed down from her spot and packed up what little they had for a camp.

She repeated her question again, moving the lantern away from his face when she realized it only hindered him, "Can you walk? Is your head feeling any better?"

Poe nodded slightly, still squinting from the flash, "Yeah, yeah I can. Which way are we headed?"

Mara took the lead while holding the light in front of her as she went to the entrance of the topless cave, "Left."

All three of them exited the rock formation and headed out into the night the way Mara said they light had come from. Dameron yawned, opening and shutting his eyes to help wake himself up, "So how long did you sleep?"

She gazed towards the sky, taking a vague guess at time she'd fallen asleep to the time she woke up, "A good few hours. I spent the last hour trying to figure out if I actually saw that light or it was some odd dream. Low and behold, your overly optimistic view was actually right for once."

"For once?" He questioned, rubbing his eyes to try and wake up fully as he followed Mara, "When wasn't looking on the bright side right?"

"First off, the village." She decided to name off the times where her cynicism had come in handy, "No one there? Oh, going into that cave full of those things for some reason thinking the situation wouldn't turn out terrible?"

He raised his hand in objection, nearly walking into a large rock, "My reasoning was sound-"

No it wasn't, BB-8 chirped at his master, chiding him. It made the two's interaction made Mara smile, though no one could tell through the blanket of night. She kept going forward, hoping a rising sun would come in the next few hours to help the group find their way.

Tiredness did eventually set in on the blonde, which ceased her usual banter and made the long walk oddly silent. The continued to trek onward. The sound of sand churning under their weight and the occasional brush of wind were the only sounds for an hour or so, the weight of the last few days making them all exhausted. Even BB-8 seemed somewhat rundown.

The sun did start to come up from behind them, beams of light slowly creeping up as long shadows mirrored themselves in front of them. Mara began to make out another deep crater, perhaps manmade, a few miles out with what started to look like a skinny antenna sticking up. From the angle Mara first saw it from, a formation had hidden most of the base you could see, which seemed to be located in the basin.

After a few minutes of walking while the sun kept creeping up from behind, they began to pass another large formation. Mara noticed imprints in the sand, at first not recognizing them. She stopped to examine them, bending down while squinting.

"What is it?" Dameron asked her, coming up to her side to look at why she'd stopped. BB-8 rolled up in front, then too saw the tracks.

A few inches wide with deeper indents of claws that dug far into the earth. All three recognized them quickly, guessing it was the animals that chased them before. Mara stood up, running a hand through tangled hair as she exhaled, "Well lovely."

Poe's gaze followed the tracks, seeing that they stopped the red rock, which seemed to have enough flat parts throughout it to be able to climb, especially with how long they leaped, "They seem fresh. C'mon, let's just get moving and keep our eyes out."