Before the Dawn Heals Us

[Salem Avesca]

21 Years before the Battle of Endor...

Rakaa IV - The Core Worlds

*

The shadow advanced without pause, all others straining towards it as it strode through the murk with martial stalk. As it neared, he knew he should run, should turn and flee from its smothering embrace - but it called to him, just as it did the other shades, those insubstantial things who were rendered oblivion without him...

With a sudden start, Glace jerked up from the forest floor, his hand reaching instinctively for the weapon that was not there. Panic fluttered in his heart. Everything was darkness but as his senses stretched outwards – feeling for more than the scent of damp earth and leaves, and the sound of night-birds fluttering in the trees above – he felt nothing, nothing but the steady ebb and flow of the Force and the warm body next to him. Rubbing the heel of one palm against his eyes, he pulled himself to his feet, the forest floor compressing underfoot with the groaning and cracking of trees. Above, the crescent moon was still high in the sky. Silently, Glace Kilgannon cursed it.

[Habria Sunfell]

The sudden start of the form beside her had roused Habria, but she had not truly been sleeping. Sleep was a solace that frequently escaped her in these troubled times. She avoided it because of the dreams she should not be having. Jedi did not have nightmares. The Force was with her and through it's strength she should be able to rid the lingering feelings paranoia and grief from her waking mind, so that in sleep she could recover her balance..but it was no longer so.

For more than a year now her dreams had been filled with the sound of screams, the scent of burned flesh and the inescapable knowledge that the light of countless souls had been extinguished from the galaxy forever.

She could feel the flutter of panic, and the sudden recollection of their present surroundings from Glace. Rolling to her side, she sat up and tucked her knees to her chest.

"Were you dreaming?", she asked, though it was not really a question.

As the sole companions in each others lives right now, there was very little secrecy between them. There was no room for the little luxuries, such as privacy, that they had both once enjoyed. They were exiled into dark times, and it seemed even the Force was abandoning them to their own fate.

[Salem Avesca]

“The temple, again.”

There was truth in that answer, but falsehood too. The temple of his dreams – or nightmares, as they might have been more accurately termed – was nothing like the pristine white enclave of Coruscant. It was unfamiliar and that in itself troubled Glace enough to push him to secrecy.

“It's always the same,” he added, turning to look back over his shoulder at Habria, though he knew she was there and awake without a glance. The more time they spent moving across the rugged terrain of Rakaa IV, the stronger their connection grew. A small part of him worried that his dreams would begin to bleed into hers, but the meditation exercises they practiced together, whenever there was a window of reprieve, seemed to be halting any involuntary sharing of memories or emotions – for now.

Frowning slightly, he turned to face her head-on, arms threaded over his chest.

“You?”

[Habria Sunfell]

She shook her head. It was no secret that she had not been sleeping. There was nowhere she could feel safe enough. Nowhere she could escape the visions of the past, they would permeate her thoughts and she would relive them in sleep. It was worse than no sleep at all. "I rested.. That is enough."

Rubbing her red-rimmed eyes, the Jedi Knight hauled herself to her feet and stretched. "We should keep moving.."

[Salem Avesca]

“By night?”

They had traveled the rain-forest by day, almost exclusively. The shadows were hardly a barrier to those whose senses were unhampered by darkness, but it had soon become clear to the two Jedi that they were not alone and who – or what – ever they were sharing the land with was more inclined to move about during the twilight hours. At first, it had seemed that to avoid their cohabitants was the best course of action, but now the young Jedi was not so sure.

Linking his hands against the back of his neck, skin clammy with sweat, Glace exhaled a low sigh and closed his eyes, trying to draw upon the calming energy that ran through the living forest around them.

“We should have followed that life-signature we felt days ago.”