─ ❛ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 ❜
BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Cyi should be dead. Instead, she's crammed into the hold of some chumbucket of a spaceship with a kid that may or may not be toying with the fabric of the universe.
By all accou...
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.･ ̣ ✵ ･ *.
⠀⠀⠀ CYI HAS ALWAYS been many things, and a fighter has never been one of them. So, when she leaps at the speeder, she's not expecting to do much.
⠀⠀⠀ She doesn't.
⠀⠀⠀ In fact, she never manages to land a decent punch on the hunter; in a second, he's knocked her back off, and she's lying on the ice, a trifle stunned. It's as if the hunter was expecting it. With this thought, Cyi realizes that that would've probably been a safe bet.
⠀⠀⠀ The hunter dismounts, kneels, and pins the link between her cuffed hands to the ice with a beskar covered arm. Then he leans close, close enough for his visor to reflect Cyi's dark eyes.
⠀⠀⠀ "I get paid for the number of bodies I bring in," he says calmly, "not the number of souls. Try that again, you die. Nod if you understand me."
⠀⠀⠀ Cyi nods, and in that reflection, her eyes do not mask her bitterness.
⠀⠀⠀ "Good," says the hunter in that frustratingly simple way of his. "On your feet."
⠀⠀⠀ He keeps a hand on her cuffs as she rises - for some unfathomable reason, he doesn't seem to trust Cyi - and remounts. Cyi keeps close to the speeder, painfully aware of the electro-bayonet at the end of his rifle.
⠀⠀⠀ A poke from that would not feel good.
⠀⠀⠀ A YEAR LATER, or at least what feels like a year later, the blizzard slows. Gradually, the world begins to appear. Ice stretches as far as Cyi can see, gray on gray on gray. And also very chilly.
⠀⠀⠀ As if on cue, a red-lettered alert blinks into existence.
wArning: your core temperAture is dropping.
> astute.
At the risk of repeAting myself: your cor-
> dismiss.
⠀⠀⠀ Cyi does not need a computer to tell her that she is cold. Her chattering teeth do that fine, as do her numb skin and aching muscles.
⠀⠀⠀ She buries her chin in her stolen jacket, and falls into a daze. Her eyes are half closed, her feet trudge along automatically, and her mind is ruffling its wings to fly. Half in a dream world, half in reality, she finds herself falling into a familiar current.
⠀⠀⠀ No, not falling.
⠀⠀⠀ Flying.
⠀⠀⠀ Soaring.
⠀⠀⠀ Her mind is spreading wings and lifting her away from that horrid cold nothingness. Then it's pulling her into that stream of warmth that links everything from the largest galaxy to the smallest particle. That promises to whisk her away if she only surrenders to it.
