tritanopia | The Mandalorian

five

Over time it reached the point where the metal interior of the ship started to become lethal to touch.

Well, not actually lethal; but it could have cooked something, that's for sure.

And then, eventually, the material of the co-pilot seat that Fae had resided in for the past several hours also started to burn her where her clothes didn't quite cover her skin. Which, to be fair, was very few places, and basically just led to keeping her hands in her lap and her neck off of the headrest.

For the first half hour or so, she entertained herself by pressing all the buttons she could reach. Not in the hope of escaping, but perhaps finding to the self-destruct button by accident, or something to that effect.

Then she spent a while trying to unlock the chain from around her ankle; which went about as well as you'd probably expect — fucking terribly, and only resulted in the chafing on her wrists to become alarmingly worse. The blood that escaped from the edges of the metal was hard to miss considering, to Fae, it was bright red against the stark white of her skin.

And after that, Fae was truly bored; again.

By that time, the sun had started to set and yet the bounty hunter had still not returned from...whatever it was he was doing. She wasn't exactly sure.

The young girl had not eaten in about a day and a half, the last time she had drank anything being even further away than that. Her lips were cracking and her tongue scraped against the inside of her mouth like sandpaper. The sound of her pulse pounded in her head as the most agonising headache filled every crevice inside her skull and at the most extreme point, her right hand began to tremble unconsciously.

It felt like death.

She felt like death.

But she didn't even notice, as she was busy watching the sunset.

The colours in the sky bled together into one brilliant display of reds and pinks and whites, to her, as her eyelids got closer and closer together and with them she got closer and closer death.

Well, no. Not death; for she wasn't dying, after all. But it did feel that way in her mind due to the dehydration and concussion that was going on up there.

Staring at a view like that, Fae couldn't help but get lost in her own thoughts, as any person would. And so her mind wandered, and landed right onto the topic of death.

Her death.

Fae had never given much thought to the concept of an afterlife. Of course, she was a person of faith of some kind, but she never saw much point in imaging life after death - as she knew she had no say in it. Behave well and help others, make some sort of a difference, and always obey whichever man was in charge of her (although lately, perhaps that rule has been thrown out of the window). Do all that and, hopefully, she would get to the good side of death. The good place. But that was all she thought of. She didn't have an image in her head of what was waiting for her there when, if, she arrived. Her mother? Endless amounts of her favourite foods and a forest to sit and eat them in? Whatever it was, she couldn't change it - so why build it up in her head only to be let down once she arrived?

If she arrived.

However, she knew in that moment what the good
place was like.

The colours in the sky. The colours which lit up her eyes like a work of art, more beautiful than any piece of artwork she had ever gazed upon, in such a beautiful way she swore she would have cried if she could. Cried over the fact she had never seen nor imagined anything as gorgeously full of life as that sky, and she would have shed many tears over how grateful she felt that she was one of the few people in the history of the universe to have seen such a thing. Cried because all the effort she had dedicated into escaping her old life would have still been worth it, even though it didn't work, as it led to her being sat in that chair at that time in order to witness such beauty. But all her body could muster was one single tear rolling down her cheek. That was the perfect image of the good place to Fae, and if that was the last scene she saw before closing her eyes, she would have been content with that. The pain and the fighting she had endured her whole life would have been worth it as long as she got the privilege of heaven on earth being the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes for the last time.

Sounds dramatic — to you maybe. But Fae had lived a life of white corridors and boring grey skies.

This was exquisite to her.

Perfect.

But of course, she wasn't going to die sat in that chair staring at the sky. No, far from it. And all that actually occurred was Fae nodding off into her dreams as the sun finally disappeared behind the sand dunes.

Dreaming about the sky, most likely, and getting the most hours of sleep she had achieved since she had escaped.

And, also, managing to not fall out of her seat when a bone rattling, metallic screech reached her ear drums and practically ripped her eye lids open itself.

Fae didn't even move a muscle for several seconds, waiting for the sound to resonate again from wherever it came from, she wasn't sure. It was probably about a minute until it finally reappeared, the girl somehow getting shocked all over again and letting out a tiny yelp of fear to nobody but herself.

"Um...Tin Man?" She yelled in a shaky voice, "That you?"

Why was she scared? Because she knew that wasn't him, and was only asking as one blind leap of hope that she knew was fruitless. But why was she scared? Because she simply did not have the foggiest idea what sort of creatures lived on the planet, or a desert for that matter. To her, it could have literally been anything. And the reply that she received did not clear anything up in the slightest.

Mumbling.

No, not mumbling. It sounded like mumbling due to the fact it was being heard through several sheets of solid metal. But in reality it was more like screaming. Aggressive, high pitched screaming.

That definitely wasn't the bounty hunter.

Whatever it was, there was a lot of them, and they were getting closer. As they did, Fae realised that they were actually talking each other. Although how any of them made sense of another went right over her head.

But she had bigger issues at that point than the technicalities behind whatever their language was, and realised this when the door to the cockpit loudly slid open to reveal several...tiny little creatures.

Oh, Fae thought, this shouldn't be too bad.

{i need to stop writing short chapters but that involves effort i do not possess and maybe never will.
also, self promotion, i also have a The Last Of Us story which is also a parental relationship between my OC and Joel Miller so i mean id appreciate if you checked it out?

thanks for reading uuugh comment and vote! or don't...i can't really make you...

...or can i?}