Dealing With Departing Book 2

The Truth?

The Phantom slowly descended to Atollon's surface. As the ramp was let down, it showed a troubled Kanan being guided by a saddened Ezra. Kanan had a white strip of cloth seemingly bandaging his eyes. What had happened?

Hera quickly walked up to the now blinded Kanan, embracing him in a sorrowful manner, while Ezra stood nearby his friend. Sabine and Zeb gave a sympathetic look slightly behind them as Rex emerged from the small group. He realized the absence of his comrade; his friend. Ezra glanced toward him, and Rex looked back, both of them understanding the mournful way of the other's eyes.

Aaylah stood at a disntance looking out of the reflective window of her quarters. She hardly even noticed the window fogging up, or the ragged shallowness of her breathing. What happened? she queried. Don't be stupid, she reprimanded herself. You know very well what happened, she reconciled.

She stood there very still, as though she were an object and not a person. She did not cry, however. She seldom cried. She didn't cry; or, at least, that is what she tried to believe. It was very foreign to her when she felt a hot liquid running from her gray irises. What happened?

Then she turned from the window, her back against it, and slid down the wall, clearing the cloudiness off the window and clutching her knees as she hit the durasteel floor. She put her head on her knees as she sobbed. It was all so surreal to her; an unknown void of her life. She didn't quite understand what was happening, or if it even was happening. Force, she could've been in a dream.

Now what? Now what would she do; where would she go? She didn't know. She didn't even know who she was, what was more, if she could remember. Ahsoka had taught her everything she knew: lightsaber forms, combat, to read, to write, to speak properly, and - she mused - her favorite thing: acrobatics.

Rex slowly walked away from the crowd, head hung, trudging to his quarters. As he was walking down the durasteel corridor, his boots clanging against the floor, echoing off the walls, he slowed to a halt in front of one of the first doors as he heard uncontrollable sobbing.

"Aaylah," he mumbled softly to himself, eyes wide and gasping in realization. He was about to intrude on her, but thought better of it. She just needs time now. I think we all do. He continued walking down the corridor until he reached his dull, silvery door halfway down the hall. He walked inside and sat heavily down on his cot. What happened?

Aaylah was still sobbing with her head on her knees when she heard a faint humming sound, and saw a bright light through her closed eyes. Her glistening eyes shot open in a startled attempt to avoid the blinding light she saw. When she opened them, however, even as her head was still resting on her knees, she saw an owl-like creature - cream and mint colored with specks of fluffy pink. She saw it in her mind's eye as it stared fervently back at her, and slowly it faded into blackness as another form slowly took its place, surrounded by dimly burning stars. It looked as if it were a ginormous white wolf, and her head shot up violently hitting the durasteel wall behind her as it murmured one word in a gravelly voice.

"Soon."

So, after I wrote Dealing With Departing I had a request to do another book like it, and I came up with this: Aaylah during the aftermath of Malachor.  I know the Loth wolf actually said "Dume" or "doom", but I had to make it different yet similar, so I used soon.  There were also a few requests to do another book similar to A Shooting Diamond, so I will probably make one like that too.  So here it is finally!  Thanks!

-Aruna Accalia