A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far Away

Chapter 84

"Ghuahh!"

Luna broke out of the nightmare gasping for air, a hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming. It was a learned habit from years of being yelled at for waking everyone up because of a nightmare. It kept her from screaming, or would muffle her screams so they wouldn't wake anyone else up. Most of the time.

Sometimes her hand didn't make it over her mouth, and she woke up half the house, but those rare occurrences were far more accepted by the other girls than weekly or nightly ones.

Of course, Luna had barely began to calm her racing heart when she realized the dark room she was in lacked the sleeping presences of Chelcy, Terra, and Lucy.

The very dark room that lacked the soft light of devices charging, glowing numbers on analog clocks, and the moonlight or starlight. That lacked anything relatively familiar.

There was no window in the room she was in. Wherever she was.

Luna always made sure that the room she got in whatever foster home she was sleeping in had a window or a nightlight. Call her childish, she didn't care. It made waking up easier.

She could barely make out the vague shape of furniture as she looked around the dark room.

Calm down. If you were kidnapped, you wouldn't be in a bed. Breathe in....and out. In.... And out, Luna thought to herself, trying to not panic.

She moved to sit on the end of the bed, trying to find the familiar shape of her backpack in the darkness and shadows on the floor.

Eventually finding her bag, Luna groped around in the darkness, finding her flashlight in the one of the smaller compartments. She turned it on, sending the weak beam of light across the room.

It was more alien than Luna had realized when she first had woke up.

It was then that she remembered that she was just in her room. On a ship. In outer space.

It was supposed to be unfamiliar.

That didn't make it anywhere close to reassuring. No one was around, and Luna wasn't one of those kids that would go to their parents rooms when she had a nightmare, and even if she had been, she would most certainly not be waking up anyone in this universe just because she had a nightmare. That said, the presence of literally anyone else would have made her feel better. She would have even been willing to settle for Threepio or Artoo.

Luna needed her books. More specifically, she needed to be able to read them, something her flashlight could not help with. Luna mentally berated herself for not replacing the batteries or bulb the past week when she had discovered how weak the light was. Of course, she had been pretty distracted by the fact the universe she was currently in actually existed at the time.

"Where's the light switch...." Luna muttered to herself, walking over to the wall, trying to find a control panel. Once she had located a panel near the door, Luna just stared at it, completely unfamiliar with which button did what.

"That one opens the door, so.... Or was it that one? No.... Is it the red one?" Luna asked herself in a hushed voice, a finger hovering over a button before she closed her fist and drew back her hand. "This is ridiculous. What do you expect to be able to do, Luna? You'll end up triggering an alarm."

She sent the beam of light around the room once more, mentally picturing where everything was positioned before turning off the flashlight. Luna then put the flashlight back into its compartment before hopping back into bed, having become cold outside of the covers. She pulled the blankets over her head, creating an even darker world for her to hide in.

Luna wasn't afraid of the dark, or not in the way children were at least. She was afraid of what it could hid sometimes, but otherwise the dark could be relatively safe.

The darkness concealed her brokenness, hid her real self from others when the day's light disappeared. It reassured her that it was alright to let her guard down sometimes. Even when looked at as darkside of the Force, Luna could see how it could be helpful, as long as the user didn't get ensnared by having a thirst for power. There were times to look darkness in the face and fight just as there were times to let the darkness hide or help her.

Or in time like this, darkness helped her imagination take her to a different time period in, for the first time, the very same galaxy she was in.