Revival- A Star Wars Story

Chapter 8- Fortuna

On the Myrioi Osprey, Rey sits in the pilot's seat, breathing in deeply. She feels her fingers moving by themselves, and locates the coordinates of the planet she felt in her vision. On the screen, one word flashes: Fortuna. The Osprey whirls, and shoots into hyperspace.

The ship exits into desolate space, and just ahead is a planet with wispy, white clouds, with faint, cream colored swirls lofting over it. The Osprey lands on the curious planet, and the scavenger girl gasps when she looks through the windows of the ship. All around her is wheat-like grass, taller than any tree she's ever seen. Beyond them are giant glass stones. But unlike in her vision, which showed a landscape shrouded in darkness, the sky is in an eternal afternoon bliss.

The doors of the Osprey open, and Rey and BB-8 step out, softly landing on the delicate yellow dirt below. As they move away, a droid in the darkness of the ship powers up, but the girl does not hear it.

She walks through the vast terrain, her footsteps slow as she is entrenched in awe. A light satchel carrying the Jedi books is slogged over her shoulder. She hikes through white mountains cracked with dull gold, with rays of the sun revealing dust dancing in her path. She touches upon wooden creaks and hills, with material that is seemingly crafted, yet so easily suggestive of a natural formation. They puzzle her. She reaches a dark red forest, shrouded by burnt wheat-like grass, with flicks of red embers flickering all around.

And suddenly, BB-8 whirls. The cry of a creature is heard.

A mangled mess of scarlet lashes out from the bushy wheat and towards Rey; she ignites her lightsaber, but it sputters into darkness. In a split second, she moves out of the way, and avoids the slashing of the creature. 'Darn,' she thinks to herself, 'It malfunctioned again!' Ever since she tried to repair it, the lightsaber hasn't worked the same.

She eyes the menacing predator, a centipede-like nightmare coated in spiked fur, glitching with shines of red like a computer screen riddled with viruses. It lets out a horrifying cry, and lunges towards her again. With no other option, Rey charges at the creature, her hand on the lightsaber, giving it all the last hope she has. Her arm swings out, her hand clutching the blade's handle, and a blue light shines through, slicing the predator in half. Chocolate-colored blood drizzles out as it writhes on the ground, dead.

Rey lets out a sign of relief. She looks at BB-8, and her expression falls. "We've been wandering for hours," she tells the droid, despondent. "Isn't there anything we can do?"

BB-8 whirls back. Rey shakes her head. "The Jedi books? When have those ever been of use?"

But then, a memory in her begins to click. The zen-like poems.

"The poem of the red fountain. It talked about a forest just like this. Do you think it's talking about Fortuna?"

BB-8 clicks and twirls in a reply, and Rey answers back, "You're right, it can't be. That story was complete nonsense, talking about miniature people smaller than a cell, going to stop the body they were in from dying. But why was that place they went to so similar to this planet?"

She recalls the intricacies of that cryptic tale, drawing analogies between its descriptions and things she finds on Fortuna. The girl feels a bit silly a times, like a child trying to map between a fantasy story and her real world. But as she connects more and more of the dots, it all begins to unfurl so perfectly. And in time, the scavenger and her droid find themselves before a red lake, shimmering slowly beneath the burned forest of wheat-like grass.

'That fountain of blood within that story... it's so much like this lake. But that means..."

She takes a long, apprehensive glance at BB-8. The droid is nervous, too. She thinks to herself, 'That means I have to swim inside.' In her mind, she read back the next part of the poem to herself.