SERENA

PART II: Chapter 1 - New Home

The blue and green sphere in front of Serena becomes bigger as she gets closer and, quickly, she realizes that the area she's headed toward is actually not blue or green. It's very light brown or orange.

The aircraft rocks and the front of it starts burning, which causes Serena to start panicking. To make matters worse, lights start flashing and alarms start beeping all around her.

"System malfunction." A robotized voice speaks.

"Thank you, I hadn't noticed." Serena replies as she tries to figure out what she can do.

The aircraft keeps burning in the front, and Serena can no longer see clearly where she's headed, but she imagines it's the same area she saw before. Serena tries clicking some buttons to try to salvage the aircraft, but she's never flown one before and she doesn't really know what she's doing. And, to be honest, she wasn't expecting to have to do anything. Rakon told her that she was just supposed to sit tight and wait to get to her destination, which made her believe the aircraft was programmed to land in safety. But the truth is Rakon has never been to this planet, so he couldn't truly know what landing here would require.

Defeated, Serena straps herself to the seat to brace for impact.

Her heart is pounding in her chest, and the alarms beeping all around her don't help at all. She closes her eyes, and hopes that the crash won't be violent enough to truly hurt her. She's very strong and can heal quickly, so she might be okay.

Finally, she hits the ground. It's as violent as she expects and her seatbelt cuts her flesh where it's touching it. The glass in the front of the aircraft explodes into millions of pieces, because it was already vulnerable after all the fire it had to contain, and some pieces cut Serena's exposed skin.

Serena takes the seatbelt off and falls onto the broken glass and the flames. At least, the fire doesn't harm her, but the glass shards create more wounds on her skin.

She groans as she manages to get on her knees, and then, slowly, on her feet. She tries clicking some buttons, but nothing happens, which isn't surprising considering that all the lights inside the aircraft are off.

"Great." She mumbles to herself. "This is just perfect."

Without power in the aircraft, there is no way for Serena to know where she is or how to get anywhere.

The cuts on her skin are already healing, and she heads toward the entrance of the aircraft. Without power, she has to open it manually, which proves to be a very challenging task. That door was closed with the intention of remaining that way while withstanding space travel and the rough conditions that entails, which means it cannot be easily opened by hand.

She pushes, and she pulls, but the door doesn't even budge.

"Come on!" She groans as she uses all her strength to pry the door open. "Come on!"

It still doesn't move, so she lets herself drop onto the floor, defeated. With no way of opening the door, and no way of escape through the broken front part of the aircraft, since it's buried in the sand where it landed, she has no way out. She's trapped.

She stays like that, sitting on the floor with her back leaning against the door, for a long while. She doesn't know how long, but it's enough time for the world outside that she can see through the window to start looking darker.

"The window!" She exclaims and quickly gets back to her feet. "I'm such an idiot!"

The window was obviously also created to withstand space travel, but it must be much easier to break than the metal door. The front glass section was severely damaged by the fire before the landing, and if there's something Serena can create is a fire.

She walks toward the window and places both hands on it. She closes her eyes and concentrates. Her palms start heating up, and then there are flames covering the entirety of the window. She steps away from it, and pulls the seat from the floor. It takes a bit of strength, but nothing she can't manage.

After a while of letting the window burn, she throws the seat toward it, and the glass shatters.

"Yes!" She exclaims and extinguishes the remaining flames. She might not know where she is or what she's supposed to do, but at least she's not trapped inside the aircraft anymore.

Serena steps out of the aircraft through the broken window, cutting herself on the shards of glass once again, but she doesn't really care anymore.

Once outside, she looks around, but all she can see as far as she can look is sand. There are no buildings or people anywhere in sight.

Rakon didn't send me to an uninhabited planet, did he? I can't survive if I'm out here alone.

She walks over to the front of the aircraft, which is buried in the sand. She wants to try to get the sand out in order to see if there's a way to somehow fix it, so she knows she has to manipulate the air around it. It's not her forte, but moving some sand should be easy enough.

She senses the air around her by moving her hands in front of her body, and it feels thick. It feels nothing like the air in Elementia, and that was hard enough to manipulate.

Serena focuses on the area around the sand she wants to move, and she waves her right hand in the direction she wants to control the air. Nothing happens. She tries again, focusing harder, but there's still no movement.

"Fine." She says. "Whatever. It's not like I was going to be able to fix this thing anyway."

She walks away from the front of the aircraft, and decides to start walking to her left. There have to be people or some other creatures in this planet, and she's determined to find them.

After some time walking, all the light is almost gone, and Serena still hasn't found any sign of life. It's also getting extremely cold, and she's lucky to be able to raise her own body temperature due to being able to create fire. But, either way, she's getting exhausted and decides to get back to the aircraft to rest.

She gets back and gets inside. She drags herself toward the bed where she slept throughout the entire journey here, and she closes her eyes.

Despite feeling exhausted, sleep doesn't come easy. She's still worried about the fact that she didn't find anything or anyone, and she might possibly be alone in this planet. And she has no way of getting out, since her aircraft is ruined and she has no means or knowledge to fix it.

Before falling asleep, Serena decides that tomorrow she will walk the whole entire day if she has to, but she will not give up until she finds someone. Giving up is not an option.