To Be So Lonely // Ben Solo

2

Cyra was singing softly, smiling as it echoed against the ice Cave, skinning the fish she had previously caught. She became accustomed to the noises in the Cave, the cold wind whipping against the ice barrier, the crackling of ice threatening to melt underneath the sun's rays, the water dribbling down the walls, and she was hearing them flow through her ears, not truly noticing them. 

Everything ceased, suddenly, abruptly, when the ice underneath her feet began to crack, and a streak of pure red light overtook the small ray shining into the Cave. 

Cyra's knife clattered to the ground as she dropped it and ran for the barrier. She threw her hands onto the ice barrier of the Cave wall, shattering it, and ran to the edge of the mountain. Cyra saw the endless forest below her, she saw an uncontrolled gush of wind ripping through the trees. She threw her hands out, grasping the Force around her, to keep herself upright as the wind rushed through the mountain, too.

Cyra whipped her eyes to the sky as she saw the source of red light generating from behind the mountain. She saw a thick, red beam shooting through the atmosphere, into space. It was crackling and unnatural, pulsating, terrifying. She could not see the source of the beam, but she knew it was coming from Ilum.

In Cyra's fright, she entered into the Force again. She fell to her knees, her hand clutching over her chest. She felt thousands of lives, ending abruptly, a disturbance unlike anything she had felt before in the Force. The tide shifted; the balance was tilted. Her mind was loud with the shrieks of terror, her vision was blinded by the red light the people were seeing before their planets were destroyed.

Cyra had to leave at once.

With a quick inhale, Cyra let out a scream, shutting out each section of herself she had accidentally given into the Force. One by one, she stopped hearing the cries of the people, she stopped feeling their burning pain, she cut off her connection from the Force once more. Only the red light of the land remained, still painfully bright and inescapable. 

The ice barrier of the cave was crackling as it rebuilt itself down to the ground. Cyra slipped underneath it before it completely froze over. She was gasping, running, to gather her belongings into her backpack. Cyra slipped on her belt holster, settling her knife and her blaster into them. She dug through the backpack, to the bottom, and withdrew the lightsaber. She attached it to her hip. She shoved some clothes into her backpack, packed in some food, her comlink.

Cyra stopped as she handled her comlink. She kept it for noise, at this point, so far into her seclusion. Sometimes leaving it on meant hearing passing messages of ships flying over Ilum, though it was mostly radio static.

Cyra unzipped the front pouch of her backpack and withdrew her journal. She cursed as dozens of letters spilled out from the journal, but she continued to flip through it, searching for the woman's name. At this range, she would never be able to reach her, wherever she was in the galaxy. From her ship, however, there was a chance.

She shoved the letters and the journal back into the backpack, zipped it up, and threw it over her shoulders securely. She pulled gloves over her hands, settled a hat over her head, and threw her comlink, as it was attached to a string, over her neck.

She did not bother to take one final look at the Cave she had spent the last years in. There was no time. Whatever the red beam had been for, whoever it was made by, it required her immediate attention. The destruction the weapon on Ilum brought would bring people to the planet, good people, wanting to destroy it. She could not afford to be caught in the fight. She refused to die as a casualty of the foreshadowed war between the Light and the Dark. 

Cyra traveled down the mountainside. The lands had begun to return to a normal color. As soon as she was on the frosted grass of the forest, covered atop by the trees, she was sprinting, trying to remember the fastest way to her ship. Her ship was a short hike from the base of the mountain, far enough into the forest to throw any suspicion, but there was no telling how much time she had. She had to hurry.