Whumpril 03 - Crash
Ahuska had never particularly been one to enjoy getting around on a speeder, but she couldn’t deny the value now. On the nights of the full moon, she couldn’t get far beyond the temple fast enough, and there was simply no better option for putting as much distance between herself and every single Jedi or Jedi-to-be as possible before the song of the moon compelled her to twist and turn and tear out of her skin. She was safer now, of course. She was disciplined. She’d proven herself to the Council, she’d proven her ability to fight through the pain and keep her mind, she’d proven the massive progress she’d made in undoing her Imperial conditioning, and this was without the Council even being properly aware of the nature of her failsafe, her bond that stretched across the galaxy and was there to fall back on, to keep her grounded, to help keep her body and mind stable if she found herself unexpectedly under duress…
But Ahuska also knew she wasn’t perfect yet. She didn’t consider herself truly free, not when she still had to fight so hard against the pain and the heavily embedded compulsion to seek and destroy any source of that pain.
And so, the wilderness of Tython was bliss.
The further she could head out, deeper into mountain or forest or sweeping plain, the more confident she could be of avoiding any accidents. The more she could enjoy simply being wild.
And already, the moon was calling to her, prickling under her skin and making her muscles feel tight and cramped. The fox was curled in her lap, his weight so slight but still a comfort, and she wondered as she often did whether he felt much of anything any more, let alone the moon’s song. He was so small. So quiet. And she knew she would try, as she did every time they went out into the wilds together, to draw him out of his shell, to find some small joy for him to engage in. A wag of his tail, a little bounce in his step, anything at all to stay her private fear that it was simply too late to ever bring him back to who he’d been. Ahuska pulled one hand back from the handlebars to rest across the fox’s back, when the speeder shuddered and made a jerking motion to one side. The fox’s ears shot up as Ahuska cried out and then swore, quickly gripping tight with both hands and attempting to steer them steady again. But the speeder was shaking, a series of small tremors, then a larger shudder, and for a moment she was fighting for control before everything turned white and the world ground to a halt.
—
Everything hurt.
The stench of blood and smoke burned through her lungs.
She hacked out a cough, tried to rise, and couldn’t work out if she had four legs or two. She twisted awkwardly on the ground, her body not moving the way it should, and there was a deep pain somewhere…
The world faded out again, more slowly this time.















