Chapter Three
Leia pushed the speeder on. She was already at its limit. She cursed to herself. This speeder didn't go as fast as the other one. Luke's speeder. He kept modifying and tinkering with it. Granted sometimes Luke's tinkering did more harm than good. Yet right now Leia wished they were in the other speeder, just so she could have more speed.
She needed to be home.
Leia had woken up to a cold and dark room, her mother no longer there. A quick surge of fear shot through her. Only for Leia to chastise herself a moment later. Her mother often went out to the market in these early morning hours.
As Leia got dressed she noticed there was still something bothering her. She felt a tingling in the back of her head and goosebumps spread across her arms. She glanced around the small room, but she knew whatever it was it was beyond this room.
Leia was incredibly relieved when her mother returned. She was ready to tell her mother about her bad feeling, but when she saw her mother's face she didn't. Her mother wasn't in a good mood. She wore a frown and her eyes seemed to be staring off. Leia sighed and kept her own thoughts to herself.
Leia thought perhaps the gnawing feeling was coming from the trade job. While the job didn't go well, the feeling didn't go away after it was over. It only got worse as Leia and her mother made their way through town and saw the stormtrooper checkpoint. It got even worse as they got back on their speeder and made their way home.
By now Leia felt like her insides were being pulling out of her. It was painful. Her breath was short. She sat tense as she steered the speeder home. Her driving was careless, causing her mother to shout her name a few times. Yet Leia didn't slow down, she kept pushing the speeder on.
It was now late afternoon. The suns were low in the sky. The speeder crested a sandy ridge. Black smoke clouds were rising in the distance. Leia gripped the controls tighter. The smoke was coming from the direction of home.
Leia could no longer hear the wind as it rushed past. Only the sound of beating heart filled her ears. The closer she got to home, the larger the black smoke got.
As the speeder come up to the Lars Homestead, it became clear the smoke was coming from the buildings. Large burn marks scorched the sides of the above ground buildings. Plumes of smokes came from the underground dwellings. Leia swung the speeder into an arch. She jumped out before the speeder had come to a stop.
"Luke!" Leia shouted. "Luke! Uncle Owen! Aunt Beru! Luke!"
Leia ran through the smoke shouting her family's names over and over. Tears started to sting her eyes. A squeezing feeling seemed to have taken over her whole body. It hurt to move, to breath, to blink. She moved through a cloud of smoke, to see a figure hunched on the ground.
"Luke!" Leia shouted as she ran towards her brother. She knew it was him as soon as she saw him. His white farmer tunic was dusty and stained. She collapsed onto the sand next to him. "Oh Luke!" She cried and hugged him. "I feared the worse when I saw the smoke! There were troopers in town and . . ."
Leia didn't finish as her eyes followed her brother's. On the ground in front of him laid two charred humanoid remains. Uncle Owen. Aunt Beru. Leia let gasped and fought back choking on her own breath.
This was it, she thought. We've had been found.