I woke up with no clue where the hell I was. It wasn't home, because there were no alarms, yelling, or any noise here. I wasn't in my bed, and I wasn't in any of my friends' houses, either. In fact, I wasn't even in a house. I was on a bench of some sort, laying down in the middle of a large, dense forest. I wasn't in any place I recognized, and the air seemed different here, it was fresher, it was cleaner, and it was also a little thinner. He looked up in the sky, and although it was bright out, there was no sun in sight. Then I realized the bench was actually just a very pristine acacia log. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and got up. The forest was lush and green, though there was a surprising lack of thick trees, as if every single tree was new. I walked towards a light in the distance, still disoriented. I felt a sort of tingle in my skin, a kind of feeling, no - a kind of power, sitting just beyond reach. It felt reassuring, soothing, relaxing.
I reached a clearing in the wood, where a large beast sat staring at me, hungrily. I tried to turn back where I came from, but the path was gone.
Okay, I thought. That shouldn't have happened. I must not be getting enough sleep.
The beast looked at me, and charged. It would've bitten me in half if a giant green bird hadn't flown in it's path and knocked it to the ground. The bird was majestic, like an eagle mixed with a lion. A gryffin, I would guess it would be called. It had glowing green plumage, but I didn't have time to take that in before it morphed into a humanoid figure. I sucked in my breath.
The woman was young and tall, about 6 feet tall, yet she looked only 16. She had warm, kind leaf green eyes. Her lips were perfectly chiseled, and her expression was gentle and still somehow showing great power. She had long, flowing green hair, that something told me was natural, which didn't make any sense. She had a large, complicated gold headdress that gave her a regal vibe. Her dress was elegant and unique, white and bronze with a gold trim. It was long and complex, and a large emerald-like gem sat in her midsection. The dress went past her feet and onto the ground, yet it stayed perfectly clean. Her legs were completely covered in wraps, and she didn't wear any footwear except for them. She wore gauntlets reminiscent of her leg wrappings, and she had gentle hands. She was pale white, but not unhealthily so. Her eyebrows were thin, long, and intelligent. Her skin seemed to glow in the light. Then I realized it really did glow, every part of her produced bright light. She radiated power and beauty. I found myself staring. She was the most breathtakingly beautiful woman I'd ever laid eyes on, but she didn't seem like a beauty queen you'd see in school, proud, selfish, and rude. She seemed surreal and kind, a general selfless woman. She seemed like a get-your-hands-dirty kind of person, and she didn't look at me the way most popular girls did, like I was a waste of space. She looked at me like I was a valuable person, though she didn't seem to judge me at all on first glance, which I appreciated.
She smiled at me in greetings and looked at the monster in front of her. "This beast has been bothering me for thousands of years," she said.
I gaped at her. "Thousands?" She must have been joking.
"Yes, thousands. This planet is my home, and I've lived on it since before I can remember. Oh, where are my manners. I should introduce myself. I am Daughter. To whom do I owe the pleasure of meeting here?"
"I am Morgan Johnson, ma'am. Forgive me, but could you elaborate on the thousands of years part?"
Daughter chuckled. "I suppose it does warrant an explanation. I am one of The Ones, an ancient family. I was born over a million years ago, yet I stopped aging once I reached about twenty-two. Don't ask me why. Anyway, the reason I look even younger now is because I died decades ago." She explained how she'd died saving her father from her brother, and a girl named Ahsoka, and how she'd somehow come back to life again the previous night.
"As for the age, I still know I'm millions of years old, yet I feel 16, as if dying and coming back made me younger. In fact, I technically am sixteen, I just have the memories of my previous life here. I don't know how I came back to life, but I won't argue with the ways of the Force."
She smiled at me. Her smile was like a firebomb in my soul, and it warmed me to the core. I still didn't get the whole died and came back thing, but I decided not to ask too many questions. Any more confusing stories and my brain would explode.
"It's nice to meet you, Morgan," she said. "But we really must go before we are killed where we stand.
As we walked towards wherever she was taking me, I told her how I lived somewhere else, on Earth, and she said this planet was called Mortis. As she said that, everything fit in place. I hadn't realized how familiar everything was until she said that, but it turns out I'd already known of Daughter's story and this planet. It was from a cartoon series based off a Science Fiction film franchise, and I just hadn't made the connections because of the heaviness of the situation I had to process. I wondered how I'd ended up here, but I'd have to set that problem aside for now.
Daughter led me to a large building on a mountain, an old monastery of sorts. She turned into a bird and flew me up there so I didn't have to climb the stairs all the way up.
"Here, the Force speaks to us, it is my father's monastery, where we can most easily read the will of the Force. If we will find answers to both our problems, we will find it here."
She sat in the center of the hall, and gestured for me to come join her.
She meditated peacefully, a dreamy, relaxed expression on her bright, gentle face. She seemed in control, so reassured, so at peace while she meditated that I just had to marvel. I decided to meditate with her, as that was probably why she had called me over to her. As I copied her stance, I felt momentarily at peace. The tingling in my body grew to a feeling, an overwhelming, passive, relaxing feeling. My mind focused not on the present, or where I was, but the future, and where I felt I could be. I relished the feeling of the Force in my body.
I could get used to this, I thought.
Daughter opened her eyes and smiled at me briefly, as if she could sense my thoughts. Maybe she could, since she'd probably been doing this for millenia. She closed her eyes again and returned to her personal bubble of tranquility.
My mind broadened past the mundane and I saw the stars in a beautiful group of constellations. A whispering in my ear, a gentle, soft voice faintly whispered in my ear. It grew louder until I could hear parts of what it was telling me.
"Your wish... back to life... brought you here... your destiny, it is with... save them... she will guide you..."
I didn't understand what most of it meant. The gist of it, I understood. My wish to leave my life at home, to finally live a long and happy life had brought me here. Something about the wish had also reawakened Daughter. The last thing the voice told me was a name, something I didn't know how to use, except the voice had told me I would know when it would be needed.
I opened my eyes and saw Daughter had done the same. "Get anything?" I asked her.
She nodded. "I didn't get too much, but I got that you came here of your own free will, but without knowing what your... wish, the Force said, would bring. I was also told that the fact that you arrived brought me back in some way, which I can't explain. The last stuff I was informed..." She blushed and continued, "doesn't really matter right now. Did you hear anything else?"
I told her what I'd heard, except for the part about the name. I still didn't really know what it meant, and I had a feeling I wasn't supposed to tell Daughter about that.
"Well it seems that you wished for something, and the Force sent you here. Coming here brought me back to life somehow, and that you have a destiny here. We should probably leave soon, I don't know how this building will stand, it's so old."
As if on cue, the hall rumbled and dust fell from the ceiling. The floor trembled and cracks appeared in the walls and ceiling.
"I advise we run," I added.
"Run is sounding pretty good right now," She agreed.
We left in a hurry, the monastery collapsing behind us. I almost sighed in relief, but I saw that our troubles were far from over. The entire planet was collapsing in flames. I remembered how the planet changed with the time, yet I didn't think that the apocalypse occurred every day.
"How are we going to get out?" I yelled over to Daughter.
"I don't know!" She yelled back. "This place was designed so we couldn't get out!"
Think, Morgan, think, I told myself. How can we get out of this situation?
Then I saw it.
"There!" I pointed to an old starship sitting in a clearing.
Daughter turned into a gryffin and grabbed me, flying me over to the ship.
We landed in the cockpit, and I tried to start up the controls.
"You know how to fly a ship?" She asked me.
"Nope," I responded.
"Then how do you expect to get us out of here?"
"Hope. That's all I've got. It's gotten me this far, and well, I hope I'd be a good pilot."
"Wonderful. You'll get us both killed," she delivered.
I looked over at her. She was still beautiful when she was annoyed, and somehow cute when exasperated, yet I decided not to push her too far, or she could kill me in any number of ways.
I desperately hoped that I could get us in the air without killing the both of us. I took a deep breath. I started up the ship, and it didn't blow up. So far, so good. I took the controls and somehow maneuvered us out of there, and found the exit, which only a ship could get through. No wonder Daughter or her brother had never left. I steered the craft outside of the planet.
"Uh, Morgan... you might want to get us out of here quickly," Daughter worried.
"Oh, Styx..." I cursed. THe planet was collapsing behind them into a singularity, drawing them in.
Luckily, I found the hyperdrive activator and pulled the switch. The stars became a blur and I lurched forward as we were propelled at lightspeed through the endless darkness of space.