Tess found herself wrapping her hands around her tauntaun's neck as her fingers slowly lost feeling and she could not even tell if she was holding on to the reins or not. She looked up at the sky. She knew she didn't have long until nightfall. She was about to set up the tarp in her pack, but before she even dragged it off her shoulders she saw a gray mound in the distance.

To Tess' relief, she neared it and saw that it was what she expected—a cave. Then her nerves spiked when she remembered what creature typically inhabited caves on Hoth—wampas.

Mustering her courage, Tess slowly entered the cave. She knew that if it was uninhabited, it would be the perfect place to allow her tauntaun to hibernate through the night—the only way it would survive the temperatures. And Tess, though well-equipped with a snowsuit—was still human and even with a tarp to block the wind speeds, even she was not guaranteed to last the night without the shelter of something like this cave.

Tess knew better than to trust the tauntaun not to make noise, so she put an omnibar in its mouth—the perfect treat to please for an omnivore like her tauntaun—and left it outside the cave.

Though the cave itself was white on the outside, darkness came fast on the inside. The white became gray, and the gray just became darker and darker. Looking further down the cave, she could see no ending, just a fade into black.

Tess listened as hard as she could, but the wind from outside was overpowering anything she could have heard. One of the distinct signs that a wampa was in the cave would be its loud chomping, but she wouldn't be able to hear that until she was too close. Tess tried another tactic. Wampas were known to suspend demobilized but live prey from the ceiling for later consumption.

As soon as Tess' eyes found the ceiling, they found the wampa's most recent capture—Luke. Checking her perimeter to make sure the creature was not nearby, Tess rushed to her friend.

"Luke!" she whispered nervously once near, touching his freezing cold face in attempt to wake him. "Luke, wake up!"

Sure enough, Luke's blue eyes showed themselves.

"Tess…? Where…?"

"We're in a wampa cave," Tess said as softly as she could, just in case the wampa was near. Luke suddenly remembered how he had come to be in this state and his eyes widened.

"Tess, you have to get out of here—its too dangerous," Luke insisted. He reached up towards his legs in attempt to free himself, but the ice was too strong. He then brought a hand to his belt. "My lightsaber…it's gone."

"I'll find it," Tess insisted, turning to look.

"No!" Luke snapped. He pointed ahead. Tess followed his finger.

Fear rose up in Tess' throat. Not only did she see the silver glow of Luke's lightsaber, but right beside it was the gigantic white wampa, paws soaked in red blood as he savagely consumed a tauntaun.

Tess turned back to Luke to ask him what to do. He was way ahead of her. Luke stretched out his hand with closed eyes. He was using the Force. Tess looked back towards the lightsaber, which shook in the ice but could not wiggle itself out.

It might have been unconscious. Maybe it was to soothe her anxiety. Instinct was a possibility, too. Regardless of the reason, Tess reached up and took Luke's hand. Suddenly, she felt a surge of something powerful—something beyond imagination—and the lightsaber flew into Luke's hand.

Tess didn't have time to contemplate what she had just felt. Luke detached himself from the ice of the cave ceiling and flipped himself to a stand.

Hearing the sound of the lightsaber, the wampa turned around with a roar. Luke nudged Tess slightly, indicating that she stay put, as he leapt forward and sliced off the wampa's arm with ease. His speed propelled by the Force, Luke grabbed Tess' hand.

"Run!"

In order to keep their tauntaun alive longer, both Tess and Luke agreed that they would walk alongside it. Their best chance of surviving the night was to find another cave, but that was still incredibly dangerous because most of those caves housed wampas just like the one they faced.

"You shouldn't have come," Luke called at Tess through the wind. "We could die out here—you know that?"

"Of course I know that!" Tess snapped, her voice shaking with cold.

"Tess…your nose is bleeding," Luke alerted her. He stopped the tauntaun, reached in his pocket for a cloth, and held it up to her face. "That happens a lot when it's this cold, but unless you want a nostril frozen shut making it even harder to breathe than it already is, I would wipe that down well."

Luke inspected the tauntaun for a moment. Tess could not see his face well through the goggles and hood but she knew he was frustrated.

"This is exactly why you shouldn't have come," Luke muttered.

"Because of a nosebleed?!" Tess snapped. "That could have just as easily happened to you! And if I wouldn't have woken you up in that cave, the wampa probably would have gotten to you first! You should be thankful that I came!"

Suddenly, their tauntaun let out a high-pitched wine and collapsed on the snow, dead. Luke hung his head with a labored sigh. He pulled out his lightsaber and cut into the tauntaun's belly.

"What are you doing?" Tess asked.

"It will keep you warm," Luke explained. "It will smell like hell, but that's better than freezing to death. Get over here."

"No."

"Tess—"

"Luke, wait," Tess assured him. She pulled her pack off her back and dragged two thick brown tarps out. Luke watched, not willing to admit that she came more prepared than him, as she secured one of the tarps on top of the snow and the other one on top of that tarp with an opening so that they get inside and stay warm under it.

After she finished setting up the small makeshift camp, she crossed to the dead tauntaun, then looked at Luke with disdain.

"You cut it too much," she groaned. She knelt and touched the now ice-hardened insides of the tauntaun, then wiped her hand off on her pants. "If you don't cut it little by little, it all meets the air too fast and freezes within minutes, Luke."

Again, Luke couldn't bear to be one-upped by a fourteen year old, so he made no comment on his mistake and lead Tess towards the tarp by her shoulders.

"Come on," he told her. "We need to get in there before we freeze to death."

The sound of someone yelling in the distance nudged Luke awake. It took him a moment to remember where he was. That moment was interrupted with anxiety when he saw that Tess was not under the tarp with him.

Luke tightened his goggles and exited the tarp tent.

"Tess!" he called, cupping his hands around his mouth. "Tess!"

She was not hard to see in her red snowsuit. Tess stood several feet away from the camp, yelling for help.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Luke demanded, grabbing her wrist and starting to drag her back to camp. "How long have you been out here?!"

When Tess turned around to face him, Luke could see that she had tears frozen to her cheeks. Her nose and ears were turning blue from cold.

"They need to find us!" she cried. "They just need to!"

"They will," Luke assured her. "Now get back into the tent."

"No!" Tess retorted. "I'm not just sitting and waiting! I'm not giving up!"

"Even if it kills you?!" Luke shouted, taking her by the shoulders and trying to shake her into realizing the danger of standing out here in the cold.

"It won't!" snapped Tess, teary-eyed. "I won't let it! Leia…she doesn't know!"

Luke looked at her a moment, confused.

"What doesn't Leia know?" he asked. Tess didn't respond at first. He looked at her a bit deeper. "Tess?"

"She doesn't know…how much I love her…" the fourteen-year-old sobbed. "I know I'm not always nice to her and I don't always listen, but you, Han, and Leia have been like my family for the past three years and Leia… I never told her that because I'm too busy doing the opposite of whatever she tells me to do. I mean—look! She told me to go to bed and now I'm in the middle of a snowy nowhere!"

Feeling she needed it, Luke wrapped Tess in a hug. She knew he wasn't one for many words, so Tess didn't really need them.

"Come on," he said gently. "Come back to the tent. It's morning now, they'll be sending a rescue squad before you know it."

Tess nodded and took his offered hand. She took about three steps towards the camp before her feet grew heavy, her head pounded, and her vision began to blur white.

"Is it…snowing…harder…?" she muttered breathlessly.

Suddenly, her legs fell out from beneath her and her vision went black.