A/N: Thanks for the response everyone. Here's the next chapter. Please let me know what you think by leaving me a review or favorite/follow the story.
It was on the third day of no night and no rest from the scorching sun, that she noticed the marks. She was sliding down from the top of the sand dune again when she noticed them. She slid to a stop a few feet from the ship and trudged through the sand to the bow.
Dark, angry marks, as tall as she was and nearly twice her height in width, marked the belly and sides of the little x-class flyer. Blaster shots.
It made sense that she had been shot down. It was to the back end of the ship so whoever had attacked her would have been behind her. She started pulling off pieces of paneling, determined to find out why she hadn't seen them coming. She found it only a few minutes in; the corroded wires obvious to anyone with half a brain. Who knows how long that ship had sat in the salty caves that Luke had kept it in. She mentally chastised herself. If she had just slowed down and taken her time she probably would have found the faulty sensor.
No wonder she had no recollection of the crash. She had been blindsided. The first blow probably knocked her unconscious and then, as the systems failed and there had been no conscious pilot to correct the dying ship, it had plummeted, getting caught in the atmosphere. It was sheer chance that she had survived the impact.
Luke was stranded on the water planet; she had taken his only means of transportation. He might know that there was something wrong by this point, but there was no way he would be able to do anything about it. And who knows how the others were fairing when nothing had been heard from them in weeks. She was truly stranded. No way to respond, no way signal for help. And if she was stuck in the Badlands like she believed she was, then there was no way anyone would come to look for her. The badlands were called that for a reason. Only the runaways and the lost wandered into the badlands and even fewer ever made it out.
That meant that the only people out there, if they were even still around, were the people who shot her down. But that had happened days ago, they were most likely on the other side of the galaxy by now.
She sat down in the sand, exhausted. She had taken some of the gauze from her arms and wrapped it around the more sensitive skin of her neck to keep the sun off. She had grown up in the desert, but even the desert had night. This hellhole never seemed to stop burning.
It became clear then that she would need to start thinking about packing up her water and food in an attempt to find something besides sand. Maybe there were more downed ships. Maybe there was water. Her provisions were slowly disappearing from their containers and that dull feeling underneath her ribs was slowly being replaced with worry. She didn't have the time or resources to stay here any longer.
Yet again her focused shifted. She had a purpose. Find shelter.
It was day five. She had taken her fourth day on the fire planet (as she fondly called it in her head) to pack up her gear, find a way to easily transport her water, and scour the ship for anything that the fire, sand, and wind hadn't already destroyed. She wrapped it all in an emergency blanket and some rope and made a pack.
The inside of the ship had finally cooled enough from the fire that she could venture inside. She used more of the blankets that had been saved by the containers to make a small bed and she finally was able to sleep somewhat well after three nights of sleeping in the sand and the scorching heat of the sun.
When her little watch sounded that it was 'dawn', she grabbed her bags and abandoned ship.
She climbed to the top of the sand dune. There was no sense of direction when the sun was beating on her from above, in the same position it had been since she'd arrived. There was no distant shape or goal to works toward. It was just an infinity of sand. It would be so easy to be swallowed up by it. She knew as soon as she topped two or three ridges, she would no longer be able to tell if she was still heading in the same direction. It all looked the same. It all moved with the wind.
She closed her eyes.
Luke had not been able to teach her much. They had only had a few weeks together. But it was enough to know that here in this vast landscape, with no distractions, no people, only her and the wind and the sand, the force would be strong.
She pushed back the thirst and hunger she felt and she focused on something much more primal. She could feel it. The wind seemed to quiet for a moment, the beating heat of the sun fading until she could no longer feel the burn. She likened the feel of it to the hum of a generator. A soft, comforting feeling, but that softness was deceptively powerful. It grounded her and she reveled in the focus it gave her. She felt some of her strength come back as she sought it out with her mind.
Her eyes snapped open. There. She would walk in what she would call 'east'. The name gave no clue to her actual direction. But it was enough; the soft vibe of the force would be her guide.
She slid down the dune and kept her eyes on the horizon, all the while praying the force wouldn't let her down.
Day 6.
She knew she was hallucinating. She kept seeing a figure walking in front of her. He was clad in a Jedi cloak, just as Luke had been. The figure never turned around. It just marched in stride with her twenty paces ahead. She could run and the figure would begin to run. She could stop and the figure would stop.
She tried changing directions. But as soon as she did, her mirage would stop and the force, which was her only compass in the nothingness, would nag her gut that she was headed the wrong way. It would grow to the point where her stomach was so tied up in knots that she would have no choice but to return to her original path. Her mirage would still be there, waiting patiently on the dune where she had deviated and, once she was back on track, he would again take the lead.
At one point, she just started yelling at it. It marched on. She sang to it. Nothing changed. She drowned it in silence. Still nothing.
She decided it was dehydration. Or maybe it was the exhaustion. But she finally stopped trying to figure it out, and just followed it in the sand, letting it lead her east at a tireless pace.
Day 7.
The figure was still there, even more frequently than before. The water was nearly gone. There was still sand for as far as the eye could see. Nothing changed.
Her clothes, though they were designed for the desert, did nothing to cool her or keep the sand from finding crevices and wearing her skin raw.
She had red blisters everywhere. The sun created them on her skin. The sand created them when she walked. Her lips were swollen and bleeding. Her feet were long past saving against the scorching sand. The straps of her make-shift pack dug long, raw lines into her shoulders.
She imagined it was Luke who was making her walk. That this was the physical part of the training he'd been talking about. She imagined he was there, pushing her to walk faster and harder and to feel the pain less.
It didn't help.
She started humming at some point the scavenger songs of the Jakku people as she hiked through the shifting sands and slid down the backs of the dunes.
She walked on endlessly. The fire planet tortured her for her troubles.
Day 8.
The Jedi figure slowed his pace; she followed suit, internally grateful for his mercy.
She named him Walker (since that's all he did was walk) in a small attempt at humor.
It wasn't funny.