Kanan wakes up. The cave is starting to light up with pre-sunrise glow. He starts to move and feels Ezra sitting up against him instead of lying next to him. He spins himself around to face Ezra.
"Ezra, what are you doing?"
"Huh?" Ezra jolts his head up, having dozed off momentarily, yet still holding his active lightsaber.
"Did you sleep last night?" Kanan asks him.
"What? Sleep? Ah, some. Had to stay awake – monsters in the cave."
"Ezra, for the last – they're not monsters, they're just-"
"Oh, not them, the growlers."
"Growlers?"
"Tried to eat us all night. I hate this planet."
Kanan gets up and picks his lightsaber up by the handle, out of the wall hole.
"Put your lightsaber in the wall and re-heat it, I'll go take a look."
Kanan carefully makes his way to the back of the cave examining his surroundings, making sure he doesn't miss something.
"I'm cold, I'm hungry, I'm tired, and aliens are trying to eat me. Zeb can have the next dangerous mission."
Ezra remembers the cave entrance and quickly growls and movement. He jumps out, hoping to scare off the unknown creatures. His blue lightsaber blade barely lights up the dead end. He sees a small animal, about the size of a two-year-old kid and thin like a small monkey, look at him, it's eyes glowing blue from the reflection. IT snarls and shows its razor-sharp shark-like teeth, before dashing into the hole in the cave wall. Kanan picks up a small rock and throws it at the hole hard.
"Get out of there!"
He backs off, watching the hole and maintaining a defensive stance with his lightsaber. Once at the bend he runs away from it and back to Ezra. He looks back to make sure he wasn't followed.
"That might be a problem," he says, de-activating his lightsaber.
The sun rises and starts sending rays into the cave.
"Well, so might this," says Ezra.
Kanan looks over and there are now twice as many, almost two dozen, creatures at the cave entrance, watching.
"If they come in here, this won't be a battle, it'll be a slaughter," says Ezra.
"That's gonna be a problem, too."
"Well, you know slaughters – they can be a problem at times," Ezra comments with sarcasm.
"No, not that. We may not be able to go scavenging for food now. Even if we scare them away from the entrance, there will undoubtedly be more. We have to eat – the food gives us energy which our bodies burn and create warmth."
"Maybe there are some emergency rations in the ship."
Kanan replies, "It'll be buried in the snow by now."
"Well, we'll lift it out with the Force."
"Lift from where? Out tracks are long since gone. It's probably frozen into the ground now."
"We're really going to die here, aren't we?"
"Don't think about that. Put your lightsaber into the wall and keep heating it back up. Then let it rest. In about three hours or so, depending on the orbit and rotation speed, the cave will be lit up by the sun as much as it will get. At that point we gotta go back there and try to seal the hole those animals are coming in from."
"Oh, gee- swell – a death hole; this planet just keeps giving and giving."
"You were up too much last night. Why don't you nap for an hour or two? I'll keep guard and remove your lightsaber."
Without a word, Ezra walks to the wall and lies down against it. Ezra quickly falls asleep, without any difficulty. Kanan sits up against him to help keep each other warm and position himself so he can keep an eye on both ends of the cave. Kanan pulls out his communicator bead and starts tinkering with it.
.
Hera lies back in the pilot's chair, sleeping. She feels someone shake her awake and looks over to see Sabine.
"Breakfast?" Sabine holds out a small plate of food for Hera, also holding one for herself.
"Thanks," Hera takes the plate and sets it on her lap after sitting up, "kind of hard to have a breakfast time without sun up and sun down."
"Ezra taught me that. I mean, I used to do that back when I first came onboard, but over time every meal just became another meal. Ezra told me I'd sleep better and have better, you know, movements, if I got on an eating schedule. He was right. You should try it."
Hera replies, "No thanks. Last thing we need is a five-member crew all having to go at the same time with only one head aboard."
"Find anything?" Sabine asks while eating.
"Nothing. I even tried scanning for distress beacons. I put a call out to the rebel fleet to keep an eye out just in case. Rex said he'd ask all his contacts."
"What if they're captured? How long do we wait here?"
"Maybe another twenty-four hours. After that I'm taking the Ghost to the secret base and we'll look for them there."
"I hope they're okay."
.
Ezra awakens to Kanan shaking him.
"Ezra, wake up – it's time to try and seal the hole," he hands Ezra his lightsaber.
Ezra gets up and stretches and yawns. He follows Kanan to the curve. Both of them activate their lightsabers for use as flashlights as they make their way around the curve and to the hole, bending over as it decreases in height.
They reach the hole.
"Force your lightsaber into the wall about an inch from the perimeter; we'll try to melt and break apart the roof in front."
They both push their lightsabers into the wall, both humming deeper under the strain.
"Kanan."
"Yes, Ezra?"
"I hate to ask, but if we can't get any food … do we die or do we eat each other? Would you wanna know in advance or do you want me to just whack you unexpectedly? Maybe if just cut small bits off at a time, like toes, and rationed them…"
"Ezra, please shut up."
Some pieces of the tunnel top start dripping into the bottom of the tunnel. Kanan de-activates his lightsaber and lowers it, as well Ezra.
"What?" Ezra asks.
"It's taking too long."
"Not like we don't have free time."
"No, we'll run out of sunlight and ruin our lightsabers."
"Won't these crystals run like forever?"
"Theoretically the crystal could run continuously for years but the lightsaber hilt cannot. It'll heat up and ruin the parts; we got to let them rest some – we can't run them hours at a time with heavy use days on end. Let's fill the hole with rocks best we can and try melting those together some."
They get down to dig.
.
After about twenty minutes of effort, Kanan and Ezra come walking around the curve and find half a dozen of the creatures inside the cave, watching them while two smaller ones fiddle with the hatch.
Ezra activates his lightsaber quickly and runs toward them, "Get out of here! Get out of my cave! MY cave!"
The creatures scurry off as Ezra stops at the hatch. They once again position themselves at the entrance and watch.
"Well, they're comin' in the cave now. Probably only a matter of time before they get brave enough to just eat us."
"Give me you satchel."
"Sure," Ezra takes the strap off from around his neck and hands Kanan the satchel.
"Get in front of me and push the creatures away some so I can get some snow to melt so we at least have something to drink."
Ezra walks cautiously up to the entrance, swinging the lightsaber around to frighten away the creatures. They scatter about a few feet as Ezra exits the cave a foot or so. Kanan bends down and scoops snow into the satchel until it is full.
"I'm done, let's get back in."
Kanan turns and walks back in. Ezra backs up until he's further in, then de-activates his lightsaber. The two dozen plus creatures again crowd the entrance. Kanan hovers his right hand over the heated rocks in the hatch, to feel how hot they are. He dumps all the snow onto them on one side, then activates his lightsaber and sticks it in the other side.
"It'll take a couple minutes to heat these rocks up to boil the water clean.
Ezra sits down and watches.
"Why do they have to just stare at us with those weird eyes all the time?" Ezra comments.
"Keeping an eye on their prey."
"I guess."
"Or they're just watching what they eat," says Kanan.
"No, no, no – that's not funny."
"Sorry," Kanan says, smiling a little.
"If they'd just leave I could maybe shoot a bird down. Got to be other life on this snowball."
"All I know is that if we don't eat in the next twenty-four hours, we'll have to go out there and kill one of them and cook it," says Kanan.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"I don't take any solace in killing a sentient being that's never wronged us. For all we know, the one we eat may be those youngsters' mother or father."
"You're officially making me feel bad about eating the creatures who want to eat me. Maybe we can eat the kids – they can have more, right?"
"Oh, God – Ezra," Kanan says in a disgusted voice.
"What? It was just a suggestion."
Kanan removes and de-activates his lightsaber, watching the water boil on the rocks. Ezra looks at the creatures. One of the small ones watches intently, it's jaw shaking up and down with a faint raspy noise coming from it, much like a cat sitting in a window sill watching birds.
"He really, really wants to eat me," says Ezra.
"It's always good to have goals in life," Kanan looks at the ground around the hatch, "Why is the ground moving?"
"I told you they were gonna dig threw the ground!" Ezra backs up.
Kanan bends down and brushes the dirt some, revealing worms.
"The heat from the walls and the hatch must be drawing them here."
"Yay – now I get to sleep on worms who'll probably lay eggs in my ears," says Ezra.
"Don't you know what this means?"
"Worm poop?" Ezra replies.
"Food!" Kanan picks a worm up and holds it on a red rock. It shrivels and fries. Kanan lifts it up, blows on it to cool it off, then eats it.
"OH! I'm friends with a worm eater!"
"They'll keep us alive a little."
"You want me to eat a worm?"
"As many as possible," Kanan replies.
"No way."
"You will. That stomach will growl and it'll look like a dinner tray of goodies," Kanan bends down again and grabs more worms, getting back up and cooking them, too.
"Maybe, but not right now," says Ezra.
"Suit yourself. I'm going to melt a bowl into that loose rock to poor the water into."
Kanan activates his lightsaber and sticks it into a small boulder, carving slowly into it.
"If we survive this, from there on it I'm going to remember to pack emergency rations on each mission," says Ezra.
Kanan gets down on his haunches and angles his lightsaber blade up about fifteen degrees, and pushes it into the boulder, working it up to the bowl-shaped outline carve he made. Once up into the outline, he slowly moves the blade in and out of the rock, allowing melted rock to trickle out the drain hole.
Kanan comments, "I was stuck on this hot baron hell hole called Sennooo once. Had to boil my own urine until I was rescu-"
His lightsaber hilt crackles. He lets go and backs off. It shuts off automatically and hits the ground. It sparks and makes popping sounds before finally going quiet and emitting a little trail of smoke.
"That's not good," says Ezra.
Kanan waits a few seconds for it to cool off, then picks it back up. He points it upward and presses the activation button; nothing happens. He tries again, getting the same result. He puts it back on his belt.
"This isn't good. Let me use your lightsaber – I gotta finish making this bowl."
"Here. This is bad, isn't it?"
Kanan breaths in and out, now starting to finally worry, "Well, we'll have to heat the wall up again, heat the rocks in the ground again, heat the rocks in the hatch again, heat them up in the middle of the night, and leave your lightsaber on so our new friends don't rip us to pieces while we sleep. It's a lot of heat and stress on your hilt."
"S, you're saying…"
"I hope you can see well enough in the dark to fight, 'cause tonight it may be lights out…"