Work Text:
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a little girl is left alone on a sandy, desert planet. It is a planet on the very outskirts of mapped space, with precious few residents and even fewer resources. It is the sort of planet no one would like to visit, nonetheless leave their child, yet that is exactly what these parents do.
At first, the girl thinks that it will be only a matter of days before her parents return to fetch her, and even when they days stretch into years, she still clings to the hope of reunification and rescue.
In the meantime, however, the girl learns how to scavenge parts from the many ruins of starships that litter the shifting sands of the planet. She is smart. She has uncannily good instincts. She earns her meals and more besides.
But when food begins to grow scarce and her hope begins to fray, the girl finally decides to leave the sandy planet behind.
No longer will the girl's life revolve around patiently waiting for her family to return; she is going to find them herself.
When the suns rise on the day on which she makes her final departure, the girl dons a cape with a red hood, straps a quarterstaff to her back and tightens the buckle on her bag. She takes one last look at her sad, temporary home before she steals a ship and takes to the sky.
While on the sandy planet, the girl had no way to comprehend the vastness of the universe. Stars seem so much smaller when viewed from afar, and she had grasped how impossible the task of finding a single couple in an infinite universe would be, but she does not allow herself to be intimidated for long. Rather, she steadies her hands on the controls and makes the jump into lightspeed again and again, determined to keep going until the hyperdrive wears out, checking as many planets as possible for traces of her family's presence.
The girl follows both an unnamed instinct that nags at her mind and a faint tug in her gut, hoping that they will work together to lead to her lost parents.
As she travels, she sets foot on places that she has never seen before. For the first time in her life, she stands at the foot of daunting mountains, she dips her foot in raging seas, and she gazes out upon seemingly endless fields of blindingly white ice sheets. She stares at animals and people she has never seen before. She tastes strange foods and drinks strange drinks. She hears stories spoken by the lips of strangers. She is a tiny splash of red lost in the madness of places that she would have never known if she had remained on the sandy planet upon which she was abandoned.
Increasingly, she finds herself lost in forests of warships and soldiers. Before this journey, the girl had not known war except by way of the empty carcasses of ships that littered the surface of the sandy planet, however, war recognizes her and quickly catches her scent as she passes through its domain.
And a wolf takes interest.
He follows her path as she hops from strange planet to strange planet. She catches sight of him once or twice in the corner of her eye -- a stranger with dark hair and a ragged scar on his face and a lightsaber strapped to his belt -- but he does not speak to her.
It is only on the third time that she dares to whirl around in a busy marketplace on a humid, green-leafed moon and speak to him, accusations lacing her tongue, sharp and angry and bitter.
But the wolf, seemingly ready for the girl's assault, bites back.
He knows her, he says.
He knows her parents.
And the girl blinks once, surprised.
But the wolf does not give her the answers that she wants. He does not write them into legend or offer her a location.
Instead, he tells her that they were nobody. They were drunkards who sold her for money, he claims as reaches out a hand, offering to accept her into his pack.
The army can be family, he says.
She can become a wolf like him, he says.
The red hood can fall away, he says. It can be replaced with a stiffly starched uniform, and she can fight tooth and claw against a galaxy that wronged her.
But the girl does not wish to be a wolf.
Truthfully, the girl does not know what she wants, but she knows that she will not find it in his den, among the blasters and lightsabers and simmering anger.
This, the girl shakes her head, steps away, tugs her red hood tighter around her neck, and steals away to her stolen ship.
After all, the hyperdrive has not yet worn out.
There are so many places left to see, and perhaps the word of a wolf is not to be trusted.
Perhaps he was lying.
Perhaps she is not questing in vain.
Perhaps her parents are, indeed, worth finding.
And so the girl leaves the wolf far behind her, completely unidentifiable in the blur of her latest jump to lightspeed.