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Zeen Mrala turned off all the non-essential machines of her ship and let herself drop on the pilot's chair with a exhausted sigh. She didn't know how much time she had been looking for Lula, how many places she had visited. It didn't matter though, she would never stop. She couldn't.
Zeen sighed again and leaned back on the seat, rubbing her eyes. Her gaze drifted through the myriad of stars that decorated the outer space. Tears filled her eyes. She was so tired, of searching, of fighting. Hope was not easy to maintain when you were given no reason to do it.
"I have to find her" she said to the stars. She wasn't hoping for a response, but something -the fatigue, the Force, or maybe just the need to talk to someone- made her keep going. "I was being a coward when I ran away. I know Master Sy said that we were where the Force needed us to be, but I can't stop thinking that if I had been at Starlight, if I had been there to help her, she wouldn't be missing."
Presumed dead, her mind betrayed her. She was used to it. Fighting against herself had been the most difficult part of the search. The urge to give up was strong in moments like these.
"She is alive. I can feel it" she assured herself and her silent interlocutors. "You have probably seen her, don't you?"
The stars did not answer. Zeen was feeling like she was going crazy, but as she continued speaking she started to let go all that tension she had been holding since she discovered Lula's fate.
"She and Qort and Farzala all welcomed me to their lives like I had always been one of them. They became my family and I wasn't there when our home was falling apart. And Lula... I finally decided to tell her what I had been feeling. What if I never find her and we don't get to talk about... us? The galaxy is big and even with Qort I can't get everywhere."
Tears fell down her pink cheeks, the stars watching her unmoved. She took out of her pocket the holodisc in which the last message Lula had sent her was kept and caressed it as if it were her friend's hand.
"Everything happened so quickly" she sobbed. "Catching Krix, that short goodbye, stopping the Nihil on Corellia and then watching the fall of Starlight. We thought we were winning but everything got out of control so fast. Even the jedi are overwhelmed, everything is uncertain now."
The stars looked pitying through her tears as if they knew the destiny of the universe but couldn't tell her anything. Zeen cracked a slight smile.
"I love her" she blurted out. "And I know she loved me back. There is something -the Force, maybe- that ties us together like twin suns. I know she's out there and I will find her, I promise. I know the galaxy is big, but there is no place I wouldn't go for her."
A new strength grew inside her as she said this. Zeen didn't know why but the stars seemed pleased.