In her bunk, Sylvana tossed in silent anguish as a light sheen of sweat began to form on her brow.
Hidden lands. Simple exploration turns utterly wrong as evil orc- like creatures kidnap them away. Merciless beatings, cuttings, torturous laughter in cold glinting eyes. First one is left for dead, the other is carried days further. The second beaten and left scarred, bloody, and naked on a mountain pass to freeze in shame....
A whirlwind appears, whisking her down a corridor, sword poised. Harsh words flying back and forth, heedless of the attention they draw. A foreboding sound reaches alert ears. Get them away, she's just a guard protecting them with her life.... She turns to face the enemy and the point of view changes with the whirlwind. An ever familiar figure, red hair pulled back in tight braids, sword raised defiantly against the oncoming host.... Even a Corellian should pay attention to such odds now presented, yet she is fierce. Each stroke deals death as though it were the stuff of playing cards in a casino. It is not enough, never enough. Once again, blasters raise unerringly....
Everything fades to a bright red, bathing everything hellishly, coalescing to blinking lights on a control panel of sorts. The ground rises all too swiftly. Red tinged darkness fades to burning eyes.... White armoured sentinels... no escape....
Again the whirlwind returns, blurring things as though a reflection in oil-slicked water. Now walking in a dark place, searching for something... for someone.... Listening.... Waiting.... Watching....
An attack from nowhere, a flash of light. The pain of a blade down her cheek, her arms, her hand.... The evil glint of lust, a chest caught tightly in fear as a fist tangles in her dark hair to jerk her head back. A cruel mouth crushing down....
Blinding pain turned to a sightless battle frenzy.
Unknown fears brought to light. More terrible is the truth than the lie currently lived....
Ice... burning....
Sylvana sat straight, gasping for the air that had previously seemed denied to her. She put her head in her hands as she attempted to catch her breath, to slow down her heartbeat. The images seemed so real, and she could not seem to lose them.
Shakily, she slid out of her bunk and went to the 'fresher, shutting the door behind her. The dark would close in but for a small light left near the sink and mirror. She let a bit of cold water run from the tap, then splashed it on her sweaty skin. A towel nearby lent itself to her as she pulled it down, scrubbing it roughly down her face.
She leaned against the sink exhaustedly, only her eyes, peering between her sleep-mussed fringe and the towel, were visible. Haunted eyes. Sylvana tried to search her own eyes, using the mirror as a guide, but she found it impossible.
The images looked so real, felt so real. Some she had seen countless times, others were a new terror to conquer in silence. She knew that her little brother was aware of her war with dreams, and sometimes he would lend his aid as well as he could in the form of a compassionate ear. Speaking her dreams brought little to no comfort, they always remained fixed perfectly in her memory, regardless. She only spoke the lesser dreams now, the nightmares that were near rest to her in comparison to the terrors that more often affixed themselves in her mind. She never spoke the terrors, never acknowledged them aloud. Yet they plagued her, chipping away at her carefully constructed mask of laughter and grins.
She hoped the day they could break through the mask would never come.
Sylvana closed her eyes, and took a deep breath to let out in a slow controlled sigh. She dropped the towel to the sink and stood tall, shaking her head slightly. When she looked at the mirror again, as she picked up the towel to put away, an impish face looked back at her with a false lop-sided grin.
She winked at the image, and let the grin fall to a simple smirk as she hung the towel up and left the 'fresher. Silently, she crawled back into her bunk on the Gaia and burrowed beneath the covers. She started counting her heartbeats.
Somewhere around seven thousand, seven hundred fourty-two she drifted back into her ever-tortured slumber.