Things started out innocently enough. Unreal, the images danced with an archaic beauty before her.
The sun shone in a clear azure sky. Sparse white clouds drifted past like diaphanous bridal veils trailing in the light breeze. Sapphire waves licked gently at the white-gold of the shoreline below the bluffs as a tiny girl and a toddler boy picked along for the delicate shells scattered along the tide-line. Something about them seemed familiar to Sylvana as she watched from atop the nearby bluffs, but she couldn't see how they possibly would. They looked like creations of her imagination, they couldn't possibly be real.
Someone beside her grabbed her arm, speaking to her in a language she found easy to understand in the dream, though vaguely the thought pierced her heart that it was a non-language. Something likely made-up, nothing like anything she'd ever heard before. He had hair that reminded her of dancing flames, eyes gold like the sun above them. He grinned, and pulled her along to the edge of the bluff, and she heard herself laugh as the two of them took a flying leap off the precipice to fall along a clear waterfall spilling into the lapping waves below.
They laughed as something resembling stardust and moonlight, fire and solar flares enveloped them, slowing their decent, the wind kissing their unclothed bodies as they fell, to plunge safely beneath the waves. Sea life scattered at their sudden presence, then came to tickle their sides as they kicked to the surface. When they emerged, she found the sun to be blinding.
She lifted a hand to wipe the seawater from her eyes, and looked upon a man dressed fully in black, a mask covering the upper half of his face. She watched as he fell into a ravine, a blonde woman throwing herself after him. She blinked to herself in disbelief and tugged at her ill-fitting clothes as she moved to the edge of the ravine to look at the couple come to a stop.... Watched, then turned away as she could almost see the joy emanating from the two of them. She couldn't help but smile.
She turned away to see a long hallway, in keeping with the archaic sense she'd been given thus far in her dream. Yet, the dream seemed to be making a sorry turn toward the darkness which seemed always so familiar to her. Amid the sounds of protest, a man in an heavily constructed armour bearing weapons of galactic origin stalked purposefully down the hall. He turned to her, not seeing her, and she quickly dodged out of the way as he levelled his weapon at the doorway she was standing before... and blew it into its constituent atoms. As he stepped over what was left of the portal, she turned and ran, barefoot, down the hall.
Her flight led her out to the edge of a waterway, where she stood beside a masked man who looked horrified by what his eyes beheld. She watched as horror gave way to pain, sadness, finally becoming accepting of utter and complete despair. She wanted to reach out to him, comfort him with an embrace, to tell him that whatever it was, she just knew he'd have the strength to overcome it.
She made her decision and reached out to him, then fell writhing to the ground as the fibres of her spirit-tapestry seemed to tear, imploding and exploding in tandem, burning and freezing individual threads of her essence all at once....
Sylvana's eyes flew open, the sensations quickly fading, leaving her with a numb feeling. Consciously she slowed her breathing as she scanned the bunk area to be sure she hadn't woken anyone up. Sci's bunk was empty, made as though no one had been there, though she knew when she'd awoken earlier he had been sound asleep. She looked over at the ship chrono, and noted it was morning... ship time, anyhow. She found herself hoping ship time was analogous to whever on Coruscant they were going; she hated Jet-Lag... or would this be Hyper-Lag? Space-Lag?
She shook her head to herself as she dropped to the floor, allowing the cool seeping through her bare feet to bring tangible reality comfourtingly to bear. Now seemed a good time to go to the galley and find some groceries to shove down her throat. It would be another long, boring day in transit - might as well get it underway.