Lumi had been enjoying the flight, to put it mildly. She was swinging her legs and bouncing in her seat, turning her head this way and that to see all the different life forms that were aboard. She knew the person in the seat next to her was getting irritated, but the Krog woman was wearing a maroon dress. Lumi hated the color maroon, and in fact, blamed the woman for whatever bad luck came to Lumi in the future. As a result, she did not feel inclined to settle down for the Krog’s benefit. The amount of species on the ship was incredible. There were Kafkans, Durospex, Humans, Lizanders, Kra’lels, and forms she’d never even seen before. One in particular her eyes kept trailing to, examining, deciding, debating on speaking to him, but in the end she voted to watch and wait. She always chose to first watch and wait, as did most Estray. They’d all be dead by now if they didn’t have such sense, weaklings that they were.
Lumi realized there was a problem before anything visibly happened. She felt the concern, the fear radiating from the front of the ship, but as she had a seat close to the very back, she couldn’t taste the specifics. Was it uncertain, or definite? Life-threatening, or merely enough to make their heart pound? She wondered if they were going to have to make an emergency landing. Perhaps Terra was not where she was destined to go after all. She glanced down at her arm for a moment, her white skin making the off-white cloth of the seat look yellow. If not Terra, she mused, where? Then, suddenly, she was thrown forward in her seat, smacking her head despite the empathic warning she’d been given. The rest she was oblivious to.
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Something hurts. As soon as Lumi realized the pain, flashes of memory hit her before any true consciousness began. Every cut, scrape, broken bone, and burn she ever had came back to her as clearly as the day they had happened. She found, finally, her reason of pain this time wasn’t in her memory, and it was then she managed to force open her silver eyes.
Distorted metal was all around her, broken pieces of the ship scattered and smashing so everything was ruined. Her neighbor from before was no longer there, though considering what had happened to their section of the ship, Lumi had a feeling she would only have to look ahead to figure out where her body was. Lumi herself was boxed in, squished up against the side of the ship that had broken away from the main hull by a large piece of debris. Her left hand was throbbing, and when she compared the pain to the past, knew it was broken. She felt a scratch on her face and was sure her rib cage was bruised. Smoke filled the air, making her cough and tilt her head away as if she could breathe cleaner air from the sky.
Lumi tried to push the debris that was pinning her away, but found herself unable. She tried to wriggle out of the little space she was smushed in, but that almost made her break a rib. In her mind, she began sending out a distress call instinctively, despite knowing there were no other Estray on board who could pick up the mental plea. Try as she might, she couldn’t escape the ship, and fear began to close her throat in a way she wasn’t used to. It was much too soon to die, her mind still much too intact.
The fear, the painful, terrifying fear of the passengers who had survived, and the ones still on the ship who could not escape the death that for them was minutes away, was assaulting Lumi the longer she was awake. Her breathing came in shorter gasps, and she found thick, silver liquid sneaking from her eyes down her face, tears she did not want to shed but could not help. For some reason, she did not expect aide from the others. They were panic-stricken, and that lead to immediate self-interest. She understood. But in the meantime, she felt everything, including her own fear, and almost wished she had died instead of being forced to struggle this way. But she continued to struggle nonetheless. Wherever they were, after all, demanded exploration.