Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [12]
They huddled together for warmth and watched the night try to slip around the edges of the fire. It crackled reassuringly despite the mist as the night sounds chorused around them. They were no different from day sounds, but anything that wears the cloak of night, especially on an alien world, partakes of the night’s mystery and terror.
“Don’t worry, sir,” said Threepio. “Artoo and I will keep watch. We don’t require sleep, and there’s nothing out there that can ingest us.” Something sounding like a broken pipe gurgled stentorianly in the darkness and Threepio started. Artoo gave a derisive beep, and the two ’droids moved out into the darkness.
“Very funny,” Threepio admonished his companion. “I hope one of the local carnivores chokes on you and breaks every one of your external sensors.”
Artoo whistled back, sounding unimpressed.
The Princess pressed close against Luke. He tried to comfort her without appearing anxious, but as the darkness closed to a Stygian blackness around them and the night sounds turned to sepulchral moans and hootings, his arm instinctively went around her shoulders. She didn’t object. It made him feel good to sit there like that, leaning against her and trying to ignore the damp ground beneath.
Something called out with an abyssal shrillness, startling Luke from his sleep. Nothing moved beyond the dying fire. With his free hand he tossed several shards of wood onto the embers, watched the fire blaze again.
Then he happened to glance down at his companion’s face. It was not the face of a Princess and a Senator or of a leader of the Rebel Alliance, but instead that of a chilled child. Moistly parted in sleep, her lips seemed to beckon to him. He leaned closer, seeking refuge from the damp green and brown of the swamp in that hypnotic redness.
He hesitated, pulled back. She was an aristocrat and Rebel leader. For all he’d accomplished above Yavin, he was still only a pilot and, before that, a farmer’s nephew. Peasant and Princess, he mused disgustedly.
His assignment was to protect her, He wouldn’t abuse that trust, no matter his own hopeless hopes. He would defend her against anything that leapt out of the darkness, crawled from the slime, dropped from the gnarled branches they walked under. He would do it out of respect and admiration and possibly out of the most powerful of emotions, unrequited love.
He would even defend her from himself, he determined tiredly. In five minutes he was fast asleep.…
Any awkwardness was spared by the fact that he awakened first. Removing his arm from her shoulders, he nudged her gently once, twice. With the third nudge she sat straight up, eyes wide and staring with sudden wakefulness. She turned sharply to stare at him. Then the events of the past several days came flooding back to her and she relaxed a little.
“Sorry. I thought I was someplace else. I was a little frightened.” She started to rummage through her survival pack, and Luke did the same with his. Threepio offered a cheery “Good morning.”
While the cloud-masked sun rose somewhere behind them, warming the mists slightly, they shared a meager breakfast of emergency cube concentrates.
“Whoever created these,” she grimaced in distaste, biting off a small piece of a pink square, “must have been part machine. They didn’t program anything like taste or flavor into them.”
Luke tried not to let the awful taste he was experiencing show. “Oh, I don’t know. They’re designed to keep you alive, not to taste good.”
“Want another one?” She extended a blue square with the consistency of dead sponge. Luke eyed it, half-smiled queasily.
“Not … right away. I’m kind of full.” She nodded knowingly, then smiled. He grinned back at her.
The long day never grew truly comfortable, but their suits and the thermal capes kept them warm enough. By late morning it had grown sufficiently hot