Revelations and Epiphanies

The elevator lowered, Dagobah slowly being revealed below their feet. She could hear the creature slithering around down there, snorting in triumph and defiance. She could feel the wet heat on it’s skin, the rapidity of the great beast’s heart. The mixture of curiosity and hunger and territorial furor spilling from it’s mind. She knew the Dragonsnake wasn’t especially hungry, it had eaten recently, but nevertheless we were intruders. Wait, that’s not right…
 
It dawned on Kathirra that these were facts and feelings that she could not possibly know. She shook her head in an effort to clear the incursion into her mind and slapped her face to sharpen her focus. What was happening to her? Was it this place? These people? This creature? More and more these momentary flashes of insight had been coming to her unsolicited.
 
Moments before she had found the datapad the previous day she had known it was there. Before she had attempted to repair the energy enclosure on the ship, she had known it would need to be modified to fit the Dragonsnake. And now she could sense the creature’s intentions as clearly as if it had spoken them to her.
 
Earlier in her life she chalked such occurrences up to intuition. She would get a bad feeling before a smuggling run and decide not to go, only to later hear that the crew had been caught and killed while trying to escape. Feigning illness had gotten her out of Imperial sting operations, deserting comrades at the last minute had saved her neck from gang retaliations and syndicate reprisals. Every time Kathirra had thanked the heavens and gotten on with her life. It had never occurred to her until now, staring at this Dragonsnake under the derelict starship, that maybe all of these things were connected.
 
Maybe it wasn’t just intuition or fate or luck. Maybe it was something that she could call upon, something she could use not just as a warning but as a weapon? Previously it would come months apart, sometimes years, but here on Dagobah the frequency had become separated by days or even hours. Was this what she had been searching for? Was this what had brought her here?
 
The creature roared. She raised her pistol and took a shot. The blaster bolt was partially absorbed, partially deflected. The monster seemed to barely register the attack. The Dragonsnake stood between her and diagnosing … whatever this was that was happening to her. For a fleeting moment Kathirra contemplated running. But where would she go? How would she ever get off this planet? No, this time, it was fight or die. This time, she’d stand her ground. Win or lose, live or die, this time she’d stay.