Author's Note: I don't own Star Wars. Please enjoy.
My name is Rey. Beyond that, I don't know much about myself.
I was raised by a Tusken woman named Reena. When I began remembering things, I don't remember seeing anything. I remember hearing. I knew that I was loved and that I was safe as long as her voice was with me. She me told me our story many times. She told me the story over and over, again and again, until I could recite it word for word, even before I even understood what most of those words meant. But somehow I always knew she had always left some parts out.
Reena often told me of her life before she settled in this region. She made it clear to me right from the get-go that she was not my mother, but for me, she was the closest thing to a mother anyone could wish for. She wasn't a part of any tribe. Shortly after I was born, she was forced to wonder the desert in search of a place where we could live with minimal fear of starvation. Most of the time she could barely find enough to keep herself from starving, let alone an infant as well. For years, Reena wondered the desert with no place to call home. A lone sand-woman was suspicious in itself. But she had also been rebellious, though subdued, in her own tribe. Also, the other tribes of sand-people did not welcome the idea of letting in a woman from the tribe that disappeared in one night. Some tribes took her in for a time, but she never stayed long. Finally though, she found a stable way of living, though it still involved movement. She had a tent outside of a less threatening tribe that was not far out of sight of the town of Mos Eisley. How we survived until then, I have no idea. But in this place she could be protected by a tribe that didn't completely shun her, and still travel to the town to work in disguise so she could earn the things we needed to survive. In this way, she was able to raise me.
As far as I was concerned, I was a part of the sand-people. I spoke their language, but it hurt my throat. I wore their dress, though I couldn't stand the goggles and head wrap. I lived in the tent outside the camp, I went gathering with the people, and I stayed away from those who were not sand-people. Despite Reena's story and the proof I saw and felt on my skin, I thought I was a sand-girl. By the time I was twelve I was obviously taller than most of the sand-people. When we were inside our tent, Reena and I would take our gloves and head wraps off. I was sun-burnt most of the time and my skin was smooth except where it had been gashed by the sand. Reena had very rough and wrinkled skin which the sand didn't seem to bother. Everything about her, even her voice was dry. But I knew that the only difference between her and me was that she and the other sand-people had had many generation to adapt to the desert's harsh climate whereas apparently my ancestors had not.
When I was a little older, it hit me that the years she spoke of in the story didn't match up. According to the story, she had been wondering for years before she settled down. I was sure I would have remembered traveling that much. But the only home I knew was in the tent outside the village. I was blind when I started to remember hearing Reena's voice, but I still think I would have known if we had been moving that much.
I wasn't supposed to tell Reena's and my story to the other sand-people of the tribe, but I had learned listen well and to ask questions without arousing suspicion. No one seemed to know where the tribe I was born in had been, but the tale of its disappearance had been told to most of the adults in the village by their parents. The tribe was destroyed decades ago. I had been growing for only fourteen years, but it seemed that I was more than three times my own age.
I need to ask Reena about this when she gets back from Mos Eisley tomorrow morning.