Echoes
Chapter 1
You probably would have heard from someone, from somewhere and at sometime that sand is rough. That it is course and it is everywhere. I don't blame him. I didn't like it too.
I was born on Tatooine. I never knew my mother for she died when I was born. My father raised me along with my older brother Darren who was about 12 years older than me. He was a farmer. One day, he just decided to move to Tatooine. He found an empty land and started farming.
He started to earn a lot when Czerka came to his doorstep and showed him paper, land papers. Czerka claimed that that desert land was their own. Darren said that father did not want to get in a fight with anybody, so he relented. Czerka in turn leased the land to him for 500 credits each year.
Father tilled the land. Beneath the surface, more and more crops grew. Every month he tried to get more and more water. The next year, he got more than expected. He was able to send Darren and me to school somewhere near Anchorhead. But sometime later, Czerka showed up again on our doorstep giving him a paper that said that his lease is now for 1000 credits. Once more, he relented.
Year after year, father tilled the land. Year after year, Czerka visited us. Darren was able to finish secondary school. He rented his own land and was able to build his own house. I was just a girl who only went back home from school to father and Darren.
When Czerka came to him for 10,000 credits, father took his blaster and chased them out of the house. The next thing he did was barricade our home with metal scraps. During those weeks, we usually saw him standing outside with his blaster.
One day, when I returned home from school. I didn't find him at his usual post. I thought that maybe he went away for a while. I waited that evening but he never came. A few days later, a hunter came and said that he found his body in a cave.
Darren came and took me to his home. He continued sending me to school with what little he earned. I found out that Czerka visited him yearly too. One afternoon, he took me to his study and told me: "You deserve a better place than this, Aranel. Father always wanted you to grow up to be a lady. So I am sending you to Coruscant to study."
I didn't want to go to Coruscant. But he insisted that I go. So I went. I was only eight years old. I never saw Darren again. I received a letter one day from one of his neighbors telling me that Darren died. I was told that he got into some trouble with Czerka. He was found in the desert presumably killed by Sandpeople. But his neighbor said that nobody ever believed in that story.
A/N: I wrote this story in KFM. It's still in progress but I just thought that I put it here. More chapters to come. Thanks for reading.