It's a long way to the top of the cliff. The old steps wind up the island's back, and salt and her own sweat permeate the air. It's been three days since she left camp in search of the crystal that will power her saber. At her hip, her crystal nestles in a sun-beaten pouch that still shakes sand from hidden folds. The nail-sized crystal is white, but Luke says that will change. So she climbs on and thinks.
Blue.
The color of skies and freedom. Blue is where ships fly, up, up into black space to any system they wish. Hyperspace glows blue and white as pilots hurtle impossibly fast.
It is the color of the boundaries too. On Luke's island, the ocean marks shores and the horizon, and it is frighteningly deep. He says he will teach her to swim, but she prefers rain and thundering skies overhead and firm earth underfoot. She wonders if Finn can swim, and a pang like an empty stomach twinges in her ribs.
Blue is also the color of her first lightsaber. It was Luke's, a long time ago, and he said it belonged to his father and Leia's. Rey does not remember having a father, and it seems strange that the General and the Jedi had one. But Luke said they did, and that he was a good man.
Yellow.
The color of the desert. Luke is a child of the desert too and of the suns. She tells him about her house in the fallen walker and scavenging the destroyer. She tells him about her plant, her helmet, her simulator, and his eyes gleam with pride.
He tells her about Tatooine sometimes, when the ocean and the sky turn red and the sun dips below the horizon. Luke is lonely, she thinks. He tells her stories about Tatooine, about Old Ben, the Rebellion. He talks about R2, Han, and Leia, staring at the horizon until distant plants appear and the fire burns to coals. Luke is a child of the desert, and the desert has a long memory. He talks. She does not stop him.
Her bag bounces at her hip. Rey trudges up the long stairway to camp. Step, step, step. Luke is waiting there, probably watching the ocean again while supper stews over the fire. It helped him meditate, he said, the spray and rhythmic push of waves reminded him of sand rolling across the dunes.
Red.
The color of defiance. Red is deep sunburns and cracked lips, broken bones and bloody knees from misjudged leaps in the sweltering underbelly of an Imperial wreck. Even decaying, the old battleship demanded suffering in exchange for bits of its kingdom.
The color of that awful weapon, glowing like unholy lightning. The Hosnian system as a flare. A horrible shudder that gutted her lungs and pitched her into the wet underbrush, retching and afraid. The First Order had clawed its way out of the Empire's carcass to stand red and furious, shaking a bloodied fist at the gods.
A lightsaber jutting from his back and falling, falling, falling, and she can't find up and she can't breathe and Finn is holding her hand and she can't breathe—
Rey trips and hits the stairs hard. Red pain flares through her shins and forearms, and she hisses and shakes her head. The Force is there, solid as bedrock beneath the swirling fear and grief. The Force will not let her be swept away as long as she holds on.
Luke promised hers would not be red, but she clutches the pouch a little tighter and resumes her climb.
Green.
The color of hope. Not green like hard scrags fighting out of Jakku's dunes, but green like her plant, rebelling against the heat and the dust to bloom and bring a smile to her chapped, iron-tasting lips. Who will water it now that she is gone?
Green is bright and thirsty, but plants don't hoard water on the island, not like the desert that gulps what it can and holds on. She has held hands with hunger—thirst too—and walked with it growing and shrinking at her heels like a desert spirit as long as she can remember. She might like a green saber to keep those ghosts away.
Then she is at the top, overlooking cliffs and other islands nestled in the pounding ocean, and R2 is bleeping at Luke again. The old Jedi answers and looks up. Rey unties her pouch and holds it aloft. She is ready to build.