Ben Solo woke to warm sun and cold sheets where he had expected to find her. It was the combination of the two that coaxed open his eyes. Dust danced on the sunbeam that came through the window Rey had pronounced "east." East, of course, was defined by the direction that the sun came up. Ben sat up and glanced across the empty spot in the bed to the far side of the room where Rey kept her boots.
They were gone.
Which meant that she was gardening again.
It was a hobby she had picked up last summer when the locals had requested (demanded) that the odd couple in the cottage on the hill pitch in during the growing season. Apparently, it was culturally insensitive to eat food that you were not willing to tend.
As it turned out, it was audacious to suggest that paying for food was the same as growing it. Ben had argued that if one worked and got credits and then transferred those credits to the person who worked on the food so they could transfer the credits to someone else, then there was no substantial difference. The locals hadn't bought it. Neither had Rey for that matter, and it was her opinion that ultimately forced him to get his hands dirty. Well, at least they were able to validate the claims about Ben's cybernetic arm's "extreme durability."
Rey had not only taken to the mandatory community field work but to the private gardening that the local families did on private plots as well.
Luckily, the harvest had been brought in for the autumn. Ben still had bruises from the night of the harvest celebration.
With a slight huff, he slid his legs out from under the blankets and set the soles of his feet on the cool wooden floor. It only took three strides to cross the room so he could look out the window where the sun beams were dancing.
"Rey?" Ben said into the morning air.
"Did you just wake up?" a voice said from below him.
Rey was digging in the dirt just below the window. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat that was tied with a bow under her chin. The slightly red tinted soil of the planet they were currently inhabiting had created two identical splotches on each of the knees of her overalls and the smiling face that looked up at him had a streak of mud from just under her eye stretching to her temple. Ben assumed that the motion of repositioning an errant strand of hair had caused that mark.
"Yes," he answered simply. "The sun was in my eyes."
Rey squinted in the direction of the sun. The brim of her hat cast her face in shadow even as she looked towards the light. "It is rather bright today, isn't it?"
He hummed in agreement watching as she began to work again.
"Why don't you get dressed and come help me," she said after a minute of quiet.
Ben felt his face twist and she laughed at him.
"Bring me some water, too," she added as he retreated from the window.
He dressed quickly and then went to fetch water and some gloves.
Rey had moved from under the east window when he made it outside. The morning air had taken on a clean chill to it that flushed the last remnants of fog from his brain and lungs. Now that Ben was outside, the birdsong was louder. When they had first arrived on the planet, he had found it beyond irritating. Now Ben let it fade into the background of his consciousness—it was white noise.
Rey stood with a slight groan as he approached and gratefully took the mug of water from him. She gulped it quickly allowing drops to run down her chin in streams from either corner of her mouth.
"How long have you been out here working?" Ben asked watching the stream from the right side of her mouth make its way down her neck and disappear under the collar of her off-white tunic.
Rey glanced at the sun. "About one and a half hours—one standard. It's going to start getting hot soon."
"What exactly have you been doing?"
Rey knelt down and reached into a blue mesh bag. "I've been planting these," she said holding out a brown leafy ball.
It kind of looked like an onion. Ben hoped she wasn't planting onions under their bedroom window.
"They're flowers," she clarified after a second. "All the locals have them planted all around their homes. They come up in the spring."
Ben squatted down beside her and plucked the brown ball from her hand to look at it. Upon closer examination, it looked significantly less oniony. "If they come up in the spring, why are you planting them now?"
"You have to plant them before the ground hardens."
Bene frowned. It had seemed to him that the ground was always hard on this planet. However, Ben had yet to experience a winter there.
"Would you like to dig or would you like to place?" Rey asked waving her trowel at him to reclaim his attention.
Truth be told, Ben didn't want to do either.
"Dig," he answered.
"Fine." She handed over the trowel. "The bulbs need to be planted at least three inches down and three inches apart," she said illustrating the distances with her fingers. "I've just been placing them in something of a zigzag line around the cottage."
Ben glanced past her and took note of a slightly zagging line of overturned soil.
"Think you can handle it?" she asked.
"Of course, I can," he said taking slight offence to her words until he caught sight of the brilliant smile on her face.
Ben's stomach twisted the way it always did when she smiled at him. Quickly, he turned his gaze to the ground choosing a location for the next hole. Careful to make it deep enough, Ben scooped out a depression about a handbreadth from the last hole Rey had dug.
Rey plopped a brown bulb into the hole and covered it with the red dirt that he had removed.
Then Ben dug a new hole.
They worked in silence for a quarter of an hour before Rey came to an abrupt halt. "I think you're starting to burn," she said squinting at his face in concern.
Ben's right hand flew up to his face. The skin on his nose did feel a little tight.
Rey pulled on one of the strands of the bow under her chin and undid it. She plucked the hat from her head and placed it on his. Ben felt his hair compress under it and press into his scalp. The ribbons tickled either side of his face as they wafted in the breeze. Rey removed her gloves with her teeth and scooted closer to Ben. Efficient fingers tied the ribbons into a bow under his chin.
"There," she said, "that should keep your skin safe from the sun."
"What about you?" he asked adjusting the hat slightly by nudging it with his wrist. Ben didn't want the red dirt on his gloves to mark the hat.
"I tan better than you," she said. "Besides, we're almost done."
He nodded and continued to dig.
They filled another five feet of cottage perimeter with bulbs before they met up with the line that Rey had started.
"Excellent," she said. "We had just run out of bulbs."
Ben stood with a slight grown and stretched out the muscles in his back. His spine cracked audibly.
"You going to survive, old man?" she asked with a laugh.
Ben tried to glare at her but he could feel his lips twitching to smile as she was smiling. "I'm not that old," he protested gently.
"No," she agreed. She turned slightly to survey the morning's work. "But you are a rather pitiful zigzag hole digger."
To be honest, Ben had forgotten that the holes were supposed to zag.