A young boy and his mother are traded off like property, send through the desert off to their next masters. This time they've been lost in a bet, and the mother has to uproot and take her three-year-old son with her.
The boy takes a dislike to sand at a young age. It's always blowing, always everywhere, and always, without fail, gets into his eyes. His mother places a scarf over his face to help this, but it only makes everything stuffy. No matter how hard his mother tries, she can't keep the sand out of his hair, and has to scrub his head every time he takes a bath.
When the boy is six, he decides he hates the desert all together. At night, when the work is done and he is home, he imagines leaving, and only coming back when he's grown to free all the slaves. He's been in the desert his entire life, and as much as he loves the idea of leaving, it doesn't seem real.
At nine, something changes. He has fallen into a sort of routine: when the work is done, he returns home and continues work on his various mechanical projects, before heading off to bed once the sky darkens. Then, repeat the next day. Things changed when the angel showed up at the shop. He had heard them spoken of before, mostly by pilots who were just passing through. Seeing this girl, there wasn't a doubt in his mind that she was one of them.
He does leave the desert, that same year. The rest of the universe is shockingly cold, not at all like the hot, stuffy wasteland he grew up in. He has to leave his mother behind, something that made him consider staying in the desert. In the end, she convinced him to go.
It is another ten years before he sees his mother again. He returns to the desert to find her gone; sold off to a moisture farmer near Mos Eisley. When he goes to find her, she's gone from there too. Her absence only reminds him of how much he hates the place.
His mother had married the man she was sold to, after he had freed her. The boy meets his step-brother, and his step-sister-in-law, as well as his now one-legged step-father. They all seem upset about his mother's absence, but they've given up hope. The boy takes it upon himself to find her.
He does find her, though he's much too late. She dies in his arms, and he carries her back to the farm to be buried, though only after she had been properly avenged. After she is buried, he swears to never return to the planet.
All it has left him with are bad memories.