This story is for Scavenger-Jedi-14, because she is awesome.
Listen to Rey's Theme while reading this.
Hope Among the Stars
Yes, this will do. The scavenger thinks to herself, bending to pick up an old power converter. She tosses it in her bag, and it lands with a metallic clank on top of the other bits of scrap she has scavenged. The bag is made from old cloth she has found and sewn together. It has a strap that she wears on her left shoulder that crosses her chest to end at her right hip.
Her clothes are the simple attire of a scavenger, consisting of a thin, creme colored sleeveless tunic and gray pants that end just below her knees. A long, tan strip of cloth is wound over her shoulders, one side looped and the other loose. She can use this piece of cloth as a scarf over her mouth and nose as needed, though most days she has a hood she wraps around her head and neck, to keep sand and grit out of her hair, mouth, and nose. A double belt wraps around her waist, sporting a small utility bag.
A leather band wraps around her left wrist. She uses this to prop her quarterstaff on when engaging in combat, which is very common when you are a scavenger on Jakku. When not in use, her quarterstaff hangs trustily at her back, dangling from its strap that hangs off her right shoulder.
Ankle high boots protect her feet and thick gloves protect her hands. Dirty strips of cloth are wound around her arms, leaving only her shoulders bare. Handmade goggles complete her look, roughly sewn and sporting old stormtrooper helmet optics as lenses.
Her complexion is fair, but her skin, if bare, is often burned from the sun; mainly her ankles and shoulders. More often than not, though, her face is burned as well, due to forgetting to put her goggles and hood on. Her eyes are brown, and small freckles dot her nose. Her chestnut hair is pulled back in three vertical buns, one starting at the crown of her head, then the second in the middle, and the last at the nape of her neck. All that remains are a few short baby hairs, resting in front of her ears.
She is Rey, simply Rey. She knows not of a last name; she was left on Jakku when she was very little, sold off for drinking money, though she doesn't know that. When she was younger, she believed her parents were coming back for her. Now, at 15 standard years of age, she is starting to go into denial, telling herself they are coming back, even though she knows they are not. She isn't even certain they are still alive.
One of the many lone scavengers of Jakku, she is just as loathed and alone as the rest of them. She spends her days collecting bits of metal and machinery, then selling them to earn her next meal. She never knows when her next meal will come.
She heads into Niima outpost, towing a bag of salvaged metal behind her. While waiting to exchange her findings, she rummages through them, locating which is sellable and which is junk. Not much, she decides, is sellable, but she can try. She takes what she thinks she can exchange and places it on the tall counter before her. Rey peers over the top of the counter at the thing behind it, standing on her tip toes.
"This is worth," the great orange blob, Unkar Plutt, muses, "one half portion." He sweeps the parts off the counter with one flabby arm, then slams a small packet of a strange grey-green substance down in its place. Rey sighs, and without arguing, takes the package and stashes it in the bag hanging from her belt. She returns to her speeder. Its engine starts reluctantly with a cough. She whizzes across the desert in a swirling cloud of dust, back to her home.
If you could even call it a home. It is an old All-Terrain Armored-Transport, otherwise known as an Imperial walker. It is dull from dust and half sunk in the sand, but it's about the best one could do when one lived in a desert with practically nothing to her name. Rey dismounts her speeder and enters her "house", sticking her staff in the sand outside her "front door" as she goes.
Once inside, she shucks her hood and goggles, leather wristband, and gloves. She feels a sting on her right knuckles. Great, I must've cut it when I took my glove off earlier. She scrubs the blood off, ignoring the pain, and wraps a strip of cloth around the injury. She then withdraws the packet from her belt bag, and pours its contents into a bowl of water. The water is absorbed by the contents of the package, resulting in a grey-green ball of something.
Her "cooking" finished, Rey takes the bowl outside and sits down, leaning on the underside of the fallen walker's foot. She tears off a piece of the ball and puts it in her mouth. It is tasteless and dry, and it has a leathery texture, but Rey eats quickly, almost ravenously, for she knows not when her next meal would come. When she finishes, the hungry gnawing in her stomach has subsided to a dull ache.
Dusk is settling over the sands of Jakku, and the stars are peeking out from behind shreds of mist. Rey pulls an old Rebel Alliance helmet out of the sand and brushes it off. It is too big, and the eye shield is foggy and cracked, but it is her most valuable possession. She pulls it on over her head, then looks out at the stars.
This girl knows not of her destiny, that in just a few short years she will rescue a refugee BB unit droid she will befriend, or the First Order deserter she will escape the planet with, nor does she know she will join the Resistance and meet Luke Skywalker, nor does she know she will undergo Jedi Training under his tutelage.
No, Rey knows not of these things, but one thing she does know. It is a phrase. A phrase she lives by. The phrase she tells herself at night, with the old Rebel helmet adorning her head. The phrase she tells herself as she stares out at the sky, wishing, praying, for something better. The phrase she tells herself as she lies in bed each night, hungry and alone. It is her only comfort.
There is hope among the stars.
...
I wrote most of this on my iPad, so forgive me if there are mistakes! It is extremely hard to type on those things!
One day later note: I know the tenses were all screwy, so I fixed them and the typos, I think. Did editing on my Kindle this time, but it is very hard to type on as well. I hope I got them all, but I may have missed a few. Please let me know if I missed any!
Constructive criticism, such as the review from ChocolateTeapot, is welcome, as well as praise, but please no flames!