Rey wrings water out of her hair as she turns towards the heat of the campfire. A relief to be around water and fire, trees and birdsong. It makes her feel grounded in a way that flying never will, though when she's sitting in the pilot's set, eyes on the engine, her brain lights up in a way that it rarely does. Luke Skywalker's in the small, wooden hut twenty paces east of the campfire. He said that he needed to think, and suggested that she begin her training tomorrow. He never expected to train another Jedi, he said with an agonized expression. His last attempt was an unmitigated disaster and he didn't know what to do. He was too tired of his failures as a teacher, a brother, a friend. Rey knew that he meant Han's death, that he felt guilt at his inability to do anything about Kylo Ren. Rey and Luke haven't talked much; Luke hasn't seen another person for so long that Rey thinks he must be unused to speaking a language that's not private. Rey knows all too well the strangeness of having to make herself clear to another person, how ineffective words are in the face of grief, insurmountable trauma of losing someone who was a father, husband, friend. When legends turn to flesh, you're either disappointed that the reality doesn't live up to the ideal or wracked with pain after losing the warmth of a real person.
Rey shakes her head. She mustn't get lost in these thoughts. She nibbles at the flesh remaining on a rabbit bone and tosses it into the fire. BB-8 and Chewie are camping out by Luke's hut, and occasionally she'll hear a beep or growl, evened out by Luke's quiet tone. Rey begins her nighttime stretches-she's developed a habit, now that she has enough to eat and doesn't have to worry about losing caloric energy. She starts with her leg tendons and ends with her core muscles. Wiping off the cool sweat on her forehead, she lies on her back, face turned from the fire to avoid the smoke and ash, and closes her eyes. Breathes in, and out. Smooths the plane of her consciousness, until there is an unspeakable vastness, innumerable pinpricks of light without a center. She reaches out to the light, and feels the thirty fourth blade of grass to her left. The highest log on Luke Skywalker's cabin. The closest bird on a tree. The worm it digested an hour ago. The volcanic rock by the sea, face creased by erosion. The lapping of the waves, almost violent, but steady, the ebb and flow not at all out of control like...
Rey feels the ghost of a lash on her back, and a surge of inexplicable anger. Then comes another lash. She can feel the force behind it, but not the pain. The angle of the lash is meant to cause the greatest pain possible, to draw blood. Another lash, then she stops counting as the torrent of rage, confusion, regret, and something buried beneath that she could almost call grief, if she were to put a name to it. It feels nothing like her grief, so she's not sure if she should call it grief, but maybe there are two feelings for the same word. Maybe there are different ways to feel the same thing. Rey doesn't know what to do; she feels wrong, just lying on her back and feeling the lashes that Kylo Ren is getting for his failure to capture her.
She reaches out to the waves, the steady ebb and flow, the water that she's dreamed of all her life, the loneliness that he, inexplicably, understands and drew from her. As if he felt it too, and was lonely in a different way, though Rey couldn't imagine how, with Han Solo and Leia Organa as parents, and Luke Skywalker his uncle. There must be so many stories, so many ways to understand his history, place himself in the world, and yet he rejected them all. Still, no one should have to bear this pain, not like this. Rey's surprised to find that she's no longer angry at Kylo Ren, as if she couldn't be angry with all these pinpricks of light surrounding her, her consciousness alert and steady. She draws from the waves and sends them to him, an offering, a balm against the wounds. She doesn't know if this would work-it might just be a vague feeling, a dream, but if she's feeling what he's feeling so strongly, maybe he'll feel the dream she sends to him.
The lashes stop. Rey feels the undulation of the waves, the smooth, impenetrable waters, as if it is her body, and hopes that it is his body too, just for a moment.
A foreign coolness washes over her. There is something almost grateful in it.