Chapter 2
The God of the Sea
Rey wakes up in a panic and choking on spray. She's back in the temple, which has gone pitch dark without the light of a fire, and freezing cold. Her teeth nearly clatter too hard to speak the spell to realight her bowls, and as soon as she is successful, a sea-drenched gale quickly undoes her efforts anyway.
She darts outside, and her jaw slackens with shock. The tide has eaten up the shore until it nearly reaches the doorway to the temple. A howling wind buffets her face with salt spray lifted from churning waves that are mere steps away. Overhead, the sky has opened up in a colossal torrent.
Teeth chattering and naked skin tender with gooseflesh, Rey sprints for her hut, before what few possessions she has here are flooded out and carried off to sea. She swears the wind picks up as she runs, as if it is racing her there, and she chews on a spell of air to keep her light-footed across the slippery rocks.
She gets there just in time to salvage a change of clothes and her staff. She can smell her herbs and poultices as they mingle with the flood waters, can hear the crack of the stones behind her as the hut collapses into the powerful encroaching waves. Rey is already running for the cliffs.
She spends the night wedged into a crease high up on the rocks, struggling to keep a magical flame going for long enough to dry out while the world rages in diluvian chaos below. No louder than the chattering of her own teeth in her head, the sea, the storm, the sodden, rioting wind itself all seem to howl.
leave me alone
Rey waits on the cliffs for two days, but the waters don't recede. On the third day, she finally decides there is nothing else to do but take the only wadi she can access from her perch, a steep-walled canyon with just a trickle running at the bottom that slowly turns from salty to brackish to fresh the longer she follows it north. It's a difficult journey without any food stores to supplement the water she scoops from the creases of the stones underfoot, but Rey is hardy, and her efforts are rewarded when she reaches a settlement just before nightfall on the second day.
She is not known in this village, and the people are kind to her with an earnestness that makes her heart ache. She refrains from magic while she is there, to stretch the people's good graces, but their goodwill begins to wither once she starts asking after the salt sea and the chaotic thing that guards it.
The only one who will discuss it with Rey is a gruff old farmer, who takes a liking to her but pretends he hasn't. She milks his goats for him while he rests on a stool and fiddles with her staff. If he's noticed its strange glow, he says nothing of it. At Rey's prompting, Luke spins his story slowly, tangentially, as the old are wont to do.
"When I was a younger man, a long time ago," he begins, light blue gaze wandering out toward the southern horizon, and Rey imagines he is trying to pinpoint the very crags that cradle the sea in their rough arms. "I started a school out there. You could drink the water then. It was… safe." His story almost instantly shatters into a million scattered asides—the fish they caught there, the afternoons the younger boys spent paddling around in the shallows like puppies, memories of the wildest ones and their antics. Rey allows him to talk for a bit before gently guiding him back. She gets the sense these are stories he does not allow himself to tell often, and to hold them in has worn him over the years.
"There was a time when the gods were terrible and bloodthirsty. New demons were born with every sunset. The rivers flooded and the farmland crumbled to salt and the wars between tribes were bitter, bloody feuds. The divine had grown tired of people, and were ready to reclaim the earth for themselves."
"What stopped them?" Rey can't keep herself from interjecting.
Luke raises and drops one hunched shoulder beneath his cloak. "There was a war, kiddo. Some of the divine were still merciful, and they fought to preserve humanity."
"But why would they care?" Rey is well acquainted with a worldview with a more violent tilt to it. She has weathered droughts and famines and floods and bloodshed—there are few, if any, benevolent desert gods.
"I think a handful genuinely feel compassion for us, or perhaps it is pity. But most of them simply understand that they need the praise of mortals to keep them strong enough to hold onto their power." Rey grimaces. She's prayed and made offerings countless times, but never had she imagined in those moments that her role in the rites would be regarded as little more than fodder.
Luke gives the goat an affectionate scratch behind its ears as Rey finishes milking it. He continues, "A balance was reached between the gods, but only for awhile. New gods came eventually, new gods that listened close to the stories of their brutal ancestors, who placed no value on human lives. They were the ones to realize the mistake of these old gods, while simultaneously turning away from the gentle balance that had been forged. They learned what was stronger than happiness or wealth or contentment. They began to trade in threats, fear, terror. They turned the balance to darkness, instead of light."
Here Luke suddenly shifts uncomfortably in his seat, keeping his eyes fixed on a faraway point, where Rey cannot meet them.
"Most of these new gods were harsh and cruel from the beginning, without ever giving us a chance to show them what we could offer them unbidden, without them resorting to threats and cataclysms. But maybe they were right to do so, because others… others weren't cruel from the beginning. Others learned." His gruff voice fades, and Rey can see he is unwilling to go on.
"What do you mean learned?" she presses. He has told her too much to fall silent now.
Luke brushes a gnarled hand along the handguard on Rey's staff, his fingers gentle. Rey thinks he might be breaking off onto another tangent, but she finds it is not one she could easily lead him away from, as he suddenly comments, "It's been a long time since I've seen magic like this in a weapon." He huffs a quiet laugh. "Interesting choice. I would have gone with a scimitar perhaps. But then, I was always overly fond of my Imperial gladius as a young man. Don't have enough change left in me to learn to wield something like this."
Rey's mouth swings open in surprise. Her mind spins, unsure which thread to pursue first: his recognition of magic, his tale of the cruel young gods, or his reminiscing about a weapon that hasn't been used in at least a hundred years.
He chuckles at her thunderstruck expression.
"I was familiar with magic, once, though this is the first of it I've touched in years. My sister is better at it. Her, you've likely heard of. Her name is Leia."
"... the warrior goddess, Leia?" The question feels absurd on Rey's lips, but she asks it anyway. Luke smiles.
"Our mother was a minor goddess. Her father was a god, while mine was a kind of… demon. He was a mortal once, a witch actually, until he strayed to the study of magics he should never have meddled with. I have his mortal nature, though my mother gifted me with an especially long life."
All of these revelations about the simple farmer who sits before her, goat milk in his grizzled beard and a sly twinkle in his eyes, have distracted Rey entirely from her initial line of questioning. Luke, however, has continued his story with clear intent, and he circles back around now to their first topic.
"Leia had a son, my nephew. He belonged to this generation of new, vicious gods. Mortals are more precious to Leia than they are to most divines, and she feared for what her son could become if left unchecked. So we conspired together. She would send him with me, to live among the other boys at my school. We hoped he would learn affection for mortals there, as Leia had while being raised alongside me."
His voice suddenly frays, and he sounds every inch a mortal, no hint of the goddess's son in him. "I failed him, utterly. I sensed the potential for power in him, but I ignored it. I tried raising him as a boy instead of a god, and he chafed against it. He began to crave the power that others, his true peers, wielded. He must have learned how they became what they are, because one day he sent a dreadful storm that swelled the basin of the sea. Nearly every one of my students drowned in the deluge."
Rey's thoughts flash to her last night on the beach, the sea-drenched wind that had nearly stolen her breath, the waves that had destroyed everything she had built, and would have taken her too had she let them. She feels her skin go ashen and cold.
"I shouted curses into the wind from the cliffs all night long, when I saw what he had done. In the morning, when the waters had receded enough for me to emerge, I tasted the first of the salt, and I knew then that I had damned us. The families of each of my students... they were wild with their fury. They flung their own curses, and every bitter word was a handful of salt thrown into the water. I haven't seen my nephew since."
Luke is staring out to the ridge in the south again, his face far away. But Rey watches the people who mill around outside the open flap of Luke's tent, their faces friendly and gentle as they enjoy the coolness that has come with the sun's low seat in the sky. She tries to imagine their faces twisted in rage and anguish—no, their ancestors' faces, if Luke is as old as he says. She finds it is not a hard picture to paint; she has seen such faces, contorted against her, in Jakku.
The half-god beside her sighs heavily, drawing her attention once more. "He used to send down storms and hold back water in droughts to threaten us, but the people here have adapted over the years, learned to find water elsewhere. No one worships him. No one remembers to curse him either. I don't know if he will someday vanish altogether, or find a way to flood his reach and destroy us all. I may not live long enough to see it, either way."
Luke contemplates her as he hands her staff back. "A witch from Jakku, a nowhere place full of thirsting people. I can guess what you were doing out on the ridge, Rey." He chuckles softly at her. "I can see what a hard little weed you already are, and I'm sure your roots must run deep in this land to keep you standing. But kid, I'm telling you now," he meets her eyes, "this is not going to go the way you think."
"Forget the sea, forget Jakku. Find somewhere new, and start over."
Rey likes Luke, despite all that he has confessed to her. She stays in Tatooine for a time, and it feels almost like what belonging must. And yet, sleep cannot fully find her so long as she lingers on his quiet farm. Besides, she is restless to return to Jakku, anxious to puzzle out a new approach to her goal. She refuses to be dissuaded. She cannot afford it.
It is not until she is halfway through the desert, on her way back to Jakku, that the kind of sleep with which dreams come finds Rey.
She's back on the cliffs that overlook the sea. It's not morning or evening now, but midday. The sky burns overhead as Rey opens her eyes, but in an indirect way that lacks the sun's true focused heat. It's her first hint she might be dreaming.
Her second one is the beautiful man.
He's sitting near the edge again, but this time his legs are dangling over the side, and he leans back on his hands languidly. He frowns at her as she sits up, her eyes adjusting to the bright light. Their shadows lie hidden beneath them, and in the harsh light every detail of his sullen face is presented for her examination. At his back, the pale blue sea sparkles with sunlight.
"I told you to leave me alone," his deep voice grumbles. She can tell she's caught him off guard again, but he's less vulnerable and volatile this time, more annoyed and resigned.
She clears the dust out of her throat. "I didn't do anything!" He raises one dark eyebrow at her, and Rey fights the blush that wants to rise up on her cheeks at her next admission, "I think I'm… dreaming of you."
If possible, his frown deepens.
The dream fades away before he can comment on her observation. When Rey wakes, she feels as hot and feverish as if it were high noon, despite the cool dune of sand she is nestled in. She swears she smells salt in her nose, though the desert around her is nothing but dark, empty sands. Rey quickly pushes the dream out of her head, rubs the sleep from her eyes and prepares to cross a few more leagues before the sun can start its burning march over the horizon. She has far more important things to be thinking of.
The next time Rey dreams, she is back in Jakku. Miraculously, she finds her storehouse still standing, but many of her supplies have been pilfered, her clay jugs shattered. She simply shrugs as she hums the command for her sands to knit them back together. She sleeps too heavily for dreams the first few nights, as she works to replenish her supplies and sweep the dust from her floors and her bed.
The next time she dreams, she is back on the cliffs, and this time he is ready for her.
"Why are we connected?" he questions her as soon as her eyes are open. It appears to be evening this time, the hour just following sunset, when the sky is soft and the light fades fast. The sea below whooshes calmly, its potential for catastrophe belied by its gentle, deep blue surface.
She's busy calculating the change in her surroundings, and she sees the impatience flash across his narrow, pale face like a flash of white lightning as he waits for her answer.
"Why are we connected, mortal?" he repeats, his words stiff with his annoyance and… condescension… and… mortal?
"My name is Rey, not mortal," she retorts, fixing him with a queer look before returning her gaze to the darkening sea before them. Better not to look at him at all. He's standing today, and closer to her than he's ever been (if she doesn't count the time he pushed her over...). Rey refuses to be cowed by his height, or distracted by his impressive build. His chest…
"I didn't ask for your name, mortal, I asked, what did you do to connect us?" he hisses.
With that sentence, several things fall into place for Rey.
This beautiful man, who always appears to her alongside the dead sea (which seems so much more vividly alive somehow in these dreams of hers...), who feels the need to differentiate her a mortal, must not be mortal himself. If he is an immortal, who else could he be, but the god of this sea? She'd seen it from the beginning, hadn't she? His salt-sculpted skin and muddy brown eyes, the way the brine seems a part of his hair, twisting it into a work of art…
"Murderer! You're a… you're a monster!" Rey spits without thinking, hazel eyes hardening in disgust, despite the beauty of the… being before her.
She regrets it with her very next breath—he is a god, surely he can smite her even in her dreams—and her fists clench, steeling herself against whatever punishment her outburst has earned her. Instead, she watches, surprised, as emotions scuttle swiftly across his expressive face. She struggles to catch each one as it passes in the low light, but she swears she sees in him apprehension, regret, fear…
She must be drunk with sleep, because it would be impossible for this hard man, no, this cruel god, who pushed her from these very cliffs and sent a storm to drown her, to feel such decent, human emotions.
A wind begins to blow high up on their shared cliff, building into a keening, mournful wail, and she thinks she hears him whisper, "I am," before the dream fades to the familiar blackness that she's come to expect after these visions.
Notes:
The divine!Leia, mortal!Luke dynamic is inspired by the Greek myth of Leda's egg.
Luke's Imperial sword is a throwaway reference to the Roman Empire, which I just HAD to make, because Star Wars, despite the fact that I have been trying to write this with sort of an Early Persian tilt. Ancient history scholars out there who realize we would be dealing with a chronology that is jumbled on the order of anywhere from 500 to 1,000 years, don't me!
Thank you so much for the comments, likes, and favorites! Hearing from you all puts a huge smile on my face! Thanks for reading, I hope you're all enjoying reading as much as I am writing :)