A terrible tributary

Rey's life was full of both expected and unexpected moments, though the word "expect" may conjure a very different meaning for you than it did for her at the time.

Before we descend into the truly upsetting parts of her story, I would like to clarify something I said before.

When I said that this story doesn't have a happy beginning, I didn't mean Rey's entire life's story, just the part that comes a little later, when she sets off on a journey she could never return from.

Before that… Well, before that, she had a family and she was seldom ever sad or alone.

In order to appreciate the depth of her losses and magnitude of her struggles –

- the word "magnitude" used here to emphasize that there is an opportunity for one reading this story to misinterpret or underestimate the extent to which Rey's life was taken from her, so wrongfully and so completely, without her heartbeat being extinguished along with everyone else-

- I feel as though you should know where she came from, and, more importantly, who she came from.

Rey was born when her parents lived in an enormous mansion on a violent, damp, rocky, and dimly-lit world.

The word "mansion" here is used generously to describe a crashed and partially repurposed Imperial Star Destroyer, a symbolic relic of the Galactic Empire and a precursor of more still to come.

Rey spent her early days, probably far too early to even be crawling, toddling around in the Destroyer where her parents would often build new walkways and floors and levels to climb as her limbs became stronger and her movements more coordinated.

Rey was an intelligent, industrious, and resourceful child who was quite amiable as long as one appreciates those qualities in children.

She had rich brown hair and pleasant facial features, with wide eyes she hadn't quite grown into.

When she was a little older, or, rather, when she was no longer an age at which everything she touched went straight into her mouth for inspection, Rey spent her days exploring the vastness of the huge ship with her father.

When her hair had grown past her shoulders, her mother would tie it up into a series of buns going down the back of her head, to keep it from being in her way -

- a notion which only begins to describe the tenacity with which Rey explored her surroundings-

- as she had neither the time nor the patience to deal with hair getting into her eyes or mouth as she climbed and looked for hidden treasures.

-Truthfully, this is a problem to which I can directly relate…-

Rey's father told her about each and every part of the ship; what it was, what it did.

Rey drank in information like it was water, something she found she had never quite appreciated until she didn't have it anymore.

As they explored, picking out potentially useful pieces to study, Rey was struck by the magnitude of the ship and how small her family's house really was in comparison. She thought further of the hugeness of the rocky world where this ship currently rested.

"Papa," Rey asked, her tiny voice muffled by the scarf and goggles her father had secured around her head to protect her young lungs from the fine, dusty particulate that occupied every nook and cranny of parts of the ship beyond their living quarters.

Her father turned, "Yes, my love," he answered, a light accent tilting and slightly blending the "s" sound into the next word.

"Where did this thing," she motioned widely with both arms, hoping to the convey the broader implication of her words to encompass the entire ship, "come from? Are we on a planet, or in a ship?" Rey asked.

What she hadn't said was that she had only just considered that the world beyond the mostly-shielded windows of the ship may be a far larger environment than the ship which she had never left during the course of her young life.

Her father regarded her warmly, which Rey had to assume, considering she couldn't see his expression.

She imagined his kind eyes crinkling at the corners as his mouth curved slightly into a thoughtful smile.

"Well, young one," he began, picking Rey up and settling her atop his shoulders, "to answer your question, we are on a planet, but we can make-pretend that we are in space, which is why we live in this ship. This world is not very hospitable," he had walked with Rey out onto the command bridge as he spoke.

When they reached his destination, he lifted her again and set her down on a charred mess that was once a captain's chair, no doubt. It sat right in front of the mostly shielded, gigantic windows.

Rey had not been to this room before, where voices and shadows from the past began to creep into the peripheral of her vision, the edges of what her ears could register.

She blinked, unknowingly shutting out the intrusion so that she could focus on her father, who had walked up to a part of the window where the hardened durasteel-alloy shields had cracked.

After checking that the window was intact and safe, he beckoned for her to join him and lifted her so that she could see outside.

She saw the planet look as though it were tearing itself apart. Winds and rain swept across the landscape, which consisted mostly of jagged rocky protrusions shone reflected reddish light, appearing to be in sharp relief against their endlessly black shadows.

Her heart sank, it was not a world of brightly-colored plants or animals.

It was terrible.

"Not hospitable," she repeats, "does that mean it is a place where nothing lives?" Rey asked, noting the drop of temperature with the increased proximity to the window.

Her father nodded.

Everything outside was black in the shadows of the deep, red light emanating from their host star.

Their planet was tidally-locked to its star, a phrase which here means-

"The planet is locked in its position, with one side facing the sun," Rey's father looked toward the red ball of gas which was barely visible over the gently-sloping horizon, "and one facing away from it," he turned in the opposite direction in a way that suggested Rey follow his gaze, "It is caught in a sort of twilight, a time between the day and night on other planets, where the extremes of either side cannot support life," he finished, settling Rey on the ground.

"Which side are we on, papa?" Rey asked, not knowing which she should have preferred.

"We are at the end of the habitable zone on the side facing away from the star; where the light and dark begin to battle. Our ship is perched on a precipice"-

– or, at the point of a huge drop that would be neither fun nor survivable if one were to jump from it-

- "where the last of the light touches the planet, before it falls into darkness."

Rey's father closed his eyes and looked into the valley between them, the shallow place where Rey's young mind kept her emotions quite close to the surface, and saw her growing dismay.

Without turning to her or opening his eyes, he continued, "There is a place in the middle, where things do live," he added emphatically, hoping she would cling to this fact, that it would give her hope.

He turned back to her, then, "where the light and the dark have fought away their strife and wish only to work in harmony."

Rey looked thoughtful, "So, while this part of the world is out of balance, there is no life?" she asked.

Her father nodded, taking her hand, and leading her back the way they came.

As Rey slept that night, her parents watched her for a time.

They usually did.

And she always felt them.

Felt them there, watching over her, making her feel safe and warm and loved.

These were the feelings they wanted her to feel from them.

In reality, they lived each day in varying degrees of fear – hoping against hope that nothing bad would happen but knowing they had only borrowed time.

The bad things will be further explained later, but for now, know this:

Like most parents, Rey's hoped to keep the bad things out of their child's lines of sight.

Out of her waking thoughts and out of her dreams.

Rey was special, in a way that was at once familiar to the both of them, and still altogether foreign – a contradictory statement taken here to mean something similar to what they had read about in the holos they'd found in a destroyed temple on a core system planet they visited long ago, or had learned by searching deep within themselves; while being at the same time something that was far beyond their grasp of understanding.

Their gazes often drifted to each other's, sharing a complex look of mixed pride at the talents and abilities their daughter had begun to show, and anguished panic for who else may have taken notice of her –

- the "who" referring more to a "what" or a "they" that Rey's parents feared were the dark forces which had been at work at least since the Empire was dismantled, ardently devoted to their galaxy-wide search for children like her -

- and would soon find her.

That night, as they turned from her makeshift doorway, in the rickety mansion they had fashioned from an old ship which was itself a symbol of an opposing view and regime, they accidently let a little of their darkness and despair slip into Rey's peaceful mind.

And like a viral disease evading a body's protective systems, it snuck in deep and hid itself from her for the time being.

The parts of the Destroyer where the family lived accounted for less than 1/164th of the ship.

Rey had always been good with fractions.

The word "always" taken to describe the fact that by the age of four, she had discovered that things could be divided up into several pieces and, depending on how many pieces were available, one could sometimes estimate the size of the whole each piece belonged to.

Just like she had learned to walk and climb and some of the more general points of galactic-level mechanical engineering at a very young age, so too did she learn to read sooner than would be expected.

Rey's mother would often hold a holo-screen with Rey in her lap and read to her.

Rey had learned what the symbols meant by following the comforting sounds of her mother's voice.

Poetry appealed to her, with its weighty rhythm, "a rhythm is a strong, repeated movement or sound," her mother explained.

Rey's young mind found that everything had a rhythm: her heart beat, the steps of her mother and father, their breathing when they slept, the sound of the wind in some parts of the ship.

Everything ebbed and flowed, like the tide on planets with vast bodies of water called oceans.

When one thing happened, another happened in response.

Rey often felt that she was mirroring or being mirrored by someone, but she could never specify who.

It was like having an imaginary friend, except she felt as though she was the one that had been imagined.

"Mother," a 7-year-old Rey padded on bare feet into the kitchen, where her mother was scooping and moving food around in a very hot wok.

"Yes, my light?" she replied.

"I am having trouble with this passage of text I found in the Archives of the Empire… I don't understand it," Rey's eyebrows furrowed, conveying her confusion, as she handed the holo-screen to her mother.

"What is it, my love?" her mother turned off the wok and set it aside to cool before serving, taking the screen in hand and looking at the lightly illuminated surface.

"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind," Rey looked up at her mother then, not noticing the far-away look in her eye as much as feeling her slight apprehension.

She exhaled as Rey added, "How could grief develop the mind? And what powers are they talking about?"

Rey's mother put the screen face-side down and pushed her love and calmness into the psychic valley between them at the same time, just to where she knew Rey's subconscious could find it, hold on to it.

"When one is happy, one has everything they need," gently, Rey's mother cupped her cheek to lift her face, "so there is no will to change. The powers of the mind that come with age and experience and understanding of how the universe ebbs and flows. The-"

"Balance, in everything," Rey interrupted.

Her mother's eyes smiled before her mouth did.

"Yes, my darling. Balance comes through adversity, a righting of the sides until neither is more than the other. Happiness, in this work, is viewed as complacency," Rey's brows furrow once more, her mother continues with the lilt of laughter in her voice, "which means a sort of smugness or self-satisfaction that doesn't bother to look critically at the circumstances, in this case," she finishes, picking Rey up and setting her on the counter, reaching above her to take plates out of the cupboard.

"Mother," Rey said in a quiet tone, taking the plates in her small hands.

She swallowed then, remembering the voices and shadows she finds on the edges of her awareness, unshed tears from another time threatened to make her voice shaky, "does all balance require suffering?"

Her mother turned to her once more, "No," she said, haltingly, "but, many people in the galaxy seem to think so. Their view of balance is actually skewed in their favor," her voice lowered, becoming suddenly thick and dark, "they will stop at nothing to complete this vision. Real balance does not require suffering."

Rey's mother pulled away from Rey's glassy stare, and closed her eyes, willing herself calm.

"I'm one with the Force, and the Force is with me, I'm one with the Force, and…" she began to whisper, as she spooned some food onto the first plate.

The feelings of dread and anxiety had increased recently in her chest, which would clench at the thought of Rey being hurt and had recently begun to feel as though it was caught in a vice.

Something was coming, and Rey's parents had begun to put a plan in motion that they hoped would save them all, or at least, save Rey.

Rey's mother tried desperately to calm the thoughts and feelings while Rey was watching right then.

She willed Rey not search her feelings, and, luckily, Rey didn't.

Likely, still shocked at this revelation she did not fully understand.

Good.

Rey couldn't know.

Not yet.

There would be a time very soon when they would have to be separated, washed along parallel streams fraught with parallel dangers, leading to separate unknown, though, likely, unfavorable ends.

Like a mining droid with a disabled shield generator is dissolved and washed into the molten liquid metal and rock of Mustafar's vast reserves, so, too, are Rey and her parents headed swiftly for a high drop and sudden, nauseating, stop.

It is here, dear reader, we will stop for now.

At this point, Rey's story begins to move very quickly and in a very unsavory direction.

If my warnings had no effect on you before, please reconsider them now – look away.

For the rebellious and fool-hardy among you – the next chapter in this dreadful story will come soon.

May the Force be with you, always.

As myself**

First comment!

Thank you, Erika H. Daae, for your kind words. It's amazing to know even one person has read this story and I so appreciate you taking the time the leave a comment.