She pushes a rebel strand of sandy brown hair out of her eyes as a sharp gust of air rushes up from the sea over the cliffside. Her eyes squint into the sun as she peers off over the waves. She's having trouble meditating. Master Luke will be disappointed.
The air is crisp and sprinkled with the tangy smell of salt. The cliff dark, sharp and coated with a spray of impossible green. Seabirds call into the wind. It's everything she had ever imagined all those nights on Jakku. An island in the sea. Someone to guide her. This is what she wanted...and yet..
...and yet every time she closes her eyes she sees a snowy forest with the hills collapsing all around her and staring at her with eyes, pulsating and unknowable as two orbs of dark matter, is the man. The man who seems to know something about her she doesn't know. The man who killed his own father, her friend, Han Solo. He stares at her behind the red flash of lightsaber burn, boring dark eyes into her own and she feels the hum of the Force between them. It's familiar in its warmth and light yet somehow different, somehow darker, heavier, sweeter. Balanced.
The man bothers her. She wants to loath him but something in him unlocks something inside her. Something about that savage creature of a man with his pale fragile features draws up something powerful in her that she never knew she had. She wants that something. Needs it.
Her thoughts linger over his features. Its become almost a type of meditation but unlike her island it rarely brings a peaceful emptiness of mind. Instead it brings back the hum. It's faint but she can feel it rustling as she trails over and refines her mental picture. His large frame, nearly twice her height, the toss of dark curls, a long angular face with features that are by all accounts handsome yet somehow just slightly too much and too little all at once.
She usually stops with his face. Recalling how is eyes look into her own is too much to keep a steady enough hold on the hum to continue. Today the hum is stronger than usual. She draws up his eyes, lingers for awhile and then moves onto his voice.
Finding the right pitch takes some time. His voice had been deeper with the mask but she soon finds it, still deep but vulnerable.
"What are the coordinates for the girl?" The voice asks impatiently.
She gasps. This is not a memory. She can feel her heart hammering in her throat. She clenches her hand into fists, nails digging into her palms, trying to keep her claim on the hum long enough to hear more.
She only hears one more word before the connection skips through her fingers and she is left standing on shaking legs, gulping in gasps of sea air as her mind races to make sense of it. Only one word, whispered reverently and determined.
"Rey."
