To disappear an entire Wookiee is no mean feat. Rey felt panic rise up in her. No, no, no, no. She whirled left and right, horribly aware that there was no one in sight. Then she drew in a breath and reached out with the Force, searching the sands for her friend, and was astonished to feel him just beneath her.
She took a few steps forward and found that the sand sloped strangely. At the bottom of the slope was a – a mouth? Huge tentacles crawled and flailed, as if it sensed she was near and wanted to devour her. The teeth around the mouth were sharp and many-rowed. Reflexively, she jumped back. It was like a creature from the stories, nothing she'd ever seen in her life – and Rey had seen a lot of incredible things.
Nothing to be done about her own fears. She stepped forward again and drew her lightsaber from her hip. She ignited it, the blade gold and shining against the sun. She spun the saber once with a flourish and then again, as a tentacle stretched out toward her. The sickening chop sound it made as her saber sliced through the tentacle was … unusual. In the back of her mind, she remembered that it was the first time she'd used her own blade in combat.
The creature let out a scream of pain, a piercing sound that made her skin crawl. But it retracted its stump and she was able to creep forward, just a little. She sucked in a sharp breath and plunged her saber down into the creature below her. Another shriek, like the sound of death itself. Rey was on her knees now, holding the blade in place with both hands as the creature writhed in pain.
"You give him back!" she shouted, though she knew perfectly well that this creature was not sentient and did not speak Basic. "Right now!" And she wiggled her blade back and forth a bit for emphasis.
Just as suddenly as he'd vanished, Lump came flying up from the toothy maw, clearing the razor fangs, and landed with a thud on the sands. The creature then began to slip back into its burrow. Rey extinguished her lightsaber and the creature disappeared entirely from sight, the sand crumbling back down into the hole where it dwelled.
She scrambled over the sand to her friend's side. His fur had patches of thick goo stuck in it, but he seemed, overall, unharmed. Lump let out a long string of curse words, many of which she'd never heard before, before he ran out of breath and could only lie on his back in the sun, panting.
I hate the kriffing desert, he managed, at last.
And what else was there to say to that, except, "Me too, buddy."
After a while, they collected themselves. Lump rubbed sand ruefully into his fur to abrade out the digestive juices, which had begun to stink under the warming sun.
The small settlement on the hill was little more than a few tents indeed, and no one had any more idea who the Skywalkers were there than they had in the larger outpost. Rey was disappointed, but mostly in the fact that she had literally risked Lump over such a small reward. She found herself looking over at him much more than usual, just to be sure he was still there, and she made him walk in front of her so she could keep her eyes on him.
They made it back to the original settlement and to the Falcon. Still there, Lump observed, with a bit of surprise. She paid the hangar owner his second credit and they left the little town with a woosh.
The Falcon rushed over the bare desert, skimming over the open sand and leaping over rock outcroppings. Lump was a fair pilot, Rey knew, and he enjoyed the chance to test out his skills in an area devoid of the trees and teeming life of his homeplanet, where care was always needed. They passed over a tiny village of strangely dressed people, wrapped head-to-toe in long garments; perhaps these were the Sand People they'd been warned against. They did not seem friendly, or happy about the ancient Corellian freighter invading their lands.
When they had crossed the barren desert and dipped over the horizon, when they were far enough from where they started that Rey felt it was worthwhile to begin asking her questions again, she asked him to settle the ship outside of town.
Lump shook his head. Dad said only in ports and hangars.
"That's crazy. We only have so many credits, and we don't know how long this is going to take us." Rey could feel the credits in her pocket lightening even as she spoke.
There are Jawas out here, he replied, with earnestness. Do you know what they do to nice ships?
"Good thing we don't have one of those," she retorted. But she didn't mean it. Of course a planet with an active Jawa scavenging presence was not a safe place to leave the Falcon out in the open. There was too much value in the old bird, too many memories. It had been Han's and now it was Chewie's, and it had carried them on so many missions and adventures. The ship seemed to hum with memory, a story of its own. And a part of her always kept hoping that she'd come across some scrap of thing that had been Ben's; she had nothing physical of his but his father's ship, which wasn't even hers, but perhaps somewhere there was a child's scrawl on a wall, "Ben Solo was here."
In any case, Jakku hadn't been crawling with Jawas so you could leave a ship sitting out and protect it yourself if you really wanted to; a well-hidden treasure would stay buried for years, untouched. On Tatooine, apparently, that was not the case. She'd have to part with a few more credits to keep the Falcon safe.
They landed and left the Falcon in a docking bay, just on the edge of town. If the last place had been a busy trading hub, this was nearly a city, with permanent structures erected in almost-neat lines, forming streets where blurgs and dewbacks trudged along with packs on their backs or pulling wagons or carrying riders. Sentient beings from all over the galaxy rushed around and went about their business, buying and selling goods and services. It was loud.
An open-air market sat in the center of town, with vendors of all sorts of goods. Lump went off on his own to find some dinner – there seemed to be no end to his appetite – and they agreed to meet back at the hangar in an hour's time.
Rey asked around after the name Skywalker. She knew she had to be careful; there was no way to know when she might come across someone who did in fact know a Skywalker and didn't want to talk about it. It felt like overkill to be wearing three lightsabers, like all she needed was a good breeze to reveal her secrets, and yet at the same time it felt good to have such a collection of history in her hands as she searched.
She stopped at a shop where a peculiar alien seemed to be in charge. He – she could only assume it was a he - was not of a species she knew, but he was a short humanoid with tight-cropped, purple hair and large black eyes. Long, slender fingers, four on each hand, rested on the counter as he leaned against it out of the sun.
"Excuse me," she began, as politely as she could. "Do you know of a place around here owned by someone named Skywalker?"
His black eyes focused on her slowly, as if he were surprised she had addressed him. "Skywalker?" he repeated, meditatively. "Hmmm. Can't say that I do."
She nodded her thanks and began to walk off, when he spoke again.
"But my droid Zed might," he said. "Zed! Zed, come out here."
A protocol droid, painted a pale, metallic pinky-purple, emerged from inside the shop. It was an ancient looking thing, many models old, perhaps from the Old Republic. It had been repaired so many times over the years that only the torso and head were original parts, and whole thing had been painted over multiple times. Surely any design would fade quickly in the sun and sandy breeze of a desert outpost like this one; Rey had seen it many times. Servo motors whining from a lack of good care, the droid turned toward its master, awaiting instructions.
"Zed's been here a long while," said the shopkeeper's tinny voice. "Ask her if she knows."
Rey looked Zed in the eye – there was no reason not to be kind, even if she was just a droid – and asked. "Do you know anyone named Skywalker?"
Zed's eyes lit up just little bit. "Why, yes, madam, I believe I do. There is a farm -"
"That's enough!" the shopkeeper snapped, pressing the controller to Zed's restraining bolt. He hadn't expected Zed to know, but now, Rey realized, that information wasn't going to come without a price. "You want to know, you buy the droid."
She sighed. "How much?"
"Forty credits," the shopkeeper said.
"Forty credits?" Rey stammered. "That is exorbitant!"
"Do you want the droid or not?" he asked with a shrug.
"Twenty." Rey squared her shoulders, defiantly. For a brief second, she considered using a simple mind trick, but of course, that would just be stealing.
"How about thirty?" said a voice behind her. Rey turned, and was both surprised and not surprised to see Alik.
"I just cannot get rid of you," she said, incredulous.
"Do you want the droid or not?" Alik asked her, in the same tone as the shopkeeper, teasingly. Rey sputtered in frustration.
"Forty," the shopkeeper said, now speaking to Alik.
"Oh, come now," Alik replied, reaching into his pocket. "Take the thirty and be glad for it. That creaky old thing isn't worth ten." He held out thirty credits to the shopkeeper. Rey's eyes followed his hand and the money as the man took it. "There now," Alik said with a nod. "See? Shiny."
"Where did you get all that money? Rey asked him as the shopkeeper begin to adjust the droids restraining bolt.
"An obliging Hutt was interested in making a purchase."
"Obliging Hutt," Rey repeated, derisively. She was fairly sure there was no such thing. Alik shrugged.
"What do you want with the droid anyway?"
"He's got some information that I want." She was feeling compelled to be cagey.
"What kind of information?"
"I hardly see how that's any of your business," she said. He shrugged again.
"Well, seeing as it's now my droid, I think that it is my business."
They began walking away from the shopkeeper, the droid following obediently. Rey simply could not believe it.
"How did you find me?"
He laughed now. "I think the question is, how did you find me? We're on the opposite side of the planet from where you left me."