"Dad?"

Poe called for his father as they entered the house. Rey and Shaina had just arrived on Yavin IV a couple of hours earlier, and Poe had been insistent that they visit his father's farm right away. Rey looked around the house, pleased with its comfortable and homey feel. She wandered over to the mantle of the fireplace, drawn to the holos that sat there. Her eyes immediately found the one of a younger Poe in his New Republic uniform standing proudly next to an X-Wing.

"Dad?" she heard Poe call again. He turned and looked at his wife and child. "He knew you were coming today." He shrugged.

Rey smiled at him. She had met Kes Dameron already at their wedding on Ajan Kloss almost a year and a half ago, but this was the first time she had been to the house Poe had grown up in. She looked at the mantle again, finding the holo of a beautiful black-haired woman with a very familiar grin. "Is this your mother?" she asked him, already knowing the answer.

Poe walked over to her, looking at the holo fondly. "Yeah," he said softly.

"You look so much like your father," Rey told him, "but I see her in you, too."

Poe gave her a grin. "She would get a kick out of the fact that I married a Jedi," he told her. "She would love you!" He took out his commlink. "Dad? Where are you?"

There was a pause. "Poe!" Kes Dameron replied. "Sorry. I had to run to the Corner for supplies," he explained. The 'Corner' was Adorney's Corner, the local market. "I'll be there in 10!"

Poe shrugged. "Well, I wanted to show you something anyway," he told Rey. He motioned with his head for her to follow him and headed toward the back of the house. Rey followed, bringing her hand up to let Shaina grab her finger. She carried the baby in a sling on the front of her chest. At only three months of age, Shaina was already far ahead of other human babies in her mental and physical development, and she was looking around, silent and curious, as if studying everything around her. Rey didn't know if it was just a fluke of genetics or the Force at work in the child.

She followed Poe out the back door to an open area cleared of all natural vegetation except grass. At the back of the yard was a lone tree. Poe walked toward it, and as Rey followed and got closer, an amazing feeling came over her. The overall sense of well-being and completeness with the Force was so powerful it almost made her light-headed, and it was emanating from the tree. Poe stopped to look at her, his eyes bright, but he did not say a word. Rey walked up to the tree and put her hand on the bark. Shaina also reached forward, but her short little arm couldn't quite reach, so Rey stepped closer until the baby could also touch the tree.

She looked at Poe with a stunned expression. "What is it?"

Poe smiled and tilted his head at her. "It's called a Uneti Tree. It's Force sensitive, but I can see that you and Shaina figured that out already." He stepped closer to her and put his own hand on the tree. "The 'parent' of this tree used to grow in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant," he told her. "The Emperor had it destroyed, of course, but for some reason he kept two cuttings, probably to study them later, I don't know. My mom helped Luke Skywalker recover them after the war, and to thank her, he gave her one of the branches. She and Dad planted it here and this was the result." He looked up at it fondly. "I grew up with this tree."

Rey smiled at him. "What a wonderful way to grow up," she told him.

Poe glanced back at the house. "You know, we're gonna have to come back here, just the two of us, when Dad's occupied elsewhere."

Rey frowned. "Why?"

Poe's smile was downright naughty. "Do you know how many times I've fantasized about making love to you under this tree?"

Rey couldn't help but laugh. "Is there any place you haven't fantasized about making love to me, Dameron?"

He thought a moment. "No. Not really."

"There she is!" Kes Dameron's voice called out from the house.

Poe leaned in toward his wife and whispered, "And we still haven't gotten to the cockpit of my X-Wing, yet."

Rey punched him lightly on the arm, then started walking toward her father-in-law, who was already focused on the baby.

"Oh, my!" Kes said as he met his granddaughter face to face for the first time. "She certainly got the Dameron hair, didn't she?" he laughed.

Rey smiled at him and unbuckled the straps to release Shaina from the sling so her grandfather could pick her up. The baby had still been distracted by the tree, but when her grandfather took her, she immediately turned to him and smiled. Once more, Rey was filled with an overwhelming joy she couldn't describe. Her family, she thought. She was here with her family. She was living a life she had only ever dreamed about, and she knew she would die before she ever willingly gave it up.

SUNRISE

It was a long time before Rey was able to continue on that morning, and it had nothing to do with her ankle. Her heart was breaking. All those years on Jakku, waiting, counting the days, finally finding all she had been waiting for with the Resistance, and now, not much more than three years later, it was all gone. And she was once again all alone. Maybe that's how she was meant to be. Maybe this is what the Force wanted.

NO! She would not think that way! This last dream, a real memory of the day she had arrived on Yavin IV, was a reminder of what she had waiting for her when she got home! She had to believe that. She must not let hopelessness and depression pull her down. She started meditating, asking the Force outright to give her the mental strength she needed to carry on. Her mind drifted to her dream/memory. She and Poe had indeed been able to spend time under that tree alone, more than once. They still had not gotten to the X-Wing cockpit, though, even though Poe had twice made sure it was parked in a semi-isolated area of the landing field. Life had just gotten in the way. Rey made a promise to herself that when she got home, she would make that X-Wing tryst happen.

That last thought gave her the energy to get started. She had found more of the berries last night and had made camp there so she could eat them directly off the bush. She picked several more and stored them in her bag for later. Sal had been grazing off in the distance, but he came to her almost immediately when she got up and settled her bag over her shoulder. Her ankle was feeling much better, but her ride yesterday evening had made her realize how much more distance she could travel on Sal, and since he didn't seem to mind at all, she mounted him again, able to hop up from the ground this time. "Let's go," she told him, and he did, carrying her west-northwest, just as her Force sense told her. She wasn't sure if he was reading the direction from her, or if he was following the same urge she was, but she guessed it didn't matter.

By mid-day, Rey started watching the sky again. More storm clouds were building, and she felt a brief moment of panic; her bruises from the hail storm two days ago were still fresh. However, the storm that built stayed toward their south. It was close enough she could hear the rumble of thunder, but the waves of rain and hail she saw coming down from the dark cloud did not reach them. Nor did the terrifying funnel that sprouted from the base of the storm at one point. Rey had never seen a cyclone like this before. Dust devils on Jakku could get fairly large and tended to hurt if you got caught up in one, but this was something much more powerful. The atmosphere around her felt explosive, and the clouds the storm emanated from had turned a weird greenish hue. She remembered Finn talking about encountering what he called a tornado on Dilonexa XXIII, back when he was still a young cadet in training. It had destroyed several homes and acres worth of crops, killing at least a half dozen people. This one looked like it could do that kind of damage and more, but it meandered on, moving southeast, away from them. Watching it caused her heart to race, but Sal never even seemed to look at it. She wondered what he would have done had it headed their way.

About an hour before sunset, Rey saw a major difference in the terrain ahead of them. Suddenly, there were canyons and cliffs and sandstone pillars in front of them instead of kilometer after kilometer of open grassland. She halted Sal and decided to make camp for the night now rather than try and traverse the rocky terrain in the oncoming dusk. The storm from earlier had long since moved on and she saw no more lightning in the vicinity; she had been fortunate one of those storms hadn't come upon her while she was sleeping. She finished the berries she had collected that morning and settled down for the night, watching her fire flicker and listening to the sound of Sal grazing.

And she wondered what she would dream about this time.

XXXXXX