Chapter 7: Rey II
The benefits of a mostly full stomach, all the water she could drink and the sunset had worked wonders on Rey's mood. She leaned back against the leg, sighing contentedly as the stars started to emerge all around her.
She reached down to her plate, dabbing up the remaining crumbs of her polystarch roll and savouring them on her tongue until the tiniest morsel was indistinguishable from saliva.
As the last glimmers of dusk dwindled away, she stood and went inside. Her home was the caved-out carcass of an old walker from the long-dead empire. According to Unkar, it had been part of the final battle that had taken place there decades ago. It had fallen on its side and remained there after one of its rear legs had been destroyed until she had claimed it. It had been the first thing she had ever taken apart when she had run away from Plutt's house more than five years ago. She'd been living there since and had made it quite comfortable. Her protocol droid – really a repurposed old imperial cleaning unit that she had used to teach herself programming – greeted her at the door as it always did, no matter how long she had been away.
She took a seat on her couch – a converted pilot's seat with an added overhead vid screen - and connected to the newsnets. She would just lie down for a few minutes then get back to work.
She was halfway through the usual dream of them leaving, of how Plutt's fist held her whole arm in a vice-grip and her crying herself to sleep when the distant rumbling woke her.
She lay still for a moment, just listening. It was a booming, a screeching and… a pressure, all far away.
She sat up, leaning on one elbow. The pressure – the feeling – was heat and fear and darkness.
Uneasily she stood, walking to her makeshift front door. The sounds were from the north, over the back of the walker. Bending her knees, she jumped and landed lightly on the roof of her house. There, two metres above the sand she could see all the way to the edge of the horizon. Against the sea of stars came the distant booming, the distance making them little more than memories of their noise.
Whatever it was, it made her uneasy. Jakku was a silent world most of the time, with the occasional noise of a transport or freighter arriving from off-world. Other than those, almost nothing ever happened. Even the gang wars had died out over the last year since Plutt had consolidated his control over Niima Outpost.
The booming stopped abruptly after a few seconds and she waited in the silence. Long minutes passed with only the sound of her own body working and the faint breeze before she shivered. The desert was cold after sunset and that had been at least an hour ago. She turned and hopped back down to the ground, heading back inside.
Tomorrow was another day.