Author's Note: I'm pretty much a movie based fan and don't get much more information on the Star Wars universe than that. Thank you for the reviews. This is my first fan fiction, and I am excited to see that people have already read it. This story is basically my idea as to who Rey might be. I haven't seen the movie yet (it's released tonight where I live, but I don't think I'll see it until next week) so this is just my favorite idea of who she is. It's rated T for some Tusken violence that will appear later.
I mentioned the flaw in my age to Reena when she returned from Mos Eisley today. After we had taken off our head wraps and let our hair go loose, she sat me down and told me the story yet again, only with slight changes.
She said I was born a long time ago. My mother had been captured by the sand-people two months before I was supposed to be born. She had been taken near the tall, pointy, machine-things that the sand-people often smashed to pieces trying to get that wet stuff (I honestly don't know what those machines or the wet stuff is; all I know is that the wet stuff is clear and that it's usually given to the banthas or put into porridge). The reason my mother had been caught was not that she had been out by herself, but that she had unexpectedly gone into labor. The sand-people found her, and simply carried her away. Reena, unlike the ruthless men and frightened women of the tribe, felt pity for my mother. She knew almost as soon as Mother was brought into camp, that the pregnancy was not going well, and that the beatings she had received only added to the problem. Reena risked her life to be there for my mother. Fortunately, the men of tribe went on another raid that evening and the other women refused to leave their tents after dark. My mother's labor pains stopped momentarily late that night. It was then that Reena spoke to her and learned that she and her husband had no expectation that I would survive the entire nine months. But Reena had begun trying to treat her as soon as she was left in the prisoner tent. I was born prematurely, but whatever Reena and done had given both me and my mother the strength to survive, at least for the moment. Mother held me at night, and Reena hid me in her tent during the day.
A new born baby is hard to keep a secret, especially in tents and among a people who hate anyone who is not of their tribe. To prevent their finding me, Reena used a very primitive form of carbon freezing to keep me quite during the day and woke me up at night so my mother could hold me.
I can hardly believe it, but I actually laugh when Reena tells me about the carbonite. She gives me a reproachful look, but I keep laughing. I finally take a breath and manage to say, "The lizard."
Now Reena understands, and laughs, too.
Carbon freezing had been uses by the sand-people as a means of food preservation. But when Reena was a little girl, she had managed to catch a dune-lizard and put it alive into one of the unused compartments. Needless to say, her mother was not amused when dinner jumped at her and ran out of the tent. Reena got her hide tanned and didn't get dinner that night. After hearing this story when I was eight, I did the same thing. If Reena hadn't told me the story just the day before, I probably would have got my hide tanned, too. As it was we both had a good laugh and she asked me not to do that again.
We soon stop laughing and Reena continues with the story. In using carbon freeze this way, she managed to keep me hidden for almost a month.
Mother grew weaker and weaker each day. Finally, Reena stopped bringing me to her. She could not hid me from the other members of her tribe for long. But they both hoped to keep me hidden until it was safe – preferably when she and my mother would be able to escape the tribe.
But it was not to be.
It was evening when my mother's daily beating was ended. She was tied up in the prisoner's tent and both Mother and Reena felt the end was near and that some doom hung over both my mother and the camp. Reena woke me and carried me to the tent while it was still light out. She laid me down and freed my mother's hands. She tried to make my mother drink something, but it was too late. Her body had broken under the strain of the treatment from the other sand-people. For an hour, Mother cradled me in her arms, speaking to me thing I couldn't understand or remember. In that time she also wrote a letter for me, explaining everything I might want to know about my family should I and my curiosity be allowed to grow. Then Reena took me and the sealed letter back to her own tent.
That night, my mother died. Shortly after, the entire camp was burned.
Tears were streaming down my face as I tried to understand how much they had both sacrificed for me. I hadn't known about the way Reena hid me, or the way she risked everything to help mother and me, or the sleepless nights so Mother could hold me, or the pain Mother went through just forcing herself to survive one more day for her little girl, or the letter.
Reena pulled the note from her pocket and handed it to me. It was yellowed with time, but still sealed. On the outside we some strange black markings I couldn't understand. I looked questioningly at Reena through my tears.
"'To my only daughter, Rey,'" Reena told me. "I asked her what it said. She wished to write her name on it, too, but her strength gave out after writing yours and her hand slipped." She pointed to the long streak on the paper.
I stared at the note, the only thing Mother had been able to leave me, and I couldn't read it. I couldn't even identify my own name among the markings. I speak Tusken and the smallest amount of Huttese. But Tusken has no written language, and I don't know about Huttese. As I continued to stare at the note, Reena began to tell of the tribe's destruction.
After returning me and the note to carbon freeze, she meant to return to my mother. She had cut a secret opening in the back of the prisoner tent when my mother had arrived so she could avoid the guards. She started to enter but stopped moving when she saw a glowing blue rod cut through the canvas. Reena backed out of the tent but sat nearby and listened. She told me she couldn't understand what was said, but the young man who had entered had no doubt loved my mother. She heard my mother's last breath, and the boy's subdued anguish at losing her. But the sorrow turned to anger, fury, and hatred. She saw the blue rod again, and looked around to the front of the tent just in time to see it slice through the guards. Reena had watched as the boy killed others, and soon realized that he meant to destroy the camp. I was safely hidden she hoped; and, should he happen to find me, even in carbon freeze I was obviously not Tusken. So Reena fled the camp. She didn't glance back. She just ran.
She returned at the first sunset the next day to find the camp burned to the ground. She tore through the ashes and burnt canvas of what had been her tent trying to find me. She didn't care that her hands were horribly burnt in the process. When she found me, she woke me and held me in her arms as she cried over the loss of her friend and home. Even though she had been beaten and practically shunned by the tribe, it was the only place she knew where she was sure of a bed and food. Now she had nothing except an infant and the memories. She returned me to carbon freeze, deciding to leave me that way until she could be sure she could care for me and keep us both from starving.
I refused to let it sink in how long she traveled before she came here and woke me again. I knew it had been years, but I desperately wanted to believe I still had family out there – my mother's family. Once she found this place, she woke me and began to raise me. It was difficult for us at first, because I was blind from the carbon freeze for some time. She had to leave me in the tent at times so she could work. But leaving a blind child in tent near a people that would kill her if they knew she wasn't a Tusken had been terrifying for her. But we managed until my sight returned when I was three, and now, after more than fourteen years since coming here, the other Tuskens have never suspected that I was anything other than sand-girl.
Author's Note: I honestly don't know how far this story will go. Everything that I want to say about Rey should be revealed by the end of the next chapter, but I have ideas of how I could continue, and I probably will.