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She comes from out of the Dune Sea.
Little Ani has been having dreams all week. Screaming dreams, crying dreams, dreams from which he wakes up scarlet-cheeked and excited even as his bleary eyes roam over Shmi’s face with a disconcerting sightlessness.
“She’s coming,” he says after every one. “She’s coming.”
Shmi, who has never loved anything more than her son— Shmi, who has been Watto’s property for less than a year, who has only lived on Tatooine for little more than that— Shmi who has been a slave nearly her entire life and wept when she found out she was pregnant for no reason even though she’d been so, so careful not to attract unwanted attention and near ripped out the throats of those who tried anyway—
Shmi is terrified. But then again, she has dreams, too. Nothing like her son’s. Nothing like the things that prompt her son to innocently say things like: “Oh, sandstorm next week,” or “Watto’s gonna be angry today,” or “Need to grab more water after work, it’ll be more expensive tomorrow.”
It breaks her heart, knowing Anakin is special yet still a normal little boy with grand dreams of freeing all the slaves. Even though he’s only four. Even though a kind, little boy like him never should have been exposed to the cruelty of the galaxy.
But her Ani has been having dreams all week. Dreams which leave him panting with tears streaming down his cheeks.
“She’s coming,” he says as Shmi holds him close.
And she does.
One morning, just as dawn breaks clear after the worst sandstorm Shmi has ever seen on Tatooine yet, Shmi wakes knowing she needs to find her son.
He is not in his room.
She calls for him, panic bubbling beneath her calm mien as she searches their small home. Then she realizes the front door is open.
She nearly bursts into tears right then.
Her little Ani—
She needs to find him.
The air is so still when she steps outside. The distant sounds of early activity, so common on Tatooine, does not even break the odd, sacred quality of the chilly early morning. There are even a few stars still dotting the dark sky. Ghomrassen, the primary moon, has already disappeared over the horizon to make way for Tatoo I.
Shmi glances through the arches of the Slave Quarter, casting a scrutinizing eye along the horizon. She’s still not sure about sandstorms and how they work, if there’s still a threat of the recent one’s return. It’s nothing but clear. Then she pauses.
In the dark velvet of the sky hangs two gleaming bodies in the sky. Guermessa is expected, that moon won’t set for a couple hours yet. But there is a third that hangs low, nearly touching the clean line of where the sky touches the earth.
Frowning, Shmi twists a hand in her skirt. Oh, yes. She’s heard about a third moon, erratic in its appearance. The natives of Tatooine weave many superstitions around Chenini’s appearance. Thinking of Anakin’s dreams, she promptly crouches down, skirts dragging, and scoops up a handful of sand. She lifts it up to her lips to mouth a silent prayer, then stands and lets the sand slip through her fingers.
There are many things in the universe that Shmi doesn’t understand and never will. She knows she is but an insignificant speck of existence in the universe and doesn’t expect anything to answer her prayers. But it never hurts to be humble and careful. Not all is the way she would like it, and nothing ever will, but she can wish the best for her son, at least.
Her son.
There are footprints in the sand. Small, barefoot. She knows they’re Ani’s. The winds of the day have not yet disturbed them.
She follows them through the Slave Quarter. Their path is straight and determined, heading out to the Sand Dunes where no sane slave voluntarily goes. Her heart leaps into her throat. If her little Ani wandered too far, if he stepped past the limits of Mos Espa—
She won’t have a son anymore.
Shmi scurries across the still cool sand, visions of blood and blasted bone flashing across her eyes. She can practically smell burnt flesh, easily summoned from the worst of her memories. The light of her life cannot be dead. Surely, surely she would know. Surely Anakin paid heed to her warnings, surely he knows leaving Mos Espa means death.
Surely.
She finds him on the very edges of the city, the delicate pink of the dawn turning his hair golden. Like he is a miniature sun himself with a tiny dragon heart.
“Ani!” she calls, breathless. She near tumbles into him as she crouches down to grip his shoulder. “Ani, you cannot do this! It is dangerous!”
But he does not look at her. He’s looking towards the horizon where the first sun of the day lays flush against the sand. His eyes shine.
“She’s here,” he says. “She’s come.”
An unnatural chill trembles down Shmi’s spine. Anakin turns to her then, face alight with the warmth of the sun and his own joy. His grin is wider than she’s ever seen it.
“Look,” he says, pointing out into the desert.
So she does.
There in the distance is a shadow. Though it’s more like a dark freckle upon the pale sand than anything else. The sun breaks over it, throwing it into stark relief. Whatever it is travels closer, though it sets a slow and steady pace, Shmi can tell.
She wants to leave. Wants to turn her son around and march him back to their home and shut the door behind them so whatever is coming cannot touch her Ani. Cannot touch him any further than the dreams it’s tormented him with.
“We gotta wait, mom,” Anakin says in a hushed tone, near reverent though excitement trembles just beneath. “We have to wait for her. She needs us.”
Hand tightening upon her son’s shoulder, Shmi bites her lip. She’s learned to trust her son’s gut feelings, learned to trust the truth of his dreams, no matter if they come to pass or not. Everything holds a grain of truth, though we may not be able to interpret it.
So she nods, says, “Okay, Ani. We will wait,” and pulls him close so they can watch the speck together. Watto will not expect them so soon after a sandstorm, after all. They have some time.
The shadow grows and grows, though it takes an hour before Shmi can make out anything at all. By then the second sun peeks above the horizon, the barely-there dawn flushing into true day and against the figure moving steadily closer and closer. The heat of the blossoming day begins to creep into their skin and they must squint against the brightness of the twin suns.
And the approaching thing is a person, Shmi notices with little surprise as the increasing activity in the Slave Quarter grows louder. The both of them are tucked behind the main housing where few people go, so they need not answer any questions about why she’s kneeling in the sand with her son as the suns rise into the heat of the day.
The figure treks closer and closer, a flickering shadow on the sand. But as the suns rise, the shadow fades into the landscape, becoming a pale presence. Their clothing must be beige, as desert dress usually is. It’s when Shmi realizes the figure is not as tall as it should be, not as wide nor as fast— It’s then she takes pause because no. There has just been a terrifying, ravaging sandstorm. And this figure is solitary and unwavering even though it is slow. Surely, surely it’s not—
But it is.
A child.
Bile stings the back of Shmi’s throat as her heart plummets heavy and cold in her breast. There is a child all alone in the desert trekking with terrible strength towards them. When they (she? Anakin has said she over and over and over again) get close enough, Shmi can just make out the dark, wispy hair beneath the caked and crumbling sand. Anakin jolts in her arms, like he wants to rush forward and meet this child halfway. But Shmi holds him back.
“She must come to us,” Shmi whispers, tense and wary. “We cannot go out to her. She must come to us.”
Anakin nods, distracted and twitchy, eyes focused on the approaching child with an intensity that rivals the sandstorms of Tatooine.
Step by step the child draws nearer until Shmi can make out the wrap tangled haphazardly about the child’s head, goggles perched atop. The bag slung across their shoulders and the heartbreakingly bony calves. Clearly the child has starved for a long time. Shmi does not want to think about why a child might be out in the desert all alone, where sarlaccs lie in wait and Sand People snatch up any wretched soul.
Shmi knows the moment the child notices them. They’ve probably been focused on the buildings and nothing else, fixated on the thought of safer ground. The sight of their town might be the only thing keeping them going. But when the child sees Shmi and her son, they pause, gait faltering. Shmi knows without seeing their face that the child feels a sharp spike of fear in their heart somewhere amidst the bone-deep weariness.
“It is all right,” Shmi calls, pitching her voice to carry but still sound soft against the harsh landscape. “We are no danger to you.”
The child wavers, clearly weighing the threat of strangers against the dangers of the desert.
“Whatever you need,” Shmi continues, “we can help. Or we can try.”
The child stands less than one hundred paces away from them. They shift uncertainly, hands raising to grip their bag’s strap. Then they call out, and Shmi knows it’s the girl Anakin foresaw. Her voice is high and ragged with disuse, sandscratched but strong nonetheless.
“Why should I trust you?”
Anakin shifts, anxious. Shmi rubs a soothing thumb along his shoulder, says, “I can do no harm to you, nor can my son. He saw you coming. But we cannot leave Mos Espa, our slave chips prevent it. So we decided to wait for you. If you are willing to accept help, we will give it.”
The girl wavers still. “Slaves?” she echoes, fear and alarm trembling the word.
“Don’t worry!” Anakin calls before Shmi can stop him. “If you’re in trouble, we won’t turn you in! Promise! We hate slavery!”
Shmi shushes him even as her heart swells with pride. She does not need unsympathetic people to hear her young son’s admirable words. She does not need them to be punished. But she does want the girl to understand what’s at stake here. Not only is the desert dangerous, but if the girl truly is on the run…she cannot be caught. And if she is not a slave, it would be very easy for anyone in Mos Espa to force her into the system.
“My son is right,” Shmi calls. “Which is why we must not linger. Many bad things can happen to young girls on Tatooine, and I do not want any of it to happen to you.” She pauses, grips her son tight. “Please trust us.”
The girl hesitates for a very long time. So long, in fact, that Shmi begins to despair that yet another girl will be lost to the depravity of the universe. But then the girl takes one halting step forward, then another, and another.
Shmi waits with baited breath as the girl makes her way forward like a skittish eopie. Anakin wriggles against her, clearly still desperate to dart forward to greet the girl. Thankfully he stays by her side.
The girl stops just a bare few paces from them. From here, Shmi can tell that the girl was indeed caught in the sandstorm. She’s caked in it, lashes crusted in fine specks of beige. Any exposed skin is reddened and raw, even bleeding in patches along her arms. But the girl was smart and protected her face and hands. Shmi has no idea how the girl even survived. How she was not buried in the sands to rot until scavengers found her body and picked apart whatever remained.
The girl is small, though taller than Anakin. Perhaps older by a couple of years. Exhausted shadows sallow the skin beneath her eyes and her cheekbones are far too sharp in her narrow face. Shmi wants to feed the girl as much as she can, to cushion the fine, narrow bones that look like they might snap with a single blow. Dark hair tangles beneath the girl’s wrap, stringing into her face. The girl trembles with exhaustion and seems to be standing by sheer force of will alone. And her eyes…
They’re a clear dazzling hazel, and as fiery as anything Shmi has ever seen. Like the twin suns rising in the sky. There’s an intensity there that matches Anakin’s perfectly.
Here is someone who has not yet lost hope. Who has not yet had their dreams ground to dust or their future lost to the hungry sands of Tatooine.
Shmi looks into this little girl’s face and sees someone she herself might have been. Once. Long ago.
“My name in Shmi Skywalker.” Her voice is soft. She does not wish to break whatever is in the air between them. Does not wish to disturb their little pocket of odd stillness. “This is my son, Anakin.”
The girl’s eyes skitter across her face, searching for something. Whatever it is, Shmi does not know. But the girl must not find it because she then glances to Anakin. Anakin who gazes back at the girl with an equal amount of intensity, suddenly utterly still.
Shmi doesn’t move, unwilling to break whatever…whatever this is. Because it is something. This girl and her son stare at each other like they’ve suddenly found something they never even knew they were searching for. Like they don’t know what to do with this sudden shift.
And there is a shift. It’s like Shmi’s world tilts on its axis and spins the wrong way, stealing the breath from her lungs in a sharp, painful gasp. There’s an odd humming in her ears and nothing else. Everything else is utterly and completely silent. There’s no noise from the rest of the Slave Quarter. No distant sounds of the city. No wind, as there has not been all morning. Something thrums just beneath her skin, rattling her bones, warming her heart even as a chill shivers down her spine to her toes.
Then her son shifts, lifting a hand in offering. “Hi,” he says, unbearably and so oddly shy. “I’ve been waiting for you.” He speaks slowly, each word a soft and meaningful weight in the air. Carefully chosen and pronounced. Significant in a way that Shmi does not yet understand.
“You’ve come a long way,” he says. “You’ve been strong. It’ll be okay now.”
And Shmi, his mother who has been a slave since she was just six years old. Captured by pirates and torn from her family, left to fend for herself, aching and weary and all alone for years until the day she realized her sickness and swelling stomach was no illness, but the impossible. Shmi, who has never known such all-consuming fear and love until she gave birth to the most beautiful and kind boy in the universe—
Shmi watches as something breaks behind the girl’s wary, distant demeanor. Watches as the girl blinks rapidly, like if she had any moisture left to give there’d be hot, splattered tears along her lashes. She bites her cracked lips, nervously licks away the blood when the skin breaks. Then reaches out with a quaking hand to grasp Anakin’s tight. “Rey,” she whispers. Clears her throat, repeats with renewed strength even as her shoulder droop in weariness. “I’m Rey.”
Anakin beams brighter than the twin suns above. “It’s nice to meet you, Rey.”
And Shmi—
Shmi knows there’s no going back from this. While she may not have dreams like Anakin’s, dreams that whisper of a future filled with anger and hope and so much love, there are some truths of the universe that Shmi knows with such surety that it is like they are a part of her. Living in her every breath, settled in her very bones:
Shmi is a Skywalker. Her birth family may be lost to her, but her name never will be.
If there’s anything that remains of her from a life before slavery (besides the name she gave her son, the one he says with such pride in his eyes as he looks up into the clear blue sky and the millions of scattered stars beyond), it’s the knowledge that she should be the kindness she wishes to be in the universe, as well as the change.
Shmi may be a slave, but her son is not. Not truly.
One day, her Anakin will leave her. He’ll be grow to be a free man. He is meant for better and greater things, and Shmi, no matter how much it pains her, is not a part of that future.
Though it is easy to become lost in the cruelty of the universe, swallowed whole by greedy ravagers and ruined ragged by uncaring folk— The galaxy also holds an incredible amount of beauty and kindness if you just look for it. If you just work for it.
And Rey— Rey is now a part of Shmi and Anakin’s little universe whether the girl realizes it or not.
Rey is not a simple, fleeting presence in their lives. No matter what this little girl thinks now, she’s here to stay. Anakin won’t let her go so easily. There’s something else at work here. Something greater than themselves.
Shmi doesn’t know how Rey came to be all alone on Tatooine, wandering the Dune Sea during a sandstorm she miraculously didn’t die in.
But Shmi knows Rey is meant to be here. Meant to meet Anakin. Meant to stay.
And Shmi Skywalker finds she does not mind at all.
Rey looks up at Shmi, hesitation in her eyes. When Shmi smiles down at her, warm and welcoming, Rey chances a small smile back.
It’s rather beautiful on her young and weary face.
“Come, we should go. Get you some water and let you rest. We’ll keep you safe.” Shmi stands, knees creaking and limbs stiff. She keeps one hand on her son’s shoulder and offers the other to the little girl. Rey stares at it, eyes wide and startled, almost wondrous. Then, the little girl reaches out and slips her fingers into Shmi’s palm.
Rey’s hands are so tiny. Even though the skin is cracked and bleeding beneath hastily wrapped cloth, it’s warm. Rey’s tiny hand in Shmi’s feels right and just as natural as her other hand on her son’s shoulder.
“Let’s go,” Shmi murmurs, tears suddenly hot behind her eyes. “Let’s go.”
She glances up into the sky. The twin suns hang bright, heavy and hot but an odd comfort. The stars have all faded into the new-blue of the day. Guermessa has almost dipped completely below the horizon, now just a pale, shining sliver along the shimmering sand.
The third moon, that odd tiny thing they call Chenini, is gone.
Shmi looks down at her son’s smiling face, then into Rey’s hazel eyes, bright despite her weariness. This strange desert child looks up at Shmi with hesitant satisfaction softening her face. The little girl’s fingers tighten around Shmi’s own, as if she’s afraid the woman will let go.
Shmi’s lips curl effortlessly into a smile, like it is always meant to be there when this child looks up at her.
Perhaps there is something to those odd haunting tales of Tatooine, after all.
“Let’s go home.”