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"What's in there?" asks the student.
"Only what you take with you," answers the teacher.
She feels them before she sees them. The cave is cold, and then it's not. Dark, and then it's not. Empty, and then it's not.
"Hello?" Rey calls into the strange blue light.
"Hello," a tall, bearded, man with long hair answers, his voice deep but his tone light and conversational.
"Oh!" Rey jumps back. The man in joined by more beings as the light coalesces into distinct forms. "Who are … what are you?"
"We are manifestations of the Living Force," the tall stranger explains.
"Oh."
"We're Jedi," another one adds. He's just as tall, but bald, and his intense eyes are full of judgement, if also wisdom.
"We're friends," a third offers. This one's voice is softer and he seems familiar, somehow.
Rey looks at each in turn. Besides the three who've spoken there's a small, ancient one from a race she's not encountered, and a woman with flowers in her hair. There are others, the cave is crowded with spirits, but they are just wisps, not clear like these.
"You're ...ghosts."
"If you prefer," the bald one one accepts.
"Are you here to teach me?" she asks, part eager, part wary.
"A teacher," the short wrinkled one tuts, "you have."
Rey lowers her eyes, but cannot hide the pain of rejection. "I don't think he wants me."
A kind of pall falls over the cave and its spectral inhabitants, an unspoken but palpable sorrow. The vaguely familiar one, in particular, has eyes full of regret. As the silence grows uncomfortable, the woman speaks up, "He wants you very much. He's just afraid."
Rey frowns. "Of me?"
The woman's hands flicker; she wants to comfort the girl, and her teacher, too. "No. Not of you."
"Of failing you," the familiar spirit with regretful eyes posits. "And failing all of us."
Rey shakes her head. Her fingers brush the lightsaber at her belt. The cold metal calms her.
"That lightsaber have you…"
"It was Luke's," Rey answers, her hand closing over the hilt. It gives her strength. "And his father's before him."
"And now it calls to you," the tall, jovial, embodiment of the Living Force (whatever that means, she thinks) states, completing Maz Kanata's refrain.
Rey straightens her shoulders. The two kind ghosts -- the familiar one and the woman -- smile brightly. The man had seemed older when he first appeared, but now beside the woman they are peers, gazing at her with -- pride. Like parents, she imagines. Proud parents.
"Who are you?" She looks between the two. "You seem familiar…"
The woman's hands flicker again. "Luke and his sister are my children."
Rey's breath catches in her throat. She turns wide eyes to the man beside her. Is this Luke's father? Did he call her here? She raises the lightsaber. "Is this yours then? Are you--?"
"No," he answers, sounding tired and sad. "I trained Anakin. And…" he glances at his companion. "And Luke, too."
Obi-Wan Kenobi, she realizes, assigning names from her reading, and the little one must be Master Yoda. But she's not sure about the tall ones and Luke's mother wasn't mentioned.
"But if I look familiar Rey, it's because I've been watching you your whole life."
Rey blinks. What? "Why?"
Obi-Wan weighs his answer a long moment. Finally, with a glance to the tall Jedi who'd spoken first, he replies, "The Force wills it."
Rey frowns at the non-answer. Why is everything a puzzle? Something of her annoyance must have played on her face because the woman -- Luke's mother -- reaches out toward her.
"We're so sorry you've been so lonely."
Rey's frown deepens. The ghosts are just another facsimile of family. Watching her, haunting her, sorry for her. But not sorry enough to intervene.
"Mmm." Yoda shakes his head. "Much anger have you."
The proclamation causes a stir. Rey feels small, like a child being judged and found wanting. The two tall Jedi turn away, resembling bookends of desolation. Obi-Wan looks at his hands in grief. But Padmé's eyes flash.
"She has every right to be angry."
Yoda straightens to his full height. "Teach you we will, if to be Jedi you choose," he tells Rey. "But let go you must, of anger, and desire to be loved." Having said his piece, Yoda closes his eyes and fades into the mist. The others move more slowly and deliberately, but disappear as well. Obi-Wan and Padmé share a look before he vanishes -- at least from view, Rey still feels his presence. She peers up at the remaining figure.
"What kind of choice is that?"
"An unfair one," Padmé answers with compassion.
Rey cocks her head, looking for Luke, or the General who'd sent her to him, in the spirit before her. She is reminded of Maz Kanata's advice. The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. Where? Rey silently asks the wind.
"What's wrong?"
"I came here to find…." Rey tries to explain. "I thought I would feel … that the Force…." She thought she finally had an answer, finally fit. But instead... "Luke doesn't want me, the Jedi don't want me… why did it call me? Why am I here?"
Padmé considers her response a long while. "I'm not a Jedi," she tells the girl. "But I have spent many long years with them." She pauses, as if to take a breath, though her chest does not move. "Qui-Gon would tell you the Force willed it, nothing happens by chance." Rey purses her lips. "Yoda would say it's the wrong question. You are here, and what you do now is what matters." Rey doesn't like that answer, either. "Obi-Wan…" Padmé's eyes soften, and she flashes a small, sad, smile. Rey still feels the Jedi's presence, and thinks she might see the outline of his matching smile in the space between them. "Obi-Wan would tell you ... to trust the Force." Padmé lowers her eyes. "I suppose that is what each of them would say, if in their own words, and from their own perspective."
Rey sighs. More riddles. But wait -- "You're not a Jedi?"
"No." The others argue about how she ended up among them. Most assume it to be some form of transfer from Anakin, or her children, though a handful believe she has a sensitivity to the Force that was hidden in her life.
"Is everyone a ghost then?" There is one in particular Rey would like to see again.
"In a manner of speaking."
Rey makes an annoyed noise.
"I'm sorry. The Force is … hard to explain."
"I just want to know who I am," Rey tells her. The answer is entwined with the Jedi or the Skywalkers, or why would Maz send her here? Why would their lightsaber call to her?
"Who do you want to be?"
Rey looks away. "It's silly."
"Not to me."
Rey raises her eyes to meet Padmé's. A quiet yearning for connection is evident in both pairs.
"I want to be important to someone."
Padmé's eyes are bright and her voice clear when she assures Rey, "You're very important to all of us."
Her expression is sad, but kind, and Rey drinks in the image of a mother fully accepting and adoring her child. It is a very pretty picture, but a very pretty fiction.
"I've imagined my parents dead many times," she explains. "I can't picture them. Alive or dead….It's like a fog I can't see through. But I have mourned them." She takes a deep breath. "You're very kind." Rey's eyes travel from Padmé to Obi-Wan, flickering into view beside her, and behind them the tall Jedi, and again behind them hundreds more she can't quite see, but feels in the Force. "But you're … all of you… ghosts."
"Not all of us," a voice answers from behind her. Rey spins to find her teacher in the entrance of the cave. "Not yet, at least."
A blinding blue light surrounds them and then blinks into darkness and Rey is abruptly alone but for Luke.
"Where did they go?"
Luke peers into the darkness. "They're still here. They can't interfere."
Rey follows his gaze to the lightsaber. Now hers, but once his, and his father's first. She turns it in her hand. She wants to speak to the man who made it. She has so many questions. Watching, Luke's eyes soften, and he resembles his mother.
"Anakin is needed somewhere else," he answers her unspoken desire. "But that lightsaber is a promise."
A promise. A path. A contract. A map. A weapon. A riddle. An heirloom. A life. Rey shakes her head.
"What am I meant to do with it?"
Luke glances to the stars. "Write your story."