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She stares up at the sky long after her parents’ ship is gone. The Crolute they left her with — a man named Unkar Plutt or maybe Platt, Rey isn’t sure — has left her alone, and she’s not sure where he’s gone. Her arm still stings from where he grabbed her; she touches it occasionally, seeking out the dull ache of his handprint.
The sun is so bright here that even when she’s not looking directly at it, it makes her eyes burn.
Her tears don’t dry until sundown.
And then, when the desert cold settles in and Rey curls herself into a tight ball on the sand, she feels — or almost feels — a hand upon her shoulder.
There, now, says a voice she doesn’t know. You’ll be safe enough here, little one. Let’s find you shelter.
And Rey, five years old and already forgetting what her mother looks like, glances up into the face of her very first imaginary friend.
He has a kindly face, the type of face that children, and Rey, especially, trust innately. She likes his twinkling eyes, the lines on his face, his sandy beard. She likes his old-fashioned robes best of all; privately, she calls them his costume , because that’s what they look like to her: the Jedi costume she got to wear last year in the children’s play back home.
She doesn’t think there will be any children’s plays here.
“I’m Rey,” she says, when they’ve walked far enough from Unkar Plutt that she knows it’s safe to speak.
I know, the man says, but not in a harsh way. He’s smiling down at her. And I am Obi-Wan. You may call me Old Ben if that’s too hard.
“Obi-Wan,” Rey says decisively. He doesn’t look surprised.
It seems her imaginary friend knows everything about this strange new desert planet, and that sort of knowledge is exactly what Rey is desperate for. With tears drying on her cheeks, she’s forced herself to stop thinking about Mother and Father, to focus all her efforts instead on the world around her.
They’ll come back, she knows they will.
Until then, she has to learn everything she can. She has to stay alive.
Obi-Wan can help her with that.
He explores the AT-AT for her, his shimmering form disappearing from sight as he goes inside. Outside, Rey huddles in the well of the walker’s kneecap, her back against a durasteel wall still warm from the sun.
It’s the fourth shelter he’s explored for her. This time, he emerges with a broad smile on his face and beckons Rey inside.
It’s safe, he says.
What he means is there’s no one inside. Rey follows him tentatively, one step behind him at all times, and Obi-Wan walks slow so she can keep up. He makes a big show of checking each room for her before she goes in. Rey knows what he’s doing. She appreciates it, anyway.
All clear, Obi-Wan says, and he takes a seat in the very center of the AT-AT’s body, the place Rey will soon make her home. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and gestures for her to come forward.
Hold still, he says. His accent is familiar, comforting. It reminds her of home. There’s sand in your hair.
Rey closes her eyes as he reaches out to her, but she doesn’t feel warm fingers threading through her hair to brush the sand out. What she feels instead is something like a mix between a warm glow and a gust of wind. She feels her hair blow back, feels the sand lift from her scalp, but she can’t say for sure how it was done.
Isn’t that better? Obi-Wan says.
Rey attempts a smile. She can see sadness in Obi-Wan’s eyes; for some reason, that makes her feel a little better. Like he isn’t pretending. Like he knows.
There are old clothes hidden inside compartments around the walker; Obi-Wan shows her how to find them. They’re Imperial uniforms, things like coats and tunics, the material uncomfortable but warm. He shows Rey how to make a bed from them — more like a nest, really — and he folds the heaviest, warmest coat over her once she’s crawled into the center.
Well, he says, it’s best you get some sleep.
She tries.
Five minutes later, she moves the makeshift blankets away from her head and peeks out at her new home. Her new friend is still there, still watching over her. She can tell by the faint blue glow he emits (the same way she can tell he’s imaginary, not real; real people don’t glow).
“Tell me a story,” Rey says.
So he does.
He tells her a story about a little boy with no parents who grows up in the desert with nothing to do but fly speeders and help on the farm. He tells her that the little boy had a secret friend, just like her, only his friend couldn’t talk to him. His friend could only watch him from afar, keep him safe from a distance.
It’s not a good story, Rey thinks to herself, but it puts her to sleep.
Tomorrow, she’ll teach him how to tell a story right.
She’s never had dehydrated food before; when Unkar gives her her first-ever packet of rations, she doesn’t know what to do with it. She doesn’t dare ask questions, either; she takes the packet with her, hiding it inside her wrap, and only takes it out again when she’s inside the walker.
Like this, Obi-Wan says.
He guides her hand, showing her how to pour the powdered bread into the right amount of water, how to activate the heating coils if she wants it hot. He teaches her to count down the seconds to make sure the bread is fully baked before she eats it.
He watches her take a bite and scowl at the taste.
Unpleasant, isn’t it, he says, amused.
Rey is less eloquent: “Yuck!”
You’ll like it when you’re older, Obi-Wan tells her. It’s an acquired taste. For now…
Out in the dessert, he teaches her which tough, hardy plants grow in the sand, and which of those — it looks just like the rest of them to Rey’s untrained eye — contains a sweet, sugary syrup inside its skin. She can pour this over the bread like a sauce, and suddenly it tastes fine.
In her gratitude, she very graciously offers Obi-Wan some. He smiles down at her.
No, thank you, he says.
He tells her that the mangled black spacecraft abandoned in the sand are called TIE fighters. These are fighters without hyperdrives (which Rey soon learns to identify in all its different forms) or shields (which Rey, in time, learns how to generate) and without ejector seats.
It isn’t long before Rey sees her first dead body — long dead, flesh whittled away by years in the sand, Imperial uniform sun-bleached and worn — tucked into a machine. She doesn’t need Obi-Wan to tell her what she’s looking at, and he doesn’t presume to explain it.
What he does explain is this:
You see those panels, he tells her, attached to the wings?
She sees them.
Examine the wiring, Obi-Wan says. What do you think they’re for?
Rey can see the damaged panels of the TIE fighter and exposed wiring underneath, but she can’t get close to them without climbing over the dead pilot. She looks up at Obi-Wan, her brow wrinkled.
“Power?” she guesses.
Correct, says Obi-Wan. Those panels take energy from the sun and transmit it to fuel cells. Where have you seen fuel cells before?
That’s a no-brainer.
“The cannons,” Rey says. “The cannons in the walker.”
Very good. Where else?
This time she has to think a little longer. The small crease between her eyebrows becomes more pronounced; she’s scowling at the TIE fighter, so deep in concentration she doesn’t see the look Obi-Wan gives her.
The soft smile. The sad eyes.
“Speeder bikes!” she says finally, turning back to him.
This time, she catches the smile.
Very good, Obi-Wan says. Then let’s get to work.
In the weeks that pass on Jakku, Rey learns more than she ever thought she would back home. She learns how to weave a hammock all of her own; she learns how to fix a broken generator and how to tell when a unit’s heating shields are still intact, like the walker’s are.
She learns how to navigate an old-fashioned computer from something Obi-Wan calls a Y-wing and, shortly after that, she learns how to identify a Y-wing and scavenge it for parts even when it’s buried up to the tip of its wings in sand.
She learns how to store her water barrels where no one else will see them.
She learns how to weld, and then she learns that on Jakku one must weld shut every open door on one’s shelter to keep intruders out. Except the front door, of course. Obi-Wan catches her before she does the front door.
She learns how to set traps.
She learns how to tinker.
And, when she comes across an orange helmet lying in the sand, she looks up at Obi-Wan and sees the brief flicker of pain across his face, and she learns that some things just shouldn’t be sold.
You’re waiting for them, Obi-Wan says.
Rey looks over her shoulder at him and says nothing. She sits on the outside hull of her walker — her home — with an old Imperial coat around her shoulders. It’s many times too big for her still, even though she’s six now. But it keeps her warm.
She turns back and looks out over the endless sand, over the wreckage and the junk.
At the stars.
She feels a shift in the world around her as Obi-Wan sits nearby. She can’t explain the way it feels when he’s close to her; like someone is whispering in her ear, but she can’t hear the words, and she only knows they’re there because of the brush of their breath against her skin.
Only it’s not like that. It’s something deeper. She can’t explain it.
“They’ll come back,” she says aloud, hugging her knees close to her chest.
Obi-Wan hums. He doesn’t agree and he doesn’t argue.
“They have to come back,” Rey says. She thinks, but doesn’t say: I don’t have anybody else.
You have me, Obi-Wan says.
She closes her eyes. She tips her head forward, buries her face in her knees. Her breath comes out hitched, but she doesn’t cry. Not exactly. Not really.
When she speaks, all she says is, “But you’re not real,” and her voice is choked.
I’m real, Obi-Wan says. I’m as real as you are. I promise, Rey.
“You’re not.”
He doesn’t agree. He doesn’t argue. And Rey desperately wants him to argue. She wants him to prove it to her; she wants him to show her undeniable evidence that her friend is here, that he’s real, that he won’t leave.
She wipes her eyes on her sleeve and turns to face him. Her vision is so blurry that for a moment she can’t see his kindly face or his twinkling eyes; all she sees is blue, blue, blue.
“Prove it,” she says, and this sentence all on its own is so childish that she knows Obi-Wan won’t answer. So before he can shake his head, she says, “Hold my hand.”
She sticks her hand out — impossibly small and covered in sand, the fingernails short and blackened, her fingers trembling. It isn’t the pudgy hand of a child; it’s the callused hand of a hard-working adult, already covered in burns and dirt and scars.
Rey… Obi-Wan says.
“If you’re really my friend,” she says, and her voice is shaking, “take my hand.”
He hesitates. His mouth is twisting. His eyes are narrowed, squinting, almost like he wants to cry as much as she does.
He takes her hand.
She almost feels it.