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The light painted the dark waters a gilt-edged silver as the sun rose on the day after Luke Skywalker rejected his old lightsaber, but accepted Rey as his new student. Sitting alone on the stairs at the base of the cliff, Rey struggled to take it all in. She’d been too nervous yesterday to really appreciate just how amazing it was. The wind off the sea breathed cold and wet across her face, carrying unfamiliar scents. It piled the water up into dunes and then smashed them against the rocks. Wheeling birds cried overhead as the water crashed and the wind howled. Compared to the whispering sands of Jakku, it was almost painfully loud.
Rey couldn’t quite get her mind around the sheer amount of water stretching out towards the horizon. It seemed to go on and on forever and all of it for just one man. On Jakku people had scrambled, fought, and died for just a mouthful. Maybe if Skywalker had shared some of this, they would still be alive. Maybe Han would still be alive.
Rey angrily shook the thought from her head and scooped up a handful of sea water. She lived here now. She had just as much right to drink it as Skywalker did. The water tasted salty and gritty, like sweat on a windy day. Rey wasn’t sure she liked it, but she supposed she needed to get used to it. She reached for a second handful.
“You shouldn’t drink that,” Skywalker said as he ghosted silently down the stairs behind her. “The salt will make you sick,” he added, settling down on the step beside her.
Rey flung the water from her hand, her face burning. She knew how to survive as a scavenger on Jakku, but she’d been over her head since the second she stole the Millennium Falcon. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.” The words came out as if the Jedi had pulled them from her except that, after Kylo Ren, Rey could tell that he hadn’t.
Skywalker nodded slowly, as though a living legend like him could even begin to understand. “Moisture farming back on Tatooine, I never would have believed there was this much water in the whole galaxy.”
“You were a moisture farmer?” The stories never said where he had come from. Luke Skywalker had just appeared, spat out by the Force to save the galaxy.
Skywalker smiled, wistful and a bit sad. “I’d never gone anywhere or done anything and suddenly I had this mysterious droid and a mission.” He shrugged helplessly.
It was so strange how familiar his story was. Had he had a Han Solo to hand him a weapon? Or a Finn to hold his hand? Rey’s Han was dead and her Finn might never wake up. Where were his? Did he miss them? “Does it,” Rey swallowed hard around the lump in her throat, “does it ever get easier?”
“It…,” Skywalker trailed off, sighing. His shoulders slumped like a man who’d spent a hard day hauling scrap. “All this water,” he murmured, staring out across the sea. “I’ve been here for years and I still can’t believe it.”