Rey

vii

"Jase! Look at this!" Rey pulled something through the sand.

He ran over to help. Together, the hauled it out of the sand.

It was a stormtrooper helmet, and it popped off of the owner's head audibly.  Rey quickly kicked sand over the skull so she didn't have to look at it.

It was dusty, but otherwise like it was brand new.

"Good job," Jase praised.  "You could use the eye pieces for your mask, instead of the pilot helmet ones."

Rey nodded. "We might have to head to the cloth depot for more though. All I've got left are my blankets."

"We can give Freghad some portions and she'll give us more cloth."

Rey stashed the helmet in her bag and dug through another TIE-Fighter for parts. The fields of crashed fighters were starting to run low on valuable parts, since almost everyone went there first. But there was a massive Star Destroyer nearby that they'd explored before, and no one seemed to go to, not even Raze, or Hirich and his gang.

They'd been laying low for a while, to stay away from them, but it had been nearly a year, and Rey was now eleven.

She went on to the next fighter, trusting that the boy who she now referred to as her older brother would call her back before he left with an ear piercing whistle.

And that whistle came about two fighters later.  Rey lodged all of the parts she'd collected into the net, but kept the helmet with her, in the bag.  Jase smiled at her as she hoisted her small frame up onto the speeder.

They went back to the outpost.

It was Rey's turn to trade in the parts.  She took off the net and dragged it behind her.  Jase took the helmet into the tent so none of the other scavengers saw it.

She carried her staff with her, and glared at anyone looking at her the wrong way, willing them to take her on.  But it seemed that Unkar Plutt had threatened them not to touch her, unless, of course, she started it.

But that hadn't happened for a year, though she and Jase had been working on her fighting.

She turned in the parts, threw the net over her shoulder and shoved the portions into her pockets greedily.

Rey ran to the tent to give the portions to Jase before Raze could take them.

Then she grabbed a small handful and rushed to the cloth depot. Freghad was very short, with orangish skin and tiny eyes set in strange hollow sockets that reminded her of the stone fruit a trader had brought years before. Jase had bought the fruit for the same amount of scavenged parts that would have bought sixty portions.

She ducked inside the short entryway. "Hello, Freghad."

The cloth dealer rushed around her low counter to the girl. "Ah, Rey, my dear girl. What are you here for?"

Rey walked over and placed the dozen portions on the table. "I need some cloth."

"Well, I see that was obvious. What kind, my dear girl?" Freghad asked.

"Something practical."

"No, no, that doesn't do for a growing girl like yourself. How about some silk? I have some beautiful silk all of the way from Coruscant," Freghad said, bustling about under her counter.

"Freghad, I don't need silk out here."

"Nonsense. My sister sends these all of the way from her own outpost, somewhere way out there. She never comes to visit, but she does send all of these smugglers down with their cloth. It'd be a pity not to use any of her cloth."

"But Freghad, I don't need it. I just need some good cotton cloth. What about that cotton you got from the smuggler, he claimed it was from Dantooine?" Rey insisted.

Freghad sighed. "Alright, my dear girl. But take a bit of this silk, for free. I don't need it. I'm a thousand years old, I'll die soon anyway!"

"Don't say that."

"Ah, but it's true," the cloth dealer said, handing her an armload of fabric.

"Thank you," Rey said, and ducked out of the brightly lit tent.

She shivered. The sun had set, and the temperature had dropped drastically.

To keep her body temperature up, she ran back to the tent she and Jase shared.

The wind began to pick up, and, for the first time in years, clouds began to cover the stars. Perhaps it would rain.

Since it was even colder than normal, Jase had opened the front of the stove and stoked a small fire, fueled by bits of wood they'd found by abandoned huts and tents.

She sat down in front, and started to cut out the eye pieces with a pair of huge clippers.

Then she cut the fabric to fit, and punched holes in the inch of plastic she left around the eyepieces.  Sometime around the time she finished this task, Jase went to bed.

Rey used thick thread to attach the fabric to the to eyepieces, pushing the needle and thread through the holes in the plastic.

Then she put it aside for the next day, and blew out the lantern.

She tripped over the clippers and they clanked against the overturned metal container she had been sitting on.

"'You okay?" Jase asked groggily.

"Yeah," she said, hopping around and grabbing her big toe.

Jase laughed.  "Good night."

Rey fell onto her bed, located her blankets, and laid down.  "G'night."