Sandrats

Chapter 1 (that girl is fine on her own)

“You must have a guardian angel, child." Says one of the rough, leathery old women, when she drags her haul to be exchanged. It catches her off guard and leaves her searching for something to reply. What does that even mean?

“What?” she says, dumbly.

“Somebody must be watching over you out there, it sure as hell isn’t one of us.”

She wants to bite back that she can take care of herself well enough, thank you, but she and everyone on this sandpit knows that the tools she carries are on loan, that the only thing really protecting her from the cold, hard fingers of her “neighbours” is the widely known fact of her already being more or less indentured, therefore someone else's property, a someone they don’t want to deal with more than strictly necessary.

Rey slips into the slightly dumb and innocent smile of someone who doesn’t understand anything, which has worked to her benefit with these people before.

On her way back to her shelter, she can’t help but think it over again.

A guardian angel... she understands what a guardian is, but “angel” feels foreign and dangerous.

Her shelter is blessedly empty and untouched, if only because if someone were to peek inside, they wouldn’t see anything that could be regarded as precious; almost all the tools that were left with her were stolen that first night (she has her suspicions who it could’ve been), and all that’s left are more sentimental than useful. The tent itself, submerged and almost hidden in sand, is filthy, filled with holes, and would hardly be worth the time it would take to dig it up.

This, at least, is hers alone. Alone.

The work of staying alive is not rewarding or interesting, but at the very least, at the end of the day, she is too tired to think about how shit her life really is, about how alone she is, about how sad and angry she is. All she has to do is swallow her food, wrap herself in everything she’s got to keep warm, and let the dark wave of sleep pull her under.

She sees a new face. It is not unusual, really: every so often new faces drop in to refuel or barter or whatever else they do in the shadows where she can’t see. They don’t stay long if they can avoid it.

This new face fits right in, and she might not have noticed it, were it not for how obviously he noticed her; she must feel his stare burrow into her neck. She turns around and accidentally meets his eyes. She even feels a little scared, by how intently he watches her.

Memories of idle warnings from the kinder neighbors run through her head, as well as warnings from someone she knew actually cared. Those all advised to stay unnoticed, but what, she wonders, is she supposed to do when she is noticed? New fear runs up her spine and out into her fingers, completely different from the fear she has grown used to feeling whenever someone notices her or when delivering a middling haul that wouldn’t get her a packet.

Pretending as if this wasn’t out of the ordinary, she turns and blends into the tumult of bartering and haggling. Lose him, she whispers to herself. Lose him, run, hide, survive.

She weaves and ducks behind a stack of crates and is promptly whipped over the face by the woman who “doesn’t want desert rats pilfering her shit”. Cheek reddening, she ducks under the second arm coming flying towards her, and crawls under the tarp and into the legs of someone else. Crawling away before they get a solid grip on her, rises to her feet and looks around.

Her eyes sweep the place for just a second, but catches those eyes again.

It startles her so badly she nearly trips as she turns to run. She almost feels fingers brushing the loose hairs on her neck. The stare is so heavy she can still feel it, even at the other side of the barter place. Heart beating in her ears, a low ringing, she can’t hear the familiar (and strangely comforting) rumble of everyday life, instead she imagines she hears him breathing down the top of her head.

Then, finally, the feeling disappears, and she chances a glance behind. Nothing. No one is looking at her. The relief is immediate, numbing her fingers.

Days go by and she forgets all about it, content to leave that experience behind.

From the top of this dune, the metallic glint of Unkar Plutt’s bartershop is little more than a speck. It is still too close to yield a good haul, she knows. But she is taking a chance.

The sun was on its way down when she started heading back to her hovel. She must be more invisible than she thought, because the two scavengers on her left didn’t stop talking or change the topic or tell her to scram.

“Yes, yes, I saw it fall down on the north side. Didn’t explode, though it still made hell of a noise.”

The hungry fist in her abdomen urged her to continue on her way. It would get dark in just a couple hours. But this was information that could loosen that fist for days to come. If only she was one of the few first on site.

She listened as much as she dared, looking as small and stupid as possible: not a threat, not a rival, unimportant. Then she broke off her path, turned north, and hurried her steps.

The view from the north dune as the sun dipped past the sands and made the sky red was pretty. She even stopped to watch for several minutes, drinking in the premature triumph in her blood, the excitement of finally getting a good haul, of finally not going to sleep hungry for a change.

“You can take care of yourself, Rey. They’ll see, when they come back. Oh, the look on their faces...” They would land right outside their tent, and she would be sitting there, smug and just a little proud, and they would go ‘we knew you could manage it’, and: ‘you did a good job of it, kid’. This fantasy had been a favourite for months, but only now did she feel the sweet nearness of making that dream just a little more real.

She stands up, brushes sand out of the folds in her clothes, and turns to crest the dune.

He is standing at the top right behind her, a faint shape against the red and orange.

She is frozen in place, and she wants to cry with frustration at herself: how could she let him come this close, and why had she frozen to the spot?

The air felt thick, a low hum droning in her ears, making her feel like she was drowning in sand. The scrapes and blisters on her feet a far away sting. He towers above her, his bulk seems to shrink her, make her smaller the longer she stands there, measuring her survival against his terrible, frightening size.

Slowly, with careful and graceful movements, he shakes his head, turning his face from one side, then back the other way, eyes fixed on hers.

From somewhere, she doesn’t know where, in her small body, a white-hot rage boils forth and numbs the fear building in her abdomen: who the kriff does he think he is? Does he think she is easy picking? An easy mark? Helpless? She has survived on her own. She has a crappy, barely working cutting-tool at her hip, and she had seen the damage something so small can do when used with imagination. Her anger seems to overpower her fear completely, and suddenly he isn’t so terrible: just a man, just as fragile and delicate as any old meat bag on this dust ball.

Inside of her a memory, a voice, the tone and cadence nearly forgotten, only the words remaining: “It’s shameful to start fights, sweetheart. Good people don’t do that, and we want you to be good. Don’t you?”

Like someone had just stomped on the vicious violence building within her, she calms enough to think: let him try. Let him try. I won’t start this fight, but let him try, and see where I bite.

Squaring her shoulders and glaring, she raises her foot, and sets it down in front of her. Again. And again. Aiming to go around him in a wide half-circle.

Once she draws shoulder to shoulder with him, she breaks her glare and looks forward. The wreck is so close she can smell the hot smoke of melted and burning steel.

The hand that falls into her line of sight startles her backward, onto her butt. She scrambles to her feet, but he doesn’t lunge for her or fall on top of her or grabs her or anything. The hand remains raised in front of her. Blocking her. Again, he shakes his head, his own glare no longer suffocating and overwhelming, but rather, pleading. Anxious, almost.

“Piss off!” she hisses through clenched teeth, fury returning and spreading up her neck. She rushes forward and ducks under his arm. She digs her feet into the sand and finally crests the dune, slams her right foot down and- kriff and shit, trips. She flies head over heels, rolling down the other side, getting mouthfuls of sand the whole way down.

And down there is the wreck, half buried and with a helpful hole ripped in the hull, from which no less than three scavengers emerge at her furious sputtering, spitting, and coughing. She stares up at them with dawning horror.

“Well,” says one, “well, well. Wouldya look at that. A skittermouse.”

“Oh, it looks skittish.”

“Looks boney.”

“Bone has marrow.”

“Ugh, barely worth it.”

“A thief.”

“A brat.”

“A problem.”

Can she take three? Weighing her sand-scraped, hungry, weak body, against the treasure that is an untouched wreck, and her odds against three bigger bodies, with only a shitty, malfunctioning, utterly useless cutting-tool: no. No she can’t take three, no matter how much pride and hunger she put in her fists.

She scrambles to her feet and promptly turns to head back, belly wrenching and pride aching with every step.

“It’s running.”

“It’s alone.”

“Alone.”

She trips again, and it is only the sand in her eyes that forces the tears to come out.

“Ah, it is tough out here.”

“One does as one must.”

“One eats when one can.”

“Leave me alone! I’m going, so leave me alone!” she shrieks, voice cracking, feeling helpless and stupid. How naïve to think that anyone would leave a treasure like this alone, that they would let her have at it first, as a round-about way of showing that they do care about the filthy kid living out there, in their own way.

She crawls back up, digging her nails into the not-solid ground. The man at the top looks down at her with such dark eyes, bending over her, arching like the roof of a tent. She is surrounded and helpless and weak, and no one cares what will happen to her, and no one will notice. She really is no more than a skittermouse.

A heavy rushing sound fills her head, drowning out everything. The ground shakes, and the sand, and she, slides downward. Turning, she sees the tail of the wrecked ship rapidly sinking, and the sands pulling the three scavengers screaming down with it. The rumbling stops, the sand stills, and everything except her is buried far below.

It is very quiet after, she thinks.

“A cave below must have fallen in on itself.” says the man quietly. He doesn’t move; indeed, he has not moved at all; he is once again standing at the crest of the dune, a few feet above her. “You are able to stand, yes? Nothing broken?”

The walk back to her tent is dark and cold, the sun having set a while ago. But she meets nothing on the way, and the man follows at a distance. Little is said between them; he does not turn away or leave when she snarls at him.

Finally, she arrives. But it is not much to arrive to: the tent is gone, and only a few things are thrown around the ditch that once was home. She pulls her doll up by the leg and shakes off the sand and holds it. There is a cold and hard lump in her belly, and a fist squeezing her lungs. She tries to swallow but can’t. Tries to cry, but it is like she has no more water left in her body.

What, exactly, is she supposed to do now?

The man’s feet wander into her field of vision, standing close to her. He doesn’t touch her or say anything, but she can feel that stare at her head that before felt so unnerving.

“What will you do now?” the man asks, voice low and tentative.

An embarrassing, keening whine is all the reply she can manage. It is dry and weak.

He sighs above her, turns and walks away. Leaving her with the tatters of her life.

It slowly dawns on her that she must manage, somehow. They’ll never come back otherwise, and oh, oh oh oh, when they come back. She’ll be in trouble. She lost their tent. The tent is gone, and the burner and the water purifier by the looks of things. What will they think? Will they even come back now?

The ground rumbles again, even more violent than before. She is thrown to the ground, and when she looks up it is him she sees: arms raised, and from her angle it looks like he is holding a massive steel structure above his head. He throws it down on the ground in front of him. The noise is terrible.

He turns, and the look in his eyes is unfamiliar and indecipherable to her.

“Don’t you give up just yet, child.” he says, and as if on cue, a hatch on the structure gives a shrill clang and falls open.

She rushes forward, dropping her doll. The inside is dark and, surprisingly, not filled with sand. Crawling further in reveals untouched cables and seemingly whole machinery. A treasure.

“Are you staying?” she yells towards the hole, to the dangerously strong and foreign man. “Where- how did you find this? This is great! You should stay! Split the haul!”

She blindly feels her way around the inside of this metal beast, touching cool steel, plush seating, rusty panels, and (she nearly drops the fabric when she picks it up in her excitement) a heavy blanket; soft, if a little musty.

“I’m Rey, by the way.” She says shyly as she sticks her head out to smile at the man, but outside is only the dark night, and she is again all alone in the sand.