Rey
It starts as a dark line along the horizon, the wind kicking up, a strange sense of expectation. Rey sees it from the destroyer where she’s working, considers, then slides down the rope to the ground.
She guns the speeder towards Niima outpost, dumps the haul, still dusty, on Plutt’s counter. There’s not time to clean it, but most of it’s bulk anyway. Plutt pokes at it with a stubby finger. “One portion,” he says, drops it in front of her.
It’s low, of course it is. Plutt can see the haze in the southwest just as well as she can.
Rey gets back home just as the real gusts hit. The sand stings, but she doesn’t care because behind the metallic grit is the smell of rain. The clouds are closing overhead, and there’s just enough time to drag out the basins she keeps by the door before the thunder crashes over her, so loud her breath catches. It’s late afternoon still, but it’s dark as though the sun’s gone down, and when the skies open the rain is cold on her skin.
There’s nobody around to care, so Rey strips out of her clothes, finds her sliver of soap, washes her skin, her hair, her clothes—and by now she’s shivering, but it’s worth it, weeks of sweat and dust and grit that quick wipedowns never quite remove washing away into the sand. Inside she finds a blanket, wraps up in it and sits on the bed. The rain on the roof is deafening—a pitched battle could be happening in the sky above Jakku and she wouldn’t be able to hear it. It’s still hot in here, close and stuffy, and Rey hunts for air vents that she can open without letting in the water, sits down next to one and breathes in the cool, wet air. Even her lungs feel cleaner.
She curls up, blanket wrapped around her, and falls asleep to the sound of rain.