The Chosen Ones

The Escape

The world as they knew is a mass of land surrounded by an infinite sea that reached the borders of the universe. There, humans will live from the earth, as wide and diverse as the climates that ruled them: deep forest at the North, snowy mountains at the West, burning desserts at the East, farmlands at the South. Coruscant, a valley covered with ever-higher streets and buildings that seemed to graze the sky, and in it centre was the government palace where the Governor of the Kingdom controlled everything that happened on their lands and maintained strict control over the Jedi Wizards, those humans who are born with a direct connection to the secrets of the cosmos, a primal energy that allowed them to perform incredible things, feared and admired feats.

Their world was simple, peaceful, until fifty years ago when a ruthless man and his army invaded his lands and changed his story forever. With him, the habitants of the Kingdom discovered that on the other side of the ocean that surrounded them stretched an identical land that was governed by electricity, an invention as magical on its own as unthinkable, creating things impossible to believe, floating boats as big as cities, metal men who possessed intelligence, cold campfires that didn't go extinct.

But those history lessons are useless now, for her today is the day 1825. Trying not to move her back, she pulls out the rudimentary knife made of a twisted piece of iron and a shred of cloth for a handle, and makes another mark on the wall next to her cot, completely stripped by the marking of each day she has been held there. The mouldy cement roof is already a large black spot, the air filed with spores so small that they're almost imperceptible. "Rey..." grazes the edges of her thoughts, her hazelnut eyes sparkle in the darkness when she hears him calling her by name, regretfully must be the product of her deepest desires.

She takes a deep breath, the smell of moisture and clay became the only quiet experience in those five years. That cell of mouldy stones walls went from being her torment to her refuge in that forgotten place beneath the earth. Outside, an infinite expanse of cells mutated day by day into a city of prisoners, slaves, exiles, the outcasts of a city and a Kingdom that would never be the same again. Endless exotic and nauseating aromas mingled with the voices of thousands of people with their tired gaze, their sick countenance, their broken hopes, looking for any excuse to hold on and believe it's still worth living.

After years of confinement, imprisoned for crimes they never committed, those prisoners had become increasingly docile, accepting that new fate they called life. Thus, they created in the precariousness of their existence an underground city, but from which they couldn't leave or change. The guards required less time walking through the corridors of the always open cells, while the inhabitants greeted them with affection as if they're their protectors.

Everyone around her seemed pleased with their destiny, of that life underground, the inverted mirror of the city that certainly stood above their heads, ignorant of their fate. There, the prisoners moved in the perpetual shadows of oblivion, removed not only from the streets and houses of the surface but even from history; and thinking about it made Rey feel increasingly crazy.

She would never settle for that life. As a child, in the Jakku Desert, she had surrendered to that life at the shadows under the machines of the Great War, that life as a scavenger rescuing pieces of the metal beasts that had fallen from the sky when the invaders brought the so-called 'technology' to that Kingdom where magic roamed free on the earth. But after having come out of there and knowing the principles of the ancient Jedi Wizards, there was no turning back; and she knew there was a better life out there waiting for her, outside Coruscant, she just needed to find a way to escape.

Five years ago, Rey thought she was so close to finding the full freedom she had always longed for the Kingdom of that nefarious force that had seized the government and all their lives, her life, but also him. Those golden-brown eyes, his white complexion, his shiny black hair, a long scar crossing his face harshening his features, his fleshy lips curved in a half-smile pronouncing her name: "Rey..."