May the Force be Ever in Your Favor

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     The blaring heat of Jakku’s white-hot sun beat down onto the back of Rey as she made her way into Market Square. Every muscle in her body ached as she dragged forth her day’s haul– unimportant, scraps of metal scavenged from a far-off battle site– towards Unkar Plutt’s trading post. 

     Her sandy brown hair, loosely styled into three buns that lined her head like a triceratops, felt like pure fire underneath the burning sun. She’d had no problem transporting her load to the square- prior to the abstract shaped speeder she often traveled on powering down from lack of fuel. She vowed to fill it up after trading–she wouldn’t get far without it.

     She eventually managed to pull her scraps into the tapestry-shaded square. Unkar Plutt was waiting for her. An expression of pity was displayed across his regularly beady face, but Rey took no notice as she piled her scavenges onto the countertop.

     Her eyes widened in surprise as he proceeded to shove the parts behind him, and slapped five entire food portions onto the counter separating them. 

She grabbed them desperately before he could change his mind, and stated flatly, “Thank you.” 

     Instead of shrugging and turning away as a signal to get out of his sight, as per usual, Unkar Plutt sighed. “Good luck.” But before Rey could ask for an explanation as to why she needed good luck, he pulled down his shade. He wasn’t going to go any further into depth– so she set out to looking at the Market booths instead, confused but pushing the query to the back of her mind.

     It seemed a deep dread had settled across the inhabitants of Jakku, for none of them were even attempting to bargain aggressively for purchasable items. The Market Square was almost always in a state of reckless chaos over simple items– today, it was melancholy and depressing to behold. 

     The only time anyone acted as such was the few weeks leading up to the annual Hunger Games. Rey looked to the Capitol-issued stage that stood, imposing, a few hundred feet away from where she was standing. That stage was where the reaping– or choosing of children to “play” in the year’s Games– took place, and with it, a symbol of fear among every child on Jakku. 

     Almost every planet in the Outer Rim had one, especially seeing as the planets outside of central space were loosely governed. The stage stood, proud and intimidating, as a show of power– we can take your citizens and kill them whenever we want to. 

     But, they only had one Hunger Games per year, and the last one had only happened five months ago. Besides, Rey had already aged out of the target age– she had no need to worry about such trivial and unimportant things anymore.

So she perused the booths, searching for an explanation of why everyone was acting so strange. 

     She ended up stumbling over the leg of a jewelry stand that was directly in front of her foot. “Watch it!” An older woman snarled, pulling away the stand and causing the jewelry to rattle. 

“Sorry.” Rey apologized as she regained her footing. 

     The woman sighed. “It’s alright, dear. We’re all a bit on edge today.” As if to prove her point, her hands that were trying to untangle her mess of delicate chains shook under the strain.

     “If you don’t mind me asking, why is everyone on edge today? It’s all so peculiar to me,” Rey confessed. She considered helping the woman with her jewelry, fidgeting her hand towards the stand, but thought better of it when she realized she’d most likely end up making it into a bigger mess than before.