Chapter Text
It’d been a long, hot day, even by Tatooine standards, and eight year old Luke Skywalker was tired of being cooped up inside, when he heard a strange sound. Like a lullaby being sung by all the souls of the desert wastes. In spite of his Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen’s warnings, and a daily reminder of the consequences in the form of Grandma Shmi’s grave, Luke wanders out into the desert alone. The song growing louder as he traverses the endless Dune Sea, the words never quite resolve into anything he can understand yet he knows the meaning all the same. The melody is an echo of his own soul. Aunt Beru had always told him the desert never forgot it’s own, and Luke was a child of the desert, like his father and his grandmother before him. He cannot ignore it’s call and so he dutifully follows where it leads.
He couldn’t have been gone for more than two hours when Luke feels it, the first stirrings of a sandstorm. One didn’t survive on Tatooine long without getting a sixth-sense for that sort of thing, and Luke’s senses had always been a hair keener than his family’s. He glances about at the barren desert and curses himself. What an idiot! How could he have been so dumb as to wander so far from home. Now, he’s not only without any shelter from the approaching storm, but, Luke realizes belatedly, he has no idea where he is!
The winds continued to pick up, sending the small abrasive grains of sand into the air. He was dead! Luke whirled in circles. This storm would flay him alive and remake the desert so his rotting body would never be found. How convenient. Luke whimpered. Killed and buried in one stroke. Well, it would save on the expense of a funeral, he supposed. Funny, that reminded him of something Uncle Owen might say. Something his Aunt Beru would roll her eyes at and pinch her husband for, grumbling about his morbid humor.
Uncle Owen. Luke thought. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. If they did, by some miracle, manage to retrieve his body, Luke felt his uncle was entitled to compose his eulogy entirely from the words “I told you so.”
Too much like his father. So many voices seemed to whisper on the churning winds, driving the deadly storm. The voices of his Aunt and Uncle. Voices of neighbors and people he’d known his whole life, and voices, Luke had never heard yet felt he should know. Through a break in the whirling grains, Luke spotted a small out-cropping of rock. It’d likely been buried under the sands earlier that day, and likely would be again before the day was over, but still it was a shelter. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, they said. Luke stumbled half-blind towards the out-cropping, and wedged himself as tightly as he could into the rocks, making sure to turn his face towards the rocks and cover his mouth and nose as best he could.
As the storm swooped towards him like a Krayt dragon on the hunt, the innumerable voices roared. A woman’s warm voice calling his name. A man crying out in pain and grief. Another man urging Luke to be careful and so many more. So many more whispers of conversations he’d never been a part of, yet he knew each voice’s owner held some connection to him.
Luke squeezed his eyes shut even tighter as the sands lashed out like the prongs on a slaver’s whip, attempting to cleave his flesh from his bones. Tears leaked out, in spite of his best efforts to preserve his bodily fluids. Each pin-prick of pain made him think of his Grandma and his father. All Luke wanted was to be back home. Surrounded by the familiar white-washed sandstone walls of the moisture farm, cradled in Aunt Beru’s warm arms, and listening to her gently crooned stories and not the wailing winds of a sand storm. Luke wanted that more than anything, even if it meant having to first endure Uncle Owen’s lecture.
And, in the deepest parts of his young heart, where he kept his most precious wishes, Luke wished for his father. He knew his father was dead, and had been for as long as Luke had been alive. Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen had told him all that years ago. Yet, there were still times when a quiet whisper -- the same one which would occasionally warn him of a sandstorm or company before they arrived -- would tell him his father wasn’t dead at all. He was just lost, adrift in a galaxy even more vast than the deserts of Tatooine. Lost and waiting to be found. And Luke wanted desperately to be found in turn.
If there was one thing he knew about his father, it was that he could and would always find his family. After all, Luke’s father had been the one to bring Grandma Shmi home. If it was Anakin Skywalker, then Luke was sure he’d be able to find him, his son, even in the midst of a raging sandstorm. As he wished for the impossible, the winds shifted and Luke felt as if there was a soft blanket wrapping around him, shielding him from the storm as it surged, and then with a searing white flash, which dazzled his eyes even behind his tightly closed lids, all fell silent.
Luke slowly chanced a peek, coughing up dust and sand. He wiped his eyes, ignoring the stinging of sand grains from his hands and looked again. His location had not changed, but the desert certainly had, no surprise really after such a fierce sandstorm. What took the young child by surprise was the stillness and coolness of the desert. No sandstorm whipping out of sight and no suns hanging over his head. It had barely been past mid-meal when Luke had foolishly ventured out into the Wastes, yet above him the first of Tatooine’s three moons was just breaking over the eastern horizon, tricking the unknowing into a deceptively tranquil mindset. But Luke did know, Tatooine’s deserts were even more hostile at night. He wouldn’t be able to make it home, even if he was sure of the way, which he wasn’t. Like it or not, he would be spending the night in his little rocky fortress. He could only hope it provided as much shelter from Tatooine’s night life as it had from the sandstorm.