The wolves of Jakku were nocturnal. They were shy, and smart enough to prefer the cool of the night. Some people on Jakku never saw them at all.

They were the lucky ones.

If you were unlucky—if you were weak—they'd be there. Life was hard on Jakku, and the wolves were well fed.

She didn't remember how they got on the topic of wolves. She wished she knew, so she could avoid it in the future.

"Did the wolves ever get close to you?"

Master Luke had a genius for finding a sore spot and pressing it. But who was she to refuse him? She knew he meant well, but somehow he always seemed to focus on topics that made her uncomfortable.

"Once. I hadn't been on Jakku that long, and I wasn't smart enough to know not to eat all my food immediately. Nobody would give me any, and I hadn't really figured out yet what parts were best to scavenge. It was days before I had enough for even a quarter portion. I remember feeling really weak and meaning to lay down on the sand just for a minute. When I opened my eyes it was almost dark. It was the first time I saw the wolves. I made it to shelter before they got to me."

He studied her as he ate his soup. "It had nothing to do with not being smart enough," he finally said, voice mild. "You were a child."

"I had to take care of myself. I didn't do a good job of it."

"What did you learn from your ordeal?"

"To ration my portions more carefully."

He winced. Maybe he'd been looking for a different answer. "No one helped you? Ever?"

If he was asking her that, she hadn't painted a very clear picture of life on Jakku. "They were busy trying to survive. Besides, there were always kids who needed help. The ones the wolves didn't get, I mean."

"Did you ever try to help them?"

Her shoulders tensed. "What do you think I could do? I was the same as them. It wasn't like I was sitting on a giant pile of portions laughing as they starved. I had a job—survive and keep myself alive for my fam—" she broke off and clamped her mouth shut. I had to survive so I'd be there when my family returned, which they never did and maybe they never planned to.

His eyes were painfully kind, and her gaze scuttled past his to settle on the floor. Damn him and his pity. "Sometimes I slipped a portion into someone's bag. If I had enough to spare."

"Did you ever band together with other children? Try to find some safety in numbers?"

She didn't answer. "Rey?"

"I tried. Twice. The first time the kid ate all my food and then stole everything I had. I caught him before he got to trading post and made him give it back. He didn't want to, but I made him."

"And the second time?"

"The second time was a girl around my age. We were 14, maybe? Her mother had died. I told her she could stay with me."

"Did she steal from you?"

Rey's laugh was short. "No, I think everyone knew by then not to try that. Except Unkar Plutt, of course. He stole from us every day. Every transaction was him stealing from us."

Luke was silent a long moment. "What happened to her?"

Rey kept her eyes on her bowl. "One day after dinner she wanted to go for a walk. I was tired, so I said no. She never came back."

"Did you ever see her around the trading post again?"

"No."

"Wolves?"

"Maybe. In a place like Jakku it's easy to die. Lots of ways, especially for little girls."

He was silent for several minutes, and Rey was grateful. Luke Skywalker was a good man, a great man. But talking to him harrowed her soul, and increasingly she wasn't sure she had enough left to lose any. If he was anybody besides Luke Skywalker she would have told him to get bent.

He cleared his throat. "Your life on Jakku left you wary."

She shrugged. She'd done what she'd had to on Jakku. If she hadn't become tough she would have been wolf bait, too. She couldn't bring herself to resent the grit that had allowed her to survive.

"But I'm not sure you're wary of the right things."

This time she met his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"Wolves can take many forms, Rey."

Irritation stabbed at her, but she brushed it away. "I don't have to worry about them here, at least."

His gaze was steady. "There are wolves everywhere, Rey."

Rey chewed her lip as the made her way back to the stone hut she slept in, the moon lighting the ancient path.

Master Luke had been especially opaque tonight.

He had offered to meditate with her, but she'd refused as fast as she could. That was the last thing she wanted right now. Their meditations stirred things up in her rather than relaxing her, and she just wanted the oblivion of sleep.

She'd been in this forest before. The trees were immense, taller than ships. She couldn't see the sky, didn't know her way, didn't know how she'd gotten there.

But she knew she wasn't alone.

There was something else in the forest with her. It was out of her sightline, but she could feel it. Another solitary creature, like her.

The brush rustled behind her and she turned. There it was, black as night, fur glossy in the moonlight. It was huge and muscled. Built to run.

Built to kill.

And it was staring straight at her.

Rey jerked awake, gasping for breath, fragments of the dream puncturing her consciousness. She couldn't stop herself from anxiously peering around the little hut, the flickering firelight revealing the same simple objects she saw every day. There was no wolf there to make a meal of her.

Gods, her heart was beating fast. She rubbed her hands against her chest, willing her heartbeat to calm. She'd done that sometimes on Jakku, rubbed her chest to calm herself at those times she found it most difficult to go on waiting and hoping. Now that she was studying under Master Luke she realized it was her own form of meditation. One that actually soothed her.

Lost in a forest with a wolf. Their discussion must have put it in her head. She'd never dreamed about wolves before, not even on nights she fell asleep to the sounds of their howls. It was bigger than any wolf she'd ever seen, and she'd never seen a black one, either.

Sleep didn't return to her for a long time.

She hadn't thought there was any place in the galaxy quieter than Jakku, but she was wrong, again. Ahch-To was as quiet as a place that had never known people. The only sounds were the ocean and the wind and the birds. Some days she almost thought she and Luke were only wandering spirits, sure that real people, living people, could never be so quiet. It was only the frigid bite of the wind that convinced her she was alive.

It wasn't all bad; she liked the lightsaber training. But every day the meditations left her feeling bruised, bewildered. The probing it required was not something that came natural to her, and she had to fight to endure each session. Every day of her life she'd concentrated on looking forward, and now she was expected to look inward, to examine and expel her doubts and fears and resentments. It was even worse than their dinner conversations, which were mercifully spare. It scraped her soul.

But Master Luke had been clear. He was not ready to return to the Resistance—and she needed training.

Yet even as she became increasingly agile with the lightsaber, she felt she was somehow growing weaker, not stronger.

She didn't mention the dream to Luke. Dreams were random and meaningless. If she dreamed of wolves again, she wouldn't run.

It was behind a copse of trees. It hadn't shown itself, but she knew it was there. Watching her.

She knew couldn't outrun it. The best she could do was try to outfight it.

She took a step towards it. She was powerful. She would not let it intimidate her. Yet before her second step fear seized her. Run, her mind told her, and she did, turning and fleeing without hesitation. Behind her she heard a howl of rage, the crashing of brush, and knew that if it caught her she was lost.

She stumbled over rocks and roots, desperately righting herself, hearing the wolf grow closer and closer. A growl sounded just behind her and she could swear she felt its breath licking at her ankles.

Rey gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate. On meditation. Which was useless, because concentrating was the opposite of how meditation was achieved. She'd been tense from the moment her eyes had opened at dawn, almost on the verge of panic. Even when she'd realized that that it was merely the traces of a bad dream that disturbed her, she hadn't been able to calm down. Why couldn't they move on to lightsaber training? She really wanted to do some of that. Or just train with her staff. She needed to whack something into oblivion.

"What?"

Rey opened her eyes to see Luke, kneeling across from her, frowning.

"You know lightsaber training is in the afternoon, Rey."

For a stunned moment she thought he'd actually used the Force to enter her mind before she recognized that he would never do that; she must have said something aloud. Luke Skywalker was everything that was good and decent. He would never misuse his gifts like that.

Unlike someone.

Then she remembered that she'd pushed back against him, reached into his mind and stolen his thoughts. The shock and horror on his face had given her a fierce satisfaction.

She refused to feel guilty about it. He'd put her in that situation; she hadn't asked him to kidnap her and use her in an attempt to destroy the Resistance. If she could go back she'd do the same thing again.

Only this time maybe she'd try to influence him the way she had the stormtrooper who'd guarded her. Tell him to release her, then go to his quarters and stay there. He wouldn't injure Finn or kill Han. He wouldn't tempt her to join him. He wouldn't enrage her so badly she'd felt the dark side rubbing against her mind, urging her to kill him.

He wouldn't get off the base before it collapsed.

She remembered how he looked after she'd extinguished that obscene lightsaber and beaten him to the ground, his face slashed open and his shoulder glistening with blood, his eyes … not pleading. Resigned. A little wistful.

He'd pleaded only when he'd asked her to join him.

It stood there watching her, as always.

Only it was … not a wolf? It stood upright, its face covered by a fierce animalistic mask. Its clothes—his clothes—were strange and oppressively dark, a tattered cape covering his broad shoulders, the opposite of the snowy cape she wore over her simple dress. He wasn't a wolf, but she could sense his feral nature. And in his hand—in his hand was a sword covered in flames, a weapon for an angel … or a devil.

Not a man.

Then he started for her, and she turned and ran.

His strides were long and measured, yet he was gaining on her frantic flight. She looked desperately for a way out of the forest, but the path meandered aimlessly.

Then he was close enough to hear, his footfalls rougher than the wolves that had preceded him. His breath was rough and guttural against the mask, and she strained to go faster.

He lunged at her and she surged forward, almost free, almost, but his hand, his greedy hand, managed to fasten on her ankle and part of her skirt. She ripped it away, barely noticing the sudden sharpness as he lost his grip and his fingers raked for purchase on her calf, leaving a bloody stripe. She lengthened her stride, almost safe, her feet pounding—

She didn't see the root until it was too late and she was crashing down, and he stood above her triumphantly, his flaming sword covering her with its crimson light.

Rey forced her breathing to calm. Not a wolf. A man in black with a flaming sword. Focused on her, only her. It was familiar, like it had happened before, but it was just out of her grasp. She kept reaching for it, and it slid tauntingly out of sight.

It wasn't until she began to slip into sleep again that the man's mask disappeared and the sword revealed its true self. She awoke as if flung into Ahch-To's icy sea.

No. No, absolutely not.

That was not Kylo Ren. She did not dream about Kylo Ren. She would not—the universe would not—let her dream about Kylo Ren.

She slapped her hand against her heart and concentrated. She would go back to sleep. And she would dream of shores with clear, warm seas and soft sands. Not about men she shouldn't think of, meditations she couldn't do, and shores that didn't welcome her.

Rey barely saw the steeply stacked stones beneath her feet. There were 618 steps down to the sea, and some days they seemed endless.

The training sessions were deteriorating. She was trying harder than ever, and failing in equal measure. Master Luke was patient, gentle, and unrelenting.

It was the worst meditation session she'd ever had with him, and he was, she thought, clearly disappointed in her. As she clambered down to the rocky shoreline she fought tears. He didn't want to see those either.

Usually she only came down to the shore to tend the crab traps. She'd dreamed of an island on an ocean for so long, but nothing like this. This shore was a rock-strewn patch eager to trip her, drown her, or freeze her. The water was gray and churning and unimaginably cold. It was the least inviting place she'd ever seen. It made Jakku seem welcoming.

She had the Force. She knew it, she'd felt it. But she'd used it more strongly in the forest on Starkiller, and even in the interrogation room on the base, than she had on Ahch-To, this island steeped in the history and mysticism of the Jedi. There she had defeated a feared dark knight, and here she struggled to do what five-year-olds had done at the old academies.

Her tears were hot against her wind-chilled face, and she swiped them away guiltily.

He wouldn't return to help the Resistance. He said it wasn't time, and that the time might never come. He wouldn't bend. Then he'd offered to train her, and she'd thought he'd eventually grow more receptive to the thought of leaving. But her powers of persuasion were even less impressive than the control she displayed over the Force. And she was here, with him, on an island she had never dreamed of, and the horizon that had begun to open for her once she left Jakku was shrinking, becoming as small as the world Luke had made for himself.

With a stab, she knew he was right. Wolves did take many forms.

The moon was especially bright that night. Back on Jakku she always wanted to use bright nights like this to scavenge when it was nice and cool, but the wolves made that unwise.

Stars, stop thinking of wolves!

A voice behind her said, "You look good in red."

It wasn't Luke.