jaken

The pod hit the ground with a severe jolt – then again – and again. It was skipping across the sand. Finally, one impact stuck, slowing it down bit by bit as it tunnelled through Jakku's desert and very gradually came to a stop. The pod jarred forward, into the air, so hard that it looked as...

Out there — it’s nothing. Nowhere, stretched wide and made infinite. The dry crust of desert. The whipping tails of dust. Past that: dunes. Mounds of sand, red as fire. They seem to run on forever underneath the cloudless sky. Behind her: raggedy, ratty tents. Propped up by scraps of rusted...

The X'us'R'iia lasted three and a half days. Tejori finished one bottle of water and half of another, guarding her thirst, because she didn't know how long it would be until she'd be able to get into Jaken for more. She was out of food by the second day, and by the time the storm was over her...

When Tejori finally ventured out, it took her an hour to get her door open. The sand was piled so high and packed so hard against it that she could move it only by centimetres at first. With each push, more of the desert rushed into her home. When she finally did have the door open, she had to...

The locals called the storm X'us'R'iia. It had a name because they believed there was only the one, the same one that returned again and again. It was the breath of the god R'iia, they said. R'iia was not a benevolent god, and thus the storm was blamed for a great many things. It was the source...

Tejori didn't have much hope for a good find. She'd lost the morning already, and by the time she'd ridden her speeder out to the edges of the graveyard from Jakan, it was mid-afternoon. Anything the morning’s violent storm had revealed farther in had already been claimed. As she rode, she could...