Kalani learned from a young age that her mother didn't like her.

Of course, Padme Skywalker would've never admitted it to the teenager's face, but the lack of affection was always there: the way she seemed to constantly dote and fawn over her two other siblings, how Kalani was constantly given the hardest chores that caused her to work from before the suns came out to after they'd set, the way all of their spare credits were spent on expensive things for Luke and Leia while Kalani's shoes were littered with holes and her clothes barely fit her anymore.

She was distant, and although she put up a good act when her husband was around, there was no love in her heart for the youngest triplet of the group. Kalani couldn't remember the last time her mother had indicated in any way that she cared for her youngest daughter, let alone tell her that she loved her. What hurt the most was that Kalani had absolutely no idea why Padme found such a distaste for the runt of her litter. If she at least knew why the woman never cared for her, maybe it would've hurt less.

As much as she hated the fact that the woman who'd given birth to her practically despised her, Kalani's father did more than enough to make up for Padme's scorn.

Anakin Skywalker was the complete opposite of his wife in every sense of the term. While Kalani's mother spent all their spare change on clothes and trinkets for her favorite kids during their weekly trips to town, Anakin would sneak gifts to Kalani when no one was looking, each thoughtful present a small show of love and appreciation that Kalani would cherish always. Sometimes they were new pairs of shoes for work made of the best animal hides Mos Eisley had to offer, a necklace or bracelet he might've noticed her eyeing at a kiosk for a week or two, or a subtle outfit or two that would fit her growing body more appropriately.

Despite Padme's constant want to spend whatever they could on Luke and Leia, Anakin was sneaky enough and cared enough to hold back some of their savings in reserve for Kalani's needs. He wasn't stupid; he knew that his wife treated their blonde daughter different from the other two, and that was why he went out of his way to make sure Kalani knew at least one of her parents loved her more than anything in the galaxy.

From the moment she could walk, Kalani practically gravitated towards Anakin. Her first word had been 'Dada', which Padme could've felt less about since both Luke and Leia's were 'Mama'. Anakin was the one to kiss her owies when she fell and make them all better, though she never had many when her balance was practically perfect and her sense for danger seemed unrealistically excellent; that seemed to make her mother even more stoic towards the girl for reasons Kalani would never understand. His side was the one she ran to after having a nightmare and he'd sleep the rest of the night with her in their living room, cuddled in a heap of blankets on the floor. Whenever she was feeling upset or angry, he seemed to sense it through the air like a canine and was there in the blink of an eye to calm her down.

Although Kalani's father was her world, she was his whole universe.

Little did Kalani know that her world was about to crumble through her fingers like the oceans of sand around them.

*********

The suns were still hidden over the horizon as the fifteen-year-old girl set out for another day of work on the moisture farm. Although she was usually sweating by then from cleaning the large devices used to harvest water, today was different; she wouldn't be tending to her normal chores. No, instead of carrying her tools in a sling over her shoulder as she approached the big cylindrical machines, she was carrying a blaster rifle in her hands and a scope secured safely to her belt. As she climbed the tall seven-meter tower of metal, Kalani perched herself at the very top and prepared herself for the long day ahead.

Over the first few years of her life, she couldn't remember sand people being a problem to their normal lives. Only hearing about them through whispers on the streets and an occasional joke or two, the Tusken Raiders weren't commonly heard of in her day-to-day conversations. If she recalled correctly, Kalani had asked her father only once about the mysterious species, to which he just shook his head and told her not to worry about them. And she didn't worry about them. When her father said something like that, the smart thing to do is take his word for it and drop the subject. So she did.

But Kalani regretted that decision after the first Raider attack.

She was only twelve at the time, but still remembered the incident like it had happened just yesterday. Kalani had been washing off in the bathroom from a hard day of keeping up the farm, while Luke and their mother sat at the kitchen table, playing a strategy game Padme had recently purchased from an off-world vendor. Leia and their father were out on a quick trip to town for a spare part that had broken off one of the moisture machines; they wanted to be home before it got too late and the kiosks all closed.

Kalani was drying off her hands when she felt as if she'd been punched in the gut. With one hand gripping the side of the bathroom sink for dear life, her vision began to go dark and the girl could hardly breathe as the pain grew worse and worse as the seconds went by.

Then the shouting began.

It was a roar at first, a battle cry in a language none of them understood, and it shook their bones to the core. The noise seemed to echo through the house, a haunting sound none of them would ever forget, and Kalani crawled her way to the kitchen where her mother and brother sat terrified at the kitchen table. None of them knew what to do, not when they had no idea what they were dealing with. So in an act of instinct, Padme grabbed the two children by their wrists and dragged them to her room, where she quickly hid them in the closet and grabbed the shining silver blaster she always kept under her bed.

The two kids clung to each other, shivering in fear among the fabrics of their mother, and it was the first time Kalani could remember actually hugging her brother for once. Through a thin crack in the door, their eyes could barely make out the figure of their mother as she stood in front of the closet, blaster in hand while the roaring dulled into a murmur and the sound of footsteps filled the halls. Luke squeezed Kalani tighter and buried his tear-streaked face in her shoulder.

Then she saw it for the first time- a Tusken Raider. Clad in leather armor and hidden in layers of muddy white cloth, Kalani caught a glimpse of its goggled eyes as it raised a long, wooden rod and let out a victorious shriek before Padme pulled the trigger. A flash of blue struck the beast in its chest and it collapsed to the floor in a heap. The thought of it still gave Kalani nightmares, even years later.

If her father hadn't arrived when he did, the three of them wouldn't have survived as the rest of the Tusken Raiders invaded their home. Anakin shoved Padme and Leia into the closet upon arrival and told them to stay inside no matter what they heard outside. The fight couldn't have lasted more than a minute, but the sound of death rattling all around the building was enough to terrify both the kids and their mother for months ahead.

When they were finally told it was safe to come out, the floors and walls were covered in scattered bursts of blood; he had to have taken the bodies outside to burn before giving the signal to come out of hiding. It took them a week before the streaks of red were permanently erased.

So now here she was, sitting on watch with her blaster rifle on her lap and her scope out, scanning the horizon for any signs of danger. In a few hours, her father would switch places with her for breakfast, then she'd return to her post til dinner. As the girl looked out at the mountains of sand, the wind giving a subtle breeze to the scene, she'd expected to see nothing unusual, as was the norm.

But then a small speck appeared a little more than a mile away. At first, she thought it might've just been a piece of sand stuck to the scope lens, so she licked her thumb and rubbed at the glass. Upon further inspection, she figured out that the speck was getting closer...and multiplying as one speck turned into two, then two turned into four, and four turned into seven. Kalani zoomed in as much as she could with the scope in her hand, her heart started to thunder in her chest like a war drum.

Then the pain in her stomach returned, jolting her backwards as if she'd been shot and her vision began to black out. The scope slid from her fingers as quickly as she was slipping from reality, her head growing fogging as the pain exploded inside her.

It was then that Kalani lost her balance and the world began to disappear.

Off in the distance, she thought she could hear someone shout her name...Luke? Leia? 

She couldn't figure it out before her back hit the hard ground and everything went black.