32 BBY
Tatooine
Mos Espa Slave Quarters

There was a specific type of distaste a foreigner caught while walking the sandy plains of that specific desert planet. The hot grit that could be felt even through leather boots crunched beneath feet, creating an unpleasant sound everywhere one went. The air smelled dry, like starchy oxygen. All around stood vast hills whose beauty belonged in an ocean, of which the planet had previously been.

The twins suns beat down on anyone unlucky enough to find themselves on such a desolate, lowly planet. In a galaxy full of beauteous castles, forests, and cities, one could hardly imagine living such a humble life. The desert mercilessly swallowed victims of all races to its non-appeal, which provided the perfect opportunities for those in hiding or looking to lie low.

The humanoids who lived there were either outlaws or slaves. There was no in-between. Fair treatment was a thing unheard of, and hope was a word seldom used. Those born to the ways of the desert had accepted their fate: either a life of servitude or a life of poverty.

This statement could not have been said of the little slave boy who gazed out at the marvelous galaxies above him, longing to touch them, to leap forward and become one with the atmosphere. He thought of the legends he had been told and wondered if any of the myths of gods and angels he had heard were, indeed, fact. Even a simple, lowly child of little schooling could see that some power had created his home, and that nothing had been accidental.

The lights in the sky shimmered and blinked as if looking at him in equal wonder. The boy felt as if something would come and sweep him off his feet and carry him to the place he longed to be.

In his hands he fiddled with a collected scrap of a firm material and a cooking blade. The light from the house provided enough luminescence to show a bit of detail in the material. As the boy carved up the small block, he heard a voice call his name, beckoning him to return to the house. He returned the call, answering affirmatively.

His feet carried his back inside the house. A wall of heat hit him, and he realized how cold he had become sitting outside under the dry, desert night sky. Allowing his mother to hug and kiss him goodnight, he ran toward his poor excuse of a bedroom. A curtain separated the rest of the house from his bed. He washed his hands and face, brushed his hair, and dusted his clothes off.

He exited the small area to another one similar in size. On the bed lay a girl. Her long, unbrushed brown hair encompassed her face like the halo of a dirty angel. A bit of dirt caked her nose and cheeks, the only color on her otherwise pale skin.

The boy leaned over and kissed her forehead. He pushed back a wisp of hair from her face. The girl did not respond, and he did not expect her to.

For as long as he could remember, she had stayed like that: motionless and unresponsive. Their mother told him of the days long past when they would play together, too young yet to work. She had held him and cried, wishing for just one more day that the twins would come home filthy and hungry.

Instead, brother and sister had been separated from each other for nearly six years of their lives.

In the back of his mind, the boy could vaguely recall the feeling of the sickness. It numbed the mind and tired the victim, but sleep was scarce when the body felt like knives continually punctured and a crushing weigh consistently loomed, threatening death. It was not something he liked to remember.

After only a week of that, the he had recovered. His strength had returned. But his little sister had succumbed to a seemingly eternal weakness. She did not speak, and she rarely ate. Her breaths were short but labored. Her body had grown uncomfortably thin and colorless.

Still, he held on to his dreams of a galaxy where he was a pilot, where his mother was not a slave, and where his sister was well and living a perfect life.

He felt what he thought was wind, but it carried a feeling with it. The music of quiet hope flooded his senses.

It was his song that was playing in the wind, the one he had heard many times in his life. He heard it while he was working. He heard it while he listened to his mother's soft singing, the tunes somehow matching. And he heard it now, standing by the person he loved most in the world.

He had yet to understand why he heard the music, but he clung unto it. He was a lowly slave on a lowly planet. He was the least among the lesser. He was as valuable as the sand on his home planet.

Returning to his bed, he pulled his blanket close to his ears, not quite blocking them.

He closed his eyes, listening to the music of the universe, imagining the things he thought he would never have.