When death threats are issued against Rey, an orphan turned politician (thanks to the help of Senator Organa) from the Western Reaches, who better to protect her life than the Jedi she shares an unusually rare force bond with?
Written for a prompt from @rosemoonweaver for her Ficoween event. Thank you so much Rose for organizing this event! I’m pleased with how my story turned out and I hope you enjoy it.
Three cheers for @lovethemfiercely, who was my beta for this, and @thisgarbagepicker, who did a final read through and assured me it made sense.
Rating: M
Ship: Finnreylo (Finn POV; not part of the Finnreylo Murder AU series)
Content Warnings:
This is a loose mashup between M. R. James’s “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come For You, My Lad” and H. P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu and contains elements from the writings of both of them. Beware of psychological horror, dubious consent, and an unreliable POV. There is no serious violence, no character death, and just a tiny bit of blood, but this story is meant to be disturbing. In one scene a character loses their temper but does not turn violent. Lots of mentions of sex but nothing explicit (hence the M rating).
Prompt:
Character A came into possession of a beach house after a distant relative passed away and left it to them. The house is on a mostly isolated stretch of beach, but the water is clear and the weather is mild. It’s nice during the day, but something strange happens at night. It almost seems darker than it should be somehow, and strange noises can be heard out over the water. Also, there’s the fact that Character A keeps dreaming of a strange figure in the surf and they seem to be getting closer and closer to the shore every night.
It was very clear from the moment they arrived that Rey was displeased with the house. She put on a brave face, but it wasn’t what she’d expected and she was hard-pressed to hide it. Finn could see it in the lines of her body, hear it in the tightness of her voice. He swore to himself to do whatever he could to help make sure she had the best vacation possible, despite her immediate dislike of the house itself.
When Ben had asked Rey and Finn to come along for a week at the beach house he’d inherited from his uncle, that invitation had certain implications: sunshine, creature comforts, lots of together time, and, of course, a nice beach. What they got instead was Grand Manan Island, a Canadian outpost off the coast of Maine. The house was a small cottage, not unpleasant exactly, but built against the side of a cliff with only a very narrow beach between the cliffside and the tideline. It was on the eastern side of the island but faced full south, straight out into the ocean, with a cliff behind it and another cliff beside, running at an almost-90 degree angle from the one behind them to the far southern tip of the island. When the sun was up it would be nice to have relatively unimpeded views out onto the ocean. For most of the day, however, the house itself would be bathed in shadow.