The remnants of celebratory decoration are what direct the way to the new exhibit. Streamers are delicately draped over the doorway, and the end of one brushes my shoulder as I follow Master into the next museum section. Bright letters proclaiming this room "The Crossing of Aurora." An uneasy feeling slides through me as the floor, walls, and ceiling begin to slowly darken as we make our way farther into the room. Horribly familiar twisted trees seem to grow straight from the floor, now covered in what looked like mud, and tiny flickering lights make the ceiling look like the night sky. I have suddenly been transported into the bogs of Aurora. Even the smell and temperature felt eerily like it had when I had made the fateful journey. I cross my arms over my stomach in an attempt to warm myself as the temperature slowly falls. Somewhere hidden in the foliage a speaker belts out the sounds of nightlife. "Isn't it so strange?" I look back to Master as he continues to make his way down the now dirt trail. "This was something that spanned the entirety of what was then the eastern edge of the world. Coming here, you can almost see why the people of old were so afraid to traverse the Aurora." 

The trees almost seem to part for us as we come to the first display cases. Nestled into the background like they had also grown strait from the mud, the glass enclosures were filled with pieces of the cart itself. The carvings hung like artwork. Next were some of the little trinkets found with the bodies, laid with care on a backing of silk. The totem we found depicting the fall in a place of honor. Such a strange sight. These little bits treated like the trappings of royalty. Scraps that had most likely been scrounged from garbage on the streets cushioned on the most valuable cloth in the empire. The next few cases held the remains. I take a deep breath before walking up to the first one. Each person is laid in a casket- like box decorated with carvings much like the ones on the cart. Their bodies covered with simple cloth blankets only leaving their feet and faces exposed. I almost can't stop the scoff working its way up my throat. Even in death they still can't escape the mark of slavery. I of all people can understand the disconnect of soul from body. These people, wherever they may be, do not care about where their bodies are, or what they might be stored in. Such things don't matter in the afterlife. Such things are only a reassurance for those left behind. But I can't help but group myself with them. How many lives have I watched wax and wane? How many loved ones have I given entire lives to just to have them leave like everyone else? I am the very definition of one who was left behind. 

Another thought comes to my mind unbidden and I am accosted by a strange feeling of deja vu. I am suddenly standing over a stone bearing the name of a life lived long ago. My feet are bare, and are almost searing on the hot dirt as I stand and stare at the grave set before me. I was but a teenager. My body holding the lithe grace of youth. I wore the skin of a man, moulded into muscles and the shine of sweat by the hard life of a laborer. We were clearing the ancient graveyard of its foliage and bodies in order to make room for the expansion of the city when an old headstone had caught my attention. 

Liona

Loving Mother and Wife

Merroah va Conear

Liona had been the name I had in a life long before this, but I could remember it like it was only yesterday. My heart had warmed when I saw what my family had done for my remains in my memory, but instantly turned cold when I saw what was scrawled on the bottom. Morroah va Conear. It was the old language of the slaves, what sounded and looked like complete gibberish to the people of the empire but held all the meaning in the world for people with eyes the color of earth. And these simple words held more meaning than most.

Mother of the Revolution.

My family had made me a martyr. They had used my death as the catalyst to something much more troubling. And as I stood there with bare feet holding a shovel I was using to dig up the graves of our ancestors I was already given the answer to all of my burning questions. They had started something they couldn't finish, and had failed. A glance at the surrounding graves confirmed it. I stood over the last resting places of my loved ones who had all been killed no later than a year after my passing.  They dreamed of a revolution, and they had gotten it. And now they rested in dirt deemed of little worth enough to be given to the slaves for their dead. My own dreams of them living long and happy lives after I was gone dashed. With tears streaking lines in the dirt on my face I dug them up from their graves and bore them to the old rumbling truck that waited on the edge of the graveyard. I do not know what the slavers did with the remains, but now as I am once again standing beside Master in front of more corpses I mourn their loss.