People talk all around me, chatting about random subjects that I’m too busy to pay attention to. They are all dressed in finery, bright silken colours and intricate embroidery, sequins sparkling in the firelight of the torches all around us. I’m dressed in a simple black shirt with matching black pants that fit loose on me. I am busy, very busy as the people around me relax and enjoy themselves. And it’s so, so deeply exhausting, being here, doing this, smiling as I get ordered around from place to place.

I want to get out of here, out of this fire lit hall full of tapestries and carvings all over the walls. I want to get out of here and I want to go back home. But I can’t go home. I haven’t been home in years. And I haven’t been able to get out of anywhere I wanted to get out of in years either. I suppose that I was never really free. I suppose that I was always meant for this. It’s the price of being alive, the price that my people have had to pay for years.

“Boy! Over here!” I follow the sound of the rough voice, my dutiful, diligent steps moving swiftly and soundlessly. I carry the tray of drinks in my hands, the many cups of thick, sweet milky fluid in their cool, gilded metal cups with many stylized dents hammered into them.

“Yes, sir,” I reply to him as I get there. He takes a drink from my tray, and sends me off again.

“Come here!” A woman barks at me. I obey.

The rest of the night drones on, just like this. I do not have a moment to myself, I do not have a moment to even take a breath as I am pulled this way and that, called by person after person after person after person. Some of them are a bit gentler. Most of them are rude. All of them demand my attention whenever they seek it. Though I suppose it’s not my attention they demand. I suppose it’s the drinks in my hand. I stay silent, stay obedient as the people relax and talk all around me. I have to.

I go to fill up my tray with drinks, many times, rushing into the kitchen where other servants are busy preparing food and drinks for the party. We exchange glances, but we do not have the time to do more than exchange glances. They are frantic. Busy. Deeply in concentration. Just as I am. There is a strange sort of solidarity in sharing our suffering together, there is a strange sort of solidarity that comes from all of us hurting in similar ways, being hurt by the same people. And for the slightest moments amidst the ordered chaos of the party, I feel seen.

As the night goes on, I feel myself fading away. Fading away and fading away and losing touch with who I really am. Losing touch with who I’m really meant to be. The self alienation sinks down deep into my bones, leaving me hollowed and aching. I feel as though I’m not a person, I’m not a person, I’m not a person at all. I feel as though I am just a vessel for the fulfillment of these people. I am just a vessel for them to get the shallow thrills they want. I know, I know that there is more to me than that. But I don’t know what. I used to know what, but I’ve lost contact with it over the course of this night.

I work and I work and I work until I am exhausted. But finally, after what feels like an eternity to the power of an eternity, I am finally able to rest.

It’s four in the morning, and all the guests have left. I don’t have to clean until tomorrow, and I can leave the hall a giant mess. And so can all my comrades. I trudge out into the night, the cold air leaving me shivering. It’s summer, so it’s not actually that cold, but it’s nighttime, so it’s cold enough. I don’t mind the cold though. It makes me feel some semblance of alive, as if this life of constant serving is not what my blood was born for, as if there is a force within me that is stronger than all of the world.

The moon is out tonight. The moon is full tonight. It casts its eerie, serene glow over the whole world, a clear eye that is looking on the world, on the many people gathered below. It makes the scene in front of me look like it’s not of this world, it makes it look like it’s in a different world. And the world that it’s in is a world that the rich people cannot touch. They may think they can touch it, with all of their midnight carousing. But they cannot touch it truly, because though it is in plain sight, it is hidden. It is hidden and lying beneath the veneer of the surface, waiting and healing all that truly love it.

The dirt path stretches out in front of me as I keep walking, through the night, through the many buildings of town, and towards the forest at the edge of town. I feel at peace there. Even in the middle of night time, when I know not what creatures are lurking in the treed depths, I feel safe there. Because it’s secret. And it’s mine. And it’s ours. And it’s mine. And it’s ours.

I reach the edge of the forest, a forest flowing with moonlight. And there, I am astounded by what I see.

Alicia, my coworker, who like me carries food throughout the parties. She is standing at the edge of the forest, one arm on a tree. Her entire form is bathed in moonlight. And she is beautiful, she is beautiful, she is so so beautiful. Not physically beautiful. Not beautiful in the way that all the rich people in their expensive clothes and jewelry are beautiful. She is beautiful in another way entirely, in a way that is entirely, incredibly better than the garish beauty of the rich. All of her beauty comes straight from the soul, and it reaches from her soul to meet the moonlight, to melt into the moonlight which is itself reaching down to meet her soul. They are two parts of the same whole, her and the moon. And, seeing her, I understand now how much there is that we have, that we are, that they will never have, that they will never be.

“Hi, Alicia,” I say to her, awed.

“Hello.” There is the faintest hint of joy in her surreptitious smile.