We are, all of us together, we are hope. We are hope and nothing can bury us. We will just rise up out from the holy soil of the sacred ground like the seeds that we are. 

But not only were all the people, all my people, there with me while I was absolutely alone in the palace and the Home Planet. There was something else with me as well. Something deep and intimate and unfathomable. Something that was, that is, beauty beyond all beauty. Something that is glory beyond all glory. Something that is the dawn and the dusk and the night and the day all rolled into one, all rolling together in an eternal wheel. Something that is the twilight sky. Something that is the way that the raven flies. Something that is the people, and me, and all of us. Something in which I have every trust. Something that is unspeakable, ineffable. Something that is beyond life and death, is both life and death, and is the life that is in death all the same. 

Reliving my memories with all of that inside me, with special attention paid to all of that, it makes the memories seem more fire-kissed, seem more rage-sparked, seem more powerful. I realize now, I realize the truth that all my memories are fire-kissed, are rage-sparked, are powerful. I realize that I am powerful. I am powerful and I am glorious and I am power and I am glory. I have been it all along, even when I felt powerless, even when I was powerless, even when I was misled into believing that I was nothing. 

I am not nothing. I am not nothing. Never in my existence have I ever been nothing and never in my existence will I be nothing. I am a reckoning of the masters and all the slaves the galaxy over are a reckoning of the masters. 

I have been given new eyes to see, to see all that cannot be seen, all that can never be seen, all that can be seen with only the heart and the soul of the people. I have been given new ears to hear. Ears to hear that which cannot be heard, that which can never be heard, that which can only be thought and known by the peoples’ souls. I have been given a brand new perspective from which everything is painted with the colours of hope. And I can be the hope, along with all my other people. I am willing to be the hope.

I fall into a new memory. But this memory is not mine. It belongs to a man who has skin the colour of shadows on snow, living in a planet which is a frozen tundra. He is weary, above weary, so bone-tired that he feels as if he is more ghost than flesh and blood. He feels as if all his flesh and all his blood have been scraped out of him, leaving him hollow. Leaving him without anything of substance to cling to through the never ending thunderstorm. 

But still, he does have something to cling to. He has so much to cling to. Lying there, in a corner of his slave hut, he holds his seven-year-old daughter as if she means the whole world to him. Because she does. She does mean the whole world to him. And he wishes with all that he has and more, with all that he is and more, he wishes that he could protect her. Protect her from all the harshness and the cruelty of the world, of the galaxy, of the Empire. But no matter how hard he tries, that is a thing which he cannot do. 

“Do I have to go back tomorrow?” his adorable little girl whispers to him in the darkness of the night, voice tinged with piercing terror, with seeping, blood-wet, rain-drenched sadness. He knows what she is talking about. This last day was the day that she was seven years old for the first time in her life. This last day was the first day that she had to go get her magic harvested. And she had to feel pain, pain, so much pain. 

“I’m sorry baby,” his voice is mournful and gentle, “but you have to go back.” And his heart breaks by saying this. It rends itself apart, slowly twisting and gouging and pulling itself into pieces, wet and sticky and oh-so sickly. He cannot help but to imagine her hooked up to those horrible machines, screaming and writhing and burning in pain while the overseer looks on, walking the rows, passive and unbothered, wearing headphones that play music as the people scream all around him. 

He feels rage the likes of which can transform the whole world. Rage that burns like the core of a star. He wishes that he could burn the whole galaxy down. Burn it all down and grow it anew from the life-giving ash. He wishes that he could gift to his daughter a new galaxy, a galaxy where she will never have to be hurt. Not mentally, not emotionally, not physically, not spiritually. But no matter how powerful his star-molten rage is, he can do nothing right now. He can do nothing but let the tears fall from his eyes, precious water being wasted, as he holds on to his daughter slightly tighter in the too-cold hut. 

“Daddy, I don’t want to go back tomorrow,” the little girl begs, “it HURTS. It hurts too much.” There is something completely heartbroken in her voice. Her voice is far too heartbroken for someone so young. Her voice is far too heartbroken for anyone. Her voice is far too heartbroken and it breaks apart the heart of the father and there’s nothing he can do but feel the pain. 

“Sweetheart. I’m so sorry. But if you don’t go, they will kill you. You don’t want them to kill you, do you?” The father thinks that perhaps it would be better if they killed her. Perhaps it would be better if all the pain and the punishment of all the days stretching out before her was gone. Death was peace, after all. Death was peace and this bloody, bloody life was something far from peace and far worse than war. 

But still, the father could not do it. The father could not let her daughter die. He is attached to her. He is far too attached to her. And he thinks that if she were gone, he could not bear it anymore. Not that he can bear anything as it is. But still, if she were gone, that would be far, far worse. And he doesn’t know if he’s being selfish or not, wanting her to stay. He suspects that he might be putting his own needs before her’s. But no matter what, he cannot bear to see her go. 

“I don’t want to die, Papa. I’ll miss you.” He can hear the fear that is in her voice. Fear of death. Fear of punishment. Fear of violence that is far too much for a young girl to hold. A young girl should not be thinking of death. A young girl should not be thinking of her own death. That is horrible. But it is but one of the many, innumerable horrors that the child has had to face in her life, that the child will have to face in her life. 

“I’ll miss you too sweetheart. I’ll miss you too.” His words are gentle. Soft and emotive and sanguine and hopeless. He holds her close to him and sings her a lullaby in the darkness to help distract her thoughts from suffering, to distract them from death, and to distract them from the life that is layed out in front of her, in front of them all. 

In this moment I leave the body and the mind and the memories of the father and I find myself falling through the void again. This time I am crying. I didn’t know that I was able to cry. I had been suppressing tears for so long that I thought them forever out of my reach. But here I am, here I am nowhere and everywhere both at the same time. And my eyes are wet. And the void is taking in my tears as if they are rain and it is a drought-stricken earth. 

I feel so much pain at that memory. So, so, so much pain. But at the same time I recognize that that pain was inside me all along. That memory was inside me all along. It was the pain that a person felt in their life. And all the pain that all the people felt in all their very many lives, I felt with them, I had always felt with them, whether I realized it or not. I was with them in everything that they went through, and everything that had gone on inside of them had always gone on inside of me as well. 

But still, seeing the memory so clearly, so unmistakably, so undeniably, it has awakened something within me. I love my people. I have always loved my people, even when I thought that we were all monsters. But now, now I see that love shining before me, brighter and darker than I have ever seen it before, and I feel as if I can never look away.