I drift until a new memory overtakes me. This time I am a young child, something in between boy and girl, and I am about twelve years old, though I don’t know for sure. I have pale green skin and emerald eyes. I am walking home, my entire body aching, after a long and devastating day of having my magic harvested into energy. I cannot wait to get back home to my mother and father, my uncle and uncle, uncles by bond and not by blood, and the dear, sweet little brother that I have and love so much, who has just turned four earlier this month. The only one of my four siblings to survive.

But still, something horrible and sinister twists in my gut, and I have a dreadfully foreboding feeling inside of me. I have had this feeling for the past half hour. And I do not know what it means. But I know that whatever it is, it will be terrible beyond all words and all comprehension. 

I find myself back home. 

“Hi, everyone,” I squeal out, tiredly. But something is not right. Something is really, really wrong. Everyone looks at me with something dark in their eyes. Something unspeakable. I look around. 

Where is my brother?

Panic slams into me like a hovercraft going full speed. All the air is choked out of my lungs. 

“Where is my brother?” I manage to get out.

“I …” my mother starts, words stilted, “I … the Imperials, they -“ she bursts into tears. My uncle K hugs her, crying himself. It’s then that I know. I know what happened. And all my worst fears become real. 

My head spins, and I grab the wall to steady myself. There is sorrow. Sorrow. Such deep sorrow. But thre is also rage. 

“How could you let them do this?!” I scream at the adults in the small hovel, “How could you let them take him?!” Tears are streaming down my eyes. 

My brother. My brother. My little brother who cuddled me, and likes to be on my lap. My brother who always asked questions. My brother who is willful and stubborn and argumentative, who has adorable jokes and a way to make me laugh when I was at my absolute worst. My brother who has dreams of standing up to the Empire, even at his young age. My brother who mispronounces every word with that childish adorableness of his. My brother who is everything that he is, and all his glory. 

My brother who needs me, needs me, needs me so very much. Who needs my mom and my dad and my uncle and my other uncle. My brother who cannot survive on his own, in the hands of the Empire, facing their superciliousness without us to help him get through it. My brother who misses us, misses us, misses us more than the sun misses us more than the grass misses the sun in the nighttime. I quiver, thinking of what he must be going through right now, so far away from his family, from his true home. 

I miss him. I miss him so much. I don’t know how I’ll survive without him. I don’t know if I can survive. I think of all the wonderful games and stories we made, all the jokes we shared, all the songs we sang. I think about it all and I die inside. I die more deaths than I ever thought myself capable of dying, than I ever thought anyone capable of dying, and I keep dying and dying over and over again until there is nothing left of the person I was before this. 

“They …” my dad begins, voice shaking, “they said …. they said that that they would … they would kill him if we didn’t … if we didn’t give him up.” Of course they did. Of course they absolutely did. The universe-damned Empire and their universe-damned cruelty. 

I sink down to the floor of the thatched-roof hut. And I scream. I scream all the screams that my brother might be screaming. I scream all the screams that he might not be allowed to be screaming. I cry all the tears that he might not be able to cry. Please let him cry. Please let him cry. I hope the Empire has enough mercy to at least let my baby cry. 

I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him. I didn’t even know that the last conversation we had was our last conversation. 

I am pulled back into the void. And I am horrified beyond horror. I knew the cruelty of the Empire. I did know it. But that was … that was too much. Too much to take. Too much to bear. But take it I did. It was something we all had to bear together, all the slaves of the whole galaxy. We have had to bear it, and every single other family separation that has happened, including my own separation. We’ve had to bear it, and we will have to bear it again and again. Until the Empire falls and our people can finally, finally rise. 

I fall in and out of so many memories of the people, as the void takes me through all the lives that I have lived, all the lives that all the people have lived, all the lives I have always felt in my soul but up until now did not know about. I fall through experience after experience, feeling the pain, the hope, the joy, the love, the mourning. And as I fall I do not find myself becoming closer to the people. For the truth is that I was always infinitely close to the people. But now it is placed in front of me and I can realize it in a way that I never had before. 

I feel the grating pain of work days that are eight or sometimes even ten hours, hooked to the machine the entire time, in agony as your magic is being turned into fuel. I feel the exhaustion and the ache that comes after. I feel the pain of knowing that your loved ones are going through the exact same thing, the pain of knowing that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop that pain. I feel the exhaustion of day after day after day after day of this torture, and the absolute dread of the rest of your life stretching out in front of you, each day full of the same pain. 

I feel the pain of having your family taken from you, having your loved ones taken from you, and shipped off into the Home Planet, a planet that is not home, a planet that can never be home. I feel the pain of missing them, and missing them, and knowing that they are far too far away and you cannot hold them in your arms. I experience the anxiety that comes with wondering how they are, what they’re going through, and I experience the mourning that comes with knowing that they are missing you, they are missing you too. 

I go through being taken from my homeland and imported into the Home Planet, into a new world where our friends, our family, our parents, our children, our neighbours, our coworkers, they’re all not there. I go through the mourning that comes with that, the grief and the agony and the loneliness and the lostness. I feel the way people wonder about the people they left behind, the way that they long for them. And I feel the way that they would do anything, anything to break free of this grief. 

I go through all these memories infinitely, living them as if they were my own life. Because they are. 

I experience the grief of loved ones dying. Dying early. Dying early is what most people do, when they’re slaves of the Empire. The daily taking of magic grates on our bodies. Grates on our spirits. And we cannot live with all the work that we are forced to do. The Empire denies that they are killing us. It denies that they are destroying our health. I go through the melancholy that death brings and I go through the terror of being immersed in its threat constantly. 

But it’s not all pain. I feel the secret glory of sharing conversations in the dead of night, cloaked in darkness. I feel the glory of sitting around with friends and neighbours, sharing in each other’s company. I experience rage that is hidden in secret, rage that is shared with those who are trusted. I hear stories and tell stories and make up stories in the company of my people. I promise to people again and again and again and again that there is hope. 

I experience all the rage and rebellion, the cleverness and trickery and mystery of the resistance. I see the way they sabotage the infrastructure of the Empire, leading to people having free days away from the demands of the Empire. I see the way they look for ways to channel their magic. The way they secretly smuggle people out of the Home Planet and back into their families. I see how they secret information to each other and how they manipulate Imperials into showing some mercy to the people. I don’t just see it all, I live it. I am a part of it. I have a hand in doing it all. 

I live thousands, millions, billions of lives. I think I must have been in here for years. But as I live more and more of the peoples’ lives, I find myself understanding the void more and more. I can see how the spirit of everyone and all the lands they live on reaches and stretches through the void. And I can reach through the void as well. I can find how to go through the nothingness, how to go through the everythingness, how to go through the ineffability that threads through all of our life. Everyone’s spirits are here. Everyone’s hope is here. And I can go through their hope, I can traverse it, and I can find my way through everyone. 

I find myself pulled in all directions. I find myself pulled by everyone, by every planet, by all the lands. I find myself able to traverse through all the reeling pulling on my soul. I pull myself through the void. And I hold onto the World Stones as I pull myself through. Even though I can’t see anything, I can still know where I am going. Though where is not the right word. 

I pull myself forwards, and pull myself forwards, and all of a sudden bright light floods my vision and freezing cold floods my body. I clutch the Stones closer to me. And I collapse. 

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