"Don't let them know you guys can read," my mother tells me, voice low and serious and urgent. There are six of us here, sitting in the dirt. Four kids, the other kids of the house, me, and my mother. We are sitting beside the road, sitting outside the rickety door of our hut. A half-rotted door filled with holes that does very little to keep the cold and the wind and the rain out. We are practicing our reading and writing skills by etching letters into the dust of the road using a broken pen we found lying by the side of the road.

"Why not, Mama?" I ask, looking at her fearful and tender face. "What will happen if they know?" We all know who they are. Whenever anyone in my community says they, and doesn't specify who exactly they is, whenever it's not obvious who they is, then the people mean the overclass. They mean the people who lord over us, who have so much while we have so little, and who we all are forced to work for in order to survive.

"They don't want people like us reading," Mama tells me. "That would mean that we have power. That would mean that we have the power to read their books and we have the power to debate them and refute their ideas."

"But we don't have to read their books in order to refute their ideas," Malita states. "We know that their ideas are bad because we have to live in the world their ideas made."

"I know, sweet child. I know. Our lives are lesson enough that everything is wrong. But the overclass, they think that all knowledge comes from books, they think that all knowledge can only come from books, and that if we don't have books we won't have knowledge. They don't know that true knowledge is lived and experienced and found through gnosis in our hearts."

"Wow, that's really stupid of them." Raylenn's voice is dark and clouded over by a broken sort of humour.

"It really is. But it works in our favour. It makes it easier for us to hide from them what we know. And you have to be careful, my child. You have to hide what you know from the overclass. All the knowledge you have, both from gnosis and from teaching."

"We will." Farley promises solemnly. "We all know how serious this is. We have to keep it a secret."

"So, what does this word say?" Mama asks us, pointing to the word she has spelled out in the dust.

We all take a moment to sound it out, carefully matching the curves and lines of each letter to the knowledge we've been taught over the years.

"Inspiration," Calliden speaks out, slight joy in his voice.

"Good job, my child," Mama tells him. "And good job all of you. You're getting it. Now I'm going to write it into a sentence. Tell me what that sentence is." She uses the pen to write into the dust of the ground. Above us the sweet sun is still in the sky as it is a summer day, but it is getting lower and soon it will be too dark to make out the words in the dust. So we make the most of the time that we have here.

"We have been impressed with much inspiration from the novel," Raylenn speaks out, carefully sounding out the sentence.

"What's a novel?" Farley asks, her voice tinged with curiosity.

"It's a big, long book that tells a story," Mama answers.

"Oh, that's cool," Calliden states. "It sounds like something the overclass would have."

"It does," I agree. "I bet they have so many stories."

"Our stories are better," Malita assets.

"Are you all ready for the next word?" Mama asks.

"Yes!" we cry out in a messy unison.

We concentrate as best as we can, but our concentration isn't that good, considering that we're all kids. Still, we all try our best. We all try our best and we make a lot of good progress. I review many of the words that I already know, and I learn three new words. Well, I learn how to spell them. I've known how to say them for a while now. I'll have to knock about the new words in my head. I'll have to think about them and make sure that I remember them.

Eventually it is time for us to go inside. So we filter back into our little hut, which is just big enough for us all to sleep in. The other kids' Papa and Dada - my uncles Chandon and Dromon - are already in the house. My Daddy is not there, neither is my baby sister. My dad has her, and is off somewhere visiting neighbours. They should be back soon, I'm sure.

"So how was the lesson?" Uncle Dromon asks us.

"Oh, it was really good, Dada," Malita replies.

"I learned three words today," I proclaim to the adults in the house.

"Oh that's lovely," Uncle Chandon responds. "What words were they?"

"Impression, revel, and dissemination."

"That's really cool," he replies. "What words did the rest of you guys learn?"

We excitedly tell them of all the things that we learned. We're children. We might be poor, but we are children. And that means that we enjoy learning. It means that we enjoy time spent with our family. The universe knows that we don't get that much time to spend with them. And though there is so much they can't protect us from, our adults give us chances to take at least a little bit of childhood from the hard, cruel world that we live in.

"Hi, everyone," Daddy calls out as he enters through the door. Little Salki is in his arms, blowing raspberries.

"Give me the baby!" Calliden declares. "I want to hug her!"

"Sorry, buddy, the baby needs to drink milk," Daddy apologizes as he hands the baby to my mother. "You'll get a chance to hold her in a bit."

———

I'm with my Daddy and my one year old sister Salki. We are in Frey's hut, along with a bunch of other people. It's night time, and the candles on the window sill illuminate everyone's faces in a soft fuzzy glow. It's beautiful. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is hungry, everyone is tired, and everyone is beautiful. Just as they always are. It's terrible and it's wonderful both at the same time and all I can do is live in it, all I can do is experience it.

"Gods, I'm so tired," Alimi, who is a year older than me, exclaims. "I hate going to work. You guys better tell me I'll get used to it." I know exactly how she feels. I hate working too. I'd much rather learn words and spelling. I'd much rather tell and listen to stories. I'd much rather play outside with my friends. I'd much rather cuddle with my family. The list of things I would much rather do is endless. But we both have to work, almost everyone has to work. 

"I'm sorry, child," Daddy tells her. "You won't get used to it. But hey, it will end one day."

"Is death the only thing I have to look forwards to?" she asks exasperatedly.

"Well you can find small joys in life too," Dialla explains, wisdom in her worn out voice. "You can find joy in all the small moments you have with your people. You can find it in all the strength and the love that we share. You can find it in the way that love connects all of us."

"That's beautiful," Clay begins, their voice both smooth and gravelly at the same time. "There's so much beauty all around us, despite there being so much ugliness all around us. There is beauty all around us that the overclass will never ever be able to experience."

"It's still not fair though," I speak out. "It's not fair that we have to deal with all of this, that we will have to deal with all of this for all of our lives." By all of this I mean the hunger, I mean the sickness, I mean the cold and the heat. By all of this I mean the work that never ends and drains everything from you. By all of this I mean the ever present grief.

"I know," Frey tells me, tells all of us. "All of this is too hard to deal with. But there will be no hardships in the life after this life. There will only be love. And love is still something we have now. For the sake of the world, for the sake of everyone, we have to hold on. So that our people survive. So that we can create a better future."

"Hi!" my sister cries out to me, joy and hunger both in her voice. Her eyes are more world-weary than any child's eyes should be, but she loves playing.

"Hi!" I call back at her. She giggles. We play together for a bit, and it does so much to heal my heart, it does so much to soothe my soul. But it breaks me at the same time. It breaks me because I know that there is no hope for her. After a few minutes she goes to play with Alimi.

"There are many ways we can help each other, even if we don't have any resources or power," Alive is explaining. "There are many ways we can take back our power. And giving each other love, giving each other strength, that's one way that we can do this."

"You guys give me lots of strength," I acknowledge to the people around me. "When I'm here with you, when I'm here with any of you, it feels as though I'm somewhere where, you know, even if it's not safe, my soul is safe. And you all heal me."

"Aww, thanks," Dialla coos. "I feel the same way about you, about everyone as well."

"Work and everything takes so much from us," Clay starts. "And this sense of hopelessness, this sense that this is all that there is in the world, that takes so much from us as well. But sitting here with everyone, it just, it just lights a fire in my soul that not even the strongest of storms will ever be able to put out."

"Absolutely," Alimi agrees. "We always love each other. And no matter how much apathy the overclass has for us, no matter how much the overclass doesn't see us as people, they just see us as things to be used, we can still know that we are people, we can know that we see each other as people."

"We can always remember that we deserve so much more that what they give us," Frey adds. "We can always remember that we are so much more than they think we are. We are infinite, each and every one of us. We are all beyond infinite, and we all hold the entire universe inside of ourselves. We all hold the entire universe inside of ourselves and we all hold each other inside of ourselves. And nothing in the universe can take that away."

"There's so much more than what the overclass thinks there is," Daddy begins. "There is so much that only our people are able to access. And no matter how much more they have than us, in all the ways that matter, we have so much more than them. We have access to things that are far deeper, far more beautiful and ancient and inherent than they'll ever be able to find, no matter how much they try to find it, no matter how much they try to have what we have."

"It seems hopeless at times," Alive concedes, states, acknowledges, declares. "It seems so very hopeless. But we have to remember that what we have is so much more than what they think we have. We have to remember that what we have is so much more than what they let us have. And we have to remember that for future generations and for the sake of the whole world, we have to keep holding on to hope. Because there is hope. And we always have to remember that there is hope no matter what. We deserve more and our kids deserve more and the future generations will have more, they absolutely will. They will inherit a better world and there is absolutely nothing that the overclass can do to stop this from happening."

"So what does that mean?" Alimi asks.

"It means that our lives are not for nothing," Dialla answers. "It means that our lives are for the future generations. It means that our lives are for holding on to hope and holding on to love and loving each other and making sure our people survive. And our lives are for laying the groundwork for revolution, which will definitely happen some day."

"We're stronger than anything and everything," I declare. "We're strong because we all have each other, and that means that we all have each other's strength. And the strength of so many people put together will win in the end, it has to."

"Yay!" Little Salki proclaims, lifting her arms up to the sky.

"Yay!" Dialla echoes. "You're so sweet! Little Salki is so sweet!" There is joy in both of the two ladies' eyes, despite everything else that there also is.