"I feel like I am dust, and ash, and nothing more," Rodley speaks out into the tiny clay room. He's a child. He's a servant. And as such, it makes sense for him to feel like this. No-one deserves to be a servant. 

"I know," I reply, "I feel like that too. Every day during work, every day after work I feel like that. And it's absolutely unendurable."

"I'm so sorry you kids feel this way," Rosali comments. "It's horrible for anyone to feel this way, let alone children." Her dark eyes look so infinitely dark, so infinitely deep under her raven-black eyelashes. "Though I know how you feel. I know far, far too well."

"What can we do about this?" Clari, an older man, asks. "I wish so very deeply that I could take away all the pain everyone feels, that I could take away all the devastation."

"I wish that too," Lia, who is in her thirties, agrees. "I wish that so very much. But we can't take away everyone's pain. Not yet." 

"But we will one day," Mama promises, looking at everyone with steadfast promise in her eyes. My two living siblings are with my Daddy right now, and my other two younger siblings are in the spirit world. 

"But is it really possible?" Rodley speaks. "Can we really make things better, or is this all that exists? Is this pain all that exists? Because that's what it feels like sometimes."

"No," Rodley's dad Darlo asserts. "There is truth and purity and goodness and happiness. No matter what it feels like."

"Those things exist for the overclass, sure," Kolki states, "but do they exist for us? I'm not sure that they do."

"No," I refute. "The happiness that the overclass has is a shallow, hollow sort of happiness. True happiness is so much deeper, so much better, so much more real."

"But sometimes it feels like," Kolki starts, his dark curls shining softly like a halo, "sometimes it feels like if the overclass doesn't have true happiness, and we don't have true happiness, then who does?"

"I know it feels that way," Clari starts, "but you have to have faith. You have to have faith that true happiness exists. You feel it in the depths of your soul. I know you feel it in the depths of your soul. Even when you don't think that it's real, the true depths of you know it is."

"But how can we get rid of this feeling?" Rodley asks desperately, "this feeling that there's nothing more than this society?"

"Remember the story of the burned woman?" I ask him. 

"I do," he answers. 

"Perhaps we are all the burned woman. And we are all her heart. And as her heart, we have to live on. The core of who we are always lives on."

"I want to hear that story again," Rodley states. "Maybe hearing it will help me, even if it's just a little bit."

"That sounds like a great idea," my Mama agrees. "Who wants to tell it?"

"I think I could probably tell it," Rosalee speaks, "since I heard it only a few days ago."

We all talk amongst ourselves for a bit and come to the agreement that Rosalee should tell the story.

———

I am dying. I am always dying. But right now I am so drowning in poisonous, corrosive death that overcomes every part of me. Again and again and again I am dying. Each an every moment that I spend here. Each and every moment that I sit here and am forced to do this. And there's never a reprieve. There is never a single moment away from this agony. This agony that takes every part of my being, every part of my soul, and wrests it away from me. 

I have to cut leather. And cut leather. And cut more and more and more leather. And it's not even real leather, it's fake leather. Fake leather to make shiny and polished shoes. Fake leather I have to cut with this insanely sharp knife so that it's exactly, perfectly right. I can't be even a nanometer off. I have to follow the pattern exactly. I have to be absolutely, perfectly right. Absolutely, perfectly perfect. 

Well, I don't have to be perfect. I have to do perfect. My work has to be perfect. And that's so much worse. That's so much worse than having to be perfect. Because right now, who I am doesn't matter. Who I am doesn't matter at all. All that matters is the work that I do. All that matters is these many many pieces of fake leather. All that matters is these shoes. 

And I'm not a person. I'm not a person. Not right here. Not right now. I am simply a job that has to be done. I am simply a machine that has to work properly. I am simply an instrument to cut fake leather with. And I can't stand it. My soul is being drained from me, and is being collected into pieces of soft brown. I'm not a person, and my soul is being ripped from my insides and I'm gone, I'm gone, I'm going to be gone. 

I have to concentrate entirely, perfectly. I have to shred every part of my mind, shred every part of my brain, until I am honed entirely on the task in front of me. On the task in front of me and on all the misery that is being caused by the task in front of me. All the screaming, screaming misery. I feel like there are knives cutting into my mind, cutting away all the parts that make me who I am. But there's nothing I can do about it. I can't take even a moment's rest. 

I am exhausted on a level that's much deeper than bone-deep. I am exhausted way past my my soul. This exhaustion runs deeper than the sea, runs deeper than the sky. And it pulls me down, pulls me down, pulls me down. But I can't let myself get pulled down. No matter what, I have to keep working. No matter what I want, no matter what I need. 

I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want this so very much. But I have to keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it. Because to stop would be to die. To stop would be to starve, to freeze, to not have any of the basic necessities that all people need. To stop would be to starve my family, to starve my community, I don't have the choice to stop. I never did. 

So I have to keep going. Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. Unimaginably fast. Inexpressibly fast. And it's so violent, this mind-breaking pace. It's so unbelievably violent. As if I am immersed in ice, as if I have been immersed in ice for hours on end without break. It's so violent, as if everything all around me is desperate, anguished screaming. As if everything inside me is desperate, anguished screaming. It's so desperate. It's so desperately terrible. 

Again and again and again and again and again and again I have to do my same, precise movements. Again and again. And horrifically, unbearably fast each time. Precisely, entirely perfect each time. It siphons all my energy. But it siphons more than my energy. It siphons my entire personality. It siphons everything I have, everything I am. 

Desperately, desperately, with everything I am, I have to keep going. This existence is not existence. This life is not living. It is one torturous, painful death after another. And yet it is the existence I have to live through, again and again and again, day after day after day after day. I am desperate, desperate enough that I have to immerse myself in this ice water until my very bones are frozen. 

I wish so very desperately that I was doing something else. I wish so very desperately that I was out playing instead, or making out words in the dust of the ground. I wish I was off somewhere being myself, being a child, being free. But people like us don't get what we wish for, no matter how basic and fundamental our wishes are. For now, at least. 

I am ruled by fear. We're all ruled by our fear. And fear sparks and glares and beams inside every part of me, as I struggle to keep up, as I struggle to do my work perfectly. Fear flashes through my experience, my existence, like a constant, blaring alarm. Like a whining and wailing siren, bursting my ear drums. It flows into and mixes with every other emotion that's already inside me, all my emotions melding together to create a horrific abomination that I have to be drenched in. 

This is what I have to do every day. And the hours melt together. Time seems to have slowed to a crawl. These many hours feel like many lifetimes. They always do. I am so desperate for it all to be over and my desperation makes it even harder to bear, makes it take even longer for this all to be over. It's a cruel trick of reality. Incredibly cruel. 

I am a ghost. I am a ghost. I am a ghost and nothing more. I am definitely not a person. Definitely not a child. I have never gotten the chance to be. I have never been allowed to be. I have only ever been allowed to be completely and utterly shattered in each and every aspect of my being. I don't have a choice. I never did. None of us ever had a choice in all of this horror. I am a ghost. 

———

I am with some neighbours, some people who are neighbour's neighbours. We are trying to heal ourselves. We are trying to heal each other. We are failing, to an extent. But we are also soverign to an extent. The sun will set in an hour. It's summer and the days are long. There is still the soft brush of darkness in this room, though. Which is soft and soft-edged and comforting. Amania is telling a story. 

"The Emperoress is a greedy and power-hungry being. She wanted all the wealth that the people could generate. And she sought to get it, in whatever way possible. No matter how many people she had to destroy and step on in order to get there. 

"So she created two groups of people. A third of the people she set aside to be the managers. They would lord over the others and make sure that everyone else stayed in their place. They would enforce the status quo and make sure that all the wealth returned to the Emperoress. The other two thirds of the people she set aside to be slaves. They would create wealth for the Emperoress and the managers using their toil and their blood, and the Emperoress would take most of the wealth that they made, though she would give some to the managers. 

"This arrangement worked quite well for her and her managers. And they grew their wealth and their abundance and their bounty rather well. The Emperoress had a great big, sprawling house. And she filled it with many, many beautiful things that she got from the work of the slaves. 

"But she needed someone to clean this vast house. She thought about getting an adult slave to do it. But she decided that adult slaves were too rebellious and could not be trusted around all of her valuable items. She resolved then to take a child from among the people and raise it in her vast house, and train it to obey her and be loyal to her. 

"So she took a child from the people, a little girl who missed her parents and siblings dearly. And she lorded over this child, being the main adult in her life, being the closest thing the child would now have to parents. The girl was very miserable indeed, but she did all of the work that was asked of her, for what other choice did she have?

"The child grew into a teenager. A teenager who hid all of her rebelliousness deep inside of herself. She had hatred in her heart for the Emperoress, but she also had a strange sense of love for her as well. But far more than that, she loved her own people, she loved the slaves from whose midst she was taken from. 

"One day she was off getting things from the market for the Emperoress. There, she met the Great Mother. The Great Mother welcomed the broken girl into her arms. She then told the girl that she was the one who could stand against the Emperoress and free her people. The teenager told the Mother that she was no-one, compared to the Emperoress especially, she was no-one, and she could not do the task. The Mother promised her that she was so much more than she thought she was. 

"The Mother then took the girl to the rest of the people. There, they all talked, and decided that a boy a few years older than the girl should go along with the girl to confront the Emperoress. All the people gave the two youths their prayers and blessings, and sigils of protection, and bade them to have a safe journey. 

"They got back to the Emperoress's mansion, and they stood tall and strong in front of her throne room. There, they looked the Emperoress in the eyes and demanded that she free the people. This, of course, she did not do. She told them instead, in one breath, to go back to their work. When the people refused to do this, she called her police to come and arrest them. But the police were too afraid of the act of bravery and rebellion that the two youths had just showed and would not do this. 

"And so the two went back to the people. The Great Mother went to the people and gave them weapons with which they could wage war against the managers and the Emperoress. Now that the people had weapons too, they were powerful against the managers. They outnumbered them two to one and were equally armed. They waged war, servants and industrial slaves and agricultural slaves and slaves of all kind. 

"The war was brutal. It was bloody. All wars are brutal. All wars are bloody. But sometimes it is worth it, fighting for the sake of the future. Fighting so that future generations have a better life than us, so that they do not have to go through the same hardships and the same heartbreak that we have to go through. Safeguarding the future takes sacrifice, but it was sacrifice that the people were ready to make, that they wanted to make. After all, the Emperoress needed very badly to be stood up to, to be deposed. And so the people fought in the war. 

"They won. And they became free. But this victory over the Emperoress has not happened yet. It will happen at some point on the future, in a time untold."

I have known this story since I was young. But hearing it now, like this, with the knowledge of the other story I have read in the book I stole, everything clicks into place. It's like a light has been turned on in my head. There are too many parallels. Far too many parallels for it to merely be a coincidence. This has to mean something. Not something grand. Not something amazing. Not something groundbreaking or revolutionary or liberating. But something nonetheless. And I have to look through the book once again, and I have to remember the stories I've heard over the years. Because they just might have some very interesting parallels to them.