One day a teenaged girl, barely a teenager actually, robs a medicine store and distributes all the medicine that she gets to the communities. The medicine slips from person to person to person and is never found again, never retrieved by the guards. People whisper about Sheelo as they pass the medicine amongst each other.

But the girl, however, is retrieved by the guards. They beat her and bruise her and tie her in shackles, placing a collar around her neck. They gather all the people, near snd far, and make them stand in front of a great stage. There on the stage they make the girl stand. The magistrate condemns her for her actions, and everyone can tell that the girl has been crying.

Suddenly someone in the crowd screams out a question. They ask the girl if she is Sheelo herself. The girl, of course, is just a girl. But in another strange way, the girl is Sheelo as well. All the people are Sheelo.

And so the girl pauses for a long moment. She looks out at the crowd, her body still shackled and chained. She looks at the older man who asks her the question. And she thinks. Finally, in a glorious, triumphant moment, she nods her head. And the crowd goes wild with cheering.

/Sheelo! Sheelo! Sheelo!/ They chant so loud that it sounds like a thousand tidal waves crashing into the shore. They chant so loudly that it sounds like a thousand earthquakes breaking all at once. They chant so loudly that it sounds like power, pure power. And they keep chanting Sheelo's name, looking at the teenaged girl on the stage.

The magistrate gets an idea. He thinks that if he can kill this Sheelo right here, the people will be depressed and all their rebellion will die down. He thinks that if he can kill Sheelo right here and now, people will see that she is a mortal who can die, just like them. And the stories will stop. And the inspiration will stop. And the rebellion will stop and things will go back to the way they were before.

And so the magistrate orders the teenaged girl killed. And she dies, painfully and slowly, to the chanting of a horrified and enraged crowd. But she dies with a smirk on her face and light in her eyes. And she knows that her life was meaningful, her life was beautiful, her life was revolutionary. The magistrate does not know that the teenaged girl embraces death happily. But she dies, and as she dies she has the sort of courage in her heart that no-one and nothing can take away.

The sort of courage that she learned from Sheelo.

And so all the people talk secretively about Sheelo's brave and rebellious death. They talk about her act of selfless kindness for the people of the world. They talk about how to the very last moment she had dignity, she had courage, she had the upper hand. They talk about how the magistrate of the empire even could not make Sheelo stop holding her head up high.

And they are wrong about this. Of course they are wrong about this. The girl is not Sheelo. But they are right about this as well. They are perfectly right about all of it. The girl is Sheelo, was always Sheelo, will always be Sheelo.

They do not believe however that Sheelo died. They know that Sheelo died. They know that Sheelo's life was taken. But still all the people are adamantly sure that Sheelo lives on. They are adamantly sure that Sheelo still walks alongside them, still protests with them, still plans adventures and heists against the rich and powerful.

Thefts are at an all-time high. People find ways to steal all kinds of things from the wealthy and the powerful. From their stores, from their houses, from their banks, from their storage sheds. The people distribute the goods and money from all these thefts, and for the first time in a very long time, the people have enough.

All the thefts get attributed to Sheelo, even though it is the people committing them. And the people are not wrong, attributing the thefts to Sheelo. They are not wrong at all.

In the meanwhile the wealthy and powerful grow more and more enraged, as the people steal from them and do not go to their work. They do not know how to deal with these misbehaving commoners. They thought that this Sheelo problem was gone for good. But they realize that it isn't. And they grow more and more afraid.

One day a young man and his boyfriend rob a bank. The boyfriend is able to melt into the crowd and not get caught. But the young man is caught by the guards before he can escape. The boyfriend screams and runs towards the young man. And he gets caught as well. The two men are taken to the stage in the middle of the town square. And they are held in front of the crowd again.

They are held on their knees in front of the magistrate. But they turn their heads and look at the crowd.

A person asks them, once again, if they are Sheelo. But this time the person asks them both. How can two people both be Sgeelo? But two people can both be Sheelo. And all the people in the crowd know that.

This time the couple doesn't pause to think before answering. They both declare together, that they both are Sheelo. And hearing this the magistrate is overcome with anger. And the crowd is overcome with jubilation.

They cheer and they cheer and they cheer. Again, chanting Sheelo's name as before. And this causes the magistrate to sentence the men to die.

Again, Sheelo is dead. Again, Sheelo has been killed by the wealthy and the powerful. Again, the people are told that Sheelo is no more and that they should stop having hope. But the people have been through this before. Their belief grows only stronger, not weaker.

For they are sure that Sheelo still walks among them.

For the next few years tensions rise and rise and they keep rising like the sun in the morning or the moon at night. Civil disobedience grows more and more common, more and more widespread, more and more pronounced. Crime becomes more and more widespread and common too. The guards start killing protestors. Sheelos die in front of crowds and in protests. Many, many Sheelos with many, many names and faces and lives. All this only makes the people more inspired.

By this time the Sheelo stories have become too numerous and too wild and too fantastical for anyone to believe. But the people believe them nonetheless. For the people believe that they are all Sheelo. People believe that she unites them all and transcends them all and causes them to transcend themselves.

And so, eventually, all the tension boils over to open revolution.

The people are fighting their way through the streets, taking on guards and enforcers and military and militia alike. The people use their improvised weapons and their stolen weapons. The people use their vastly superior numbers. And the people take on the vastly more well-armed forces of the empire.

The people are afraid. Of course they are afraid. They are as afraid as Sheelo was each and every time she was brought to her death, in whatever form or forms she happened to be taking at the time. The people are as afraid as they were during all the times that their protests were met with violence. As afraid as Sheelo was during those times.

But the people fight through and overcome their fear. Sheelo fought through and overcame her fear. For the people know that now is the time of the reckoning. Now is the final battle. Now is the day that will bring in a new era, when all the inequality and the injustice and the suffering will end for good and the new generations will inherit a new world. Sheelo knows this too. And so she fights on.

The revolution has the wealthy and the powerful quaking in their shined leather boots. It has the guards and the magistrates raging in anger and contempt. It has the emperor hiding away in his greatest palace. They all know, too, that their day of reckoning is coming and their empire is about to fall. And to them it all seems like pure chaos, like all the rules that they thought that they ruled the world with have simply vanished into the air.

The people gain more and more ground, as more and more people die in the revolution.

Many people die. Young people die. Older people die. People barely old enough to wield weapons die. People at the end of their lives die. People in all sorts of ranges in between that die. Men die. Women die. People who are in between die. People who are both die. People who are neither die. People who are sometimes one and sometimes another die. Lovers die. Single people die. Children die, parents die, siblings die, friends die, neighbours die. Sheelo in all her infinite forms continues to die and live and die and live and fight on.

It is all very horrible and bloody and the grief piles on and on and on. But it is worth it. They all know that it is worth it. Because it is the start of a new day, of a new night, of a new era. The younger generations will no longer have to grieve and suffer and toil and hurt. The younger generations will have true freedom and true equality for all times to come. It is worth it.

The revolutionaries gain more and more ground. They get closer and closer to the walled palaces of the emperor. And they break their way through the gates, squishing all together amidst rivers of blood. And they march as one flowing stream to the emperor himself. And they kill him.

The guards finally stand down, and there is cheering in the streets. Cheering all over. Parents hug their children. Neighbours hug their neighbours. Friends hug friends. Strangers hug strangers. They all join hands and celebrate together, singing songs and chanting joyous chants and yelling out in glee.

They sing about Sheelo, and they chant Sheelo's name over and over and over again, just as they did during the executions. But this time the chants are not defiant, the chants are victorious. This time Sheelo has finally won. She died, many many many times over, but she won. And now they can rebuild the world into a better and kinder place.

And so they do. They build a world based on kindness, a world based on community, a world based on equality. And they tell Sheelo's stories to their children. Children who grow up free and full and well-educated and well-taken care of.

And still, after all of this, the people still do not know where the Sheelo stories came from, they do not know who the first Sheelo was, they do not know who started it all.

But they still chant her name.

———

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