We keep running and running and running through bone-weary exhaustion.

The grass is cold in a dead sort of way rather than a sparking winter sort of way. It is just the tiniest bit wet with what doesn't quite feel like water. The air is damp but not quite foggy around us. The Fateworld is really a strange world to be in. An unsettling one.

Lilith is in front of me by a few steps, and Anderei and Katapa are behind me so I can't quite see them.

Love is pumping, pumping, pumping throughout my mind.

It is a glorious feeling and a grief-mired feeling both at once. Love is both overwhelming grief and unbreakable strength.

It has always been this way. The love I feel for the family and community of my childhood, for my parents. For the aunts and uncles and titis both biological and adopted, who were pretty much my parents. For the friends I grew up with. That grief is always a stone in my chest, a flood I drown in. But the knowledge that they love me, that they see me as a human being, that they sincerely want me to be happy, that they think about me just as I think about them, it's something that gives me life to keep going. The grief that my old family and my new family and all my fellow slaves, who are indeed all my family, are stuck in these cycles of suffering and hopelessness. The strength that comes from knowing that we are all one, we are all together. The fresh, days-old grief that my /children/ will suffer through the same childhood I suffered through. The strength of loving them. Pain and healing, protection and destruction, poison and medicine. Love.

And right now it is the energy that powers my steps. My flight.

Suddenly we stop. The damp, slightly slimy grass has been replaced with jagged, sharp-edged rocks, all of which jut out at harsh angles, have ridges sharp enough to cut our bare feet.

"What is this?" Anderei asks.

"I'm fucked if I know," Katapa replies, "probably some weird Fate stuff."

"Let's be careful," I say, voice full of circulating concern.

We tread slowly on the harsh ground, careful to not get cut on the jutting rocks and sharp edges.

Suddenly we hear a thunderous roar. Not a wild roar. Not one that could've come from an animal or anything remotely like one. No, rather it is the roar of an enraged man. And a rather powerful one.

"Please, sir! The baby needs food!" This voice is of an adolescent girl. It is crying and full of desperation, pleading, terror, sorrow, and, in fact, guilt.

"You should have thought about that before you shirked your goddamn responsibilities and decided to make half these stitches all crooked!" This is the voice of a man, but somehow different from the voice of the roaring one, but still the same nonetheless.

"Sir! Please. I will fix them even if it kills me. But just let me stop to feed my infant child when she needs me!"

The four of us had previously been hiding behind a large boulder, but now we peek our heads out in concern.

In the barren rocky landscape, there is an image of a grey-walled room, with a handful of people hunched over pieces of fabric. It is a translucent image against the solidity of the landscape, all of it. As if it is somehow from a dream. But it doesn't seem dreamlike, it seems real. There is a dark-eyed girl, crying. She is holding a baby, who is maybe a few months old. Around her horrified-looking workers look on, obviously wishing they could give her some form of comfort. A middle-aged woman who looks older than she should, a young adult with smouldering eyes, and two teenagers. A towering man clad in a clean white fine-woven shirt and black slacks with suspenders looms over the teenaged girl, seething with rage.

This man has another man behind him. A man dressed in red and gold and orange. He has layers upon layers of whole furs draped over him and a long, polished and engraved rifle that looks like it is made of the most expensive wood. He isn't a flickering half-image but rather solid and shining against the dreary sky. Snarling and smirking, he dances his fingers over the towersman's head and sends faded plumes of purple smoke into the image.

The man in the fine shirt wrests the infant from the girl's arms, and the child begins to cry. They have the smallest tuft of black hair on their little round head. His rough arms grip the baby a bit too hard, grip them wrong. The child starts crying louder. A wild, terrible, small, delicate, human, divine sound that should not exist in this world. I'm tensed in horror. She screams. Tears are running down her face.

"Please! Don't hurt my baby please sir..."

Then the man sweeps out of the room, his footsteps fast and furious. And hard so so hard. The baby is silent now, eyes wide with terror, with desperation. The door slams shut behind him. He puts the wet-eyed, months-old infant on the ground beside the wall. Outside. Then he leaves. The baby is limp against the hard unyieldingness of the ground. Once the man rushes away the baby starts to cry again.

What the fuck? Who does that? Well the towerpeople. But babies don't belong on the ground. Oh universe. The child is crying and crying and crying, flickering in and out of visibility. And oh universe my heart is dying. The man, the Fate I guess, dressed in fur and with hard eyes is snarling and laughing as he sends deep purple plumes of smoke into the flickering towerperson. The curling and shifting smoke arcs across the divide, somehow both steel-edged and solid and slippery and smoke-like. Smoke like. Not smoke. It coalesces around his head, around his short-cut silky brown hair, twisting and warping before sweeping into his very head, or stringing through his ears. The Fate laughs. The man sneers. He turns on his heel and leaves. The Fate vanishes in a sparkling puff.

Everything seems more unreal than it ever did as the baby cries and cries and cries. They cry and it's such a horrible sound and I'm called to this child. I snap out of my trance. I run to the child. Transcending boundaries, I pick them up into my arms, rock them gently. They feel solid, soft, real. Beautiful. Precious. So full of innocence and vulnerability. I stare at their face, which no longer flickers. I hold them tight to my chest and rock back and forth, singing softly.

/I'll carry you up this shadowy hill

Over the horizon still

We'll emerge on the sunbathed side

I see you baby, you don't have to hide

I'll carry you up this shadowy hill

Over the horizon still

We'll emerge on the sunbathed side

I see you baby, you don't have to hide

I'll carry you up this shadowy hill

Over the horizon still

We'll emerge on the sunbathed side

I see you baby, you don't have to hide/

It's the very same lullaby I sang to Mafalia, Pavlin, Andronicha and Levi when they were ... with us. I cry. Oh God. One day this child too will be sold. And they will cry. And their mother will cry. I start changing the words of the song as I rock my, her, our precious bundle back and forth.

/Son, daughter, or child of the Earth and Sky

May you be free may you fly

May they know that you are a god

May you strike wildfire like a lightening rod/

The child has calmed down somewhat now, soothed by my rocking, by the quietness of my singing. Thank the universe. But they're still fretful. They spend moments, sometimes minutes, in semi-peaceful wide-eyed silence only to break out into soft wails again. Do they miss their mother? Could I take them to their mother? I have to check if the towerman is in that cramped room.

I force my tired legs up and start walking, quiet as a breeze over grass, towards the door. It's open, just enough for me to poke me head in. Of course I don't poke my head in. I do however look around, and see that the towerman isn't there, just a bunch of tired humans desperately sewing. A young man, barely a man, who looks strained beyond his years stares at me with wide eyes before gesturing me in.

"Who are you?" he asks, soft-voiced and confused.

"I ... um ... I'm Nancee. I' a slave too, though not from this household."

"Oh. I'm Adoolen. These are Jira, Onomayie, and Aslesha and Yenako." They wave, before getting back to work. I know how it is. You can't stop working. No matter what.

"Hi. The baby needs their mom? And food?"

Aslesha extends her arms, and I kneel down next to her. Oh so carefully, gently, we exchange hold of the baby. Aslesha looks at the child like she wants to cry, and the child does cry. At this, Aslesha quickly pulls out her breast and helps the child drink the milk. She puts the baby in the fabric sling she had previously readjusted, tying it better so it won't slip this time, but still holds her baby through the fabric of the sling.

"Our overseer won't be back for a while. But in the meantime Aslesha has to redo all of this, while finishing her other work." Jira looks at me sadly. Her hair had tiny bits of gray in it but for our people that doesn't mean we are old, just worn-down.

"I could help with the sewing." I fucking hate sewing. So much. But the child needs food, and comfort.

"We can handle it. It would be too risky if the master sees you here. Stand guard, maybe," Adoolen replies.

"This is just a shitty situation," Onomayie states.

"Yeah."

We look at each other, and then look at the fretful baby. It's only a few moments but it feels like a while.

"She's sick. We need herbs. We need shoko leaves and kee stems." Yenako says this with both worry and hope in their voice. I've been in this same situation. Sick children. Fever or stomach flu or colic or mystery illness. I know the types of support systems us slaves have. If someone is sick we will send the information down the line, and any person who knows knowledge of which plants will help shares that knowledge. And the people who live near where the appropriate plants grow go out - at personal risk - to collect them. The plants are sent back up the chain to those who know how to prepare them. And the medicine is slipped into the hands of those who need it. When I was a young child my parents and aunts and uncles and titis would go out to gather herbs from the brush by the river bank. As an adult we've received so much help from the medicine network. And in turn we've helped Katapa prepare medicine for many people all over, in the quiet of the kitchen at night, by candlelight, on many occasions.

I'm part of the network, I always have been and I know what to do. I will pass on this message as soon as I'm done guarding the door. We all look solemnly at each other. I place a kiss on the baby's forehead.

And then I head out the door. What I see astounds me. There are small, fragile-looking herbs, ranging from an inch long to about three feet tall, growing in a blanket over the dusty path that leads to the door. It's a soft, almost glowing blanket of green that is so full of life you can almost hear it humming with it. What's even more is that the towerman is lying face down across some of the plants. His right arm is splayed out over his head and his left arm is bent crooked at the elbow, by his side. Is he asleep? Is he dead? I crouch down by his head and check his pulse, one tentative hand on his neck. He's alive. Why is he asleep or unconscious or whatever he is?

My questions are answered however as green mist softly floats from the leaves and stems surrounding us and into his head. It is much kinder, less vindictive than the purple mist of the Fate. Somehow. I realize that while the plants I need might be right here, I have no idea how to identify them.

I open the door.

"Come out here, see this miracle." The people inside look up curiously. "Does anyone know how to identify herbs? Because these magic herbs are growing right in front of the door. And they've knocked out the Master, too."

They clearly only half-believe me, but slowly rise to their feet anyways, with Adoolen helping Aslesha up. And they're greeted by the cool moistness of the oasis of plants. Aslesha, Yenako and Adoolen laugh when they see the towerman passed out on his face.

"What happened to him?" Yenako asks, mirth sparking in their eyes and voice.

"I don't know. I think the plants are doing it," I reply.

"These herbs do seem to be magic," Onomayie starts, voice smooth and hushed, "and I didn't even believe in magic."

"It's good to beleive in magic." Yenako's eyes soften and I am happy for them. "Jira you know plants, right?"

"Yeah."

"Can we get what we need from here?" Adoolen asks, voice laced with threads of excitement.

"Yeah. Look for light green, almost yellow stalks. And long thin leaves in clumps of four."

The child is asleep now, rocked by her mother. I never did get her name. So I ask. And it's Onomaye. And it's so beautiful, just like her.

Even standing here makes me feel healthier, calmer, in both body and mind. These people seem to be alright. I suppose it's time for me to get back to my mission.

We part tender goodbyes and good lucks. And damn the air itself seems to glow with hope.