It's nighttime. An hour until I have to go to bed. My work for the day is over. Weapons training practice is done. I've had dinner. And now I'm not hanging out in the tents with the others. I'm lying on the ground under a tree. It's cold. Autumn has just begun to set in, summer flickering out. The hustle and bustle of the camp is silenced but still people flow from one place to another, oblivious to me as I lay under the tree thinking. That's good. I'm not in the mood for conversation. I hope people will leave me alone. 

I think about my mother. I want to make her proud. I want to make her feel joy at the young woman I have become. But I don't know if I can. I know, I know she loves me no matter what. She's the kind of woman with an open, kind heart that loves unapologetically and unconditionally. But I need to make her happy. I need to make her proud. She put her life on the line for me. She escaped her master's house despite how dangerous that was. She trekked through miles of hostile territory with a six-year-old, a two-year-old, and me. I was only a year old when my mother took me and my siblings and she fled. She didn't want us to live the kind of life she had lived. She wanted better for us. She wanted hope.

The war had just broken out. Slaves all over the Empire were revolting. People couldn't take it anymore. They told themselves that anything was better than to continue living in slavery, than to raise the new generations in slavery. And they were right. I'd rather die than live as a slave. 

Because as hard as it is to live here, like this, I am considered a person. I am considered as a person, not a thing or an asset to be used. Not a piece of machinery meant to do work. I value that, above everything. The right to be thought of as a person.

But that doesn't mean I'm happy. The war has stretched on for twelve years and there is no end in sight. We're losing people - people who would rather die standing up to the Empire than be under its heel, but people nonetheless. It has gone on for most of my life. And as much as I know I should hold onto hope, I can't. 

After everything my mother has done for me, I think, after everything she has done for my freedom, I am not doing enough to help the war effort. Sure I work hard to make sure the soldiers and other people are fed. Sure I work hard to prepare the medicine Issenne shows me how to prepare. I train for the day I will myself join the ranks of the freedom army. Yes I've even seen battle during the few times when there was a real crunch to get numbers up. I've bled and screamed and hurt for the war. I've exhausted myself working. I've been hungry and thirsty and cold. And I wanted to do all of it. Because bleeding and hungering and working and hurting for a better future is so much better than bleeding and hungering and working and hurting to increase the wealth of already rich people. And that's what slavery is. I'd rather die than be a slave. And I'm lucky that I can fight for my freedom. Our freedom. 

But still it adds up to nothing, So much constant work and yet it all feels like nothing against the sheer force of the Empire rolling out over all of us. The Empire is stronger than steel and sharper than razors and the Empire is overwhelming. It's everywhere. And I am but a fly against it. I can't take on the force of the Empire. It's so huge, so all-consuming, so omnipotent and omnipresent. 

I want to help. I just really, desperately want to help. But there's so much to do everywhere. There's so fucking goddamn much. And I'm weak and small and so so entirely insufficient. I don't know, I don't know. And I'm just ... I'm such a failure. People are dying on the battlefield. And I'm here lying on the ground. I can't do it. I can't stand up to the Empire. I can't save my people. 

Issenne is walking up to me. I can tell that they're walking up to me and not just walking up. In the dark night their black birch-brown eyes look like pools of shadow. They move like a raven, as they always do. They are kind. They are good. I love them. But they're not the kind of person it's always easy to get along with. They're stubborn. They're brave. They came of age when Emperor Trudemius was on the throne and you could tell. There's always an anxiety about them. A fear behind the dark pools of their eyes. There's always a sense of protectiveness that's so strong it's almost unbearable. The younger people call them overbearing. Though by all means they're young themself. It's hard to remember that they're twenty-one though. Not when they never act like it. It makes sense though. They've lived through so much war. So much slavery and oppression and exploitation before that. So much loss. It made them who they are. 

And who they are shines with pure divinity like the sun. Too bright, too hot, yet warming and nurturing at the same time. 

It's hard to remember that I'm thirteen, too. This last year was the year where I really exited the safety of childhood - well, the meagre safety of childhood that can be found amidst war. It's been both exhilarating and terrifying to look at my new responsibilities and try to navigate them. But what if ... what if I can't? 

"Charlotte?" 

"Yeah?" 

"What is it?"

"What?" 

"You're not okay. Why?" 

"I don't know. I'm tired." 

"Physically or mentally?" 

"In my ... in my soul." 

"What are you thinking?" 

"That I don't think ... I don't think I can do it." 

"Who made you think that?" They puts their thumb on my wrist, feeling my pulse beat through them. 

"No-one. Well, Anthem did. But to be fair she was only talking about her own fears and then I kind of internalized them." 

"Oh. Yeah she's very unsure of herself. She's sweet. Full of dreams. But she's young. She doesn't recognize her power." 

She is all that, and more. She's a little shadow of a teenaged girl. She moves through the world as if she's a part of the air itself. You can't notice her unless you try. We always have to make sure to try. She left her master's house eight years ago, all alone, six years old, and full of more rage and pain and overwhelming agony than she could possibly comprehend. She gave everything she could to the cause. Fought in battle after battle and bathed herself in the blood of the Empire, and in her own blood as well, as soon as she was old enough that people couldn't hold her back anymore. She is really a lightening bolt of action, with the eyes of a wolf and the snarl of a cougar. But underneath all that she's a broken girl who was raised by cruel masters rather than loving parents. She can't comprehend how she could possibly be good and beautiful and deserving of love. She can't comprehend how she could have something to give the world. 

But at the end of the day she does have a point. Her and I are both young. Too young to properly know our place in the cause. And we're both lost children. And we're both just two children standing up against the might of an Empire that controls the entire world. 

"Look at us though," I say. "We don't have power, do we? Not money nor power nor time nor anything. How can we change things?"

"We have spirit. We have each other. We have cleverness. Kindness. Ingenuity. Cooperation. We have a will that they cannot break. And we have a fighting spirit that they cannot subdue. One that always finds a way. Even against the most insurmountable of odds it's always finds a way." Their voice is soft in the moonlight. Contemplative. Understanding. 

"How?" I ask. "Just look around. Everything's a fucking mess. I can't even picture what the new world would look like." 

"Let me tell you a story. A real one this time. I've got to warn you though it's fucked up." 

"Okay?"