I’ve never been in the void. I’ve never actually been in the void before. All I have done is dangle limbs and body parts into it. But now, now with everything I have and everything I am plunged into everything that the void is, I can finally, finally know what it’s like to be engulfed, enveloped, consumed.
The box holding the World Stones disintegrated in front of my eyes, as I suspected that it might do, and so I madly grasped through the void to collect all seven stones in my hand, which I managed to do just barely. I am holding them tight to my chest right now. I cannot lose them. I cannot lose them. Whatever happens, I cannot lose them. Everything relies on these seven tiny pieces of rock.
Well, actually, that’s not true. Everything depends on us slaves and what we do. The rocks are just an opportunity. It is up to us to take that opportunity. It is up to us to make the best of it, to find our power, and to use all the power that we have, all the power that we’ve been building inside of us for so very long.
I have to prove to my people that we can win. I have to prove to my people that we can be saved. I have to prove to my people that we can save ourselves. We can save ourselves and we always have been able to save ourselves and all we have to do is unlock that power that is inside of us, that has been inside of us all along. I have to prove to my people that it doesn’t matter what the odds are, it doesn’t matter what we are up against, we can still win.
Of course, I have to get out of this void with all the stones in order to do that. So that is what I turn my focus to.
I have no idea where I am going. It feels like I am falling and flying both at the same time. It feels like I am being pulled each and every way, all at the same time, like I am going everywhere at once. Yet at the same time, it feels as if I am going nowhere. As if I am absolutely still and the world is absolutely still all around me. It’s impossible for me to get a sense of direction in all of this. I don’t know which way I’m going, if I’m even going. I don’t even know if I still exist.
There is blackness all around me. Blackness that is deeper than black, darker than black, blackness that is not blackness at all. I cannot describe it. I cannot describe it at all. I have seen it before. I have seen it many times in my travels through the palace. But that was nothing like this. It was nothing like being surrounded by the darkness on all sides, everywhere, wherever you turn.
It’s so dark that my own deep-hued skin seems light against it. Well at least I can still see myself. At least I can still feel the Stones against my chest. At least I know that I still have a body, I still have the Stones, and I still have my existence, however strange this existence might be. I exist, and I can hold on, and I can move forwards.
And I have to move forwards. I have to do it as soon as I can. Because I don’t know how much time is passing in this place. I don’t know if I have been here for seconds, or days, or hours or years. I don’t know if I’ve been tumbling through this darkness forever or if only a few moments have passed. I don’t know if my thoughts are all racing through my head or if they’re being stretched slowly like taffy. I don’t know if the world around me has changed immeasurably or if the Emperor is still standing there outside the tunnel, watching me go in.
The void is not oppressive, though. It’s not oppressive at all. I feel a sense of freedom, a sense of belonging here that I have never felt before. There is nothing here. Nothing taking me and twisting me and controlling me to be its own thing. Yet there is everything here. All that ever existed, all the people, their hopes and their dreams, all take up residence in this void, and I am one with it, I am one with it all. There is a oneness here that nothing can describe, nothing can imagine. A oneness that perhaps nothing can even experience. And I am part of it all, I’m part of the whole universe.
I almost want to just let go. To let myself loose and experience it all. I feel like I could lose myself entirely in this. I feel like I could find myself completely. I feel as if everything I am and everything I was and everything I could become could come to me and I could become everything that I have ever been or will ever be all at the same time.
I feel as if I am immersed in a secret knowledge that I cannot explain. I am immersed in a secret knowledge that I cannot understand. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is but it’s there. I can feel it. I can feel it and it’s there. It stretches out before me, beyond space and beyond time, beyond number and beyond form. I can feel all the knowledge, secret knowledge, forbidden to me, and inexplicable.
I am bathed in it. On all sides I am engulfed and enveloped and immersed. I am consumed by it. But I am not burned up. I am all this knowledge all around me and it is me and we are one. I can feel it reaching towards me. It reaches towards me and I reach back. I am ever-reaching, always reaching, and I can grasp it, I can grasp it with every fibre of my being. But somehow, there is something that I can’t grasp. Something that I can’t grasp no matter how much I reach for it.
There is an energy all around me. There is energy within me. It hums and thrums and twirls and dances. It’s beyond shape, beyond form, beyond symmetry and gravity and movement. But I can feel it flowing through me. I can feel it flowing through each part of my body and all of my mind. I cannot name this energy. I cannot put any description to it. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s nothing. It’s absolute nothingness. But it’s everything at the same time.
Something about this void, about this immersion, it feels like home. It feels like something I have never known before, and it feels like something I have always known deep in my heart, something I have always longed for, something I have always felt an intense connection to and an intense disconnect from. I breathe. I feel wanted here. Not wanted for my magic or my obedience or my work. But wanted for some unknown, unknowable quality of my soul which has always been mine and has always been me. It is an utterly glorious sensation.
I can feel myself losing myself. I can feel myself losing myself more and more, unraveling as I experience the void in all of its entirety. I cannot let this happen. I must hold on to my consciousness as I float, or fall, or fly through the void. I must hold onto myself so that I can find a way out of this and into the world that I must save.
Yet, in a strange way, this void feels like the whole world in all of its entirety.
I try to navigate the void. I really try to navigate it, trying to grasp at whatever I can and propel myself in any way that is possible. But I cannot even propel myself, or turn myself, or direct myself at all. I am entirely at the mercy of the void. And I do not know how long I will be in here. But I have to get out. I have to get out. I simply have to. Except, I have no idea how.
Eventually I give up trying, because there is simply no way to navigate, there is simply nothing to do. And so I allow myself to drift in these endless seas, seas which are not seas, and I hope that eventually the tide will spit me out on some shore somewhere. I let myself relax. And I let myself feel the nothingness all around me. Nothingness which is everythingness and everythingness which is nothingness. I let it lull me. And it does.
I feel more and more at one with the void as this time which is not time goes on. I feel more and more lost in it, more and more found in it, and more and more swallowed by it entirely. I did not know that it was possible to be more swallowed by the void than I already am. But I find myself getting increasingly swallowed as this time which is not time goes on. I find my mind increasingly uncoiled and stretched out and doused in nothingness, doused in everythingness.
From within the void I can feel something calling me. I can feel something pulling at me, reaching out and begging for me to reach back. And I am begging to reach back as well. I myself am begging to grasp and connect with this strange call. I don’t know what it is, this call, but I feel familiar with it. I feel more familiar with it than I have with anything before in my life. It feels like a mother’s arms wrapped around me. A true mother, one that cares and can be there for you when you needed it. It feels like a call to come home.
And I follow it. I follow the call to come home. I wander behind it with my mind. And I find myself swimming through the void, not with my body but with something far older, far deeper than my body. The call, it calls to me. It calls to me. And I become one with it.
I’m falling. I’m falling but I’m flying but I’m falling. I look around, and instead of the blackness, I see the gardens of the spring palace. The royal family are there but they don’t notice me. My heart jumps to my throat for a second as I think that I’m back on the Home Planet. But something feels wrong about this. I feel different. I feel so much more raw, so much more searching, so much more fragile. I feel like an open wound bleeding out into the sky. Much more so than usual.
“I’m proud of your skill at hunting wild beasts…” the Emperor is talking to the Prince. I remember this. I remember this. I was six years old, the Prince was nine.
“Your skill with the reverb bow has really improved,” his mother is telling him.
I am silent. I am in the background. I am always silent. Always in the background. Always perfect and obedient and lacking any emotions of my own.
Except I have emotions. I have always had emotions. And right now my emotions are shredding apart my insides as if I am being cut with serrated saw blades. I feel like I can’t breathe, even though technically I can. I feel as if I am drowning on dry land. But I always feel as if I am drowning on dry land. This is nothing new. I don’t know how I’ll survive this. I don’t know how I can find the courage to continue existing.
The Prince is smiling at his parents. The Prince smiles a lot. With hair the colour of sunlight and eyes the colour of the sky, he is a perfect, shining summer day. And I am a dark and shadowed night in contrast to him. Unseen, unheard, unwanted. Existing not to exist but to serve the Empire.
But underneath all that I feel something else. Something I have not noticed before.
There is a beauty inside me. A great, arching, reaching eternity. Skies and earth and dusk and dawn all at the same time. In my pain, there is glory, there is love, there is something that I cannot name. Something beyond everything I have ever known. Something that reaches deep into the very core of me and then reaches out into eternity. I feel it. And I realize that I’ve felt it before. I’ve felt it the first time. I’ve felt it the first time I have gone through this experience. And I’ve felt it every second of my life.
This something, something unknowable, something unnamable, something eternally known within me is strong. It’s stronger than any of the Empire’s best weapons and as feral as the wildest beasts of the galaxy. It is aching, starving, and willing to do anything and everything to sate itself. Sate itself on blood. Sate itself on true justice. It is aching and hungry and its hunger is driving it mad, driving it vengeful, driving it more dangerous than any of the Empire has ever known anything to be.
And it is growing within me. This feeling. This longing. This something, something I have known infinitely forever and ever. This something that I am just now finding out in these relived memories. It is growing inside me. It was growing inside me when I was a baby, looking for my parents and surrounded by enemies. It was growing inside me when I was a toddler, hungry for attention I was never given. It was growing when I was a child, hurting from a million wounds to my heart and soul.
And it’s growing inside me now.
This thing, whatever it is, whatever undeniable magic it has, it’s lonely. It’s achingly lonely. It’s screamingly lonely. It’s as lonely as I have been for my entire life and it has felt every single second of my loneliness. But at the same time, somehow, it’s more connected than anything the Empire or myself could ever even imagine. It’s connected to every single person from all of the Lower Planets. It’s connected to all the people who know pain, know hurt, who have suffered at the hands of the Empire.
This unnamableness is me. And it’s also them. It’s also all the slaves scattered throughout the whole Empire. And it’s something far beyond all of us as well. Something far beyond us all yet irrevocably a part of us all at the same time. Something that we all are and something that no-one is.
I’m lonely. I’m still unbearably, insufferably lonely. But, as I’m reliving this memory, I can see a power that I have never known that I have.
I live out the rest of the memory, feeling every single thing I felt in that moment and, for the first time, seeing what I felt, understanding what I felt. With this understanding I gain a hope I have never had before. I gain an insight into my own power, into my own necessity, into my own inevitability. I have always been aware of this. I have always been aware of this but I have somehow never seen it. I have somehow never seen it in the way I am seeing it now.
The Royal Family continues their blissful picnic, completely unaware of the silent, darkening mutiny going on right beside them.
I’m back inside the void. And it’s darker than I’ve ever remembered it. Darkness beyond darkness. Darkness that is not darkness. Darkness that is calming, is beautiful, is beyond immense and awe-strikingly amazing and holding everything that truly exists in the love that I feel for my people, the love that my people feel for me. I can see through this void now and I feel something, something that connects me to the darkness all around me and has connected me to the darkness all around me for all my life. I am one with the void. And that means that I am one with myself. Being one with the void means being one with myself.
I drift into another memory. I find myself back in the body of my child self. This time I am ten years old. The Prince is thirteen. He’s thirteen and he is a spoiled brat, just like he always was, just like he still is. The Emperor and the Prince walk in front of me. We are in the chamber where the World Stones are kept, the void all around us. There are guards flanking the tunnel as they always are, strong and sturdy despite all the madness constantly around them. I feel pity in my heart for the guards. I always do. It’s not fair, it’s never fair, that they have to do this.
I feel all the feelings that went through me ten years ago, when I was but a young child. I remember having to mask my misery, as I always did. I remember having to put on a carefully-guarded blank face, and having to will back the tears that fell inside my throat instead of down my cheeks. I remember being ten and wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard, for who I truly was. I remember being ten and having to still fight myself into obedience even though I had obedience ingrained into me for my whole life. I remember it not ever getting any easier to obey.
I remember the enchantment and the insanity of this place though. I remember looking at the World Stones and longing, longing, longing somehow even more than I have ever longed before. I remember being absolutely entranced by what I was seeing. I remember not seeing it, not really seeing it with my eyes at all but rather feeling it with all of my whole body and with none of my body at the same time.
“The savages of the Lower Planets used the World Stones to cause much destruction,” the Emperor is telling the Prince. I’m listening to him. I’m listening to him because I have to listen to him, in case he calls for me, but most of my attention is going towards the Stones themselves.
“They used the Stones and the magic they gave them for great and evil acts,” the Emperor continues, “they were savage beasts, monsters in need of taming. They fought war after war with each other, throwing the galaxy into chaos.”
I remember this small bubble in the void, and looking through it as a young child. It made me somehow feel less alone, being in the presence of the World Stones. It made me feel as if … as if there was hope for me. As if there was hope for my poor, hopeless, friendless, drifting soul. As if there is something out there that wants me, that needs me, that loves me desperately. And it’s a deeply addicting sensation. I remember myself becoming overcome by it in such a joyous way. I feel, all over again, myself becoming overcome.
And it’s mesmerizing. It’s mezmerizing. It’s oh so utterly mesmerizing.
And I know why now, looking into the memory with the new perspective that the void is giving me. I remember why I felt that way. These Stones. These small, scattered, rough, dull, unassuming pieces of rock, they’re as close to my heritage as I have ever been. They’re as close to my home planet, to MY home planet as I have ever been. They’re as close as I have been to all the other Lower Planets in the galaxy, to the other people fighting and living and dying under the same boot that crushes me.
All the people call to me. All the enslaved and exploited people all throughout the galaxy. They have been calling to me ever since I was taken away from my homeland, they have been calling me even before that. The songs of my heritage, of all of our shared heritage, the screaming and the writhing of our heritage, it has always been flowing through my veins and dancing in my gut. I could always feel it. It’s just that in this twisted chamber, that feeling is amplified, is created into something that I just cannot ignore. And with the power of retrospection, I know exactly what is going on here, despite not knowing at all what is going on here.
“I can’t wait to be Emperor so that I can teach the wild beasts their lesson,” the Prince exclaims, all blue eyes and bright hair, smiling up at his father.
“Being Emperor is not just about revenge, young one,” his father explains kindly, “you have to be willing to put the needs of the Empire before needs of your own.”
I look at the Stones again. And I think of how very much I want them, how much I want to be with them, even if it destroys me. And I don’t let anyone hear these traitorous thoughts.
The void around me seems more familiar than it has ever seemed before. I feel as if I can reach through it just as it is reaching through me. And so I do reach through it. I reach out through it and it reaches back to me. I think I might be able to find my way through it. I think I might be able to find my way through but as I reach out, I find the void still unnavigable. And so I let myself fall through it and I let it fall through me.
I am immersed in memory after memory after memory, all throughout my nightmare of a childhood, my burning coal teen years, and my lying-in-wait adulthood. I feel all the memories that have built up in my mind, carving me into a great and terrible creature full of power unknown and fury untamed. I live through all the memories that haunt me and I feel all the emotions locked inside of me, the emotions that I have never gotten a chance to express, the emotions that have never gotten a chance to leave me.
I realize that it’s all still with me. The entirety of my past, with all its horrors and all its glory as well as all its unendurable trauma, it’s all inside me. And it’s all been inside of me all along. Every second that I hurt and screamed inside, every second that I held back tears, every second that I rebelled silently, it’s all inside me. It never left. Age might have made me stronger but it did not make me any lighter.
And I have to remember it. I have to remember everything that I have ever been forced to endure. And I have to keep it with me, always, like a flame warming me in the deepest winter. But I have to let go of it at the same time. I have to let go of all of it and I have to give it up to the void, so that the nothingness can take it, so that it can take it and turn it into the nothingness that it should have been to begin with. I have to keep it with me and I have to purge it out. And I can do both. And I know how I can do both.
I realize, in my remembering, that the void has been with me always. The void has seen everything that I have seen. Every heartbreakingly unfair scene. It has heard everything that I have heard. Every sharp and hate-filled word. It has felt everything that I have felt. Every horror that my heart was ever dealt. And it has thought everything I ever thought. Everything I could not have forgot.
But not only was the void there with me, but all my people were their with me. Arji and Arji’s friends and my true mother and father and all the siblings that I have lost. The other slaves that were transported to the Home Planet of the Imperials. All the slaves that have not been transported here but who suffer and hurt untold amounts nonetheless. All the slaves in the whole galaxy. They were here with me, secretly, silently, going through every pain that I have went through and feeling every spark of hope that I have felt. Being every spark of hope that I have been.
We are, all of us together, we are hope. We are hope and nothing can bury us. We will just rise up out from the holy soil of the sacred ground like the seeds that we are.
But not only were all the people, all my people, there with me while I was absolutely alone in the palace and the Home Planet. There was something else with me as well. Something deep and intimate and unfathomable. Something that was, that is, beauty beyond all beauty. Something that is glory beyond all glory. Something that is the dawn and the dusk and the night and the day all rolled into one, all rolling together in an eternal wheel. Something that is the twilight sky. Something that is the way that the raven flies. Something that is the people, and me, and all of us. Something in which I have every trust. Something that is unspeakable, ineffable. Something that is beyond life and death, is both life and death, and is the life that is in death all the same.
Reliving my memories with all of that inside me, with special attention paid to all of that, it makes the memories seem more fire-kissed, seem more rage-sparked, seem more powerful. I realize now, I realize the truth that all my memories are fire-kissed, are rage-sparked, are powerful. I realize that I am powerful. I am powerful and I am glorious and I am power and I am glory. I have been it all along, even when I felt powerless, even when I was powerless, even when I was misled into believing that I was nothing.
I am not nothing. I am not nothing. Never in my existence have I ever been nothing and never in my existence will I be nothing. I am a reckoning of the masters and all the slaves the galaxy over are a reckoning of the masters.
I have been given new eyes to see, to see all that cannot be seen, all that can never be seen, all that can be seen with only the heart and the soul of the people. I have been given new ears to hear. Ears to hear that which cannot be heard, that which can never be heard, that which can only be thought and known by the peoples’ souls. I have been given a brand new perspective from which everything is painted with the colours of hope. And I can be the hope, along with all my other people. I am willing to be the hope.
I fall into a new memory. But this memory is not mine. It belongs to a man who has skin the colour of shadows on snow, living in a planet which is a frozen tundra. He is weary, above weary, so bone-tired that he feels as if he is more ghost than flesh and blood. He feels as if all his flesh and all his blood have been scraped out of him, leaving him hollow. Leaving him without anything of substance to cling to through the never ending thunderstorm.
But still, he does have something to cling to. He has so much to cling to. Lying there, in a corner of his slave hut, he holds his seven-year-old daughter as if she means the whole world to him. Because she does. She does mean the whole world to him. And he wishes with all that he has and more, with all that he is and more, he wishes that he could protect her. Protect her from all the harshness and the cruelty of the world, of the galaxy, of the Empire. But no matter how hard he tries, that is a thing which he cannot do.
“Do I have to go back tomorrow?” his adorable little girl whispers to him in the darkness of the night, voice tinged with piercing terror, with seeping, blood-wet, rain-drenched sadness. He knows what she is talking about. This last day was the day that she was seven years old for the first time in her life. This last day was the first day that she had to go get her magic harvested. And she had to feel pain, pain, so much pain.
“I’m sorry baby,” his voice is mournful and gentle, “but you have to go back.” And his heart breaks by saying this. It rends itself apart, slowly twisting and gouging and pulling itself into pieces, wet and sticky and oh-so sickly. He cannot help but to imagine her hooked up to those horrible machines, screaming and writhing and burning in pain while the overseer looks on, walking the rows, passive and unbothered, wearing headphones that play music as the people scream all around him.
He feels rage the likes of which can transform the whole world. Rage that burns like the core of a star. He wishes that he could burn the whole galaxy down. Burn it all down and grow it anew from the life-giving ash. He wishes that he could gift to his daughter a new galaxy, a galaxy where she will never have to be hurt. Not mentally, not emotionally, not physically, not spiritually. But no matter how powerful his star-molten rage is, he can do nothing right now. He can do nothing but let the tears fall from his eyes, precious water being wasted, as he holds on to his daughter slightly tighter in the too-cold hut.
“Daddy, I don’t want to go back tomorrow,” the little girl begs, “it HURTS. It hurts too much.” There is something completely heartbroken in her voice. Her voice is far too heartbroken for someone so young. Her voice is far too heartbroken for anyone. Her voice is far too heartbroken and it breaks apart the heart of the father and there’s nothing he can do but feel the pain.
“Sweetheart. I’m so sorry. But if you don’t go, they will kill you. You don’t want them to kill you, do you?” The father thinks that perhaps it would be better if they killed her. Perhaps it would be better if all the pain and the punishment of all the days stretching out before her was gone. Death was peace, after all. Death was peace and this bloody, bloody life was something far from peace and far worse than war.
But still, the father could not do it. The father could not let her daughter die. He is attached to her. He is far too attached to her. And he thinks that if she were gone, he could not bear it anymore. Not that he can bear anything as it is. But still, if she were gone, that would be far, far worse. And he doesn’t know if he’s being selfish or not, wanting her to stay. He suspects that he might be putting his own needs before her’s. But no matter what, he cannot bear to see her go.
“I don’t want to die, Papa. I’ll miss you.” He can hear the fear that is in her voice. Fear of death. Fear of punishment. Fear of violence that is far too much for a young girl to hold. A young girl should not be thinking of death. A young girl should not be thinking of her own death. That is horrible. But it is but one of the many, innumerable horrors that the child has had to face in her life, that the child will have to face in her life.
“I’ll miss you too sweetheart. I’ll miss you too.” His words are gentle. Soft and emotive and sanguine and hopeless. He holds her close to him and sings her a lullaby in the darkness to help distract her thoughts from suffering, to distract them from death, and to distract them from the life that is layed out in front of her, in front of them all.
In this moment I leave the body and the mind and the memories of the father and I find myself falling through the void again. This time I am crying. I didn’t know that I was able to cry. I had been suppressing tears for so long that I thought them forever out of my reach. But here I am, here I am nowhere and everywhere both at the same time. And my eyes are wet. And the void is taking in my tears as if they are rain and it is a drought-stricken earth.
I feel so much pain at that memory. So, so, so much pain. But at the same time I recognize that that pain was inside me all along. That memory was inside me all along. It was the pain that a person felt in their life. And all the pain that all the people felt in all their very many lives, I felt with them, I had always felt with them, whether I realized it or not. I was with them in everything that they went through, and everything that had gone on inside of them had always gone on inside of me as well.
But still, seeing the memory so clearly, so unmistakably, so undeniably, it has awakened something within me. I love my people. I have always loved my people, even when I thought that we were all monsters. But now, now I see that love shining before me, brighter and darker than I have ever seen it before, and I feel as if I can never look away.
I drift until a new memory overtakes me. This time I am a young child, something in between boy and girl, and I am about twelve years old, though I don’t know for sure. I have pale green skin and emerald eyes. I am walking home, my entire body aching, after a long and devastating day of having my magic harvested into energy. I cannot wait to get back home to my mother and father, my uncle and uncle, uncles by bond and not by blood, and the dear, sweet little brother that I have and love so much, who has just turned four earlier this month. The only one of my four siblings to survive.
But still, something horrible and sinister twists in my gut, and I have a dreadfully foreboding feeling inside of me. I have had this feeling for the past half hour. And I do not know what it means. But I know that whatever it is, it will be terrible beyond all words and all comprehension.
I find myself back home.
“Hi, everyone,” I squeal out, tiredly. But something is not right. Something is really, really wrong. Everyone looks at me with something dark in their eyes. Something unspeakable. I look around.
Where is my brother?
Panic slams into me like a hovercraft going full speed. All the air is choked out of my lungs.
“Where is my brother?” I manage to get out.
“I …” my mother starts, words stilted, “I … the Imperials, they -“ she bursts into tears. My uncle K hugs her, crying himself. It’s then that I know. I know what happened. And all my worst fears become real.
My head spins, and I grab the wall to steady myself. There is sorrow. Sorrow. Such deep sorrow. But thre is also rage.
“How could you let them do this?!” I scream at the adults in the small hovel, “How could you let them take him?!” Tears are streaming down my eyes.
My brother. My brother. My little brother who cuddled me, and likes to be on my lap. My brother who always asked questions. My brother who is willful and stubborn and argumentative, who has adorable jokes and a way to make me laugh when I was at my absolute worst. My brother who has dreams of standing up to the Empire, even at his young age. My brother who mispronounces every word with that childish adorableness of his. My brother who is everything that he is, and all his glory.
My brother who needs me, needs me, needs me so very much. Who needs my mom and my dad and my uncle and my other uncle. My brother who cannot survive on his own, in the hands of the Empire, facing their superciliousness without us to help him get through it. My brother who misses us, misses us, misses us more than the sun misses us more than the grass misses the sun in the nighttime. I quiver, thinking of what he must be going through right now, so far away from his family, from his true home.
I miss him. I miss him so much. I don’t know how I’ll survive without him. I don’t know if I can survive. I think of all the wonderful games and stories we made, all the jokes we shared, all the songs we sang. I think about it all and I die inside. I die more deaths than I ever thought myself capable of dying, than I ever thought anyone capable of dying, and I keep dying and dying over and over again until there is nothing left of the person I was before this.
“They …” my dad begins, voice shaking, “they said …. they said that that they would … they would kill him if we didn’t … if we didn’t give him up.” Of course they did. Of course they absolutely did. The universe-damned Empire and their universe-damned cruelty.
I sink down to the floor of the thatched-roof hut. And I scream. I scream all the screams that my brother might be screaming. I scream all the screams that he might not be allowed to be screaming. I cry all the tears that he might not be able to cry. Please let him cry. Please let him cry. I hope the Empire has enough mercy to at least let my baby cry.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him. I didn’t even know that the last conversation we had was our last conversation.
I am pulled back into the void. And I am horrified beyond horror. I knew the cruelty of the Empire. I did know it. But that was … that was too much. Too much to take. Too much to bear. But take it I did. It was something we all had to bear together, all the slaves of the whole galaxy. We have had to bear it, and every single other family separation that has happened, including my own separation. We’ve had to bear it, and we will have to bear it again and again. Until the Empire falls and our people can finally, finally rise.
I fall in and out of so many memories of the people, as the void takes me through all the lives that I have lived, all the lives that all the people have lived, all the lives I have always felt in my soul but up until now did not know about. I fall through experience after experience, feeling the pain, the hope, the joy, the love, the mourning. And as I fall I do not find myself becoming closer to the people. For the truth is that I was always infinitely close to the people. But now it is placed in front of me and I can realize it in a way that I never had before.
I feel the grating pain of work days that are eight or sometimes even ten hours, hooked to the machine the entire time, in agony as your magic is being turned into fuel. I feel the exhaustion and the ache that comes after. I feel the pain of knowing that your loved ones are going through the exact same thing, the pain of knowing that there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop that pain. I feel the exhaustion of day after day after day after day of this torture, and the absolute dread of the rest of your life stretching out in front of you, each day full of the same pain.
I feel the pain of having your family taken from you, having your loved ones taken from you, and shipped off into the Home Planet, a planet that is not home, a planet that can never be home. I feel the pain of missing them, and missing them, and knowing that they are far too far away and you cannot hold them in your arms. I experience the anxiety that comes with wondering how they are, what they’re going through, and I experience the mourning that comes with knowing that they are missing you, they are missing you too.
I go through being taken from my homeland and imported into the Home Planet, into a new world where our friends, our family, our parents, our children, our neighbours, our coworkers, they’re all not there. I go through the mourning that comes with that, the grief and the agony and the loneliness and the lostness. I feel the way people wonder about the people they left behind, the way that they long for them. And I feel the way that they would do anything, anything to break free of this grief.
I go through all these memories infinitely, living them as if they were my own life. Because they are.
I experience the grief of loved ones dying. Dying early. Dying early is what most people do, when they’re slaves of the Empire. The daily taking of magic grates on our bodies. Grates on our spirits. And we cannot live with all the work that we are forced to do. The Empire denies that they are killing us. It denies that they are destroying our health. I go through the melancholy that death brings and I go through the terror of being immersed in its threat constantly.
But it’s not all pain. I feel the secret glory of sharing conversations in the dead of night, cloaked in darkness. I feel the glory of sitting around with friends and neighbours, sharing in each other’s company. I experience rage that is hidden in secret, rage that is shared with those who are trusted. I hear stories and tell stories and make up stories in the company of my people. I promise to people again and again and again and again that there is hope.
I experience all the rage and rebellion, the cleverness and trickery and mystery of the resistance. I see the way they sabotage the infrastructure of the Empire, leading to people having free days away from the demands of the Empire. I see the way they look for ways to channel their magic. The way they secretly smuggle people out of the Home Planet and back into their families. I see how they secret information to each other and how they manipulate Imperials into showing some mercy to the people. I don’t just see it all, I live it. I am a part of it. I have a hand in doing it all.
I live thousands, millions, billions of lives. I think I must have been in here for years. But as I live more and more of the peoples’ lives, I find myself understanding the void more and more. I can see how the spirit of everyone and all the lands they live on reaches and stretches through the void. And I can reach through the void as well. I can find how to go through the nothingness, how to go through the everythingness, how to go through the ineffability that threads through all of our life. Everyone’s spirits are here. Everyone’s hope is here. And I can go through their hope, I can traverse it, and I can find my way through everyone.
I find myself pulled in all directions. I find myself pulled by everyone, by every planet, by all the lands. I find myself able to traverse through all the reeling pulling on my soul. I pull myself through the void. And I hold onto the World Stones as I pull myself through. Even though I can’t see anything, I can still know where I am going. Though where is not the right word.
I pull myself forwards, and pull myself forwards, and all of a sudden bright light floods my vision and freezing cold floods my body. I clutch the Stones closer to me. And I collapse.
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