From the mind and hand of Yetic-Ein

Keyed to the sign of the central finger, bound to match an Emperor's hand

Enforcer Rao,

A vision came to me on my last shift. An egg fell from its nest and broke on hitting the ground. What spilled from it was not yolk but dust. A seed with no life in it. Its mother then plucked the feathers from her breast, peeled away the skin, and broke the bars of her ribcage. She pulled out her heart and laid it in that dust; wet and purple, then dry and gray.

Small things with small lives, but somehow enormous in my memory. I see her still, that mother, that egg. I know I'm a single bacterium upon that broken shell.

I haven't received a reply, but your division accepted our last two shipments. I thank you from the heart and the head.

This system is rich in life, so much more than anywhere else I've been. I feel it as if standing one step outside the threshold of a metaconcert. Not enough to pull me in, but enough to make me want to step forward.

I never walked on Brand or saw the deep waters of Dithaa, but I imagine this is how our home system feels. I hope we grew somewhere so nurturing before we had to breathe thinner air.

Enforcer, I fear for that life. What is vast might still be vulnerable. Landwhales have been hunted on Torobatl, we're told.

The Barant soldiers who remember Torobatl talk of it regularly during our periods of temporal isolation. Trying to keep it alive. Their shared memory is withering slowly with time and attrition. I try to hold it for them, for when all that's left is young soldiers fresh from the cloning vats.

The bird, the egg, the heart, the dust.

The memory.

They haven't left me yet.