This is a poem about my friend who is a lesbian stuck in an abusive, homophobic, misogynistic home. Please give her some love.

Synths are designed to be the perfect companions for their owners. They are genetically engineered to be sweet, kind, loyal, agreeable, and submissive. Arden's synth Luca seems to be the perfect playmate and servant. He seems perfectly content with his lot in life. But as the communist rebellion brews in the shadows, there may be more to everything than there appears to be.———

This work is in the public domain and anyone can do anything they want with it.

I watch over her. I feel her pain with her. I feel all the many injustices done to her. And I wish I could intervene. I wish I could intervene but ever since my powers became depleted, this is all I can do.

The child is away from her true family. And she is in a family that treats her like a thing. Treats her like a tool to be used and a service to be exploited. She keeps all the hurt and the suffering and the hopelessness she feels inside. She’s far, far too young to be this hopeless. No-one deserves to be this hopeless.

What she doesn’t know though is that she is the embodiment of hope itself.

Azania was sixteen. And she couldn’t take it anymore. She had spent her childhood lonely, spent it terrified, spent it desperate, spent it aching. The only adults in her life were the people who saw her as nothing but a tool to exploit and use. She was told over and over and over again that she was nothing and no-one and she didn’t matter. The only people in her life who cared about her were fellow slave-children and she barely ever got to see them at all. She needed freedom. Escape. She was willing to do anything for it.

And she wasn’t the only one. All over the city people were being exploited. People were being forced to work under impossibly degrading conditions and live in abject poverty. People were silenced. Stifled. And they were longing for escape.

The Forest was beyond the edges of the city. It was a place of magic and miracles. It was a place of hope and freedom and rebirth. But getting there was next to impossible.

Within the Forest the wolves howled. Azania emerged from the water. And she wasn’t the only one. And she wouldn’t be the only one. Who she met changed her life forever.

————This work is in the public domain and anyone can do whatever they want with it.

Solaria was beautiful. Shining. Bountiful. It was a land of prosperity and luxury.

For those who were citizens.

Reymi unfortunately was not a citizen.

He was a child slave caught up in the middle of the summer solstice celebration.

The seventeen-year old is Queen. She should be happy about that, right? She's not only married but she's married to the king.

She's not only married but she's married to the king. She's got a husband who has money and power and rank. Someone she can honour and obey and give herself to. Someone who will provide for her as long as she stays in line. As long as she stayed quiet, stays submissive, stays without an opinion, stays calm and ladylike and (of course) beautiful. As long as she stays worthy of love, worthy of belonging, worthy of what he gives to her.

The seventeen-year old is Queen.

That means she has giant, ornate palaces, crystal chandeliers, hundreds of dresses, and a bunch of food she can't actually eat but can indeed stare at (fat women aren't attractive after all).

The peasants, the people lower down on the hierarchy, don't have that. They don't have food, often, as the price of bread can soar too high for them to buy it. They don't have warmth in the winter, or medicine for when they're sick. What they do have is hard work. Hard work and calloused palms, calloused fingers, calloused feet.

And her heart reaches out to them. But what does her heart know? It's not her place to have opinions.

She has to be loyal. To her man. ... Unless... unless her loyalty truly belongs with someone else.

Maybe the thing she has to be is brave.