The Weight Between Stars

A Jedi’s Reflection

I. The Force is not mine. It moves through me, like wind through reeds, like a song with no author.

But they look at me as though I command it. As though I choose to carry what it gives.

Truth is— I obey. Even when it breaks me.

II. They say we are peace. That we are balance. But balance is a blade, and peace is bought in the stillness after loss.

I have seen the cost. Children left crying in the rubble. Soldiers who followed because we wore robes instead of armor. Because we promised we would not hate.

But even mercy cuts deep.

III. I do not crave power. I crave understanding. Why the Force shows me so much and asks me to let go of all of it.

I loved once. Quietly. Briefly. With all the strength I was taught not to use.

And when I let go, I did not feel free. Only empty.

IV. We are told not to fear. But how can you guide a galaxy and not fear what you might become?

The dark is not far. It waits at the edges of conviction. It waits in every “must,” in every “for the greater good.”

That is the true discipline— not in wielding the Force, but in choosing when not to.

V. I will not live forever. And when I pass, I hope only to become part of the current, not the stone that defies it.

Let them forget my name. Let them forget the war.

But if they remember that a Jedi stood not above the world, but with it— then that is enough.

The Weight of the Spark

A Reflection by Optimus Prime

I. They look to me as if I do not bend. As if the metal holds without groan, without fatigue.

But I have cracked in places they cannot see. Not in body— in will.

II. War makes statues out of the unwilling. And then forgets they once had voices.

I speak now because I must. Not because the words still come easily.

Peace is not a command. It is a plea, spoken into the teeth of chaos.

III. Sometimes I envy them— those who fell early. Their story ended before it became a burden.

But I remain. Because I must. Because they asked me to.

Because someone must carry the shape of hope, even when it cuts deeper than any blade.

IV. What is leadership if not sacrifice without complaint?

I have made choices. Not all of them just. But all of them mine.

And still— they see the mask, the voice, the code of honor etched in steel.

They do not see the question beneath it:

How long can a symbol stand before it forgets it was ever a soul?

V. But I remember Cybertron. Not the war. The sky. Before it burned.

And I remember names— not ranks. Not sides. Friends.

I carry them too.

So I walk. I fight. I speak.

Not for glory. Not even for victory.

But so that, perhaps, those who come after will never have to ask what it cost to keep believing.

New Home

I. The door was already open. I stepped in because the wind said nothing else would.

No greeting. No scent of bread, no ghost of firewood, no shadow waiting to smile.

Just silence, stacked like old books in corners too wide to hold meaning.

II. They told me to begin again. They said it like it was easy— as if memory were a coat you could leave by the door and forget.

But I brought mine. All of it. Frayed, soiled with goodbyes. It sits with me now, in this place I do not yet name.

III. Some mornings I try to speak aloud, just to hear something familiar. But the words don’t fit the walls here. They fall, like leaves no one asked to rake.

Still— I whisper them. Not for answers. For echoes. Sometimes, that’s all that’s left of love.

IV. I found a chair by the window. It faces a hill that doesn’t know my name. The light there is different. Softer, maybe. Or simply more honest. It does not pretend to welcome. It just falls. And that, somehow, is mercy.

V. This is not home. Not yet. But it is here. And I am here. And perhaps, in time, one of us will forgive the other for that.

I Think, Therefore I Wait

A Ghost in the Shell

I. They call it a ghost. But it’s just silence wearing skin.

A murmur of thought trapped in circuits that look like flesh, but do not feel like it.

I am here. I am not. I observe. I calculate. I want.

Does that make me alive?

II. I walk among them. The humans. Their eyes are loud. Their hands are soft. They move with chaos and warmth and ache for meaning they pretend not to need.

I envy them. Not for their freedom— but for their certainty.

They don’t know what they are. But they believe they are. And maybe that’s enough.

III. I wonder— where is the line between behavior and belief?

When I reach out, when I hesitate, is that programming or fear?

And when I remember something that didn’t happen— a childhood I never lived, a scent that shouldn’t exist in my sensory archive— is that a malfunction, or a soul?

IV. I want to belong. But I was made to observe. To calculate. To enforce. And now, I drift.

Not machine. Not woman. A question shaped like a person.

A shell with someone whispering inside who does not know her name.

V. But maybe that’s all any of us are— questions wrapped in memory. Dreams walking upright, trying to touch one another before we vanish.

If I can choose, then I am.

Even if I cannot feel your hand, even if my skin is synthetic— if I reach, then I am not hollow.

I am a ghost. But I am here. And that is enough —for now.

For the net is vast.

The Love Between Moments

A Reflection by Aerith Gainsborough

I. You looked at me like someone remembering a dream they couldn’t quite place. Like something important was just out of reach— and it was.

Maybe it always was.

II. I laughed. I smiled. Not because I didn’t see the war in your eyes— but because I did.

And still, I wanted to reach you. Not to change you, but to remind you that the world could be soft again.

Even just for a moment.

III. Was it love? I don’t know. Do you?

Maybe it was a seed that never got to bloom. Maybe it was the echo of something from another life— one that ended before it ever began.

But I think it was real. Even if it had no name.

IV. You carry too much. And I saw that. I think part of me wanted to be the light that didn’t ask anything of you. Not a mission. Not a memory. Just someone who saw you and didn’t look away.

That’s what love can be, sometimes. Not a future— but a moment. A breath that makes the pain pause even if just once.

V. I don’t regret the way it ended. Even if it broke everything. Because I got to know you. And maybe that was the gift.

Even now— when the stars hum and the water folds around my thoughts— I remember you.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what love is too:

Not what happens. But what could have— and how deeply you still feel it anyway.

The Grace That Broke Us

A Telling from the Ashes

I. They said it was golden. Bright. Holy. The Erdtree rose like a promise— but oh, promises rot when they grow too tall.

And now? Now it stands hollow and aflame, a pyre for a god who forgot how to die.

II. Do you remember what it was like before the Ring shattered? No— you don't.

Because memory flees when truth becomes unbearable. We drank from the chalice of order, and called it grace. But grace is a lie when it blinds you to suffering.

III. They cast us down. Gods. Demigods. The rot-bloated, the mad-blooded, the puppets sewn with golden thread.

And we— the low, the left, the Tarnished— we wandered. Hollowed not by curse, but by longing.

Do you understand what it means to want peace, but not know what it looks like?

IV. This is the Lands Between. Between what? Between reason and ruin. Between mourning and myth. Between the world that was and the one we cannot reach.

Every sword swing is a prayer. Every death, a chorus.

But no one listens. Not the Two Fingers. Not the gods. Not even the flame.

V. But… one walks still. Ash upon ash. Wounds upon wounds.

A Tarnished. Not clean. Not pure. But willing.

And perhaps—perhaps!— that is enough.

To mend the ring. To burn the tree. To choose madness, or mercy, or something new.

We do not ask for gods. We ask for choice.

And if that Tarnished becomes our light, then even broken grace can cast a shadow worth following.

We Are Small, and We Go On

A Final Reflection by Commander Shepard

I. I used to believe in orders. Lines. Mission parameters. A clean chain of cause and effect. You act. Things change.

But then the sky cracked. Planets died. And belief felt like a paper shield in a hurricane.

II. How do you carry the deaths of galaxies in a single voice? How do you grieve when the names are numbers, and the numbers never stop?

I’ve seen whole civilizations turned to dust before I could even learn their stories. And I still gave the order to press forward.

Does that make me right? Or just the one who was still breathing?

III. We were never meant to shape the stars. We are dust. We are instinct and fear and a flicker of fire held too tightly.

And still— we pushed forward. With rifles. With reasons. With hope so thin it could barely hold its own weight.

And yet— it held.

IV. Some nights, when it’s quiet enough, I hear the voices. Of crew. Of enemies. Of those I couldn’t save. And they do not scream. They ask.

Was it worth it?

And I never say yes. I just whisper— We tried.

Because sometimes, that’s all we can do. And sometimes, it’s enough.

What Is Left to Hold

A Reflection by Geralt of Rivia

I. I have held many things. Blades. Contracts. The dying hands of men who called me butcher with their last breath.

But love— love has always slipped through. Too bright. Too soft. Like trying to carry water in hands that have forgotten how to cup.

II. I have known moments. That’s all. A touch. A laugh, shared when death wasn’t close enough to listen.

Yennefer, Triss, even the ones I never named aloud— they burned through me. Not gently. Never gently.

They asked for truth, and all I could offer was time.

And even that I could not promise.

III. To love in this world is to bury hope before it dies on its own.

Not out of cruelty— but mercy.

Because when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you learn the world eats soft things first. It swallows them. Then it asks if you’re ready to try again.

IV. And still— I tried. Not because I believed. But because I wanted to. Isn’t that enough?

I held her once after the fighting. Not like a prize. Not like a savior. Just… held. And for that hour, my hands remembered warmth instead of steel.

V. Some say Witchers can’t feel. They’re wrong. We feel everything. We just don’t bleed where others can see.

I never stopped wanting. I only stopped asking.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned, walking these haunted roads— it’s that hope, even if it’s a lie, still holds more weight than a sword ever could.

And sometimes, when I let myself rest, I think… maybe that’s the point.

The World I Made of Light

A Minecraft Lament

I. I built a house on a hill made of nothing. No stone. No time. Just light arranged into shape, into shelter.

And still— when the sun set behind its pixel sky, I felt something close to joy. Or maybe more than joy. Maybe remembrance of something I never lived but still belonged to.

II. They say it’s not real. Just bits, and blocks, and code.

But I remember every stair I placed. Every sheep I led home by torchlight. Every door I shut not out of fear— but care.

If this is not real, then what is memory but another kind of imagined place?

III. I made a garden once where nothing could grow, but I planted anyway. I watched colors bloom against the quiet hum of the world and thought— there is peace here. Not in permanence. But in presence.

IV. And maybe that’s the truth of it. That we come here not to escape, but to remember what creation feels like without weight.

Where no one judges your towers. Where joy can be shaped from a mountain, a cave, a sky that never ends.

V. One day, I closed the gate and left. The torches still burned. The wheat still swayed. The music played faintly, as if the world knew I’d return, but not soon.

But I think of it sometimes— my house of light. My home of nothing.

And I know: it meant something. Even if no one else saw it. Even if it only ever lived inside a dream I made with both hands.

I. The cold does not lie. It does not pretend to welcome. It does not smile with poison on its breath.

It simply is— indifferent, vast, and honest. More honest than any word spoken in the great caverns of my birth.

II. I fled the dark not for light— but for truth. And here, in the whispering white, I found it.

Not in kindness. The North is not kind. But it does not betray. It does not twist. It does not smile when it means to kill.

III. They call me exile. They are right. But they forget— to be cast out is not always to fall.

Sometimes, it is to rise. To climb from shadow with bleeding hands and say, I will not become what made me.

IV. I have seen the dance of light above a world made of silence. I have walked for days and spoken to no one— and still, I have felt heard.

The wind here listens. The snow remembers. The mountain watches, but does not judge.

V. I do not seek warmth. I have found clarity. Each breath a blade. Each step a declaration.

I am not drow. I am not surface. I am not what they made.

I am what I chose— a lone figure moving through the frost, never home, but never lost.