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Part of USS Hart: Down Tools and Bravo Fleet: New Frontiers

4.5 There Once was a Girl

Published on November 11, 2025
Velantri System
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Author’s Note

A short-range broadcast was intercepted during Hart's approach through the Velantri System. We record it here for posterity.

Would you speak of love to me?

I, who held love within the crook of my elbow.

I, who laughed and cooed as love smiled back.

I, who wept such floods when love closed her eyes;

That stone became mud,

That the stars feared they would drown,

On that day the father became only a man.

You dare to speak of love to me?

 

There once was a girl, who dreamt of stars and skies,

Of a dawn beyond the stone confines of her cell.

The cold touch of the tiny walls would be replaced,

With a light that had, till now, been but a pale glimmer.

A light that would caress each micron of her scaly skin,

With warmth,

With joy,

With love.

 

So full and endless was her dream that it lifted her steps.

Her tiny feet seemed to glide over the unrelenting stone.

Every shadow retreated, every heart was buoyed.

For even in her smile, it seemed,

That the dream was truly within reach.

A new dawn was palpable,

Where we may all enjoy the sunkissed morn.

 

She was my everything.

She is my all.

Even in death.

 

The girl was as bright as the purple stone,

That lies within every eye line.

Her smile, more lustrous than the stars,

To which our toil lifts our masters onward.

She could have fuelled the galaxy with her heart.

But now it is a miserable thing, all weeping and regret,

Cold and still as the rock in which she lies.

 

They tell us it was a mistake,

A sad but inevitable accident.

Some unfortunate circumstance,

That allowed cruel deaths hand to strike.

‘Gainst our heart and soul,

‘Gainst our light and life,

‘Gainst my only daughter.

But an accident does not blame,

It does not cuss and rage.

Instead, it washes crimson feathers clean,

With mewling platitudes of empty air.

 

Remember that girl called Syrris,

A girl who would be loved.

She dances amongst the quasars,

And alights from stone to star.

 

So come and speak of love to me,

Come sing and wail and gnash and cry.

Come take my hand in yours once more,

And wrap it hard and fast with mourning shroud.

Her light continues ever onward in us,

Shining as the dawn.

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