So, you see, this isn’t my first time in a cell. I spent the first sixteen years of my life in one, even if it was surrounded by trees and flowers.

I started to notice little things. Then bigger things. How we were kept in the dark about so much. And then there was the Meditation.

I thought it was a normal part of life. That everyone on the outside must do it as well. And some do, but not the way Mana-ma did it. Three times during the week, and then just after Sunday service.

It was always the same. We’d line up, quiet and patient. One by one, we’d each go up to Mana-ma and open our mouths, a little like a Catholic communion. She’d place a small tablet on our tongue. It tasted bitter and earthy. I always wanted to make a face, but forced my features to stay blank like everyone else. The pill dissolved on my tongue, and the world would grow brighter yet hazier at the same time.

We’d lie down in the meadow, or in the church if it was raining. We’d hold hands in one large circle. And we would lucid dream. Mana-ma would guide us through visions so realistic that when I awoke from them, sometimes the real world didn’t seem like the true one. The dreams were meant to be calming, with visions of nature.

“A mountain stream,” Mana-ma would say, and all of us world work together to create the perfect one.

“A sunrise,” she would say next, and the sky of our mind’s eye would bloom so bright.

The trouble was that collective dreaming hurt. Every nerve ending would feel as though it were on fire. Tears would leak from all our eyes. We’d cry out as each vision shifted. Yet we still did it. Day after day, week after week. I think she did it to bring us closer together, and because she could. Out there, with no Chairs, no needles, we made our own dreamscapes.

We’d do it on our own, too, without whatever drug she pumped us full of (it wasn’t Zeal, I know that much), and it meant we never woke up unable to remember our dreams. It made me and my sister incredible lucid dreamers. I still do it now, especially now that I’m in my cell. I can close my eyes, drift off, and then take off into the sky and fly. It’s pretty much the only thing I can ever thank Mana-ma for.

We only had Confession once a week, different days for different people in the Hearth, but it was always just after Meditation. We’d be weak with the comedown and pain and drugs, so we’d tell her everything.