You ask, I answer. That's how it works. By asking you give permission for me to speak it. I always sense, but don't usually say.

* * * * *

Fields of flowers as far as the eye can see. They're no longer blooming, and have 'gone to seed'. You stand harvesting them with other workers.

You are a slave. You have been a slave all of your life once you left the orphanage, where you were [for all practical purposes] already a slave, just not legally owned as one.

You feel the whip again, but you are old and tired at all of thirty years old. Your back is bent and life has been hard. You have never known anything but work.

At last, you can't take it anymore. You fall down and just don't get up. You barely feel the whip, or the boots, or the violence anymore. You've been raped and beaten so often before, you have become nearly immune to it. Like the other women here, you were happy when you were no longer pretty... but regretful, too, that you couldn't protect those that were.

The violence of your death means little to you, for it was the violence that marked your life.

But there was something that you didn't know. Something you still don't know.

In all that time, you sought to protect others. It was simply your nature. You usually failed, but for all that happened to you... you never quit trying.

Do you see it in you now?

You see all the bad in yourself, but do you understand that this attribute is proof of the divine nature of your soul? You are a child of God, as we all are.

And through so many lifetimes of abuse and pain, you have always shown your divine nature by trying to protect others.

It means nothing to you. It's just "the way you are" and not important to you... but it brings tears to my eyes, for it is the beauty of love shining through you, irrepressible and enduring.

You, also, are beautiful, dear one. You are an exquisite treasure, with a value beyond price.

I share my name with you; Sandi means Defender of Mankind. In this, you and I are kindred. You are my sibling, my fellow Defender.

Be blessed in all ways, always.