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​​Batten down that bolshie brain, you’re always in trouble for the things you say. In another life, you’d be a revolutionary. An anarchist angel, like Vera Zasulich. Or a ‘lady death’, sniping fascists like Mila Pavlichenko. Or perhaps a sister of the resistance, à la Simone Segouin. Or maybe a martyr like Joan of Arc, moved by voice and vision to lead men into battle. You’d ride for the cause, enshrined alongside all the other radicalized heroines.

But in this world, you’re nothing more than a voodoo vamp, bewitching men into concupiscence and shouting socialist shrill about status quos and splintered systems. If you existed on any other timeline, you’d be put on the pyre.

If only there were potions to do away with poverty and prejudice. If only there were spells to obliterate oligarchies and root out regimes ready to destroy the Earth. If only you spoke the incantations necessary to extinguish inequality, and possessed the magic that would set the underclass free. If only you were able to assure your descendants would inherit more than the shattered remnants of what could have been.

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You’d burn for that.

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