The Daughters of Hope

Everyone knows the Daughters of Hope. Even five year old children in remote peaceful villages can describe a Daughter of Hope. Golden eyes, golden lips, silver hair, silver nails. They are famed for their fighting ability, notorious for their libidinous lifestyle. Who does not admire them? Who has never ridiculed them? In our fairy tales they are the female warriors whom no man can best, whom no prince can tame, no matter how handsome or charming he may be. In the taverns, late at night, other tales are told, but in every tale there is only one Daughter and she is called Stellar Hope. No matter that there are hundreds of Daughters of Hope, no matter that thousands more have lived and died, no matter that each is an individual with her own thoughts, her own desires, her own actions, her own name, we remember them all as only one, the anonymous Stellar Hope.

And yet there was once a woman with that name, a woman from whom all the Daughters descend, a woman with those same peculiar colours. She is to be found in our very oldest Creation myths, a warrior woman with eyes of sunlight and hair of moonlight, depicted sometimes as a powerful queen, sometimes as a fertile mother, but always as beautiful and indomitable.

Divine and absolute though she seems to us now, in truth she was a mere mortal as fallible as any of us. I remember her - though you may prefer not to believe that. I would not say we were friends, for I don't think she had any friends, but I did respect her and there were many who loved her. She was a force of nature, with a passion for life that would admit no favourites, a woman who demanded the very highest standards from herself, whatever her pursuit. She both exhilarated and terrified us, both stunned and excited us. She brought order to chaos, but left chaos anew in her wake.

We admired her, and we ridiculed her, even then when she was real and not a figure of folklore and legend. Despite their enduring reputation, the Daughters of Hope are a pale reflection of their ancestor.