Before TS came to power, the weekly meeting on violent religious extremism in the Situation Room of the White House hums with controlled urgency. A wall of screens casts shifting light across the table – maps of the south side of the Mountain marked in red, regions labeled unstable. 

Bodhi sits along the perimeter representing Mountain Aid, which supports victims of war and works to reduce the pull of extremism. As he listens to the approved bullet points from agency heads, he thinks to himself:

i have walked through many lands
where conflict sets the stage
places where religion
stands at the heart of rage

religious hands can heal
with shelter, food, and care
lifting up the broken
when no one else is there

yet i have also seen
where faith becomes the bait
a tool of power and control
that teaches hearts to hate

As Bodhi searches the room for any sign that something might be different this time, he continues in quiet resignation:

it is not ours to finish
what history has begun
yet neither can we turn away
from what is left undone

Bodhi then notices his friend Hope standing in front of her chair along the wall of carrier officials surrounding the principal’s table, where she is not acknowledged. Hope waits, composed, until a pause opens in the discussion. She takes a slow breath and speaks:

these acts of extremism 

from the mountain’s south side 

are born from generations

whose wounds were pushed aside

people have been oppressed

denied both voice and hope

treated as pawns and proxies

with no real way to cope

of course their acts are heinous

and never tolerated within life

yet something just as fearful

appears within our strife

we track the fires abroad
and name them as the threat
but what grows on our own soil
we must not ever forget

The room stills and heads turn. Hope continues, not louder but clearer:

extremism is not distant
nor born in foreign land
it forms where fear takes root
and power takes its hand

A tightening moves through the room – some in disbelief, others in recognition. A voice calls out from a speaker on the conference room table: 

whoever you may be
and wherever you are from
you are no longer needed here
and you will not again come

Hope gathers her notebook. She leaves with only a brief glance toward Bodhi. The next day, Hope no longer works for Mountain Intelligence.

her mother walked the southern roads
where broken bodies and spirits lay
serving those the world ignored
then quietly passed away

her father wore the badge of law
and taught her what it means
that order must protect the free
not rule through fear unseen

hope carried both into government
within its hidden state
to see the shadows behind the lines
that quietly shape our fate

but truth once seen could not be kept
within those guarded halls
she left to stand among the hills
and answer quieter calls

she walked among divided towns
where trust had worn thin
and helped to give a voice to those
who felt they would never win

when power rose upon the ridge
and fear became its throne
the hills chose one who didn’t shout
and could not be owned