Past the Edge of the Sky – Nat Elster

axonsandsynapses:

(or: The Literal Sky Boat Song)

Initially I wrote this intending it to be a sweet song about going home to space, but the original song is about the aftermath of a failed and bloody uprising, and it didn’t lend itself too well to happy. I wrote the current version thinking of the Alderaanian (and Jedhan and Hosnian…) refugees in Star Wars, but it could be applied to any number of science fiction universes, really.

To be sung to the tune of the Skye Boat Song.

[chorus:]
Speed bonny ship like a bird on the wing,
Upward the rockets fly;
Take us away to where the stars sing,
On past the edge of the sky.

The atmosphere howls, the thrusters all roar,
The boosters light and flare.
‘Gainst gravity’s grasp, higher we soar,
We’ll soon escape the air.

[chorus]

In space dark and wide, past systems we leap,
On countless worlds we’ll roam.
But here we remain, out in the deep;
They’ll never be our home.

[chorus]

Burned is our world, exile and death;
Her children refugees.
Yet while our lungs still have their breath,
We’ll fight and never cease.

[chorus]

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