This is the fourth speech in the wedding ceremony of Ruby & Miranda. See the Sequence introduction for more info. The speech was given by Ruby.

Riva descends from podium.

Brienne: We have spoken of the horrors that exist, the threats that loom, and the good worth fighting for. We cannot know that we are equal to these challenges, but we won’t let that stop us. I call upon Ruby to speak of our determination to Become Stronger.

Ruby ascends podium.

IMAGE 3 PROJECTED ON PLANETARIUM

Composed of gas and dust, a pillar in the Carina Nebula

Ruby commences speech.

There is a cry among us, a cry dear to us. “Tsuyoku Naritai” – “I want to become stronger.” Embodied in these few foreign syllables is one of our deepest values and greatest virtues. We say these words because we know that the challenges we face today are great, perhaps too great, perhaps greater than we can handle – today. But that does not matter, because we want to become stronger.

Some believe that we were created in the image of a perfect, wise, and just god. We know that we were not. No, we are the product of a blind, uncaring, unfeeling, raw mechanical process. We were hacked together, a disparate assortment of adaptations just good enough to pass our genes onto another generation, without oversight, without foresight, and certainly without benevolence. We became whatever worked – but only whatever worked in a time and place we left long ago.

So when we are faced with the suffering of millions, when we are marching towards our deaths, and when threats to our existence looming on the horizon – we cannot expect to be equal to these trials. There is no magical reason why the universe ought to present us with challenges we are strong enough to overcome. But in this cold and uncaring universe, there is one mercy. One card we hold in our hands – the capacity to grow. The ability to become stronger.

[We will run rampant with this ability, for in it is our capacity to do anything.] We will grow until we have the might to banish the darkness, and until we have the power to seize the stars.

Already we have come so far: in wisdom, skill, and kindness. Once we accepted dogma, the stories which were told to us, but then we learnt to argue and to reason towards truth. Later we learnt that even reasoning can easily go astray, so we taught ourselves to look at the world, to let it tell us what was true. Afte...

Tsuyoku Naritai

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