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You tried to tell him about choking on the dust, but it’s hard to convey something like that in words, in a letter. It’s a taste which sticks to your tongue, near the back. You try to swallow it down, but it coats your throat. You try to wash it down with what water you’re given in the rations, but seconds after you swallow, it’s there again. You tried to tell him about the dust, but he’ll never understand, just like so many things he never understood. The dust is everything, now.
You hate it. And yet you don’t; it’s home. All the buildings, all the bodies, all the ashes, all the dust: it’s all home. And home is where the heart is, as the humans so cloyingly say. It seems fitting to fill every lungful with the ever-pervasive dust, feeding tainted oxygen to your heart. If your heart was stone before, it’s fitting to feed it ionized mineral residue.
Maybe your heart will become alive again, breathing in all these molecules which used to be life. Maybe breathing it back out breathes life back into Cardassia. Maybe not. Either way, there’s no escaping it. You will never leave again. You belong with the dust. How does the human eulogy go? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… Yes. Very fitting indeed.