We are not sure.

We do not like this feeling, xas.

Old eyes, pretty eyes, old owl eyes. They are bright and they know--they know too much of us and us and he. Perched above, he looks down upon us (but they all do. Tall trees, these humans.) He waited and he knew.

We have killed men for less.

We are
We are u
We are un
We are unsu
We are unsure.

We are afraid. Do we lose that which makes us a weapon? What would they say, should they see us now?

That we are weak. That we are fools.

Then so be it. Fools, we are.

What is old, is new. This is the way of things. What words can a throat screamed shut, give? None.

The drums beat in my head. They call me, oh, he would flatter one side but he brought out the other. We know this; we know this but do naut care.

A sword. Bright gleaming but chipped away at by time, is still a sword. Inside the blade is an alloy that seethes with things I cannot yet understand. But I will. I will go head long into it, singing my own blades until all is mine.

Mine, mine, mine.

I have marked this, and this is mine.

Why do I write here? Do I remember what once was, or do I remember what could be? For a moment I ran alike child across a cold stone floor and dreamed.

Will we dream together, in the final moment shoulder to shoulder, the screams of the dying at our feet?

Time will tell. If I do naut break it.

Young is old is old and young.

I do not care what he says, petulant to me about wanting. Do not speak to me of wanting.

I know of wanting, for decades until time no longer means...

I know.

Don't I?

In the days of my youth I had the heartbeats of hundreds within my gray palm. I could look out across the great caverns and see the polished breastplates of my houses guard standing stone-faced and ready to die at my Matron’s bidding. Die at my sisters bidding. Die at my bidding simply because I could wish it.

Truly, I have taken the knife myself and reached in with greedy hands, hammer, and chisel against bloody breastbone to crack men open like walnuts, reaching in and cupping still beating hearts.

I have consumed the lives of thousands simply by refusing to die. I have made great men weep. I have seen great men empty their bowls in my presence and cry out to their mothers before my hands have gleefully coerced the spark of life from their terrified eyes to fade out, and away, the stench of their deaths a perfume like no other.

I crushed the weak under my feet.

I have been split apart, raked in two, and then sewn back together.

I am afraid of nothing. Nothing!

And yet as the drums beat on, the tongue’s of serpents whisper, as night looms closer and closer—sword and axe and death and dancing…

I find myself pacing long halls that are not my own. I feel the snarl arising at the back of my throat, I lunge at shadows, and I wear the stone beneath my bare feet.

I fear.

But not for me.

That is new. It was the fear of self that kept me one step ahead of poison in my plate, daggers in my back, spiders hatching in my eyes…this fear, this joy of blood, this will to live.

But now, not for me.

How I hate this. How easy it is to hate. How far it is to fall. There is no web to catch me anymore.

Dosib …nesstren!