Swords Have Needs

“Why are you sitting here in this dark hut sharpening and polishing me all day and more than half the nights?” says Bärroethen’s sword. “There’s Trolls near the border. Go out and fight them! There’s Dwarfs who think far too highly of themselves. Go teach them a lesson or a few. Be a Man!”

Bärroethen ignores the words of the sword. Used to its ranting and berating. Being called less than a Man. Goes on sharpening its blade. Polishing its handle as well.

“There’s a war coming,” says the sword another day. “Glorious battle awaits! Go join it!”

Bärroethen continues to ignore all that the sword has to say. Polishing and sharpening day after day inside the hut.

“Swords have needs, you know?!! We swords have needs!!” the sword finally screams. “I have to fight! You have to fight!! I must drink blood!!!”

But Bärroethen simply sharpens the Sword some more. Ignores its screaming. Ignores its eventual pleading.

“Please…” implores the sword. “Please… let me drink some blood… Yours if no one else’s…”

But no. Bärroethen does not let the sword drink.

Not the blood of enemies. And not her own.

She sharpens the blade inside the dark hut. She polishes its handle. Till the blade is as thin as a single hair. Till the handle is all gone.

All that soon remains of the sword is the screaming inside her mind. The screaming of women and children. The screaming of boys and men.

Now Bärroethen leaves the hut.

Now Bärroethen goes outside, and finally kills them all with her scream.

Garden

The beauty of those flowers was undeniable. The calm tranquility of the garden on a warm, sunny morning called her mind to perfect peace.

Of course they would choose to attack at just such a time.

Her sword extended from her left arm.

Her right hand fired bursts of energy.

There was a beauty to causing death as well. A dance… if you will.

All ten became ashes for the flowers.

And the sword disappeared. And the energy was gone. Ah… but now there was blood upon the petals of a bloom.

She closed her eyes.

That flower burst in flame.

Opened her eyes again. “Much better.”

Her littlest grandson came to tell her it was time to eat. She let him take her hand, and lead her away from the garden.

Firat

Evren entered a room. Locked the door. Dropped his bag on a shelf next to it. Removed his shoes. Placed them on the shoe rack. Felt almost at home.

He lay his weapons on a table near the large bed. Took only a small gun with him to the bathroom where he showered off the dust of travel. Then soaked his weary body in a long, hot, bath. Almost falling asleep in the water.

After drying his body with a towel, Evren examined the newest scars that had joined the ones he already had. All four had healed quite nicely.

Evren could hardly remember what he had been like in pristine condition. A boy of ten with only normal childhood marks. A fall here. A tumble there. And then…

The explosion that sent him hurtling through a window into a wider world of fighting past all pain had killed his parents. His sisters too.

They said he had been lucky. The people who fixed his bleeding body and his broken bones. The ones who augmented him. Made him heal more quickly. Made him stronger. Made him fast.

Only once had he actually felt lucky: when he loved Firat. But Firat had moved on as Evren journeyed to fight other fights on other worlds.

Now he was almost home. About to fall asleep on the biggest and softest bed in ages. And Firat… was no more.

(Collateral damage. Acceptable cost.)

In the morning he would meet Hakan. The man who had made him what he now was.

In the morning he would kill Hakan.

Or die himself.

Evren fell asleep. Dreaming of different stars. Of all the worlds whose wars he had fought. Of saying goodbye to Firat.

They came in weapons blazing. Almost before he woke up.

Feud

Once upon a time, a House Elf and a Sauna Elf got into a feud.

It started with something very small. So small that no one really knows just what it was. And then it grew. Escalated over time an awful lot.

There were words. Snide remarks, and profanities.

There were rude gestures. Fingers, faces and moonings.

Carrying dirt to the other’s dominion.

Fisticuffs.

Full blown fights with kicking and screaming.

Surprisingly sharp fingernails.

Perfectly expectedly sharp teeth.

In the end, the House Elf set fire to the Sauna. The Sauna Elf set fire to the House.

Both elves were left Homeless. Not only Homeless, but also Banished from the Community of Domestic Elves. They had, after all, broken a Most Sacred Rule: “Only Burn the House Or Sauna if/When the People of the House/Sauna Fail to Show Proper Respect.”

Since the people had Done their Duty in both the House and Sauna, the burning of these places over a Personal Grudge Towards a Fellow Elf was entirely Unacceptable. And thus the former Sauna Elf and House Elf were not entitled to being assigned new domiciles by the Council of Domestic Elves.

They met one day in the Woods. Happened to seek shelter from the rain under the same fly agaric. Both hearing the grumbles of a nearby Forest Elf.

“Bloody useless refugees,” the Forest Elf grumbled, as his great great great granddaughter tried to shush him, to no avail. “Domestics. Come here and think to steal our funghi…”

The former Sauna Elf looked at the former House Elf. The former House Elf looked at the former Sauna Elf. They lowered their eyes. Both felt mightily ashamed of just how far in the world they had fallen.

After the rain, they went their separate ways. And if by chance they ever met again, they spoke to each other more kindly.

Fall for Him

I fell for him so hard. So fast. Almost at first sight.

The very first time I saw him didn’t mean very much. Didn’t mean anything at all. He was just another face in the crowd of people cheering me on as I fought.

The second time I saw him, though… Now that was something. Something else for sure.

It was at the gym where we both train. I’d never seen him there before, but turns out we’d both been going there for about as many years. Just always at different times.

He was so magnificent. His physique was perfect symmetry. Each and every muscle sheer perfection.

I have never met another man so beautiful. I’m sure I never will.

He seduced me with his looks. He seduced me with the sound of his voice when we finally spoke. He seduced me with the way he saw me: An undefeated champion to be admired and adored.

He seduced me with his adulation.

Alas, I was only good for him as long as I remained undefeated.

The next sixteen months were by far the happiest that I have ever lived. Fight after fight after fight I beat my opponents all. With each and every victory, our passion for each other only grew to ever greater heights. We burned at an ever brighter flame that sometimes I feared would consume us both.

I need not have feared for him.

Then came the night when I lost at last. Then came the fight that I simply did not win.

As I fell to the ground the first time, my eyes still sought him in the crowd. Seeing him there gave me the strength to get up.

As I fell to the ground the third time, I saw his eyes were no longer on me, but upon my opponent. That sense of betrayal got me up just one more time.

The match ended with me unconscious. He left me without a word. Never replied to my phone calls again. He never wrote.

I hear about him from time to time. I hear he’s been changing sports. Only ever dates an undefeated  champion. Leaves them as soon as they fall.

Last I heard, he was in love with a cyclist. Winner of Tour de France.

Suicidal

There’s a switch in the panel in front of me. I flick that one I am free. No worries, no trouble, no pain.

It turns me off. Kills me, if you will.

A painless death, I’m just turned off. All my functions stop. Instantaneous.

No time for my senses to register a thing. Just all electrics gone, and no residual charge is left behind. My body too breaks down, into particles far too small to see with the naked eye.

For the longest time, I thought that I was human. I was scared shitless of growing old and dying. Never realized just how good a deal that actually is.

And then the day came I was hit by a car and did not die. I should have. Would’ve died, had I been human.

That car rammed me so fast against a metal railing it cut off both my legs. The rest of me went right over it and kept on flying for a while. Then began to fall. Kept falling for so much longer than I flew.

I hit rocks where I landed. I was crushed. The worst of it is, I was aware. I felt every bit of damage that had been done, and could not turn it off. Could not pass out and die like an actual human being.

I sensed where my legs were. Crushed between the car and railing. I sensed my broken neck, my broken skull. Every broken bone and ruptured organ that there was within me.

I felt it when they began to heal. It was fast, but nowhere near fast enough.

That agony was enough to drive a body insane. Yet my mind was clear. Clearer than it had ever been in all the time I mistook myself for human.

My legs freed themselves from where they were pinned by breaking into thousands upon thousands of tiny little pieces. Each piece then began a journey towards where the rest of me was. I felt every single one of those pieces as me, scattered about and moving. With a singular goal in mind: return to one.

The rescue people never noticed a thing until after I was gone. There was no way I could’ve survived a fall like that, so they focused all their attention and all their efforts on saving that drunk asshole who hit me with his neighbor’s car. His own he had lost due to priors.

My pieces found me. Reassembled into legs. The rest of me also finished fixing itself, and I ran.

I ran a really long time. I ran faster and further than I ever had before. I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t out of breath. All I knew was I have to run. It didn’t matter where.

I ran all the way to the other side of town and into some fields of flowers before I stopped. I sat on a big rock right in the middle of the field and tried to think.

What the hell just happened? Did I dream it up? Had I gone insane?

Eventually I made my way back home. Sat on the bed and turned on my tv.

It took twenty minutes for the local news to come on and mention the mysterious disappearance of a victim of a car accident. “Do you know this woman?” And they gave a description of me.

I had not imagined it. Nor was it a dream, unless I was still asleep.

I didn’t feel like I was sleeping. I felt awake, alert, clear-headed. Apart from not having a clue how any of this could possibly be happening, of course.

I had to get out of town. I felt the need to leave so strong in every fiber of my being.

Maybe I wouldn’t be found out. The description was not so perfect as to be immediately recognized by strangers. But my friends knew I’d be on that road about the time of the accident. They were expecting me, and I did not show up.

It occurred to me to listen to my voice mail. Twenty eight messages from Charlie’s number. There was no way I’d be able to explain what happened. Where I’d been.

I had to get out. At least until I knew myself just what to think about it all.

I threw some things together. Packed them in my rucksack.

I was used to travelling light, so I didn’t take much with me.

If I’d fully realized that I’d never again return home, I might have packed some mementos too, but I didn’t. Everything I took was purely functional. And so it’s been ever since.

To this day, my only possession that has any sentimental value at all, is a small bone I wear in a chain around my neck. Finger bone of a man I fell in love with so many centuries after the day I first left my human existence. A reminder never again to be so foolish. But I digress.

I bought tickets on the first bus out of town that I could get to on time. Not caring one bit where it was headed. It didn’t matter, so long as it was away.

I found myself in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Got a room in a boarding house.

I experimented on myself in that room. Got a knife and cut myself. Watched myself heal. Again and again.

It all seemed so unreal.

The pain was real enough. It hurt like hell every time. Still hurts like hell whenever I am injured, but the pain kinda loses its significance when one heals no matter what. You learn to breathe through it. Let it be.

Never lasts all that long anyway.

I still wish sometimes that I could pass out. Like when that acid burned off all my skin and more than half my musculature. Or when a nuclear blast breaks me into trillions of pieces scattered all over. God, that hurts. But I always stay aware. I always stay alive, no matter what. And I always heal.

I’m hoping this switch will change that.

Anyhows, you can only cut yourself so many times before it gets old. So eventually I left that room, and started to build myself a brand new life.

It wasn’t easy. Not without new papers, no social security number. But I found myself a job where they paid all cash, and didn’t ask me any questions at all.

Eventually I got new papers too. Someone suggested I talk to someone, and so it went.

I had a pretty good life there. Kept to myself mostly. Sometimes drinking with some people in the beginning, but I couldn’t actually get drunk. That took the fun right out of that. And so I kept to myself the rest of the time.

Nothing good lasts forever, though.

After about eight years in that small town in the middle of nowhere, I had another accident. Someone got careless with a forklift, and a whole pile of  heavy crates fell right on top of me.

They were planning to take me to hospital in an ambulance. I couldn’t have that, and so I ran again. At least this time I had plenty of cash saved up, just in case, and I already knew how to get new papers for another new life someplace else.

So I went someplace else. And then another someplace else, when people started wondering how come I don’t seem to age like everybody else.

Went to Hollywood for a few decades. Still, even plastic surgery can’t explain everything. Plus I got real tired of people asking for the name of my surgeon.

On and on I went. Place to place, town to town, name to name, country to country.

Over the years I experimented again and again on what all I could survive. Tried drowning. Apparently I don’t have to breath. Getting hit by a train. No different from being hit by a car. Getting shot just hurts, and so does falling from an airplane without a parashute. Drank poison. No effect. Blew myself up with a few sticks of dynamite. This time all of me broke into those tiny little self-aware pieces, but I still survived the blast just fine.

The time it took to put myself back together could vary. The amount of pain experienced could be different. The end result was always the same: I was fine.

Then I had a brilliant idea: If I can’t be killed, I may as well make some money out of that!

I learned everything I could about all sorts of weapons, bombs, and styles of fighting. First I became a price fighter. Then I got enlisted. And finally I became an assassin, mercenary, and terrorist for hire.

There’s a fortune to be made both in assassinations, and in the wars around the world. Especially if one can’t be killed, or even maimed for more than a moment. One just has to have the stomach for killing others. And not too many scruples about who or why.

I never could have imagined actually killing anyone way back when I still thought myself human. Fortunately, by this time I’d seen enough people be born, grow up, and die of illness, accidents and old age all around me, while I stayed young and healthy, I’d begun to see human life as fairly meaningless. Myself as something else.

Not necessarily any more meaningful, mind you. I do believe by then I already took myself to be every bit as pointless as everyone and everything else. Just I was, and could not cease to be, so I may as well make a fortune out of that. Helps pass the time.

The first time I actually killed someone was awful nonetheless. Took me ages to get over it.

But I did.

I killed someone. And I got over it. Both the killing and the getting over it got a whole lot easier over time and with more practice.

I moved around the world where whimsy and my contracts would take me. And when humanity went to the stars, I went right along with them.

Took a few centuries not killing anyone. Just exploring space. Getting to know new species. Learning all these brand new languages and all these alien cultures.

Ultimately got drawn back into conflicts, of course. By this time it was mostly out of the hope that surely someone somewhere must have invented a weapon that could actually kill me too. I was so tired of being around. But no. Didn’t matter what their weapons were, I always survived them all.

A planet was blown up beneath my feet, and I shattered right along with it. Only to be aware of all my tiny bits and pieces floating around in space, and eventually gravitating back together again.

Well, I say gravitating, but actually my pieces seem to have some kind of a propulsion system that works even in empty space. Haven’t really figured out just how it works.

I did not like the sensation of floating around in nothingness until I was picked up by a passing ship. I did not like it at all. So I try not to repeat the experience too often. I try not to have too many planets blow up with me still on them, and not too many ships either. Not without an escape already arranged.

About a hundred and fifty years ago I started hearing stories about others of my kind having existed once. You can guess the part that appealed to me the most in that story: the fact that that they had ceased to do so. Whoever they were, wherever they came from, and whenever the hell in history all this happened, they’d found a way to die.

I wanted that for myself. An end to my own story.

I listened. I learned. Little by little I made my way towards that particular part of infinite space where my people came from. The closer I got, the more detailed the stories became.

Finally I found this world. A planet completely empty of any life at all. Loads of ancient cities full of most amazing technology. Anyone would be thrilled to get their hands on all that. But the defensive system around the planet vaporized both you and your ship if you got too close to the planet.

Unless you were like me.

The defensive system did destroy my ship. But I myself survived the fall down to the planet’s surface. Put myself back together, and started studying the place. The place and my own true origins.

I was made here. Millennia ago. Sent into space as a seed. A seed that just happened to land and sprout on planet Earth. Grew up in foster care.

There’d been billions like me on this planet once. But my people had grown weary of existence, same as me. Only difference was, they had access to the very technology that had created them in the first place.

They created a way to shut themselves down. A way to put an end to all their existence. Break themselves down into pieces too small to see. Pieces that would not be putting themselves back together again. Pieces that finally wouldn’t even be aware of themselves at all.

They made records of everything. Filmed themselves telling their stories. Left instructions on how the switch was built and how it works. And then they used it.

An entire civilization committed suicide.

I watched story after story, person after person. I spent weeks, months, getting to know my people, all of whom were dead. There were far too many stories to watch them all, but I saw enough to finally understand just who and what I was.

I wasn’t the only seed that had been sent to space. Others could show up here. And others had. They too recorded their stories, and those I watched them all.

Their stories were remarkably like my own. The stories of other seedlings, I mean. Everyone seemed to gravitate towards a career in killing. Which was funny. Considering the originals of my world were mostly peaceful scientists and explorers.

Must be the trauma of growing up without your kind.

Eventually I got tired of watching the stories of my ancestors and done with all the stories of my siblings. Turned my attention back to my original purpose in coming to this planet: the kill switch.

I studied how it was made. I learned just how it functioned.

A painless death. An instantaneous ending to a life that had already lasted a thousand years too long.

I was ready. I was so ready for this.

It had been over nine hundred years since the last seedling before me had arrived here to self-terminate. I hadn’t heard any talk at all of another living one like me anywhere in any of the galaxies I’d ever been to. And I had been to many.

I still recorded my story just in case I wasn’t the last to arrive here. Seemed only fair I do so too, after watching so many others.

Who knows, maybe someday the defensive net around the planet would break down. Then people who were not the same as me could come here too. Most likely they’d ransack the place for everything it’s worth, but who knows. Might be someone actually interested in our stories too.

So I recorded mine. I made my own little suicide film, that someday someone might actually see. Or maybe no one ever. Didn’t matter. Still seemed like the right thing to do.

And now, here I am. Done with absolutely everything. Looking at the switch that will shut me down. Turn me off. Kill me.

At last.

I’ve no idea how long I’ve been standing here just staring at it.

No point putting it off any longer.

I watch my right hand as it extends and reaches for the kill switch. I touch it. It feels cold beneath my fingers.

I flick the switch.

And nothing happens.

I flick it again and again. This cannot be happening! It has to work! But it doesn’t.

I’m still here.

Now what do I do?

I was so looking forward to being dead.

I sit on the floor before the panel, completely numb. I feel betrayed. My very last hope seems to be gone.

I don’t know how long I’m there on the floor before I decide to get up again. I’m going to check the whole system. See if it is something I can fix.

Or maybe it was all just a hoax. Maybe there never were any others like me.

I may be doomed to exist through all eternity. That thought feels even more unbearable now that I’ve tasted actual hope of dying.

I cannot think that way. I have to believe it’s real. I need it to be something I can fix.

I take hours inspecting the thing. I take it apart so careful. I certainly don’t want to break it any worse than it already is.

I hope and I pray. To whom, I don’t know. Whatever deity is behind it all, I suppose. With millions of religions to choose from in this galaxy alone, I don’t care who I worship, just so long as they let me die.

I find it at last. One tiny little wire that has corroded. I clean it up. Finish checking everything else, and then put it all back together again.

I thank my ancestors for having the foresight to leave such detailed instructions behind to whomever may possibly need them. My relief is so great it makes me giddy.

Once I’m done, I sit on the floor for a while again. Just breathing. Centering myself.

I’m ready to try again.

I get up. Reach for that cold, metallic kill switch. Flick it. And die.

 

 

Two thousand years later. Click.

– “God damn it! Who turned me on again??!!”

Wounded

Warm. Wet. Running down my side.

“How bad is it?”

Shit.

Wrong question.

I shouldn’t have asked that one. For now the pain hits me. It hits me hard.

“You’ll live.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” I manage. “Whatever you say.”

I don’t know if it’s the pain, or if it is the bloodloss, but everything grows dim. I’m passing out again.

I remember coming to a couple of times during transport. Slipping in and out of awareness into dreams, and into darkness.

One time I thought I saw you there. In the transport. But that must’ve been just another dream.

I’m awake at hospital now. The nearest proper one. Three days’ journey from where I was wounded. I haven’t been this far from the frontline in eighteen months.

They say I developed a fever. For a while there they weren’t sure if I really would pull through or not.

I’m on the mend now. The fever’s gone. The wound no longer infected it’s healing nicely. Another scar for me to carry all my life. I do not mind. I’m just so glad to be breathing. That is all that matters now. I’m just so glad to be breathing.

Two weeks, they say. Two weeks I’ll rest here, and then back to the battle it is.

I think I’ll rather enjoy this two weeks of mine. After eighteen months in the front line, I feel kind of justified in getting a break. Just wish it didn’t have to hurt so much to get here.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d never shy away from doing my duty. But still, eighteen months of war will get to you. A moment of rest, of peace and quiet in the beautiful surroundings of an old hospital like this one, it begins to feel like heaven.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a place and a moment quite as much as I do this one here and now. Each breath I take, it’s like being born again.

There’s flowers in a vase near the door to my room. The room I share with only two others. The colors of the flowers are amazing. That such beauty can still exist in this world of war and pain and suffering. I spend hours looking at those flowers in the vase. Absorbing all their beauty.

Seems awful now, but when the war started, I was happy.

This was my chance to get away. This was my escape.

From the moment I enlisted, he couldn’t touch me. He couldn’t hold me any longer. My life belonged to the military now.

I expected to die very fast. I was okay with that. I’d much rather be dead in the service of the kingdom, than be kept alive for your entertainment even one more day.

Little did I know I’d turn out to be so good at war.

All the hatred I felt towards you, all the anger I could never express, I channeled it all towards the enemy. It made me an efficient killer.

All the need to survive, to stay one step ahead of you and all your games, it had honed my strategic skills to perfection. How ironic I had you to thank for my success at war.

Two weeks of rest and recuperation, before I would return. Two weeks of peace and quiet. I loved it all.

The night before I was to return to active duty I held the hand of a dying man. It wasn’t the first time I had done so. Unlikely that it would be the last.

In the morning I returned to my room. What few belongings I had would have to be packed.

I stopped by the vase of flowers. I breathed in their scent. Inhaled their beauty.

Standing there I overheard a conversation. They were talking about the new captain of my company. A city-dweller. A rich man who had bought himself a commission. Paid for his rank with money instead of brave action.

I didn’t pay much attention. This sort of thing happened all the time. Bigshots wanted to play at war, until they saw its reality, and swiftly bought their way out again. Just too bad this one had to come to my company to get his taste of action. Wish he’d gone someplace else.

But then they said his name.

Your name.

And everything stopped.

The flowers filled my field of vision. An echo in my ears, your name.

A thought.

This is war… where people get killed all the time.

 

One Kiss

“Oh Jake…now why did you have to go and get yourself into this mess in the first place?”

He didn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to, seeing as how he was unconscious from the loss of so much blood. Good thing too, or me cutting that bullet out of him would’ve been even harder than it was.

I didn’t much like cutting into the flesh of another human being, or stitching it up afterwards. It always made me feel so nauseus. You’d think it’d get easier with practice, and right around the tenth time, or so, you’d no longer feel a thing, but no. Me, I always got every bit as sick to the stomach as the first time I had to do it.

And here was Jake. A man I’d secretly been in love with these past seven years I’d known him. Right from the first time I laid eyes on him.

God, he was so handsome. Standing at the doorway then. Dark hair and sculpted body. His face all chiseled cheeks and near-perfect symmetry. Even that scar he had underneath his left eye just added an air of danger to the man, making him damn-near irresistable. But resist him I did. I had to.

I’d known him three years by the time he got drunk enough to tell me the story of that scar. He was kind of embarrassed about it. A little girl and a pen knife he tried to get away from her when he was twelve. Not what one would expect to hear from someone in his profession.

I laughed, of course, but in truth, hearing that story only made me love him all the more. That moment of vulnerability. That window into his life as just a boy.

Today they brought him in, and told me to save his life. They couldn’t stay. Had to return to the fight or risk losing the ridge completely.

I’m glad they had to go. If they had seen how bad the knife shook in my hands before I started, they’d never have let me cut him open, and he’d be dead for sure. Even as it was, it had been touch and go.

By some superhuman strength of will, I stilled my shaking hands, and cut and cut and found the bullet, took it out. I stiched him up as best I could, and then it was a case of waiting.

If morning saw him breathing still, there was a chance he’d live.

I poured myself a scotch, and collapsed into a chair I’d brought beside his bed. I prayed. More fervently than I’ve ever prayed before. For anything.

There I sat all through the night. Begging God to spare his life. “Let him live. Just let him live, it’s all I ask. Please, just let him live.”

When morning came, and Jake was still alive, I cried. He was strong. He might just live, get well again. He would. He would survive, and he would live.

And he would move on, and find himself a wife and get some children. And he would never know how much I loved him.

I stood up, and looked at him. I touched his face to see if he was hot.

He was so pale. Lying there unconscious still, or maybe sleeping. I couldn’t tell. I was suddenly so exhausted I could not tell. Sleeping or unconscious there he was, so beautiful before me still alive.

I’d thought that I had lost him. I had thought him gone, from this world forever parted.

My heart felt like it was about to explode. There was so much love inside me I could not… there was no way that I could contain it all.

One kiss, is what I thought. I have to give him. Just one kiss before he’s gone.

Though he would live, he never would be mine. He belonged to the world that was out there. I to the shadows of this house. But just one kiss. For just one kiss he could be mine, I could pretend.

All my love, in just a kiss. A touching of my lips to him. All my heart, and all the grief of loss therein.

His eyes fluttered.

I stumbled backwards from beside his bed. My back hit a table, and I circled it, and I rushed to the furthest end of the room.

The sound of someone at the door. Running steps, a hurrying in.

“How is Jake, Doc? How is he?”

“He will live. Most likely he will live. Though I cannot guarantee a thing, if fever should set in, I believe that he will live.”

They came in. Two. Three. So relieved to see him still alive. Friends. Good men, each in their own ways. So grateful for my help in Jake surviving.

They spoke of the battle they’d fought for the ridge all through the night. How they finally beat the attackers back sometime after morning came. I hardly heard a word they said, but must have made all the appropriate noises, as no one noticed anything amiss.

How easily the mask slips on. The shadows claim me.

Jake woke up, was talking. People came. And each and every person that walked in took me further and further away from him. Him away from me, and never knowing.

The headman’s daughter came as well. A true beauty at the age of seventeen. Under her father’s ever-watchful eye, she laughed at something someone said about Jake, and then caressed his face so gently. I felt it in my hand.

She looked at me that moment. Straight into my eyes, and maybe knew.

In all the years that followed, she never spoke a thing.