I fear so much. Blades in the night, raging flame, the smell of hot blood splashed on concrete, pain for those I love. Humans say that courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to overcome it. They are close. Courage is the ability to accept fear, weave it into something strong as knotted steel and run the cable through every muscle. This process takes many forms. I have learned to hate that which I fear, to render it powerless at the edge of a sword. But ours is not the only way.
This morning I went to the target's house and watched as she made breakfast. I sat in the trees, surrounded by singing birds, and stared through binoculars as she suffered patiently. The target came down the stairs as her aunt left and said something in farewell. I couldn't see the words. Wrong angle. But I saw the girl's spine loosen, her fingers tremble, even as the door clicked shut. After that she moved robotically, stiff and hesitant even in her routine. Talking the entire time. Something repeated, a mantra designed to reduce the world into manageable simplicity.
The girl is not my enemy. She isn't capable of harming herself, much less another. She is afraid and in pain. I should go to her, openly, as myself, and tell everything. That her pain comes from outside, from those twists of humanity I will spend my life annihilating. But if I do and the man escapes others will suffer. Bait, my siblings call her. I am a fisher of souls, using and discarding one to hook the sharks. Simple mathematics. Let one die, keep a thousand others alive. Probably she won't even die. But if he owns her for much longer it won't matter.
Her eyes are the color of sunset stormclouds, just after lightning.
No comments:
Post a Comment