Work Text:
Deep slashes in the splintered rock
A scar upon the face
Of a shattered land, a broken man,
A wound that won’t erase.
Dark looming walls and dripping plants
Dead soldiers and white bones.
Thick air and darkness lit by spheres
Placed on the littered stone.
Here life and death live side by side
Lifespren and rotspren play.
Can life and death live side by side?
We do it every day.
The chasm walls wind on for miles
A catacombs of pain
For those who the cruel world forgot
A no-man’s land of shame.
A broken spear lies in a puddle,
Spearhead—the blade—snapped off.
They thought that they could break me down,
Disarmed, alone, cast off.
They tried to crush me between rock
Get me to leap the ledge.
Turns out that whetting blade on stone
Just gives a sharper edge.
So sharp, sometimes, I cut myself-
Oh yes, they broke me good.
But slivers of a broken spear
—though all that’s left is wood—
When lifted up by one who won’t
Stop trying or back down
Can light a fire in eyes of others
A blaze no storm can drown.
Callused fingers, well-worn wood.
And most of them, they mock.
A moment poised, a night in rain
Jibes echo off the rock.
Can’t see them for my eyes are closed
Don’t hear them as they jeer.
A dead man’s scolds, a dead boy’s laugh—
That’s all that I can hear.
The phantom whispering of wind
As it calls me to fight.
To look up to the sky again,
To stand for what is right.
Reminds me of the man I was.
Can’t be that man again.
But maybe, I could learn from him,
So I could safeguard them?
Words stab, wind calls, heart aches, I stand
The eye of my own storm.
With pressures crowding every side,
It’s then that men transform.
I choose to try. To join the wind,
To fight once more and strive.
To give them everything I have
And keep them all alive.