She Who Dances With Death

A mother’s daughter

Born to this

To shoulder pain

While others live free

She is meant to break and reform 

Meant to become something else

For something else

It must be in the blood

Or somewhere deeper

The soul

Now

Broken again, but this time into something fiercer

How will she fit this world now that she dances with death?

Does something simmer through the bloodlines?

Something ancient?

Something angry?

Or something loving like a desperate parent?

This time she has been remade

Is she too much for this world?

She feels it in every bone in her body

Like a fever’s ache

She’s

Ferel

Unbound

Wild 

Too wild for peace. 

Freedom beckons 

Tugs

At her warrior’s soul

Sacrificial and broken

Freedom means pain and fear and anguish

But, that is what she knows, what she wants, what she is

Freedom knows no peace

And, the warrior laps at the fear

She bathes in it

Wears it like a paint of war.

She basks in the sweet, rotten smell of it

Fear feeds her

The One Who Dances With Death

So she will try and try to live with joy with happiness with contendness

But, happiness is tied to peace

And the warrior, too new and too ancient all at once, she needs the fear

She needs that freedom 

As surely as she needs air for her breath

Still,

There is a tether

From before she broke

There is love

But, not any love

It is the most feral of loves themselves

The only kind feral enough to soothe her

To hold her

Other loves are too pliable, meager, gentle for her iron heart

She withdraws from it

It’s too meek to meet the raging fire the warrior burns with

Especially now

She’s no longer made for it

Maybe she never was

She can’t let it in the way others can

It’s too tender

Too gentle

She needs love that hurts

In every way

As she dances with death

She needs love that will be just as unyielding

Just as desperate

Just as wild

Just as hard

There needs to be pain

The only love she can keep now 

The only love that can keep her

It holds her firm

Not without a pain of its own

But, there is no regret to that love

No struggle against it

No resentment

This love 

It rages

With fury, it burns 

Like a roaring fire, it consumes, yet like life it breathes

And it gives her more LIFE than anything before or after

It lives as deeply within her as her own pain and fear and anguish do 

Burning brighter than any peace or joy or happiness within her ever could

Brighter than hope itself

More beautiful than the ocean and deeper, more furious, louder than the sea

This is dangerous love 

The only thing capable of tethering the Warrior Who Dances With Death to this world

It is light and darkness

Fear and joy

Love and anguish

The only thing savage enough to stifle the freedom that beckons her

The only caress that can dampen the call to flee

But she is who she is 

And while that love that cuts pleasure with pain anchors her soul

Freedom still begs at her

Still beckons

Still lures

A warrior’s freedom cannot be denied

And She Who Dances With Death must fly