who we are and all that we're trying to be
The Sword had the briefest of warnings before the strike of smaller feet against the back of his legs – a shout, an announcement, a proclamation of children rampaging down the streets – and then the inevitable. Too large, too massive, to be moved or maneuvered by the onslaught, no damage done, he was still somewhat perturbed and baffled by the event, shifting, like a Colossus, like a behemoth, out of their path once they’d made their impact. The children might not have conjured any amount of significance within his skull, had he not seen them time and time before; Roana’s boys, and the silent, scathing rapacity behind his eyes, along his flesh, intertwined with scores of memories from before LongNight (catching, chasing, hunting) and then torn asunder by the predilections of it all (her escape, then her departure from life itself; form likely the one who brought monsters, and how they permitted it, how the fire raged and seethed, how everything came to be ash and soot and cinders). His eyes flickered over them, one-by-one, but said nothing, remaining the tower, the wake of damnation; uncertain of how to proceed, or what to say to children who’d lost their mother, who slid across muck along avenues.
He hastened only a withering sigh, gaze rising at the midwife’s appearance – the one Wessex hadn’t wanted in charge of the children (for reasons he couldn’t bother to fathom), acknowledging her presence with a nod, “Phoebe,” and gruff, reticent tones, the enigmatic quandaries rasping at his pursuits.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
