listen, mother says, and the fire will come.[break][break]

you listen, patient and diligent. you listen for fifteen years, for five thousand four hundred and seventy-five days, and then you listen some more, but the fire does not come. you think, then, it will not come. ( it will never come. )[break][break]

the conclusion you draw is this: you are a mass of post-fire ash and dust, or kindling too damp to be of any use; you are a splintered tree branch after a storm or a rat skittering to the next trash bin; the fire does not choose you, and for a family as noble and a family as prideful, it means they don’t really want you either.[break][break]

you are met with apology, with pity, with scorn; when you declare your intended absence with words turned sour on your tongue and a bitter smile, there is little fanfare for your departure. your father takes it like a dare, like a challenge, with fire gleaming gold in his eyes and the flames curled around his fingertips. go, he says, and don’t come back.[break][break]

you don’t.[break][break]

( you cut your hair and pack your bag and step over the border line, and you don’t look back. )[break][break]

it’s not all bad, on the road. that’s what you tell yourself. you don’t travel alone -- you are bold, but not stupid -- you seek a mentor for the path you tread, a path of storm-grey steel and bone-white teeth. you travel far and wide under their tutelage, and like a new language, a new liquor, this is what you learn:[break][break]

you learn that you should only cut twice with a sword. the first, to strike fear into their hearts, and the second, to end it.[break][break]

you learn to play hide and seek with creatures of tooth and claw, and to smile as bright as they can snarl. in the right light, your eyes gleam gold like theirs.[break][break]

you learn to walk silently, like the earth is glass beneath your feet and the shadows are a second skin. you learn to look, to see, to spy into the darkness between the shoulder and the spine.[break][break]

you learn, between books and your mentor’s stories, that history repeats itself; it has a way of curling and uncurling, of eddying like a whirlpool beneath your feet. it drapes over the threshold of your front door, struggling for a definition, for a name,[break][break]

you know history. there are many names in history,[break][break]

+weapon - expert[break]
+beast mastery - apprentice

-white lotus tile.[break]
-a slender sword of reasonably fine make. it's seen some better days.[break]
-luho, a young snow leopard caribou. orphaned and then adopted.