I wandered the streets of Ryn once more, assessing the damage. They are still there, they decorate tables and hang dangling from meat hooks, their blood seeps up through the cracks in the stone beneath my feet. And the children, stuffed and ready. I wondered who might still be hanging onto lingering hope for their return, what arms were missing holding them, what mother weeps where no one else can hear her. I still remember the child’s cry in N’rolav, the night the guard rose. I remember the wave of darkness that turned me into dust when I looked for her. Perhaps she is here now in this silent rotting place, waiting for someone to take her home, lay her to rest.

I sat with my vat for a time, wondering if I could make another me. An improved me, one that is not so easily cast aside. The half-formed defiled me stares up blindly, she wears a smile like mine used to be. I know the mockery behind it, Silly girl, she seems to say, Did you really believe he’d love the real you? No, I suppose I always knew, just borrowed happiness and borrowed time. The winding down of another’s love is such a helpless feeling. He always was too good for me.

I returned to Strife, the very walls seem to reject me. I’ve loved this place since I was an initiate, sneaking my way through the pass to dance on the tower top. But as I have learned, loving something or someone is not enough to assure love in return. All the old insecurities return. That desperate need to prove myself to those who only sought to change me. For the me that I was wasn’t good enough. I wonder if any save for myself miss her, that giggling girl who danced in shadows.