Liberi Reader

The haze is the blood of a city.

I once saw the silhouette of the moon made indistinct, leaving only a round mark as if carefully carved high above, the moonlight along its pierced boundaries flowing into the sky, smearing whole.

I once saw the home I loved taken by a sea of flames. I was forced across the hard mountains, from one peak to another.

I've seen the victims of famine gnawing away at each other. In times of fighting drenched in blood, taking place within a hair's distance, people can seem like nothing ever happened, look ahead of them, and walk on.

I've seen that long, long road. I used to puzzle over why everyone would choose the same path, why death is predestined, why we are only numbly walking down ways that will meet again.

I've seen the barrens and the verdant mountain waters. Seen friends who stumbled down once and so never climbed up again. Seen the looks in parents' eyes in that brief, brief moment they wanted to abandon their own.

—I've seen you.

I recognize you.

The look in your eyes. The lofty, ice-cold, solitary look in your eyes.

More than a Catastrophe's onslaught, than your mother and father abandoning you, than struggling in starvation on the brink of death, it puts sorrow for you in me. The greatest of all sorrows.

Are you looking at me, or are you looking at yourself?

I remember—how I once asked you this.