We are the warriors, Shahrizai

[Librette]

As a child you would wait, and watch from far away. But you always knew you'd be the one to work while they all play. The boy talks of Carnage and Core, and Librette can't help but smile – a mirthless, ironic kind of smile. It all goes back to the conversation they'd had in the meadow almost a year ago, a discussion of what it meant to be light and dark. Core and Carnage both were undeniably dark. Carnage especially, there was just no doubt about it. "So even though a lot of dark horses aren't mean," she begins, trying to choose her words carefully. "Core and Carnage are." She chuckles, again without mirth. "It's like you said, it just seems mean. And it pretty much was." The piece of heart sure hadn't been for her benefit. And her death hadn’t been either. "Carnage didn't know me at all when he killed me. Killing is just kind of…one of the things Carnage does." She falls silent for a while, pondering the boy's final questions. She doesn't really remember very much of what it was like to be dead, but for him, for some reason she feels compelled to squeeze her memories together and wring them out, trying to remember any scrap. Her lips flick down in a frown. "Nothing much, not that I remember at least. I assume there's something. I mean, if there wasn't anything left of me, there'd have been nothing to return." she pauses. "I mean, I'm still me. If there was really nothing you'd expect all my memories and such just…float away or something, wouldn't you?" Truth be told she has no idea how it happened. God knows she hadn't been a party to it. She had died within the borders of the Valley, killed by two magical stallions. Her bones had lingered here, her corpse had no doubt decayed, and yet here she stood. A complete contradiction, a beautiful insanity. And she had absolutely no explanation for it. "I didn't remember anything, when it brought me back. I mean, not of the time I was gone. I remembered all my own memories. Just not the rest of them." She still remembers everything, even now, years later. All of her friends, all of their encounters, she remembers them with startling clarity. Beqanna is a dramatically different place now, filled with new horses and strange rules she never knew when she lived here before, but the Valley is still here, it's still her home, and that's all she needs to know. "I wonder why it brought me back sometimes." She says with a sigh, before catching herself and being surprised at just how much she'd said. She rarely lets herself become so pensive, let alone around others, but something about this boy brings out the storyteller and the thinker in her. "I suppose it'd be handy to know the how, but that's always been what's gotten me." She pauses, looking out across the landscape. "Why me?" Don't weep for me LIBRETTE Because this will be the labor of my love. Image copyright FFFiiiAA

Such thoughts. Very philosophers. Wow.