I remember sitting in the grass tugging at the green blades poking my fat baby legs. A bird sang above me. Its feathers violet, like the dizzying swirl of our suns. It sang caustically, its feathers puffed and its wings wide. Then another bird, larger and duller, landed beside it on the tree branch. They danced.

  Birds dancing. A complex choreography of spinning and hopping and squawking.

  Do you remember what it feels like to discover something for the first time? Not like the discovery that I am who I am, but the discovery of a simple truth. Like the simple truth that birds dance.

  I think of that now. That’s what childhood was for me, it seems. A sequence of accidental discoveries made by the simple act of being. I was alive and I was aware. Sometimes I think I was never more aware of the world than I was as a small child. Every moment was new and magical. The flight of a bird. The touch of a ladybug crawling over your hand. The elation of watching it take flight and knowing that it spent part of its tiny life living on your skin.

  Sitting in the grass watching birds dance—there’s a poetry in that, in simply being. You become aware of so much. How odd it is to have a body and how a body speaks to you. Every flicker of the wind rolled over my skin. We think of skin as one thing. No, rather we don’t think of it at all. We look at a person and see that they are a person. We don’t break them down to parts and examine these bits. But my skin felt like a sequence of flags communicating a complex dance to me. It barely felt like my skin was me, but as something moved across my skin, I was distinctly aware of the sensations happening at different places. The grass poking at my chubby thighs. The wind kissing cold against my skin, enveloping me. The gentle caress of a ladybug wandering idly over my hand and onto my finger. I made a bridge of my fingers and watched it walk to my other hand. When the wind lifted, the ladybug caught it and became a speck rising through the air, floating towards my mother.

  Her sword sliced audibly through the air and the sweat dripped from her nose. Her left arm extended straight out, her weight on her left hip, her knee bent beneath her. Her right leg fully extended and balanced on the ball of her foot, where the pivot began. Her right arm extended back, palm open. Dropping her sword hand, she used momentum to swing her right foot forward through the air, leg fully extended to strike her heel up into the chin of the invisible enemy, her knee making contact with her own shoulder before coming back down. Her right foot landed softly but all her weight shifted there as she spun, dropping her head and swinging her left foot round, followed by her sword cutting the air’s tension. Her veins pulsing, visible, and every movement so graceful. More graceful than those birds.

  And it was a dance. I knew it even then. A dance Deathly. A dance of severed heads and raining blood. Dangerous and sinister but turned beautiful and sensual by my mother’s grace.

  I will always remember watching her practice Mirtis Kardas. A dance and martial art of her own invention. Her sword sliced through the air so fast it ripped sounds out and flung them into my ears. Her hand and wrist flicking so fast I could barely keep track of the blade. She swirled and twirled, her muscles taut, her movements so clean and clear and powerful. My heart raced just to see her move. It swelled with love and admiration, with hope that I would someday be so strong, so beautiful, so connected to my weapon.

  She was the only member of the clan who fought with a sword. A foreign sword made of steel while most fought with horn-tipped or stone spears in the forest. Her sword was more than a weapon to her. It was art. It was an extension of her arm. An extension of her life. A metaphor of who she was. Beautiful and dangerous. Singular and Deathly. Its pale steel blade kept smooth and sharp, halflight peering through the trees. It looked so delicate held between her fingers and so terrifying when she gripped its hilt.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Even then I knew she was beautiful. The body of a warrior—absolutely—but hers was a beauty the poets would have sang about, had life been less cruel. Her skin so dark it caught blue hues in firelight, like a blessing from the bluesun. Blacker than tarnished silver, but her hair a shade lighter. A blushing black halo, like the redsun made a nest there whenever she poked her head above the horizon. She had magnificent eyebrows. Thick as my thumb and straight as the wood of this table. They didn’t meet in the middle but came to a full stop. No stray hairs crossing the bridge of her nose or wandering towards her hairline. Scars made small divots and pale lines through her face but her eyebrows remained full and thick and complete. They were perfect.

  Her cheekbones were high and wide, her lips full. You wouldn’t know, but my lips were once the mirror of hers before a careless god mutilated them.

  I was a child, her child, but I knew, even then, that I was looking at the best any gods could ever dream.

  “Who do you fight?” I said while HoPa rubbed the soles of her feet and LoPa worked her shoulders.

  “No one, little moon.” She said between appreciative groans.

  Medis said, “First Mother says there’s peace between the clans. We don’t need warriors.”

  I held my breath and my gaze darted between her sword and her tensed hands. My fathers scowled at Medis but said nothing, the silence deepening.

  Mother tapped LoPa’s hand and he stopped massaging and stepped away with HoPa. Mother grabbed the sword and rolled to a sitting position, still naked from her bathing, the sword sheathed in her lap.

  She inhaled slowly through her nose and pushed it out through her mouth several times. Her face calm and her body still, like a waterfall inside a well. She opened her eyes and said, “There are many skills. Your HoPa is a gifted mender and healer. He can fish and cook better than anyone else in the clan. He’s clever and strong and creative. Your LoPa is the most brilliant musician and singer to ever walk this part of the forest. First Mother is a gifted speaker. Her skill is bringing unity and peace. It’s she who brought peace to the surrounding clans. Akmuo, one day you may be a gifted healer like your fathers. You’re already a talented singer. Luna, one day you will be a warrior like me, and a great dancer. Medis, you long to be a hunter and a warrior though you know you can never be either.

  “Our skills define us, even though we do not choose them. Medis, you fight like a wolf and you will be lithe and strong like your mother, but you will never hold a sword or spear in this clan. You will never know the beauty and fear of killing, of watching a life fade away. You will never have to watch the Deathwalkers stretch their inhuman hands towards the man or woman or child dying at the end of your sword. You will never stare into the face of the Goddess of Death and say, ‘Not me. I live.’

  “I train because that is who I am. It’s what I am. I am a warrior and I will always be a warrior, even in times of peace and serenity. If there is ever a threat to you, your sister, your brother, your fathers, or even the clan, I will stand before that threat and I will say, ‘Not us. We will live and you will die.’ I will rip out the hearts and dance in the blood of any who would wish us harm.

  “We do not fight for glory or joy. We fight because we must. My sword will always be ready, and I will never die at the hands of another.”

  Her words stuck in the air and they’re lodged still in my chest, between the ribs, like the broken tip of a blade. A constant dull ache over the depths of my mother that I could never know.

  Watching her from the moment memory began told me much of who she was. How she saw herself. It shaped much of my life, growing in her shadow. A shade I never wanted to leave. One that would define much of who I was.

  my patreon for more.