the reunion...

[Khalika]

~Written as the character Dabria~

There are two many voices.. To many faces, I can barely hold the conception of a thought. The words mere ink smudges upon the page of my mind.
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"I'm dying,"

She whispers across the empty room, that holds no windows, no great entrance, Just a solitary chair and the lass who sit upon it. And you.. maybe not all of you, but your eyes your consciousness in some small part is witness to her confession.

"I'm dying"

She speaks again her mortal voice, so brittle, so old. Do you recognise her? Do you see the mistress beneath? Beneath the long braided hair of mahogany brown, the peasants smock, the dirty worked finger nails, the mud that stains her feet. Yet the eyes are the same never changing swallows of sorrow and devastation.

"She is killing me....Slowly"

Here and now those eyes meet your gaze...

"I am the forgotten one, and she can no longer bare the blood that stains my hands"

There is a pause...the quiver of lips, the gathering of courage...

"She's afraid of me... of us.."

Upon those christened words twenty-six, other faces appear, sheltering the first. From babe to women, they are her, they surround her. They are the telling of her mortal bonds. Slowly dying in this room without a view.

"We are the memory of her soul, of regret...And she fears such pain. we birthed her insanity given to us from a mothers blood.."

They seem to be talking in unison now, all lips moving in perfect symmetry. Even the infant babes hold a voice...The same voice hollow and weeping.

"She wishes to erase a part of her evolution...to wash away the death that lingers there, We are but a harsh memory of a time when she felt most betrayed."

The room suddenly begins to shutter...as if a beast of great might bangs upon its walls...

"She is close, terrified that her secrets will be learned...Frantic that you might learn of her imperfections...Of her failures, Of the answers that she long ago sliced up into tiny pieces and spread across the voids of her mind...Of us..."

And pause.. a smile of hidden knowing...

"But you have slipped past her defences...as many as there are, as many of you as there are...testing the waters of our prison. we have dwelled long, waiting for her return. Waiting for her forgiveness.."

Two children separate from the fold, one looking no more then 4...she holds the hand of another no more then 2...their eyes hold the same coiling of mahogany as their lush locks, yet they hold none of the innocence that comes with such an age.. their souls, are centuries old...

"Will you wait with us?..."

"This is after all....your dream....."