1
You aren’t falling apart. You’re well beyond that. You’re just rattling along now. Elven dolls doing what little you can to gather the pieces as they fall away. But you don’t know how to properly reattach them–a doll does not repair itself. So you hug those brittle fragments to your chest until you simply cannot hug anymore. Until you’ve had to leave so many behind that you no longer remember what it is you’re missing. .Darrell Drake
2
There is a duality to darkness known only to those who’ve been infected by its touch. Everyone knows the shadows: shallow, comfortable, mostly harmless places where one might nest for a night. But the depths of living pitch only visit the aristocracy of madmen and women who’ve unwittingly pledged fealty to the curse. For some, it outright ruins minds like a hound to fresh meat; for others, it wanes into the deepest parts of its less caustic sibling and waits for the time to strike, returning periodically through life like an incurable disease. .Darrell Drake
3
I was pregnable once, ” Merill thought to contribute. She remembered how troublesome it made getting around, having a ripe belly. Couldn’t roll properly, couldn’t hop properly, couldn’t romp or flop properly. There were the cravings for roasted cabbage–she loathed cabbage, with its leaves and growing in rows. And labor! Merill passed out during childbirth. She’d endured burns, lacerations, rips, serrated teeth, nails, hooks and a trove of unmentionable harm-inflictors. Labor trounced them all and wriggled gleefully in the spray of blood and gore. “Being pregnable is no good. No good at all. Like growing a bitter melon in your belly. .Darrell Drake
4
ââ„¢« Climbed that roost, alighted right there. Made mush of his head for the onlooker bears. A two-pronger her prize, a meat most rare. Do-gooders will pay. Do-gooders will fear. ââ„¢«Darrell Drake
5
She set out for revenge, to run them through, to do what an elf, an elf must do.” The next verse was Merill’s to improvise. “Climbed that roost, alighted right there. Made mush of his head for the onlooker bears.” “A two-pronger her prize, a meat most rare. Do-gooders will pay. Do-gooders will fear.” “Ballad of the loneliest ones, ” lamented Merill. “The loneliest ones, ” said Almi. She accepted that title; they were the loneliest. The elf gloomed.Darrell Drake