The archmagi wrapped the tip of his staff on the marble floor, the runes that covered the gnarled artifact blazed sliver. “We will begin!” The seven judges standing in a rough circle began to intone and a curtain of mystical energy blossomed to life. Those seated in the raised stone platforms before them felt alternately warm and cold as the ribbon pulsed through them. Some remained standing, some sat, others still passed out.

“Save the poor girl! She knows not what she does!” The woman’s protest was cut short by a templar brandishing a short quickly into her gut. She squelched a moan and died.

One over-large, robed man spoke from behind his topiary beard. “This one has been charged with murder and blasphemy against the High God Yawe. As is custom and law by the Book of First Days, she will be put to death.” He raised his staff, whispering small words of summoning and let a flicker of flame dance around his head. It wavered elliptical before jumping off his skullcap to the girl’s naked body below. Her sharp cry of pain pummeled the few weak but standing. She strained against the ropes cutting into her delicate flesh. Mother’s in the audience vexed their hands as they cried.

A single girl of twelve, barely in her own Moonlife, and she was already a heretic. Even some of the men sobbed.

Since the last feeble days of democracy, this land had been scarred by the Order of Yawe. This high profile order of mages proclaimed the One True Knowledge and held it over the ignorant people like a dangling sword. Hundreds were brought to death each year, many of them children, yet the heart refused to die in the face of such horror.

The seven judges took their turns flicking flames from their heads into the girl, whose flesh became cindered quickly, already blackening under the magical fire. Rufus eyed the third judge, Vlad Cardimus, hoping to find some light of humanity left in him after all these years. From the full distance of the gallery, nearly twenty meters, he could see nothing. Nor did he see the slight hesitation in the fourth judge, which could have surely saved the girl some agony.

But hesitation is not respite, and the girl was against attacked by heat.

She once cut all her hair off but the front
Which would droop down in her face
Hiding her eyes.

It wasn’t long after we went to college
She found herself in dark corners.
And she longed for things beyond her reach
And she longed for things beyond her.
What was left after that year was hardly a girl.

Her son is speaking now, fully older than he is,
And it is a good sign that accompanied a breath of relief.
Her mother worried not at all,
And said genetics would carry them through.

Her faith flowers out, taking big gulps of air
Expelling out the hope that is her bread.
She takes it all in stride and smiles at the sun.
It is here she lives now, having moved out of the past.
It is easiest to say she is carefree, but her love is strong
So epithets like “mother” are better.

Evidence of needing to be here grows.
The slightest remnants fading of choice.

What if I had never been so lazy as to end up where I am?
What of all that opportunity before me?

I live a life of predestination, where I sit where I’m told,
Though honestly, I think I do most of the telling.

What control! What lack of control!
I sing to how little I knew when I arrived.

I sing to how little remains of the man who started that trip.
What little is left of the youth who walked that threshold.

But what is this new form in its place?