~ a short story
Sunlight reflected off the blade as the slash brought on the moon of souls.
Wielding in the wind, K gleaned the serenity of the moment. Weaving the reaper through the soft air, it was an extension of being. Lightly gripping the hilt with his left, right rose into the air to complete the kamae.
K flourished through the routine, alone in the grove and in mind, self-examining truths ungiven. He meditated on birthrights and destinies; contemplated meals and women. Mostly, K savored the transience. Existence as he understood it could change, and had been changing, all around him, each and every moment. K’s life meant everything to him. But he could return to dust in an instant. This perspective centered his soul and allowed for an absolute discipline to be borne. Within the flux, he’d build anew.
Leaves fell to the ground at his feet. Resting his hands now, K took everything in. The warmth of the light on his face, bleeding in and coursing through him. It almost made him smile. There, alone in the grove, he pondered the way. With this blade as his mistress, wielding Wind, he’d danced on its serrated edge for a time. Lifeblood had flowed atop it. Time and durations had been severed by his hand. In his deliberate will, an ender was titled. A dealer of death, with a mind to sell and a body to compose the legion. For K, definition was never lost, but something else had been. Something unnameable, something vital.
This something compelled him to different battles and different blood.
~
A hard rain. Blood moon risen. The horizon was far away. Bodies were sprawled on the muddled ground. Life poured out onto the streets. The final cries of death in the surroundings filled the ears of the surviving. There, alone in the midst of all the rain and mud and endings, K stood with eyes shut and downcast.
He had not faltered, certainly, left hand gripping death incarnate.
A resounding victory.
A massacre.
His hands, their souls.
Standing there in the crimson reflections, new resolutions were reached for new days.
To K, there had been no victors. There was nothing left for him now but this moment. This pain, this tragedy, this regret. This stone of infernal guilt. His sun had never risen again. The tides of his night were shattered upon the dawn of the legacy named damnation borne that day…
~
Back in the grove, K’s heart flickered unto the cloudless horizon and the fortress just beyond it. K edged the tip of his katana toward his new destination. There lay the change he sought.
There lay the blood worthy of being sighted on the wind.
~ to be continued.
