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Lying in the box, unable tothe darkness

But there would be no end Not for her They were keeping it away Playing out their own delusions of mercy and compassion The Daru who fed her, the Rhivi woman who cleaned and bathed her and combed the wispy re out, over and over, scenes of torture

The Rhivi woh the Mhybe’s hair, hu A woman the Mhybe remembered from her other life Old, she had seemed back then, a hapless woman who had been kicked in the head by a bhederin and so lived in a siht it simple But that was just one s she cannot cos to fend off the fear born of her own ignorance Given tasks to keep her busy

Before I had co for her, this woman had helped prepare corpses After all, the spirits worked through such childlike adults Through her, the spirits could couide them into the world of the ancestors

It could be nothing other than malice, the Mhybe concluded, to have set this woman upon her Possibly, she was not even aware that the subject of her attentions was still alive The wonition had fled with the kick of a bhederin’s hoof

The co continued its ceaseless round

Spirits beloould rather even your terror of the unknown Rather that, than the knowledge of hter’s betrayal -- the wolves she has set upon er The hunger, which has already devoured ’s left A life? A finalmore than sustenance?

Ah, Silverfox, are you every daughter? A our lives -- we have forgotten thebehind the Rhivi ways, the true reasons for those rituals I ever yield And you suckle in ceaseless demand And so we are trapped, pulled deeper and deeper, you and I

To carry a child is to age in one’s bones To weary one’s blood To stretch skin and flesh Birthing splits a wo froives

I have never weaned you, Silverfox Indeed, you have never left hter, draw far rant me surcease This cruel parody of hter For her sake My ht but spite, for there is nothing else within ed body -

The co her head back The Mhybe hissed in pain, shot a glare up at the woman above her Her heart suddenly lurched

Their gazes were locked

The wo at her

I, a young woman in an old woman’s body She, a child in a woman’s body -

Two prisons, in perfect reflection