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"Fitchner!" the Sovereign roars "TRAITOR!"

An explosion So? Sense cold Ragged wind biting id ar Wind whips past my ears But there’s another sound before the darkness ss me Fitchner--Ares--terrorist lord of the underworld, howls like a wolf as he carries me to safe harbor

43

The Sea

I wake to the smells of the sea Brine, seaweed, carried on a brisk autumn wind Gulls cry One banks and perches on the whitestone sill of the openIt cocks its head atsunshine Cloudsrain even as early ht

She stirs at my side Her slender body atop the sheets, coiled around rafts s, pink and tender to the touch Mustang stirs onceme feel the aches and the pains and the coh deeply, allowinghuainst e Her golden hair ticklesair is young, vital

I breathe it deep, slipping back into sleep

Memories of metal shatter the peace

Screams echo in the black Friends die

My eyes burst open for the light, desperate to re me I’m safe I’m warirl Yet the memories are so close How did I survive?

I fell from the sky with Fitchner

Ares--a truth that’s always been, but seerasp it I woke to a Yellow’s tools inside ain to a Carver’s scalpel againstin, flowing out Visitors co to this

I’ain Afraid of what I’ll see, what I’ll wake to find As a Red child, I shared , I’d wake before hi my parents’ hushed voices seep under the flimsy door as they started their day I’d hear Father’s shuffling feet The throat-clearing sound he’das he washed sleep fro the cubes she’d trade to the Grays for pitviper eggs or spools of silk stolen from the Webbery

I wish it was the sound that woke , the smell I wish I could say it was how my body knew to return from sleep But it wasn’t the sh of water running through pipes or the arthritic creak of rope ladders as the htshift made their way home from the mines and Webbery It wasn’t the wearytheir way to work from home