View source for A Conversation With Daqsool

[[Category:Bardic Runners Up]][[Category:2006 Bardics]]
By: Wivylma
Posted on: May 31, 2006


"Daqsool, golden-eyed, you tower above me<br>
Secure in this fortress, surrounded by guards<br>
Why do you stay here, why not go flee<br>
Back to your people and to your home?"<br>


"Child, have you not read the books of your lands?<br>
Your race killed my people, though gifts they bore<br>
They found only cruelty and death in your hands<br>
Though they came with friendship and questions of lore.<br>
The scouts came first, to teach and to learn<br>
And they even deigned to teach you our speech<br>
Only your violence they got in return<br>
Your people slew them, gave death to each.<br>
They gave you a diplomat, come to make ties<br>
And Hingar held meetings and counsels with you<br>
And in return he found his demise.<br>
There was the Sheik of El'Jazira too-<br>
We built him a aqueduct when you had not<br>
Though we were but strangers from other lands<br>
The workers were killed, though they never fought<br>
But only brought water to desert sands."<br>


"You came bearing gifts- oh, gifts very fine<br>
Which poured out monsters, deadly and fierce<br>
Once you were revealed- even then in your mind<br>
You planned to destroy us once you had our trust."<br>


"They gave you a gift, restored you to life<br>
A gift that my people can not obtain.<br>
Therefore we alone know true sacrifice<br>
Experience beauty, and understand pain."<br>


"You think that we don't understand sacrifice?<br>
You gave us a cast-off and now want our praise?<br>
If you count as nothing our victories and strife<br>
No wonder you killed an entire town."<br>


"The Therans allied with those Ashtani<br>
You now condemn those who fight an enemy?"<br>


"Fighting? 'Twas slaughter and ruin for all.<br>
Each stone and child fell in your fire<br>
You murdered each worker and horse in its stall<br>
And Ariel for her lone crime of speech."<br>


"You did no less, for we also were slain<br>
And our pleas of peace were all in vain."<br>


"Thera, dear Thera, you don't understand!<br>
There were lives there and histories which now are gone<br>
Cities don't crumble to dust in our land.<br>
That city was Nicator's, best of our kind<br>
Its streets were the first to hear his great dreams<br>
And his vision that we could be something more.<br>
Instead, those streets reechoed with screams<br>
Its walls fell in ruins, the people all dead-<br>
And forever. The first to be made<br>
By those who laboured to build it anew<br>
Was a tomb in which our Ariel was laid,<br>
The graveyard was first to be built in that town.<br>
By what right do you now live here so freely<br>
In a land which you have wounded and pained?<br>
You cling to the Vertani ways so clearly<br>
When nearly all of your people bear arms."<br>


"My very enemies granted me this<br>
Because I did not wish to obey<br>
And by the will of your own Sarapis<br>
I live here in exile, here I must stay."<br>


"Oh yes, very nice to disobey when<br>
Hingar and Mournria were already killed<br>
There was no fear of reprisal then<br>
Did you not merely wish to save your own head?"<br>


"Enough. It was not I who am to blame<br>
Not I who felled Thera, nor did I agree.<br>
Of this place 'Land of Hope' is our name<br>
We seek only peace and a life which is free."<br>


"I did not kill all your precious priests<br>
Nor could I have made them stop.<br>
It was not the young Therans who played in the streets<br>
Who ordered your fortresses to be attacked.<br>


Yet 'tis I who now sit beside Ariel's bones<br>
And I who lament her to the shattered stones."<br>