By: Wivylma Posted on: May 31, 2006
"Daqsool, golden-eyed, you tower above me
Secure in this fortress, surrounded by guards
Why do you stay here, why not go flee
Back to your people and to your home?"
"Child, have you not read the books of your lands?
Your race killed my people, though gifts they bore
They found only cruelty and death in your hands
Though they came with friendship and questions of lore.
The scouts came first, to teach and to learn
And they even deigned to teach you our speech
Only your violence they got in return
Your people slew them, gave death to each.
They gave you a diplomat, come to make ties
And Hingar held meetings and counsels with you
And in return he found his demise.
There was the Sheik of El'Jazira too-
We built him a aqueduct when you had not
Though we were but strangers from other lands
The workers were killed, though they never fought
But only brought water to desert sands."
"You came bearing gifts- oh, gifts very fine
Which poured out monsters, deadly and fierce
Once you were revealed- even then in your mind
You planned to destroy us once you had our trust."
"They gave you a gift, restored you to life
A gift that my people can not obtain.
Therefore we alone know true sacrifice
Experience beauty, and understand pain."
"You think that we don't understand sacrifice?
You gave us a cast-off and now want our praise?
If you count as nothing our victories and strife
No wonder you killed an entire town."
"The Therans allied with those Ashtani
You now condemn those who fight an enemy?"
"Fighting? 'Twas slaughter and ruin for all.
Each stone and child fell in your fire
You murdered each worker and horse in its stall
And Ariel for her lone crime of speech."
"You did no less, for we also were slain
And our pleas of peace were all in vain."
"Thera, dear Thera, you don't understand!
There were lives there and histories which now are gone
Cities don't crumble to dust in our land.
That city was Nicator's, best of our kind
Its streets were the first to hear his great dreams
And his vision that we could be something more.
Instead, those streets reechoed with screams
Its walls fell in ruins, the people all dead-
And forever. The first to be made
By those who laboured to build it anew
Was a tomb in which our Ariel was laid,
The graveyard was first to be built in that town.
By what right do you now live here so freely
In a land which you have wounded and pained?
You cling to the Vertani ways so clearly
When nearly all of your people bear arms."
"My very enemies granted me this
Because I did not wish to obey
And by the will of your own Sarapis
I live here in exile, here I must stay."
"Oh yes, very nice to disobey when
Hingar and Mournria were already killed
There was no fear of reprisal then
Did you not merely wish to save your own head?"
"Enough. It was not I who am to blame
Not I who felled Thera, nor did I agree.
Of this place 'Land of Hope' is our name
We seek only peace and a life which is free."
"I did not kill all your precious priests
Nor could I have made them stop.
It was not the young Therans who played in the streets
Who ordered your fortresses to be attacked.
Yet 'tis I who now sit beside Ariel's bones
And I who lament her to the shattered stones."