The Born Breathing are too many, too relentless. See Me swings his sword helplessly, but as he blocks one blow, another bamboo staff cracks his shoulders, his knees, his abdomen. Blood in his eyes: the wound of his missing hand is reopened. He sobs.
“You are beaten,” purrs the Speaker. “It is useless to resist. Don’t let yourself be destroyed as Ratio Tile did.”
“Don’t make me destroy you!” See Me roars.
“You do not yet realize your importance,” sniffs the Speaker. The Wish Power is like a breaking wave, and See Me a twig: he tumbles down into the freezing fountain.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Philemon is in his Riddling Hall; and therefore he is riddling.
“Consider this: may any touch Our Imperial Majesty without permission?” he asks.
The assembled philosophers rumble, no.
“Yet does a man’s shadow not cling to his feet?”
“Not when he skips,” chirps a little girl, as the crowd gapes around her.
“You again!” sniffs Philemon. “Well, consider this: in my Riddling Hall I am lit with a thousand lanterns, my shadow trapped under my feet! Can I not be said to have conquered darkness?”
“Well, if you trap your shadow in a box,” asks Corbin, “what does that make you?”
Monday, September 1, 2008