Draw You Fools

“Amidst the ever-shifting dunes, I see it – that small, flowering shrub that grows stubborn against the drifts. It blooms as if ignorant of the hostile terrain that it is has made home, or despite it.

‘It would not surprise me,’ the Warden Blackwall commented as we sat near each other in the light of the feeble campfire that illuminated the immediate space around us, ‘if the Vandal Aria came first and the deserts came later.’

I watch in the glowing darkness as the sands batter against the rose. In a moment, I dread to see the meager shrub be torn apart by the blistering winds that chase down the slope that has assaulted our own tents for the better half of a few hours. Yet though its green stalk bends and its petals open to drink the storm, it does not break – it merely sways, a wayward dance in the nighttime.

‘It is desperate to survive,’ I say.

Days earlier, we crossed a withered landscape where the Vandal Aria had cracked the stone as it pushed its way to the surface. The entire length of the stoneway bridge was covered in the sweet-smelling herb.

I saw how she choked the life out of any other plant senseless enough to grow near her, as the Vandal Aria will risk no competition. She is as wild as she is determined.

We can learn a great deal from her – the will to survive, and the grim horrors that must be accosted in order to do so. It is a grave lesson that the Inquisitor has learnt. Let us not be so modest that we cannot acknowledge that in order for one to survive, the deaths of others might be had.

Yet, let me conclude these observations with this:

If even the Vandal Aria can flower in an endless vastness of nothingness, then so to, can we. Even when there is nothing, is there not the chance to begin again. One just has to ask themselves –

At what cost, and am I willing to pay it?”