The Silver Sparrow

An Extension of You

A cool breeze brushed softly against his cheek and brought with it the faint, cool scent of sage and mint that grew around the valley. He paused to look at where he was—something he hadn't done since he arrived. The night was clearer then, and while there was still no moon in the sky, the stars could now be seen far across the desert where there had been none before. He noticed for the first time the golden, smooth-as-silk dunes that seemed to stretch far beyond the horizon, and the large, oddly-shaped white rocks that gave the White Desert its name gleaming like a curved wall of alabaster over and around the campsite. Somewhere in the distance, a woman was singing a lullaby to lull the little ones to sleep. She seemed to have been singing for some time, only he'd not been paying enough attention to hear it.

It was achingly beautiful, in the way that it shouldn't have been possible for him to have missed it so completely. There had also been, he suddenly remembered, so many beautiful things in Rasharwi he'd never stopped to appreciate. Everything seemed to have rushed by him in a blur for the past seven years he'd been struggling to survive, and somewhere along the way he seemed to have lost focus of where he was heading. That night, he could see it all again with startling clarity—where he had been, where he was, and the choices that had been laid out before him. For the first time in a very long time, he knew for certain the path he wanted to take, where he wanted to go, and he was trembling at the anticipation of what tomorrow might bring.

Something moved in the distance. He looked and saw Djari walking alone in the dark, her near silver hair tossed by the wind could be seen from afar. She appeared to be coming back from somewhere toward her tent, and had stopped for a moment when she saw him before resuming her steps. There was a blade in her hand, the same one she'd assaulted him with. It was dripping with the same blood that seemed to have stained the entire right side of her white tunic. Her eyes, so unnatural and otherworldly, were glowing a frightening shade of gold.

She paused when they were close enough to speak. He could see the smear of blood on her cheek and the crimson stains on her silver hair from where he was standing. She must have just killed her horse—considering the command her father had given earlier that evening. It would have been her first kill, if he remembered correctly from their conversation.

The first time was always the hardest. It changed a lot of things and ended a lot more than the life you took. The blood never washed off, not truly. Not ever. She should be crying but wasn't. Her bright yellow eyes were clear and more focused than he'd seen so far. She wasn't even close to tears.

"Will it always be this hard?" Djari asked with a tightness in her voice impossible to miss.

"Harder," he replied, "if you allow it to be." There was no point in trying to comfort her with lies, not when he knew there would be a next time, and the next, and the next. One could punish oneself forever for old sins and live miserably, or learn from it and move on. The first wasn't truly a choice, not if she had any intention to fulfill the prophecy. Too much integrity could sometimes hold back the entire peninsula. A terrifying thought, considering who she was. Even more terrifying, to think that whatever he said to her at this moment could start the ripple that might lead to the destruction of the Salasar. Or the White Desert.

"And if I don't," she asked, the outlines of her face seemed harsher despite the lack of light, "allow it to be?"

"Then it gets easier over time."

Djari looked down at her hands—stained completely by the blood of her horse—and then back at him. "Do I want it to be easy?"

A question he was both glad and sad to hear. "Enough to do what you have to," he replied. "Never to the point of being effortless." The time would come when she would have to end—or be responsible for ending—thousands more lives and not just those of her enemies if the prophecy was correct. Only the arrogant or the naive would see only the grandeur of war and not its carnage. She would have to come to terms with hard decisions and seeing herself as a monster from time to time. She would have to kill, in cold blood, and be able to sleep through the night to kill again. There was, however, a line she also could not cross or she would become the tyrant she wanted to defeat.