disclaimer: disclaimed
dedication: it's sleeting outside and that's disgusting because it's may
notes: out of control — she wants revenge.

title: pride and valor
summary: Dren and Dyth, always waiting.

—

.

.

.

.

.

He does not know how to live without her.

This is at the heart of all things: there is no Winter without Summer. There is no Sorrow without a Season to have it in, and there is no Vengeance worth having that cannot be sung about in a Ballad. There is no Dren without Dyth, for it is so: first there was nothing, and then there was new a Telling, and then there was Dren and Dyth.

Now there is only Dren, and the tale is incomplete without his mirror.

The mortals throw themselves at him. Their blood sinks into the ground, turning the earth to a stomach-churning bloodmuck that clings like spidersilk to the boots, to the insides of the lungs. It is a pity. The effort is wasted.

There is only Dren, and the waiting.

When the last mortal has ceased their breathing, Dren allows himself a moment to glance up at the sky. He had felt it, when Dyth had slipped back into the Cycle. Sharp pain, hot and sudden, like a hole in the lung. The stars had all faded out, and they have yet to reignite.

She rests, instead, and the scale remains unbalanced. Without Valor, what use is Pride?

Mortals. Always so hasty.

The throat-cutting is a mercy. Better a quick death. There is dignity in it, and Dren is not cruel. He does not make it hurt more than it needs to; the mortal children lie still, their eyes glassy with pain until the suffering ends.

Dren remembers pain.

(Dyth's laughter in his head is a horrible, jagged, cacophonous sound. She had a wild and reckless air, bright as sunlight, burning. It carries him, much as he carries her.)

The scale will not remain unbalance forever. Eventually it will right itself, and his sister will come to remove his head.

In her haste, she will be a mercy, too. Pride does not know cruelty, and neither does Valor.

Dren taps his fingers against his blades. The bodies of the mortals will rot and melt away inot the earth. He will remain long after they are gone.

Time is what he has, now.

Time will bring his Dyth back to him. He taps his fingers again, a little rythym; a swan song, a death lament, a melancholy last breath.

The story goes like this:

Dren and Dyth, always waiting.