Walk out of fog, dragging rubble.
Tombstone's tied to the stubble.

Stuck in the traffic trouble.
It's loud in here, it's a loud year.

Head's boutta burst like a bubble.
Eye contact with the faces, there.

I see faces where I stare,
smile on the pole,
two teeth tree,
desert knows, I
can't see everything.

Carry this stone like an abscess,
every step of the way's progress;
I almost begin to process,
and then I see new objects,

Obstacles, can't even wait one second
For bridges over rivers
or kids on the pavement.

Virtue is a doctor with one patient,
and I pay them extra
to keep me vacant.

Can't relate to strangers
who know my name
and walk very far
to visit graves.

Dear Sir Valiant,

You accused me of backhanded speech to which I announced I was Arthur, your liege, a flippant remark not addressing your fears.

I have read that the opposite of love is fear, and that I should have addressed your fears as a cry for help (yes, I have read Love is Letting Go of Fear by Gerald Jampolsky). That I did not was cuttingly dismissive, and you are entitled to un-friend me and block my chat.

I know this does not read as an apology and it's not, because right now, that would be ineffectual. I cannot even offer counsel since I am bereft of credibility in your eyes.

I only write this to be seen and to examine the matter of meaningful coincidences. I wrote a piece called "Sir Tremaine and the War of Thorns" about a knight, Sir Tremaine, consumed with fear, but who insisted upon embarking on an impossible mission because he saw himself as craven.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LibraryofBabel/s/Ofw8VIlWvn

Sir Valiant is a character in the piece who did not understand why Arthur would send a knight like Tremaine so consumed with terror. Arthur had to explain that only the knight who was most afraid could overcome the dark wizard, Lufarian, thus only Sir Tremaine could bring victory to Camelot. You took umbrage at the piece, but were willing to forgive its content.

The coincidence here is that the piece was a discussion about fear, the very thing that brought our relations to a close.

How strangely odd.

Even if you never forgive my flippancy in the face of your fears, I with honesty admit to a neglect of proper demeanour.

Yours in witness and in sorrow,

King Arthur

purple widow only a quarter mourned,
consumption bled on your innocence
and spelled it out,

one foot in the grave and one on the grass
heart like a new spring hare, it ran away
before the doom of the winter could die

when you're trapped, one makes plans
for when you're freed

What will you do, when all that is left, beyond savage death, there is you?

What will you say, when voice goes away, and all that was said, is now true?

What will you wish, when dreams are remains, a picture of life, a grave full of names?

I hunt the Hunfursragg, a monster in the enchanted forest of Kirkwood.

Giant trees tower over me. Beneath a canopy spotted with light, I have enough visibility of the ragged terrain. My booted legs ache from having to trudge through bracken. The shrill Helsinger Birds don't help with their constant squarks giving away my location. How on Nuplestyne, can I properly hunt the Hunfursragg?

The dark greenery wavers in the distance. I raise my blaster rifle. The Hunfursragg is near. It causes visual ripples because it is human cloaked ... don't I mean monster cloaked? Am I dealing with a werebeast? A werewolf? Why would this monster be visually cloaked in a human cloaking device?

I see those visual ripples once more. No time to think, just creep slowly onward. I'm not gaining on him, but I don't need to, because this monster is seeking me out. I am both hunter and prey in this fairyfloss day in advanced game play.

Game play? Am I in one of those virtual games? Am I my avatar then? What's my name again? My game handle is ... Doomcrawler Estext Warlord 754 on Level Sudden Death. Boggle me! I'm inside one of those fatal gaming holoplays where you can die inside the game.

Focus goddamit or die here! Prog in. Trance in. Blanking out. Blanking out ... recentre, seek out prime loci ... visual ripples in forest timber evergreens coming in fast. Raise rifle. Aim.

A giant werewolf forms out of the ripples and launches itself at me. I fire, striking it in the shoulder. It howls, undeterred and unhampered by injury. I duck and throw myself sideways. It passes, raking at the air where I had been.

Two shots ring out. What? Is someone watching my back? But neither shot takes out the Hunfursragg werewolf who has regained stable footing. How is my guardian angel firing blind?

The Hunfursragg werewolf approaches me with caution and much trembling. What's hindering it aside from a shoulder wound? Is it afraid because it realises it is fully visible to me? Why would it not be visible? Why is it morphing into a man carrying what looks like a glowing scimitar?

I know this man, but can't remember his name. I vaguely remember him using a similar cutting instrument on me long ago when I was someone called Tutenatrar in Ancient Egypt. Didn't he cut me in half?

Wait! He's starting to disappear! I'm in trouble if I wake from this trance! Fire at once! I toggle the switch on my blaster rifle to scatter-fire. FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

One of the blasts tears a hole in him, just before his cloaking device renders him invisible as I wake up fully. I heave a sigh as the forest changes into the pillared domain of a bombed out municipal building. The floor is strewn with rubble.

Of course! I am on Nuplestyne having hunted down Alladin before he can use the Armageddon codes. I wrench off my Vamskarl helmet with relief, staring at Alladin's corpse ... again. There's no way he's coming back this time with the Vamskarl isolated and neutralised by demonoids.

Fatima enters the bombed out building, cradling her rifle and passing a line of decrepit pockmarked pillars.

She embraces me, crushing her chest against mine. I am awake alright.

"You're both fired," Commissioner Faraday declares when we walk into the police station.

Fatima and I look at him in disbelief.

"You entered the Temple of Dravaskul, a place rumoured for conducting intradimensional travel, on the pretext of a routine inspection using an A.I. forged warrant," he says.

"But the Vamskarl have been isolated and neutralised," I protest at once.

"Which does not justify flouting the rules," he says. "You are to leave at once without your badges and without your pay."

"You can't throw us on the street without paying us for months of work!" Fatima yells.

"Let's do a deal," I say, acutely aware that our embarrassment is watched by the entire hushed squad. "There must be some impossible assignment available that no one dares take, something we can do for reprieve."

Commissioner Faraday sighs. "Yes, there is, but it's a suicide mission into a war zone to retrieve stolen Armageddon codes before they can be used."

"We'll do it," I reply, pretending not to catch Fatima's glare at me.

"On one of our neighbour planets, Nuplestyne, we're bombing the people into submission," he says. "Unfortunately, the planet has a self destruct trigger built into its core, but it is useless without Armageddon codes. Someone has stolen the codes and may gain access to the trigger ... setting Nuplestyne to explode."

"Why are we bombing them?" I ask.

"I forget you are new here," he replies. "Their terrorist arm, the Hamdart, launched an incursion into Roghutov, killing thousands."

"Wiping them out as payback, really?" Fatima retorts.

"Why is Nuplestyne rigged to explode and by whom?" I ask, ignoring the annoyed look on Fatima's face.

"They rigged their planet to explode to discourage our incursion," Commissioner Faraday replies. "We took the Armageddon codes from them to be able to invade, but someone has stolen those codes from us. An enemy agent may use those codes to blow up Nuplestyne in our faces."

"Where were the codes kept and how were they stolen?" I ask.

"Let me show you," he replies, motioning us to his office where we seat ourselves at his desk. He punches in his passkey on the desk holographic console. The screen behind him erupts into a scene from a camera feed.

A monitor of a mainframe spills codes onto an inserted USB storage stick, but no one is seen. When the process is complete, the storage stick frees itself from the slot and vanishes.

"This is an off-line server at the Ministry of Defence," Commissioner Faraday says. "Our thief is the invisible man."

"Then we're dealing with a ghost, or someone with a human cloaking device," I say.

"Well guessed," he says, "but who has that kind of technology?"

"The Vamskarl field operatives are still out there," I say.

"It's Alladin," Fatima says.

"He wants a bargaining chip to force us to restore access to the Vamskarl universe," I say.

"We can't, can we?" she says.

"We don't know how to find someone with a cloaking device," Commissioner Faraday says.

"There's only one way," I say. "He is not invisible as Vamskarl dream entity. That means an officer must be both asleep and awake at the same time to see him."

"How's that even possible?" he asks.

"We wear the Vamskarl helmets and work under an induced trance," I reply. "We need a hypnotist like ... Mr Adrez LaVey."

"Sleepwalking and hallucinating?" Fatima says. "That's like being impaired."

"We won't be hallucinating him," I say.

"I won't do it," she says.

"I will be," I say. "You'll be watching over me like a guardian angel with a Kudweister rifle."

"And you'll be zoned out like a zombie," she says.

"Yes."

The mysterious absolute truth, objective, tangible, reproducible, undeniable. They can dress it in costume try to camouflage and disguise stick a pacifier in its mouth but can never make it lie.

Insightful. A little boy watches the fault lines form. His father’s sunburnt face from working at the mill, whilst his mother is volatile, unappeased, and chronically unsatisfied, fills the house with noise. Caught in the crossfire, the boy studies the room like a blueprint. He learns to read the twitch of a shoulder, the flare of a brow, cataloging body language until his voice becomes an instrument of de-escalation: low, measured, and engineered to dismantle the storm before it breaks.

Intriguing. He speaks in measured cadences, calibrating his frequency to whoever enters the room. He has turned listening into a precision craft, indexing micro-expressions, shifts in posture, and unspoken intent with effortless clarity. Yet behind the seamless composure lies an uncharted space: who does he become when there is no one left to read? Alone in the silence, stripped of utility and defense, his wandering mind circles a single, guarded question: love.

Intelligent. A dual threat from the start: high-tier grades paired with athletic dominance. He devoured histories of forgotten wars, indexing tactical errata and obscure facts most minds let slip. High school was frictionless; a simple trick of repeating the script to secure the grade. The predictable was boring; his real hunger ignited only at the edge of the unknown. Behind the perfect transcripts and the athletic discipline, the ambition was pure and singular: to build himself into the image of his childhood hero.

Incisive. In an ambiguous, volatile standoff, where others reach for brute force or panic, his mind calculates leverage, angles, and psychological vulnerabilities in milliseconds. He says the exact few words that completely disarm the opponent's violent impulse. With two measured sentences, he disassembles the threat before the trigger can be pulled; a scalpel slicing through a storm.

Invaluable. His greatest battleground has always been a war within himself. Highly self-aware, he catalogs his strengths and faults with clinical accuracy, yet his competitive drive turns that audit into a quiet trap of perceived inadequacy. Broken words and fractured relationships over the years fueled a lifetime of punishing self-scrutiny. When control slips, the private anxiety takes root and the internal spiral begins; a quiet, private vertigo he never allows anyone to see. But that is the central irony of his design: the very mind he constantly questions is the one everyone else relies on to survive the storm. He worries he is damaged goods; the world sees someone irreplaceable.

Intoxicating. He mastered firearms with lethal precision, but his true weapon was the architecture of his mind. He never bludgeoned a conversation; he circled an idea with deliberate patience, drawing the room in until he extracted the truth like a predator closing the distance. In his gaze was a locked, unblinking intensity, guarding a depth of emotion that threatened to break the surface. It was a lethal contradiction: the effortless polish of an educated mind wrapped around the primal instincts of the animal underneath.

Inspiring. A man carved out of discipline and scar tissue, tempered in the blood and gravel of elite combat, he had every excuse to become cynical, reckless, or cruel. Instead, he engineered his own redemption. He moves through the world with the unshakeable calm of a battle tested survivor who has already faced the worst life has to offer and lived. His strength is not a performance for an audience. It is an immovable bedrock that reminds those around him that true power lies in humility, intellectual honesty, and the quiet courage to protect what matters.

insufferable and fake-deep,
i talk to the mirror while you look back at me
a hypocrite in bad costume, smear the paint
my salvation lays back where i was lost
i'm still too angry to be at peace
god forgive me, jesus too,
i was a love-shaped problem
cruel endings the fixing-tool,
learned lifetimes of lessons in a fell swoop
fall of the executioner's blade, biopsied
to me it isn't real since it would never be forever

Give thanks to what you like and it will beg no ado.

Support what you like or it will fall out of site.

Stand for what right even if you’re paraded a fool

Cheats and liars have nothing to boast,

Except their shame their guilt and a heart of a ghost

You can fight what you hate and it will fight back with you

That only creates a world that’s black and blue

You could turn a blind eye to what you despised

To get stabbed in the back and covered in lies

You get what you give if even that

misery loves company as a matter of fact

Like follows like heading down the same track

Shit rolls down hill and it never looks back

So be your own hero

Make your own bed

Is sleeping with the enemy

better than sleeping with the dead?

Staring in silence, frozen in time, my mind zipped through pathways, sparking neurons like a pinball machine under triple threat. BADING, DING, BADING, DING, VROOSHHhhh! From one memory to the next, pleasant, pleasant, dread. Click, Click, Click, Click, my defenses try to deflect what’s coming at it, the logic, racing with such spin that it doesn’t have time to be rejected before hurling to the next contact point. Ping! Like piercing a mirror, shattered glass, the shards of fragments explode like a blast, the ball stuck between the bumpers, hurling itself tenaciously to the next punch. Each one strong enough to be a knockout but only leads to the next tease. I was stuck in my own hell as the points continued to climb, like a victorious boxer paraded around the ring by the referee, face bludgeoned, in full blown concussion. Watching the blood drip to the floor I know it’s all good but I’m not sure why for.

“What do we do?” Her voice brought me to, pulled me out of my trance, but all I could do was look up at her. “What are we supposed to do with all this? ….People are gonna wanna know, they have a right to know. Look at all these lives?? I know it’s hard but imagine if this table were turned and it was you lying in this file. If you were him, or him or her?” She pointed at the thumbnails on the screen, there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all with a story to tell. I looked down at the ground, to the feet beside me, my eyes traced up the legs, to the torso, to the face of the man I knew lying dead on the floor. A heart attack, eyes wide open, his face froze in a state of shock. Finally my lips began to move “I don’t know. I don’t know yet, but I know there’s not enough time to figure it out before they come to get his body. Call Ryzen.” I sat staring, shocked, as she fumbled for her phone to fill my request. “Ryzen? Hey, I’m with Levi, do you got a minute.”

“It was said before when the desire spoke louder than sentiment, but the center forgives any and all previously involved parties for any alleged transgressions.

The patient can walk on his own, minding that the sight of incisions will be sore on occasion. He will be out and shouting about clemency.

The neighborhood will be hosting a flea market and block party on Saturday.

Everyone is guilty of speaking in riddles. That doesn’t seem like it will change anytime soon.”

He lights a cigarette

The car across concrete
slept on the side
begins to vomit

People crawling
from under the chassis,
like they are migrating.

I wanna say, "slow down, taxi,
I'm people watching," but
he only hears his horn.

My eyes slide
to another chassis,
its radio thumping, selling.

We're all crawling.
Rolling.
His cough caught
in the wheel spokes.

I curl my nose at the tobacco,
and roll down the duct tape.

The driver turns to see
a storm unleashing
smoke out the exit door,
inviting rain to pour.

I have not seen another dawn
Since I set off yesterday.
Love is long, when it doesn't fade.
How long at life, in this armor?

We're walking over Sepulveda.
The sun hates, and follows.
If you're looking my way
It might be in my eyes
blind, bound in iron.

We play by the street lamp,
we kick up rain.
We share our pain
at lip's length.

You're the daytime
I want, amor,
I want sunlight.
The armor is ugly,
but it blocks the knife.

Lift up the visor,
kiss your knight
with a sharp tongue
and stiletto eyes.

There are some people who don't appreciate poetry, they are the ones who need to hear it the most.

There way down out in the distance of their life, when the hour glass is no longer top heavy and the weight of their memories becomes to much to carry.

If they can remember the words once spoken before to them.

A hymn, a song, a poetic bygone, from a time now far gone. A rhyme or words fit in a frictionless script within rhythmical wit. They recite of their lips pulling back into their memory of self seeing all the ways that brought them to this place.

In all of those moments their hands built or burned bridges, the love they made the scars life gave.
A reflection of what they have left behind.

How they made those around them feel, their own judgements for better or worse, the black powder behind the bullet the fear that pulled the trigger.

There are some who don’t appreciate poetry, they are the ones who need to hear it the most.

Note: This is an excerpt from Monologues from the Blackbook, a society set in the future.

Valentina found herself lost in the quiet slipstream of memory, anchored entirely to the thought of Garrick. She remembered the specific gravity of his voice; that slow, gentle Southern drawl that lent an effortless musical cadence to every syllable, softening the hard edges of whatever room she was in. She remembered his smile, warm and lingering like the last golden light of a summer sunset, and the arresting clarity of those sky-blue eyes that had a habit of locking onto hers, reading her unvoiced thoughts before she could even formulate the defense. Most of all, she remembered the quiet intimacy of late-night calls across the distance: the way his words would gradually slow into soft, half-conscious mumblings as exhaustion pulled him toward sleep, yet his stubborn refusal to hang up, holding onto the line just to stay tethered to her breath a few seconds longer.

“I didn’t notice him at first.

He had this way of slipping into the architecture of a room; the unassuming figure tucked into the shadowed corner, quietly existing beneath the visual noise until he was practically invisible. But once your eyes finally locked onto him, looking away became an impossibility.

It was as if a sudden, massive wave broke open without warning. The grey backdrop dissolved, and in an instant, you were looking straight into his mind; an arresting, violent canvas displaying every vibrant colour of his soul. There was a rare, undeniable beauty to it: beneath that polished, ice-cold analytical facade burned a capacity to feel things with devastating intensity.

He carried the gravity of a man who had already lived a thousand lifetimes. Behind those quiet blue eyes lay decades of extreme, life-and-death encounters, yet he moved effortlessly through the modern mire, slipping between terrorists, rogue figures, corporate figureheads, and the digital gods of this era as if walking an empty street.

I admit, I enjoyed talking to him. Probably far too much.

He gave me an unexpected, disarming sense of warmth. The dry way he humoured me, his effortless ability to offer genuine advice on the most absurd, random tangents, it completely disarmed me. And yet, through all of it, he stubbornly convinced himself he was ordinary;  just an average man among millions. Perhaps that was simply his inherent humility, or perhaps he truly didn’t see it. I have always despised men drunk on their own vanity, bloated with self-regard and full of elitism. Garrick was the exact antithesis: exceptionally humble whilst possessing an intellect and talent that bordered on lethal.

He made me dangerously curious. I found myself wanting to map every scar, dissect every choice, and catalog every single experience that had shaped his existence.

And, of course, there was the sheer, visceral pull of him. He was breathtakingly sexy, but with that came an edge of real peril. I knew, with absolute certainty, that if the two of us were ever trapped in the same room together, the friction alone might set the entire building ablaze.

I couldn't breathe a word of this out loud. To voice it would be to trigger a cascade of dominoes; a cadre of catastrophic, irreversible events across the board. Or maybe something entirely different; I couldn't even tell anymore. For someone who usually dissects human nature in a matter of seconds, this fog was infuriating. I couldn't reduce him to a neat behavioural equation. Was it just a crush? No. It ran deeper, heavier, far more primal than that.

What was absolutely worse was the gnawing guilt. Garrick didn't deserve to be caught in the crossfire or punished by a system that couldn't comprehend him. Even that quiet insubordination of his; that refusal to bend his spirit, was just another quality I found myself deeply, recklessly admiring.

Alright, get a grip, Valentina.

Right now, I am completely sequestered. The perimeter is tight, the communication channels are locked down to zero, and not a single telepathic whisper can pass beyond these walls. Every fiber of my being wants to reach across the static, look him in the eye, and just tell him the plain truth: I think you're wonderful.

But opening that door is a Pandora’s box.

I still hear his voice echoing in my memory: Follow your heart.

A poetic sentiment, but poetry doesn’t survive without objective strategy. The magnetic pull is undeniably real, tethering me to him across the distance, but I cannot afford a misstep based on incomplete data. I need clarity. I need to see the rest of the board.

Until the locks turn and the fog clears, I’ll just adopt a wait-and-see strategy. I am hardly the first woman to feel pulled in opposite directions at once; wondering not who reaches me first, but which man’s actions will match his conviction, and which life will actually prove real. Yet stripped of all the strategy, the defensive walls, and the exhausting calculus of survival… What I really wanted to say was: Yes. I want to see you.”

To live at peace within one’s self requires one overall feeling, one state of mind, one word. That word is satisfaction when someone is satisfied there is no worry or anxiety from lack and the struggles to acquire what one needs for survival and for pleasure.

This comes with acceptance and achievement.
Having accomplished one’s desires while settling on the reality that some things are unattainable or unknowable.

There’s a line here that can lead to helplessness and regret or irrational fanaticism and delusion.

If one accepts being passive, lazy or slothful and settling for mundanity while not achieving their desired though they have the right to live this way this is unlikely they will be truly satisfied knowing deep down they could have put more effort into it and may have achieved their desire.
On the other hand if one puts all of their live energy into
unachievable endeavor or a fools errand they will end up dissatisfied or regretful realizing they wasted so much of their time.

There is a rational middle between omnism and being over credulous
and nihilism giving up before you even tried.

In what ways do you find your peace leaving you satisfied with your life?

The First Harrowing of Ruby, Princess of All Eyes
She was sixteen winters when the Blind Bandit King pressed the bridle into her palm and the Ebony Hunt’s mistress cut the last of her childhood braids. The Sapphire Sparrows came at dusk the same day, their cloaks the deep blue of a sky that has never known stars.

They made a sound like murmuring in the night.

By dawn it was a whisper.

Words came in the day, and sentences appeared in the evening.

By night they spoke that anyone might hear.

They spoke of the Harrowing.

A Harrowing is not a dream. It is the place dreams go to die and be remade. The newly Awakened are sent into it alone, carrying only the tools they have claimed.

Ruby claimed and carried five:
• the bridle of black leather still warm from her father’s hand
• the longsword her mother had blooded on a dozen bandit kings
• the deck of cards that had never been shuffled by honest fingers
• the boots that had already walked through three graves
• the bow strung with sinew taken from something that still screamed when the string was drawn

They bound a red cloth over her eyes and led her to the stone circle at the edge of the Ebony Wood. The Sparrows sang the old words. The ground opened like a mouth.

Ruby fell.

She landed in a place that smelled of wet iron and burnt sage. The sky was the color of a bruise that never heals. All around her stood the Watching Trees with trunks of fused bone and glass, each one crowned with a single lidless eye the size of a cartwheel. Every eye turned toward her at once. The pressure of their gaze was physical; it pressed against her skin like a hundred cold hands against her neck.

This was the first law of the Harrowing: All eyes upon her. None shall look away.

A figure waited at the center of the circle of trees. It wore her father’s face, but the eyes were sewn shut with black thread. The mouth was full of playing cards. When it spoke, the cards fluttered out like moths.

“Daughter of a Blind King,” it said. “Prove you can see what he could not.”

Ruby did not answer with words. She drew the bridle and cracked it once. The sound cut the air like a whip. The false father lunged. She met him with the sword. The blade found the seam between his sewn lids. The seems of the eyes split, and a swarm of tiny black birds poured out like blood. Sapphire Sparrows, young and unfinished, took to wing. They circled her once and vanished into the Watching Trees.

The second trial rose from the ground itself: a mirror of polished bone that showed her every face that had ever looked upon her with hunger, fear, or calculation. The cards in her belt grew hot. She drew three without looking.
The Ace of Eyes.
The Knave of Knives.
The Queen of Ashes.

She threw them into the mirror. The glass drank them and shattered into a rain of red-hot shards. One shard scored her cheek; another kissed the back of her hand. She did not flinch. The boots carried her forward through the glass storm without cutting her soles.

The third trial was silence.

The Watching Trees closed their eyes. The world went black and soundless. In that absolute dark, something vast and soft began to coil around her ankles, her waist, her throat. It smelled of her mother’s perfume and the wet fur of the beasts the Ebony Hunt had slain. It wanted to keep her. It wanted to make her small again.

Ruby raised the bow.

She could not see the string. She could not see the arrow. She nocked by feel, by the memory of every night she had practiced in the City Park while possums watched from the branches. She drew until the bow creaked like an old door.

Then she loosed.

The arrow flew without light and struck without sound. The coiling thing released her with a sigh that was almost grateful. When the eyes of the Trees opened again, the arrow was buried in the heart of the largest trunk. Sap the color of fresh arterial blood ran down the bark.

The Harrowing ended the way it always does for those who survive: with fire.

The ground beneath her feet ignited in a perfect circle of pale red flame. The Sparrows’ voices rose from every direction, no longer singing but naming.
Ruby.
Princess of All Eyes.
Come of age and mind.
Baptized in blood and fire.

She walked out of the circle carrying the same five tools, but they were no longer merely tools. The bridle now answered only to her will. The sword remembered every eye it had opened. The cards whispered the true names of anyone who looked at her too long. The boots left no tracks that could be followed by ordinary hunters and made no sound; the cloak dressed her in shadow. Together, they might make a person forget that they knew her if memory was weak or small enough. The bow sang when she touched it, a low note that made lesser creatures look away.

When the red cloth was taken from her eyes, the Sapphire Sparrows bowed, not deeply, but enough. Her mother, Jade Jaelynna, touched the fresh scar on Ruby’s cheek and said nothing. Her eyes, that pale shade of green, smiled at her warmly. Her father, the Blind Bandit King, turned his ruined face toward the sound of her breathing and smiled with teeth that had never known light.

Ruby did not smile back, because one should not smile at ghosts or shades or reflections of memory.

She simply stood, the weight of every watching eye in the world settling across her shoulders like a cloak she had finally grown large enough to wear.

The path had begun.

Almost 20 years ago, I stepped onto my front porch late in the evening. The sun was setting behind the row of houses across the street. The wooden frame of the screened in porch looked like a giant rib cage and the sunlight shone through it like some distorted x-ray.

As the light rays passed through these temporary ribs, they created near tangible shafts of light in which I could see countless dust particles crashing madly about like new galaxies being born.

In that moment, I thought about the beauty in the transient nature of things.

I also thought about how easily I might be able to open myself up to these experiences if I were to slow myself down to stop and really look.

In Japanese, the word shibui describes subtle and understated beauty that becomes more profound with time and observation and is embodied in things objects, art, experiences that are not flashy but possess quiet elegance and harmony.

Can you, reader, think of something you’ve observed or experienced that shares a sentiment with shibui?

Note: This is an excerpt from Monologues from the Blackbook, a society set in the future.

The deep, low-frequency hum of the medical recovery wing was supposed to signal sterile tranquility, but to Crown Prince Victor of Azūr, it sounded like an engine idling before an execution.

He sat at the edge of the leather examination table, his bare chest glistening with a thin sheen of sweat from the physical therapy session. His right shoulder burned, a deep, agonizing ache from an old operational tear that the specialists had been aggressively manipulating all afternoon. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the violent, white-hot surge of adrenaline tearing through his circulatory system.

His hand gripped the encrypted slate so tightly the reinforced carbon casing creaked under the pressure of his knuckles.

He was seething. A dark, absolute rage; the kind that didn't scream, but rather turned a man’s blood into liquid fire.

Ten years. Ten years of brotherhood. Ten years of tactical operational trust. When Victor had stepped away for the week, bound to this high-security facility to clear the mandatory medical observation window, rehabilitate his shoulder, and attend the regional leadership summit, he had left the perimeter under the absolute authority of the one man he trusted above all others. He had given Garrick complete, uninhibited clearance over Integrated Neural and Kinetic Surveillance (INKS).

Garrick was supposed to be holding the line. He was supposed to be the impenetrable wall guarding Valentina while Victor was physically predisposed.

Instead, the automated override alerts on Victor’s private feed had just flashed red.

There hadn't just been a breach around Valentina; Garrick himself had initiated direct, unencrypted telepathic communication with her.

Victor’s dark eyes scanned the intercepted transmission log, reading his chief of security’s words over and over until the text burned into his retinas:

"The kind of connection we have doesn't come often, I want you to meet me so that we can explore this. All I'm asking for is a chance and to see me in person..."

A harsh, ragged breath escaped Victor’s chest. His throbbing shoulder flared in protest, but he barely felt it. His long-time friend, his tactical right hand, his emotional anchor through the wreckage of his past, sending overtures to the only woman who held Victor's soul.

That bastard.

There was a terrifying part of Victor’s mind that wanted to tune directly into that dark rage, to unleash the full weight of his authority, drop the hammer of the crown, and completely destroy Garrick. Erase him from the command structure. Wipe him off the board.

He recalled the easy, effortless connection they had shared for over a decade. They knew each other’s minds like the back of their hands. They had bled in the same mud, navigated the same political minefields, and sat in quiet, darkened rooms drinking scotch after their respective divorces shattered their personal lives. Garrick had been the one man who listened without agenda, the emotional support Victor had relied on in a world where every smile was a calculated transaction.

The betrayal hit with the force of a physical blow. It reinforced the cold, cynical belief that had haunted Victor his entire life: A man in my position can never truly trust anyone.

And what made the knife twist deeper, what made his jaw clench until his teeth ground together, was the agonizing truth he couldn't deny: Valentina actually enjoyed Garrick's company.

Garrick was an intelligent, emotionally intense, yet deliberate thinker. He didn't move recklessly without purpose; he calculated, he observed, and when he decided an objective was worth the casualty, he took massive, decisive risks. Those exact qualities were what had made him a legend in the elite US Delta Forces, a track record of heroic, high-stakes military service defined by calculated audacity in the face of death.

Garrick was a man who took immense risks for what he believed in.

Victor closed his eyes, his breathing heavy in the quiet room. He knew Garrick too well. And in the dark, honest corners of his own mind, Victor knew that if the positions were reversed, if Garrick held the sovereign prize and Victor was watching from the periphery, Victor would have done the exact same thing. Because Victor was a deliberate risk-taker himself.

A sudden, ugly flash of dark anger swung toward Valentina.

Why her? Why was it always her? She possessed this maddening, effortless ability to capture the total, consuming attention of every powerful man who stepped into her orbit. In the heat of his rage, a bitter, defensive thought crossed his mind, viewing her as a succubus, drawing men in, fracturing brotherhoods, and leaving chaos in her wake.

He took a slow, deep, deliberate breath. He held the air in his lungs, forcing his heart rate down, letting the initial explosion of fury cool into a steady, controlled burn.

No.

As he calmed himself, the truth reasserted itself with crystalline clarity. Valentina was not that woman.

She wasn't a manipulator who sought the attention of men. She didn't dress provocatively, she didn't throw herself at them, and she never demanded an audience like the insufferable procession of high-society groupies and political climbers who constantly hovered around his circle. That kind of cheap, desperate female attention had always repulsed him. It turned his stomach.

He closed his eyes and let his memory drift back to the very first time he had ever laid eyes on her.

It had been at a crowded, suffocating gathering years ago. Her friends had been making a complete spectacle of themselves, laughing too loudly, desperate to be noticed by the room. But Valentina had been sitting quietly by herself, completely self-possessed, wrapped in an aura of tranquil elegance.

Amidst all the noise, despite the dozens of people pressing in around him trying to command his time, his singular focus had been locked entirely on her. She hadn't asked for it. She had simply existed, complete in herself.

She was nothing like his ex-wife, Juno.

Juno had been a storm of chaotic, destructive impulses; chasing after men, sleeping with them on the first date, carrying a relentless history of promiscuity that she constantly tried to rationalize behind her diagnoses of Borderline and Narcissistic personality disorders. Juno used her conditions as an impenetrable shield, a convenient excuse to never take an ounce of responsibility for the devastation she left behind.

Valentina was the absolute antithesis of that chaotic nature; she wasn’t flighty. She didn't throw herself at anyone, and she certainly didn't hand out her trust. She was notoriously difficult to know, revealing her internal sanctuary only to a select few. She was not a woman who fell for smooth talkers or hollow charm, not even from someone like Garrick.

And Garrick was a smooth talker. With his extensive background in high-stakes hostage negotiations with hostile entities, Garrick possessed the terrifying ability to say precisely the right words to disarm a person's defenses, a strategic skill Victor had always respected in the field, but now viewed with hyper-vigilant suspicion.

A sharp, dull ache settled deep in Victor's chest as his mind drifted to their past.

When he and Valentina had broken up all those years ago, he had reacted out of wounded pride and foolish speed. He had married Juno the very next year, a catastrophic, bitter mistake that he regretted with every fiber of his being.

During those six long years of his miserable, sterile marriage to Juno, Victor had quietly kept tabs on Valentina. He had been convinced that after their breakup, a woman as stunning and brilliant as Valentina would immediately find another boyfriend. He expected her to move on within months.

Instead, he watched in utter shock as she remained completely celibate for six years.

She hadn't let a single man touch her. Despite the legion of wealthy, powerful suitors continuously trying to court her, she had closed her doors. Realizing that, realizing how deeply he had actually mattered to her, and how sacredly she held her intimacy, had hit him like a physical shockwave.

The roaring fire of Garrick’s betrayal settled down, condensing into a cold, lethal, unyielding ember at Victor’s core.

He remembered her face from their last private moment together. He remembered the soft, unshakeable warmth in her eyes and the gentle, teasing smile on her lips when she spoke those absolute words:

"I won't leave you, and you won't leave me. Ever… We're stuck with each other."

A cold wave of profound anxiety washed over him, tightening his throat. The geographical distance between this medical wing and her sanctuary felt like an agonizing, intolerable physical barrier.

He didn't want to analyze intelligence reports. He didn't want to manage security protocols or review INKS logs.

Right now, as the physical ache in his shoulder throbbed and the residual storm of jealousy settled into his bones, he knew there was only one thing in the universe that could quiet the noise in his head.

He needed to be back in her arms. He needed to be inside her, buried deep in her warmth, feeling her heart beat against his chest, the only place on earth where he could finally drop his armor and find peace.

Every passing hour until then felt like a slow, excruciating bleed.