As Ever Like the Sun & Moon at War

2- ☾☾☾ -I

The Owner takes Pariah to a door

which opens to a study space in which

upholster'd chairs and shelves of books and desks

reside with quills and sheets of paper stack'd

beside unpolish'd lamps of gilded bronze

which Owner lights upon their entering

t'reveal all that's prev'ously describ'd

accompanied by scents of sulph'rous wafts

of kerosene upon the braided wick.

The Owner gestures to an empty seat               10

whose invitation is declin'd with this:

"I'm simply here to listen to what you

suggest to be the best of ways which I

could easily employ to see my knife

embedded in the chests of each these men

who sow their villainy across this town

and do deserve more almost than my first

of victims even to receive my blade."

The Owner takes a seat and nods her head

acknowledging the gravitas of what                 20

hath just been said to her and thus replies:

"I can appreciate that you must take

this situation seriously for

comparison to traumas of your past,

for though I do not know ye, I can see

within your eye—refracted from your soul—

the reason for your surfacing from in

the mind of gentle Pilgrim must've been

the product of an evil act indeed

inflicted on the psyche of a man              30

who suffer'd helplessness at th'hands of those

abusing greater power than he held."

Pariah clenches jaw and dothn't speak

for here he wonders how much she can see

reflected in his eye with clarity;

can Owner peer into his recent past?

Or is it just as garbled as th'event

she is recalling from his memory?

Perhaps it is the trauma that refracts

as broken glass the light of broken soul              40

whilst other memories with less effect

are clearer in her vision of his past.

Regardless of th'ability she hath

she is an asset and an ally to

his arbitration of humanity,

and he would lack this opportunity

if not for this clairvoyant sense of hers.

Perceiving him to tacitly agree—