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There was a time when I was healthy, strong. I remember…how that felt. I remember the fears I had. The hopes. Though they are dull now. Duller than memories should be. Shadows. I remember what it was like to sit strong in the saddle, to ride for hours without fading. If I reach out, it is almost like I could touch it, That former life. They think I cannot tell the difference, think this is somehow less real. But I remember.
She lifts her brush from the paper, unable--or perhaps unwilling--to write her fear: "I feel it slipping away. My past. Is this the way the elderly feel? Memory diluting like water in ink, but they watch it fade, aware and yet unaware." She dips her brush in ink, lifts it and wonders how long it will take for the ink to dissipate completely. If the rice paper will remember longer than she.
"No," she whispers to the page. Sheer force of will. She writes,
I remember.
YOU ARE READING
Queen of the Eight Banners
FantasyIlha's marriage to the crown prince of the newly-formed Eight Banner Nation gives her people strength against their enemies, the Chakhar Gols, a warring sister-tribe. Yet when the Chakhar leader dies at her hand, Ilha finds not peace but further tur...
