And see the cover below
Last year, E.K.
Check them both out, below:
i.
We were made strong in that desert heat, tempered by sand and blood and bones.
We stretched out our hands and our will, and used that which we seized however we wished.
Then one of us rose too high, took too much, and was brought down.
The world is made safe by a woman.
She took the evil that she knew and bound it up with bright iron she had dreamed into existence.
She found a place for evil to roost, far away from the people she loved.
She did the very best she could.
And, for a while, that was enough.
The mountains were not kind to us, as she knew when she sent us here to suffer.
For generations of human life, we were too weak to leave them.
We hungered and we thirsted, and we lamented what we had lost in the hot desert sand.
And we remembered every modicum of it.
The creatures she made to be our keepers hemmed us in, keeping us weak and struggling.
Their songs and laughter were torture to our ears.
Humans came to the mountains, to cross them at safe passes, seeking a pathway to the sea.
The land on the other side was better, fertile enough for growing food and soft enough for cattle.
Our first attempts to leave the mountains were met with disaster.
Time, perhaps, or hubris had dulled our sense of ourselves, and we were hopelessly overmatched.
Our wounding was beyond the mortal measure of pain.
And, oh, we abhorred it.
We could not take, as we once did.
We could not force and pillage as we liked.
I would find weakness, and I would push it until it cracked.
They would give me what I wanted and think that they had bested me.
I had only to outlive them, after all, as my kind did not die.
And so I learned.
The world is made safe by a woman, yes, but it is a very big world.
