In some other place, some other time, there was the sound of the lesser men, speaking lesser languages.

 

There was a smell on the wind, cuperic, tangy with adrenaline and the salts within sweat.

 

There was the landscape of craggy peaks, wound about by strangling vines and wizened trees.

 

And there was a she that very much looked like a girl to anyone watching.

 

She held herself in absolute stillness. Such was the lack of any motion that men might’ve thought her an exceptional statue, or some revenant brought to full health in the sunlight’s palliation.

 

She could feel every muscle, every tendon, every crease of fat and fascia that held this body together. Every heartbeat, every expansion of the diaphragm, the dilation of her blood vessels, the firing of her nerves, all were conscious, thought out processes.

 

It had been too much information once, enough to drive her insane more than once, after she’d learned to stop dying from the lack of control over her own heart. It had been unpleasant, losing consciousness to cardiac arrest, over and over, too fast, too slow, just right.

 

She was getting too excited. She needed to cease. To be still.

 

This wasn’t mere awareness, nothing so crude. This was consciousness, perfect, complete, enabling control of anything and everything at any and every time. To be still was to be perfectly aware, to recognize, to control and plan and seek the moment between response and action. The moment of choice, of mastery.

 

They went on about mastery, back in the Place. How she’d find it, or at least find whichever path that suited her heart. She had not. Her siblings had. It seemed too easy, at least for them. But stillness was anathema to her; stillness was the shadow of the heart stopped, the lung stilled, the brain rotting in the skull.

 

An insect landed on her back. She knew the species by the impression of the little barbed feet that stuck into her skin, how wide apart they were, how heavy it was, and so on. A tiny mouth part like a spiked grinding wheel bit into her skin, spreading it apart so that a proboscis could enter. The lesser people might not be able to feel it at all. She marvelled at that, sensing every twitch of the insect, every tug and suck as it drank her blood.

 

Finally, when it’d had its fill, it departed, retracting the microscopic hooks from her skin, and lifting away. She had remained still the whole time. Complete. Conscious.

 

She glanced at the offending insect as it buzzed to a nearby glade of trees. She wondered if it was an act of bravery that should be rewarded. Perhaps a foolish one to be punished. The insect had little consideration of these things, she knew, but she was the one that considered it. Was it worth disrupting her stillness for it?

 

The slightest tendril of attention fell away from the whole.

 

The fly, no larger than a fingernail, disintegrated in mid air, crumbling into dry dust even as it flew.

 

She smiled, then chastised herself. The smile was by far the greater disruption of the stillness, so many muscles, so much time and energy and presence wasted on motion. No, it would be best to return to stillness. So she did. She almost wanted to scowl, if for no other reason than to spit defiance at her own failure. But that would be worse.

 

The Master would know. He always did.

 

Then again, he was the one that had suggested she should come out to this forsaken glade. So perhaps he’d anticipated it. He always did that too. Her siblings would smile to teach her, to show her where she’d erred. She disliked that.

 

The men in the field had been still for a far shorter time than she had. Their stillness was incomplete, superficial even. Certainly the one on the right was blundering around, even as he held his body motionless. The one on the left, however, was far more impressive, at least for one of the lesser men.

 

He held a sliver of the true stillness, something that she was curious about. Would it be different for him than it was for her, or her siblings? Or was the stillness something transcendent, something that worked for all peoples, lesser and greater? She would know soon enough.

 

The men held long blades of steel in their hands, crudely forged and refined, although perhaps it was advanced for them. They were clutching them, almost prepared to strike.

 

This was it, the moment she’d been waiting for, the perfect opening for her and her stillness. She was there with the men, feeling the weight of the sword in her hands, the leather grip compressing under her grip. She felt each individual bead of sweat, falling down every fraction of skin. Every strand of hair disturbed by the wind. Every fold of the clothes, their colour, their texture.

 

The second circle of Stillness opened and she was a receptacle for everything. Every mote and facet of her experience flowed into her, to be archived in unmarred memory.

 

There was a flash of motion, and she felt it too, the rush of blood and expansion of arteries and veins, the pressure wave in the vessels shooting forward. Individual muscles tensing, relaxing, tendons and ligaments straining to keep their occupants within the thin layers of skin. The impact, the push through, the follow up.

 

One man stood standing, the other keeled over, falling beneath the silvery grasses.

 

The left man, now standing on the right, sent the blood flying from his blade with a quick motion, and sheathed it.

 

She smiled. She couldn’t help it. But there was also no more need for stillness, at least to her. She might be warned that stillness was for all time and all things. But that was a far away concern to her as she rose, every muscle and ligament and joint working as they should, in harmony. With a hop, she came to crunch down one part of the cliff face, then another, then another.

 

***

 

Iwamaparei sheathed his weapon, feeling relief and joy mix together as the steel burrowed into its wooden casing. This man had not been a good challenger, for all his blustering. Iwamaparei had felt a brief glimmer of anticipation, but that had vanished about two seconds into assuming their stances.

 

He could see the angle, the foot placement, the furtive glance of the eyes. All wrong.

 

Before the man fell, Iwamaparei had seen it as clear as day the fate coming for this man.

 

The sun was almost racing the border point between sky and sea, although there was no sea here to be accurate about it. Iwamaparei sighed as he adjusted his belt, and moved to go. He missed the sea, missed fish and the coastal peoples that had defined his youth. A swim would be nice around now, to wash off the grime and sweat acquired after hiking for so many days in the mountains.

 

But still, he must go on, he could not say for the life of him why.

 

It felt right to do so, and that was all the reason a man like Iwamaparei needed.

 

He made it about five steps before the grass crunched behind him. He turned, and found to his surprise a girl, no older than ten, by the corpse of the man. She was looking, not in sorrow, nor in shock or fear, but with an intent gaze on the fallen. With deft arms, unrestrained by a sleeveless simple white dress, she retrieved his entire sword, holding it up.

 

Iwamaparei watched with admitted interest at the young girl, who waved the sword around like it was a simple stick. It was hardly the heaviest weapon, but still, someone of that size, moving casually with a blade. He held up a hand in an attempt to stop her as she unsheathed the weapon, the steel glimmering.

 

She looked at him.

 

Something, deep and old inside of him, forced his own hand to his waist at the glance of that child. Immediately, his impression switched from one of curiosity to that of fear and loathing. This was no child, but something that wore the skin of one, something that merely pretended to be a child. His hand tightened around the grip of his blade, his eyes narrowed, and he took a stance.

 

She giggled, and raised the weapon before her.

 

There was a moment of shock as he realised that she was mimicking the stance that the fallen man had used. No, not mimicking. Improving. Her feet shifted, lowering her centre to be more stable and shifting her weight onto her legs. Her arms adjusted the angle so that the blade was positioned to catch his, and follow up with a viscous counter.

 

Her eyes never left his.

 

At that moment, whether or not this was in fact a child was irrelevant to Iwamaparei. Above all, this entity was a threat, no, an enemy, and it would brook no mercy. He tensed. She tensed. There was a flash of motion.

 

It was over almost as soon as it had begun, Iwamaparei stepping lightly through the grass as the girl crumpled to the ground. Pink ropes and streams of red spilled from her cut blouse, staining the white. It was a deeply uncomfortable site, though Iwamaparei did not regret his action. Instinct honed over a lifetime of training and battle told him that it was the right choice to not hold back anything. He said a silent prayer for this poor creature, and hoped the gods would whisk it on its way to a better place. She was still on her knees when he passed her, strong despite her small stature.

 

He felt an iron grip clamp on his arm, looking down to find she’d lifted her head to stare into his eyes. The pink snakes recoiled; sucked back up over the ruined pleats of the dress, and into the gash that snapped shut like a steaming hungry maw.

 

He didn’t bother to try and break her grip, merely dropped his yamakna, the long blade that had been his life, and drove the small dagger from his sleeve into her eye. Her head snapped back, the iron fingers loosened, and he danced away, retrieving his life from the ground. She remained on her knees, ruined dress, intact stomach, still standing.

Still standing.

She rose, snapping her head upright, and in a moment of horrific grace, plucked the knife from her eye. The rest was a simple flick of the wrist, sending the offending dagger faster than any wind to shatter Iwamaparei’s skull and scatter his bloody brains across the grass.

And with a hop and a skip, she was gone.