Endsinger

An avalanche starts with one pebble. A forest with one seed. And it takes one word to make the whole world stop and listen. All you need is the right one.

Dark now. Blacker than black, I know it. And words are tiny things in the face of all that dark and all that cold. But hear these words, little sister. Hear and know. Tomorrow is coming, just as fast as the turning of the sky. And as sure as it’s black now, the sun will rise. Always. No matter how faint the glow.

And who am I, mighty Khan? She felt warmth in him then, the beginnings of a smile deep inside. He spread his wings. Bowed his head. Purred. YOU ARE YUKIKO.

Speaking of shabby looks, we're going to have to give you a haircut soon. ...WHAT? These feathers are getting messy. LET ME UNDERSTAND THIS CORRECTLY. YOU WISH TO CUT MY MANE? Thunder tigers grow manes? OF COURSE! HOW ELSE WOULD YOU TELL MALES FROM FEMALES? This is a trick question, right? A MANE IS A SIGN A MALE ARASHITORA HAS REACHED MATURITY. Her laughter rang out in his mind. So it's going to be a few more decades growing, then? HMPH. I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW MOST FEMALES FIND IT FETCHING.

We choose this. This place. This life. What it will be, and how we live it. We are not slaves to gods, or fate, or destinies woven in veils of smoke. We choose the people we want to be, and we choose the shape of the world in which we live. Nothing worthwhile comes without sacrifice. There is nothing so easy as swimming with the current, nothing so difficult as being the first to stand up. To say no. To point at a thing wrong and name it so. There are none so brave as those who choose to stand, when all others are content to kneel. None so worthy of the title 'hero' as those who fight when there are none to see it. Who choose a life bereft of accolade or fanfare, a life of struggle for the idea that we are all the same. Every one of us. And every one of us has the right to be happy. To know peace. To know love.

The truth is, the abyss lives in us. In our greed. In the way we look at things different to us, and see things lesser. In the way we see the smaller, or the weaker, and think them prey. It begins with the beasts of the land, the birds of the sky. And in a blinking, we find ourselves seeing our lessers in people with different colored skins. Different gods. Different creeds. We see them as lessers, and we hurt, and we kill, and we think nothing of it. Because they are different, we think ourselves just. Because we are stronger, we think ourselves righteous. That is the abyss in all of us. And we stand close to the edge still. Closer than any can dream. We need but stray for a moment and we will find ourselves back again, staring down into that black. And who will save us? When everything that was different to us is already gone?

You can be anything you want. Fate deals us our hand, but we decide how to play it. We all of us choose the people we want to be.