By Audrey Howard, TIWP Student

I watch hopelessly as Chiyo turns into something much more sinister. She yells at me “Nayami! Do it already, please!” I throw my arrows behind me. She transforms, turning black “Please!” she screams. Reluctantly, sadly, but I have relived this moment thousands of times. I can now do this without tears staining my face and screams of bloody murder. I grab my arrow and stab her soul paragon, it shatters with a sound I know all too well. She screams in pain, a banshee for her own death. It stops and I know she is gone. I hold the pieces of her soul paragon in my hand, it is and always has been in the form of a ring with a reddish pink gemstone, she has always worn it on her right hand, although she is left handed. I see them dissolve into reddish pink sand, the same shade as her soul paragon. My eyes are always full of unshed tears, for her, for Fumiko, for everyone I have disappointed in this dance of death. I grab my pendant, I bring into existence the fabric of a new timeline. I am tearing apart the fabric of an old time and sewing together painstakingly a new world. If I ever give up, become submissive to the impossible, acknowledge that this is all useless, that it keeps getting worse, that this dance of death will keep getting harder and harder, even now it is probably impossible, I will “die” become the very creature I have been killing for thousands of worthless universes. I cannot do that. It is a fate worse than death, this infinite cycle for a finite life.