A line of heroes, oh chain of tortured souls, falls in the spotlight and splays across the stage. The metal bites back, the world demands its pound of flesh to keep on living in it, the death of the actor is needed for the transformation to be complete — don’t you know that one cannot earn their happiness without suffering? The outside looking in peers through the cracks of the Structure, and bleeds in. Silvery-grey oozes into the paint picked out for Kit, and it swirls and forms and—

They were children then. They won’t ever get to be again. Gull Skimmer is growing up so fast, and time, that arrow, flies straight through. What a betrayal, to lose them him to a role that will surely take their his life (surely, surely, says the condensation on the mirror).

The boulders always collide, the serpent’s fangs dig in, the shrapnel cannot help but scatter The Lich always chases, the King’s sword cuts through, the Antagonist cannot help but promise.

Kit lets go of that other hue, back to that endless black. A brother seeks them out even as the world ends. Fig has finally found a purpose. And Rhys sleeps so gently beside them when they no longer wake him up with screams. For once, they dream of nothing at all.

The curtain would fall, here.
Like it does on every Story.

But they refuse.
(It is only natural to refuse)

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Kit (that childhood name) has shed the drab monochrome for something more bold; the silvery-grey is replaced with a yellowish-gold lustre that outshines the practicality of the forge they grew up in. Their left hand waits against the parchment as they hum to themself in thought. This play has only just started to form in their mind, and the first word always carries the most weight.

Their quill hovers, suspended, in that glorious second between decision and action.

The ink dribbles.
And marks the page anew.

(“There is beauty to be found when we spill ink or fumble with what we have to carry, but perhaps none can be found if that is all hands are made for.“)

A laugh.
They’ve always afforded such gravity to these sorts of things.

---

Leave the retirement to the people, to the protagonists. Give them their weddings and children, their closed journals and goodnights, their time when the world will deem them resolved — leave that to the hero they still are not, that they never chose to be.

And they shall pen the rest of their forever.

Written by Maisie M