Raiker Venn stood at the large picture window overlooking the town square. He was smirking contentedly and sipping an exquisite glass of Manticore Passion, a charming local red wine with a fantastic bouquet. Outside, it was a bright day, and perhaps a bit warm, but the townsfolk were moving around at their usual frenetic pace. Raiker had been watching them for weeks. He knew every motion of every insignificant soul. Raiker’s smile widened.

It was all rather like a poem. The town was the parchment and the people the words, and just like the words of a poem, Raiker knew precisely how to manipulate and contort them into something flawlessly and beautifully tragic. Each day, Talbin walked down the north side of the street, but a conveniently situated young lady, desirable and comely, would persuade him to cross to the south. Harra would usually turn two streets down, but an unpleasant odor would convince the attractive young maid to continue down the street. The old butcher, Forn, was usually good about disposing of his foul-smelling intestine cuttings properly, but a hungry dog begging at his door would play on the old man’s pity. And of course, if the dog were not in his usual place, he couldn’t warn anyone of a wayward mountain bear rummaging through an alley four streets down for its favorite fruit.

Raiker’s smirk turned into a grin as the little girl skipped toward the town square. Iora, one of the sweetest little girls you could find on any plane. Always happy, always singing, and always (at this time of day) on her way home, after stopping by the nearby fruit stand for a delicious, enticing pear. It was her favorite fruit, and she enjoyed one every day. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so much, it was also the favorite fruit of an ill-tempered bear who, under ordinary circumstances, would not have been there.

Raiker finished off his glass of Manticore Passion and placed one hand on the smooth glass as he watched the girl approach the alley’s entrance. Any moment now, the bear would smell his prize, and no one in town would be close enough to save poor little Iora from her fate. Raiker watched in self-satisfaction as Iora reached the opening to the alley and, by happenstance, lifted one arm to take a bite of her perfect, delicious…orange?

Raiker’s grin faded instantly. An orange? Impossible. His eyes widened as the little girl skipped innocently past the alley, the bear thoroughly disinterested in her and her orange. His lip quivered slightly as he spun around to his writing table, grabbing the paper on the top, as well as his quill.

Raiker Venn threw the quill against the nearby wall, and tore the parchment in two. He grabbed the half-empty bottle of Manticore Passion, scowled, and ‘walked off the plane, cursing at oranges.

"And now," declared the multiverse's greatest poet, "a preview of what I am working on now. With any fortune, I shall be able to recite the final stanzas on the morrow."

Thus, Raiker Venn began to intone his latest epic of young love, of quiet introductions in shady lanes, hearts growing fonder in absence. Of conflict close to the hearts of his listeners, though just enough removed that they could see it as a profound fiction, and finally of the declaration in parting, as the woman rode off to a war the merchant's son was forbidden from himself approaching. It would be one of his finer romantic tragedies, as he would have it, when the girl came home a hero amidst a thousand, her fiery nature pushing her to a Pyrrhic assault upon the enemy in his tower, in which all involved would be slain.

Raiker new how minds worked, how a spitfire in the heat of the moment would not fail to seize the opportunity, and how cruel fate and a weak foundation would lead to so many being crushed and buried by their victory.

But while Raiker had the outline of his glorious ending, the specifics still eluded him, and he let with a cliffhanger. His audience clamored for more.

Raiker looked at the candles in the hall, and seeing how his creative process was nearly complete, ordered another glass of wine and began to recite 'The Destitute Seeker' to the amusement of all. And since he was the multiverse's greatest poet, and since therefore his repertoire was as vast as the Blind Eternities, by one poem and another, and by one glass of the good spiced wine after another, some hours passed.

Too many hours.

Raiker Venn was roused by the sound of blaring trumpets. Quill in hand, he raced into the street. He had overslept, and missed the battle in the dead of night! But it was no matter. With or without an extra nudge, the tramp of countless boots would no doubt bring down a castle built upon sand. He would just have to gain his specifics from one who had witnessed and lived. It would make this one of his weaker efforts, no doubt, but still...

That was when he saw it, his face grew grey to witness. Riding at the head of the column that brought word of triumph home was a young woman with auburn tresses (crimson had been an artistic liberty) in the breeze, one arm in a sling and in her other hand bearing the tattered banner of the enemy. As they reached the center of town, she dismounted, and found and was found by a boy in fine clothes, and they embraced and kissed as the tattered banner of the fallen enemy and a flag for the triumph of the regiment were draped about their shoulders. Not slowly was it revealed how things fared, and the tower began to fall with its master's last breath. But slowly the stones fell, and by the girl's quick wit and love of action were all involved permitted to escape, and only she herself taking up the rear so much as struck by a falling stone, and this was how her sword-arm was broken.

The innkeeper, landlord of where Raiker had performed the previous night, stood alongside him in the crowd.

"Ha!" he said, good humored, "Now that is a beautiful scene, and looks like the ending of your unfinished tale."

"Yes," Raiker replied, reaching one hand into his pocket and beginning to crumple the now doomed manuscript with a cold fury, "It certainly does."

Ellia the Endbringer glowered down at the battlefield. How long had she lived, and how many conflicts had she overthrown -- by might or by cunning, either would do. Ellia had dissected the strategies of some of the greatest commanders of the planes, and by that token considered herself an expert strategist. Though the chaos of warfare was still somewhat strange to her, and did not fit cleanly into experimental models, that did not apply here. Here, her mastery ought to be apparent. Absolute.

She reached down to the soldiers on the field, and bade one move as she commanded, forward into the jaws of destruction, for her ultimate victory. Then she looked up from the board.

"Your turn."

The young woman across from her looked at the set, scratched her head for a moment, then moved one of her own pieces.

"And that," she said, "Is checkmate."

Checkmate? Ellia glowered at the arrangement. It was a legal move, and the piece at the heart of her army... there was nowhere for it to run, and none of her other pieces could interpose, nor capture the offending foe. Across the board, her position was stronger, lines inexorably moving forward. But here, where it mattered... she was beaten."

"So it is." Ellia declared.

"You did really well for never having played before." the young woman replied with a smile.

"Perhaps." Ellia said, and gave the woman an appraising look, "But I must admit you outplayed me. The question is, of course, if you can manage such mastery in your other studies.

"Don't worry," she replied, "I won't disappoint!"

Ellia smiled at the board, no longer irked at her loss.

"I don't doubt it."

The man looked at her. “You are certain that this is what you want?”

She nodded solemnly. She looked briefly over her shoulder at the two elderly ladies sitting together in the shade. The last members of the Order of Life. Of course, they kept insisting that she was the last member, but she could not bear to entertain that notion. She could not handle more loss. The war had taken her husband and son from her, as well as both her brothers. If not for the Order, she would probably have sat down on the ground and cried until she died of thirst, but the sisters had cared for her and showed her that there is always something to live for, as long as you bring life to others. But seeking to bring life in an age of death was dangerous. One by one the sisters had found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now only the three of them were left. She had been left behind because she was still technically an acolyte, the others because they were too sickly to venture out. Together they had waited for their sisters to return, and slowly they had had to accept that they were alone, and that this would most likely be the end of the order.

But she would not let that happen. Studying frantically in the Order’s library, she had found a ritual which theoretically could keep the sisters alive until the Order could be reestablished, and possibly help protect their land from the invading army in the process. There was just one problem: the ritual was only a theory. The idea itself was simple. Mystics had long known and had access to the Hall of Dreams, the place which souls ventured into during magical sleep which also served as a passage from the land of the living to that of the dead. There was a binding ritual which was used to bring back those that willingly ventured to the Hall, and it should be possible to extend it to those who passed through it in death. But the binding did not reach the whole way through. She needed to extend the binding into two steps. First she needed to bind the soul to the Hall in order to bring it back from the land of the dead, and then bind it again to the land of the living. She immediately began to make inquiries of those more knowledgeable in the mystic arts.

She had eventually found her answer. The helpful man had looked over her request and stated that the only way he could see to carry out the ritual was to bring a living person into the Hall to stand guard and catch the souls coming through. As the ritual called for a physically alive person to tie the soul to, that was the only anchor which could possibly be placed in the Hall. Upon hearing his analysis, she had only had one question: could he bring her there?

And here she was, ready to take the step. Without them knowing, she had bound both of the Sisters as anchors in the living world, so that neither could ever be lost while the other still drew breath. She had also left them instructions on how to extend the binding to anyone they deemed worthy of protection, and she would be able to sense the thread of the binding from the Hall. The instructions had been included with the letter she had left behind. She could not bear to say goodbye, and she knew they would try to stop her, so the letter had seemed the best option.

Now, she walked with the man out of their sight, to the place where she had hidden the crosier she had used as a tool in the binding. She would carry it into the Hall, so that the threads of life tied to it would reach cleanly into the lands of both the living and the dead. It was heavy in her hand, but the weight was a comfort. She knew that the crosier and the white robe she wore would be her only reminders of life, and she would need them.

With a flourish of his cane, the man opened a bright portal in mid-air. She looked through, and saw the Hall. It looked barren and lonely. She knew that once she entered, she would never leave. She would sit forever between the living and the dead, never aging, never hungering, never dying. For a moment the irony of her situation struck her. She was so afraid of being left alone that she was choosing an eternity of loneliness. It seemed almost poetic. Then, she stepped through.

The man closed the portal and reached into his pocket for a pen.

There were only two locations on Jakkard. There was Verkell, and there was the Wastes. That was it. Oh, sure, Verkell was a huge city, divided into neighborhoods, districts and slums, and sure, there were countless towns littered throughout the Wastes, but as far as the people of Jakkard were concerned, there were only those two locations. Or at least, that's what everyone thought.

It's funny how the mind works, how it decides which questions to ask, and, more interestingly, when to stop asking. Back before the Wastes started to open themselves up, the only question people in Verkell could ask was "what is beyond?" They wanted to know what was beyond their slums, beyond their grasp, but mostly, beyond the city walls. But once the Wastes opened up, everyone seemed to stop asking "what is beyond."

Or, almost everyone.

The Order of the Airborne Feather had existed for centuries, perhaps more, hiding in dank Verkell basements and stuffy back rooms, always asking questions of what was beyond, and keeping secret histories that few on Jakkard would ever know. Most had never heard of the Order, and that was by design. The few who had were either eager and loyal members, or powerful enemies who hunted them relentlessly. Both existed because of the unspeakable secrets the Order kept.

The Jakkard Wastes were utterly massive, but like all things, even they come to an end. It was simply the fact that no living being on the plane could reach that end. While the population of the plane was cloistered inside of Verkell, the Wastes consumed nearly everything that went there, and even now, the far expanses were still as deadly in that same, life-siphoning way. And this poisonous ground stretched for countless days, so that no one who wandered through them ever came back. Everyone in the Wastes knew that this marked the end of the world.

But the Order of the Airborne Feather knew better. They knew to ask "what was beyond."

They knew that something was. They even had clues to the direction that something lay. But even they did not possess the ability to get there. The Jakkard was brutal, and there was not a single person who could venture through the dead lands. Not a single person on all of Jakkard, for all her heroes and villains, her bandits and barons, her Ridders and Railrunners, not a single person could survive the trek.

There was not a single person, but there were two.

Far beyond the reach of most mortals, past the dead lands of the Jakkard Waste, where even the winds fall silent, there stood the crumbling and dust-covered pillars of an ancient temple, a temple more ancient than any living memory on Jakkard. And in the utter silence of Jakkard beyond Jakkard, the air suddenly rippled, condensed, expanded, and popped. And in that instant, two identical figures materialized out of nothing.

They looked at one another as if to check on one another's safety, but the action was unnecessary. If one had been hurt, the other would know instantly. It had been a difficult jump, with no beacon to help guide the dispersement ritual, and both twins were breathing heavily, but the elation they felt at finally achieving their goal cheered them. They allowed themselves a rare smile, with one corner of each of their mouths lifting slightly.

The Order was correct.

The temple is where they believed it to be.

We must now see if the remainder of their information is correct.

Hush-Hush moved forward instantly, each step one twin took mirroring her sister's perfectly. The gigantic doors of the temple had long since rusted off its hinges and fallen to the ground, allowing the twins to walk inside shoulder to shoulder. When they came to a split in the hall, they turned to the right, following the directions given to them by the Order of the Airborne Feather when they had joined. A few minutes later, they came to another fork, where they continued straight. Every time they came to another branch in the path, they made their choice instantly and silently, following the directions carefully and meticulously horded by the Order for centuries. Eventually, that dedication paid off, and Hush-Hush arrived at a large, circular, stone door, inscribed with strange runes that glowed a soft blue.

Hush-Hush paused, and glanced at each other. They nodded to one another. Not physically, but they each knew the other's intention. Then, they began to chant, performing the ritual the Order had taught them. They were entirely focused, for even a single missed word or faulty intonation would prove disastrous, perhaps even fatal. They chanted for long, tenuous minutes, and as the time dragged on, even they began to worry that the ritual was flawed.

But then, the runes on the door flared to life, and the door slid open, its stone surface grinding in a loud complaint. The noise made the sisters wince. But what the door revealed made them cock their heads, simultaneously, to the side. They did not truly know what to expect, and the Order of the Airborne Feather had absolutely no idea, but whatever any of them had expected, it was not this. For behind the strange, arcane door, there was a plain, smooth, wooden door. It looked thoroughly out of place in this old, decrepit temple. But whatever it was, it was their destination.

Wordlessly, they reached for the door's handle, and together, they turned it. On the other side, they saw an amazing sight, something they could barely imagine. The floor appeared to be made of some sort of black stone or marble, smooth and polished to a mirror sheen, and stretching out forever. Above the floor, in strange, endless lines spreading out in every direction, Hush-Hush could see countless doors and mirrors standing upright. The twins looked at one another, and even their usually stoic expressions faded as they both broke into a wide grin.

We have succeeded.

Amah al-Hazid looked down at the book in her hands and sighed. The Book of Kith and Kin contained a mixture of legitimate wit and inane prattling, as befitted the superstitious grandmothers of any plane. She had hoped that in a world as strange as Lorwyn, she might find some knowledge worth having, and while she could be instructed further on the virtues of various herbs, there were far more scholarly sources for such information.

Thus, Amah resolved to return the book, as she had told its owner that she would. Indeed, she would not have failed to do so even had it held as many secrets as Alf Layah wa-Layah, though then she certainly would have worked feverishly to produce a sufficient copy, for she would not be known as a poor returner of things.

Lorwyn, Amah thought, and gazed through the blind eternities, seeking that sun-drenched world, finding it, and stepping in.

What greeted her and her overdue book however, was not the Lorwyn she departed from. In the place of the green fields beneath an endless summer day, brown crab-grasses grew among barren rocks, and what she had expected to be the quaint and small cottages of Burrenton before her were replaced by the strong, fortified walls of some city minded to the dire defense of all within, though similar it was in scale to Burrenton, and in a similar place compared to the shape of the land around if she did not miss her mark in the evening murk.

Amah smiled, and slid the Book of Kith and Kin back into her pack. This matter had become a good deal more interesting.

There was a broad-based decanter sitting on the table next to Denner Fabellian, with perhaps just a finger’s worth of tawny port left in it. The port was of a questionable vintage, and had been sitting in the decanter for so long that it was thick with sediment.

Denner Fabellian knew this because, just moments earlier, he had drunk three full glasses of the dark, fortified wine in rapid succession.

Now Denner was lying face-down on the table, naked from the waist up, with his arms and legs splayed wide. That position afforded him an excellent view of the nearby decanter as the clipper ship Red Morning pitched rhythmically beneath him. The seas had been rough all day, and each wave that the little clipper skipped across set the remaining port in the bottom of the decanter sloshing back and forth, back and forth, like an ocean in miniature.

The delver swallowed. Despite having consumed several measures of liquid courage, his throat felt inexplicably dry.

“Should we really be doing this now?” he mumbled to the table beneath him.

“No better time,” came a woman’s voice from above. “No better place.”

Denner tried to roll over, but a pair of strong hands held him by the shoulders and pressed him flat. Before he could protest, he felt the table shudder as the woman sprung up on top of him. She positioned herself with bulk of her weight atop his lower back, so that she had him pinned in place.

“Don’t move,” she said. “The more you move, the more this is going to hurt.”

Denner cleared his throat. Beneath him, the table’s wooden top was rough and sticky.

“That’s the thing, though,” he said, with just a hint of a stammer. “I mean, with the ship moving like this, how can you possibly keep your hand steady?”

From above, Denner heard the woman laugh. Then he winced, as he felt her needle bite his skin.

“I know this ship, and she knows me,” the woman said, as she began to ink the delver’s back, just below his left shoulder blade. “We move together, like lovers. You needn’t worry about my hand.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say,” Denner said, feeling tears welling in his eyes. “You’re the one holding the needle.”

Again, the woman laughed.

“Once,” she said, “years ago, when the sea was as high as the ship was tall, a galley mate bet me half his share that I couldn’t balance a dagger on its tip for the length of three glasses.”

Denner squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to focus on recalling the name of every species of fish he had ever eaten, in alphabetical order – anything to keep his mind off the pain he felt as the woman worked her needle across his skin.

“Who won the bet?” he asked.

“I’d still be balancing that dagger today,” the woman said, “if I hadn’t needed it for other purposes when the galley mate declined to pay.”

Denner coughed. As he did, the woman’s needle struck a nerve, and he gasped involuntarily. The woman clicked her tongue at him.

“Sit still,” she said. “It’s your squirming that’s the problem.”

“How am I supposed to sit still?” Denner moaned. “You’re hurting me.”

In response, the woman dangled a small length of rope in front of Denner’s face.

“Bite down on this, if you have to,” she said.

For a while, Denner held the end of the rope between his clenched teeth, which at least kept him from crying out as the woman resumed her work. But doing so made him feel stupid, and weak, so, after a few minutes, embarrassment overtook pain, and he spat the salt-laced cord back out.

“Does this mean you’re going to keep still, now?” the woman asked, as her needle made short, precise strokes across Denner’s back. ”Because, I’ve marked more than two score virgins, and not a one of them carried on like you’re doing.”

That comment made Denner flinch, which earned him an exasperated sigh.

“What do you mean, virgins?” he asked anxiously.

“Virgins,” the woman repeated, before pausing for a second to refill her needle with ink. “Bareskins. Blank canvases, before I gave them their first marks.” She adjusted her position slightly, and Denner could feel her breath on his clammy skin, as she leaned in close to begin applying the fine details. “One of them had barely turned fourteen when I gave her her globe, and she managed to lie still as a board.”

Denner grunted. “Maybe she liked pain,” he said. “Some people do.”

“I take it you don’t?”

“No,” Denner said, wincing. “I’ve had more than my share of pain.”

“You don’t have to like pain to learn from it,” the woman said. “Pain is how the world tests us, and, if we survive it, it makes us stronger. It makes us more than we would otherwise have been.”

For a horrible moment, as the woman spoke, Denner’s memory flashed back to his poisoning. The delver remembered, in perfect, excruciating detail, the agony that had filled his every waking moment as the magical poison had spread through his blood, consuming him body and soul. He remembered feeling like his veins were filled with acid. He remembered spasms so violent he thought his back would snap. He remembered clenching his teeth so tightly that he felt sure he would grind them to powder.

In as much as his position would allow him to, Denner tried to shake his head.

“You couldn’t possibly understand the pain I’ve been through,” he said.

Suddenly, the woman fell silent, and Denner felt her hand stop moving. For a long, long moment, she sat stone still, until Denner wondered if she was actually holding her breath. Then, finally, she bent forward, so that the top of her head crept into Denner’s field of vision.

From the delver’s point of view, her face was upside-down. He could just see the knotted scarf which held back her long hair, the deeply-tanned skin of her forehead, and her sharp eyes, which were staring daggers at him.

Denner tried to look away, but, before he could, he caught the woman’s gaze. And, in that moment, he saw something beyond anger or hurt in her eyes.

He saw something else. Something he recognized from seeing his own face in the mirror.

He saw the look of someone who has known more pain than any living person should.

“I’m sorry,” Denner said, quietly.

For another, excruciating moment, the woman continued to stare at him. Then, mercifully, her face disappeared back out of view. Denner felt her needle kiss his skin again, and, instead of wincing, he almost sighed with relief.

“You ought to be more careful about what you say, to the person who’s giving you your star,” the woman said. Her voice was low, but there was no anger in it.

“I’m sorry,” Denner said again.

“I know,” the woman said.

Then, for a long time, neither of them spoke, as the woman applied the finishing touches to her handiwork.

Eventually, Denner couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“What was your first tattoo?” he asked.

“The mark on my cheek,” the woman said. “The points of the four winds.”

“That must have hurt.”

To Denner’s surprise, the woman laughed.

“I nearly bit through the rope,” she said.

“But you survived,” Denner said.

“You’re almost as smart as you think you are,” the woman said.

Then, just as quickly as she had leapt on top of him, Denner felt the woman slide off his back and back down to the floor.

“We’re done,” she said. “You have your first mark.”

With a groan, Denner peeled himself off of the table, and rose to his feet. It took him a second to find his legs, as the Red Morning rolled beneath him. His back throbbed, as though someone had punched him there.

He saw that the woman was holding out a silvered mirror for him, which he took. By twisting his shoulders, and angling the mirror just so, Denner just caught a glimpse of the seven-pointed star that the woman had inked upon the back of his left shoulder.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“On my world, that was our pole star,” the woman said, her voice a whisper. “To bear that star is the mark of a true navigator.”

Denner was silent for a long moment, as he studied his own reflection in the mirror.

“I will find your world for you,” he said.

"I know," the woman said, "I've seen your mark."

Slowly, Denner nodded his head. The woman was staring intently at him, and he did not know how to read her eyes.

“I’ve been thinking about the best way to get you home,” Denner said, feeling a sudden and urgent need to fill the silence. “If what you’ve told me is true, and you were able to use a seashell as a sort of anchor for travelling through the aether, then our plan should be simple enough. All I have to do is—”

But, before Denner could complete his thought, the woman had closed the distance between herself and him. She clasped an ink-stained hand over his open mouth. Then, with her other hand, she reached up and untied her scarf, so that her hair fell down to her hips.

“You talk too much, Denner Fabellian,” she said to him.

Then the woman removed her hand from atop Denner’s lips, and, before he could say anything else, she kissed him.

Denner Fabellian, whose flawless memory recalled everything that he had ever seen, or felt, or done, forgot all about the pain in his shoulder.

The Bridge of Luschwick was once a broad, bustling monument to architectural ingenuity. The architect Luschwick, after whom the bridge was named, was heard to say that this was the greatest of her creations. It spanned a hundred yard length over a canyon with a depth three times that. One side rose gently from the side of a sturdy redrock hill - the other side connected to the top of a cliff whose side was so sheer that scaling it was nigh impossible. The bridge had been wide enough to comfortably and safely fit several wagons, or, if necessary, entire caravans at once. Built many decades ago, it was meant to stand against the tests of wear, tear, and time.

Giants had never really factored in to the stress tests.

Now, the bridge was a barely accessible ruin that, despite the ill temper of a long forgotten giant, still stood, albeit with only a fraction of it's width and glory. It was more of a novelty than a thoroughfare, since the bridge was barely wide enough to allow a single person's passage, and even if anyone dared to try and traverse it, the mighty winds that occasionally gusted through the canyon threatened to upset their balance and send them tumbling to the canyon floor far below.

Jinsen, of course, had been attracted to the bridge precisely because he was certain no one else would be there. The view was splendid, wide, and breathtaking. He had stopped before attempting to cross in order to both rest his feet and appreciate the scenery. This high up, there was little greenery, but there was something to be said about the solid coldness of the mountain stone. Red, brown, and grey, with wind whistling above, whittling, but still the stone stood. Perhaps one day it would not, but that was not today.

Jinsen took a deep breath of the crisp, mountain air. Crossing the bridge would be a perilous, if enlightening, experience. It had been a long time since he had been at the mercy of wind and stone.

Silently, he took his first steps onto the bridge.

It was not until he was almost a quarter of the way across that he realized he was not alone. He was focused solely on placing his feet correctly, and the sound of the wind drowned out the world around him. For a few minutes, it was simply him, the howling wind, and certain death on either side. During a lax in the gusts, however, he heard an unexpected noise - footsteps. Coming from in front of him.

His hand went idly to the blade at his waist as his eyes fell upon the fellow traveler. Jinsen narrowed his eyes in order to make out the details of the man who was still walking placidly forward. Human, loosely garbed, well-muscled, and... hairy. Hair on his arms, hair on his chest, hair framing his face. he carried only a cloak... and a katana, much like his.

This surprised Jinsen most of all. The humans of this plane did not craft such things. Was he too a visitor from elsewhere?

Jinsen supposed he would find out soon enough - their paths would cross shortly, and there was no avoiding him unless he turned back and waited on the other side. The crumbling bridge was too narrow to allow them both to cross side by side - one would have to stand by the ledge and let the other pass. A dangerous prospect for either of them. Jinsen was unsure, exactly, what would be socially acceptable in this situation. As they continued to approach one another, he realized he would have to make a decision soon.

Soon, they stood face to face. The man acknowledged Jinsen with a nod of his head, and Jinsen returned the silent greeting. The human's face was not kind as he surveyed Jinsen, but he made no threatening moves - his hands stayed idly at his side.

In the end, Jinsen stepped aside, one heel place precariously over the open air as he allowed the human passage. The man raised his chin and his eyebrows as Jinsen motioned for him to cross, and it occurred to him that it would be simple for this stranger to push him off of the bridge. Still - he remained true to his decision. Jinsen was familiar with his abilities, and not with the abilities of this stranger. He would rather risk his own life with this knowledge, than allow doubt to risk the life of this stranger.

The human walked past with another nod. His shoulder nearly brushed against Jinsen's chest, and Jinsen found himself wondering about the tattoos that adorned it. It was not his place to pry, however. He passed without incident, and Jinsen stepped fully back onto the bridge. A strange encounter, that had given him much to think about-

"That was brave of you." The human remarked from behind Jinsen, voice carrying over the wind. Jinsen half-turned to regard the stranger over his shoulder. "Were I given to cruelty, your life would be over."

Jinsen thought about that for a few moments - the man patiently waited for him to respond. Jinsen turned to face him.

"You seem certain of that." Jinsen pointed out finally, raising his voice so he could be heard. "Why?"

"It would have been simple to push you." The stranger affirmed, but Jinsen shook his head.

"Of that you are correct." Jinsen agreed. "I meant that you seemed certain I was being brave." Jinsen tilted his head. "Why?"

It was the stranger's turn, now, to think.

"Is it not brave to watch death pass you by?" The stranger asked.

"In order to watch death bravely, I would need to fear it." Jinsen told him. "And I do not." The human raised an eyebrow skeptically at Jinsen, who only shrugged. "What I did was not brave." Jinsen said blithely. "And there are crueler things than death."

The stranger paused, and then nodded.

"I concede your point." The stranger said, bowing slightly. "But tell me - if what you did was not brave, then what would you call it?"

"Kind." Jinsen replied simply. The wind picked up, then, and the both of them widened their footing slightly to strengthen themselves against the gust. Once the wind died down, Jinsen turned to leave, and walked away from the stranger. And though Jinsen felt the human's eyes on the back of his head as he walked away, the stranger said nothing to stop him.

Jinsen did not turn around until he was on solid ground once more. When he did, the bridge was empty. Jinsen wondered, briefly, what sort of man was shown kindness, and then immediately spoke of cruelty.

He hoped the stranger would make peace with himself soon.