”Why are you doing this?” Her voice was like some far-away thunder, as if her cowl was some impossibly deep cave.
I smashed my head against the helmet of the man in front of me before he could draw his blade and slashed to my right, drawing blood from some other poor devil's throat. I bashed the third one with my shield, dropping him in place, unconscious.
“You are distracting me. Shut up.”
“My Lord, in front of you!” I screamed, my voice rough with smoke.
The kid whirled in place and faced his opponent. He faked to the right, then to the left, and drove his spear into his enemy’s neck. I smiled.
Carpe diem
We've all heard the expression. Maybe from a movie such as Dead Poets Society, maybe in some philosophy class, maybe some pompous friend of ours has uttered it while triying to dazzle us with his knowledge (I'm usually that guy).
The aphorism, first coined by Horace in his Odes, is meant to teach us to seize the moment, as time flies away and the bastard thinks very little of us, and doesn't come back when asked to. The future is unknown, for the most part, and Lady Luck is quite the bitch, so you can seldom leave your fate to her. Thus, you should try to change, affect or seize what you actually have within your grasp: today.
I
At times, life gets you down. Maybe you aren't where you thought you would be, maybe something good is over, maybe the world just isn't being kind today. I think of those times as being in the Dark. In Darkness, you only have your voice and your mind to talk to you, and that can get pretty horrible in short notice.
That's why you get friends. No one is born alone in this world, we all have people out there, even if we haven't met them yet, who can and will be true friends to us. People to share the Light, in good times. To shine in the Dark, in bad ones.
These people come in so many flavours that I can barely count them all. Very, very few