Chapter 155

• The first time I saw her, I thought I was having one of those hallucinations. She was barely a flicker, like a distorted image, and then she didn’t appear again until my eighth birthday—persistently, like someone was trying so desperately to etch her into my memory. But it was always the same dream: the lonely back of a girl standing on a battlefield soaked in moonlight, barefoot, bleeding, silent, and watching the sky like she was in a deep conversation with it. Though, now it felt more like the sky owed her something.
• After seeing her twenty times in a row, I gave her a name. “The girl who never cowered.” Because in the middle of a never-ending battle raging around her, she didn’t react when a dagger was pointed at her. She didn’t flinch when she was cut or stabbed. And yet, somehow, she seemed almost at peace.
• Gradually, as people around me grew wary of how odd I was, I learned to be like the girl who never cowered—silent, indifferent, unbothered.