Jul 13, 2023
By then I was used to silence. / Though something stretched between us / like a whisper, like a rope.
iii.
Death was not something unfamiliar to Aizen Sousuke.
He had learned of death at a young age, learned to avoid the rough men that tramped through the Eightieth district he had been born into; those were men who would think nothing twice of killing a young boy, of trampling him in the mud --- or of forcing themselves upon him. Quick as a bird he'd been as a boy, darting this way and that, protected to a degree because it remained known he belonged to Aizen Naoko, fruit of her womb. Children born of spirits were rare enough, never mind children produced by a woman who came from a brothel.
... continue reading CHAPTER 3, ON THE PRECIPICE.