No one is now what they were before the war.
❮ ✦ not accepting ┊ ❛ DEATHLESS ! ❜ ┊ @temperline ❯
WAR IS A DEADLY THING . almost beautiful in it's destruction . the way it breaks you apart to forge something new . ( if you come back broken , unwhole ? well . that's not wars problem . ) it is a push / pull type of thing . or , that's the goal , isn't it ? that you change it as it changes you . BECAUSE YOU CANNOT STOP THE CHANGE IN YOU . the more you fight it , the more you leave pieces of yourself behind . the more you drop bits of who you were , never to be retrieved . so , THE GOAL IS THIS : for every inch , every cell of you that goes transformed , you alter the war around you . make it better . push it closer to the end . that is the goal . whether you succeed or not , you never know . isn't that just bullshit ?
SOMETIMES : hua mulan wakes up && feels blood on her hands . a slick slip / slide on palms that you do not , cannot forget . YOU FEEL IT : YOU REMEMBER . you feel it : you fall . all of a sudden , you're back on that battlefield like you never left . fighting for your life && the lives of those around you .
❛ I WAS WEAK . before . ❜ not a lie ! not exactly . knew how to fight beforehand , had it drilled into her by grandfather . but , now , there is a steel in her spine && an iron in her veins that did not exist before . ❛ now i'm not . ❜