Aye, this is the last of the Kitty Ai series.
Any comments will be much appreciated!

Caitlyn Esther and the fiction Phoenix Requiem are created by me © 2004 Kristopher P. Love. Any of the contents involved may not be used in any way or form without consent.

A maiden's thoughts;

Who was it that told me the world could be shaped with a strong person’s will, or be shunned to live obliviously in? Sometimes I would gaze up to the stars thinking of that man who told me such, as I sit here sharpening the will of my blade many years after with the whetting stone he gave me back then as a mere weight holder of scrolls. Oh how we thought two worlds apart, yet perhaps that’s what he wanted me to think. We were living a lie, yet he just stood there smiling, watching me intently with sincerest hope. ‘We’ll fight back the storm, this I promise,’ he’d gesture, ‘for the glory of your house, your old foes will meet you like waves threatening one of God’s born cliff sides, to crash and be broken. Remember that a wall is something a spirit should be; fortified with many manners to distil and hide any weaknesses inside, for there is never truly an ability to shield ourselves from everything, only to improve grace from obscurity.’

I honestly couldn’t care less back then for the glory of whatnot, as I continued to strike my steel, slowly, with long patient strokes. ‘Your soul should reflect the perfect balance between your spirit and blade, Cat, remember that,’ another of my cherished men would say and, ‘for one whom wishes to wield the sword must first conquer oneself of any distractions in life,’ he would go on telling me. ‘If you can see the reflection in your blade as perfect at the calmest rest at water’s edge, so should your soul be in harmony, for if should the blade be tainted like the soul wielding it, there is no assurance to see either two make past every storm.’ Raz always was one to bring a certain shine in steel...

With that I would sigh, wondering how I ever found my life in a storm of swords and not a calm of scrolls. Two hands offered me different lives yet I took the blade and not the feather. Yet in the end it’s funny how the two men remind me of each other. So as I face another sunset before ruins of mankind’s forever warring, I consider what lays in days unwritten before me. In the end I only have one hope, one prayer. A chance to redeem house Esther, truth one of my friends would want. I owe much to him as I take his breath with my master’s blade, though both men my masters of past and present. One day we’ll all meet again with our troubles left behind. And then we shall see true… my fate.