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“Then swing through, not at. And shave your fucking head. And make them love a version of you. That’s the important part, whatever you do. Love, then get out.”
Her eyes were brown, beautiful, tired, and yet they widened for a moment as she looked at Thurwar, her killer. Come at me, those eyes said.
it was an image Wright knew people would remember. The man-bear in rusted metal and him in a gray, tailored suit.
She showed them that she, the Hurricane, was capable of great love, and that if they’d look they’d see they were too. And maybe someday they would understand what they’d enabled, what they’d created.
They’d found he’d been sliced across the neck, as if someone had snuck behind him. Whoever had done it had used Sunset’s own sword and been precise.
Some truly didn’t think about the fact that men and women were being murdered every day by the same government their children pledged allegiance to at school.
She killed, they loved her better, and she hated them more deeply.
She chose silence because she could not say to the people she was ashamed of her success, of the very fact of her continued existence.
She’d caught him off guard on purpose to cause a stir.
Ur not that important
The shame was setting in. They roared, and she was relieved. Relieved that the sound of their adoration could take her mind from the fact of her continuing.
Or rather, where I was enslaved. Just ’cause you enslaved don’t make you a slave. You can’t ever be that.
“I’ll continue.” Government Man so sewn into his language, but all it means is murder. It tries to paint all that nothing over death. He is nothing too. That’s the only way he could. A shell, a cipher for a thing so great he’d be destroyed looking in the mirror if he weren’t already dead on the inside. Like me. I ask myself, Can I even hate a man like this?
And now that I’ve traded my arm to get it back, my whole inside knows I can’t return to the silence, ’less I throw myself against the saw again, more precisely.
I might come out. I don’t think I’m coming back.
Thurwar let go of the hammer. Even for this demonstration it felt like a sin.
It’s a show I’ve seen before. When a man sees he has been forsaken. Discovers he might be unblessed. Thinking he understood. All at once he see the gods he kept don’t keep him the same way. Not how he hoped. He see he had it all wrong the whole time.
It would have been funny if there weren’t so much blood everywhere.
and yet there could be no enemy but them. They were the ones with guns.
In the center of the complicated nexus of adored and hated, desired but also easy to watch being destroyed, it had to be a Black woman.
“Because after Sun was gone, I wanted to enjoy you the old way. Just like you wanted. And because a part of us maybe already knew this was coming. Nothing as good as us could exist here.”
On this one thing you don’t negotiate. You love through all the people you’ve been and hope you have a chance at being better.”
I thank the world, unsure no longer. Worthy of life, I’m sure as it leaves. In the end, surely we are blessed. The royal and low, the queen and the singer. Surely we are blessed. The hammer welcomes me, Hendrix Young, to the unbound.[*1]
“Whatever,” Thurwar said. And they enjoyed her. They were proud to be led by the woman named Loretta Thurwar.
“We are something you have never seen before.” And before she kneeled into the Keep, she said, “When you think of us, remember that just because something is, doesn’t mean it can’t change, and just because you haven’t seen something before, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. They call this a freeing ground. So who’s going to be freed: me or you?”
The killing time was here.
“You ready?” Thurwar said. “Swing through,” Staxxx said. “What?” Thurwar said. “I love you.” “Wait,” Thurwar said. But Staxxx had already pulled away. “You and me,” Thurwar said. “Us,” Staxxx said. And they turned away from each other.
But her body said, This one thing I will do for you, let me hold this endless hurt, here you need not think, just move.
“Gotcha,” Staxxx said, and she dropped LoveGuile to the ground. Before the scythe could find the earth, Hass Omaha rose and blew Staxxx away.
