Sublime

Once a Spartan boy stole a fox and hid it under his cloak. Some grown warriors stopped to question him on an unrelated subject. Beneath the cloak, the fox began gnawing at the youth’s belly. The boy made no sound but allowed the beast to bleed him to death, rather than cry out or reveal his deed.

Pain and love are places I must be brave enough to visit. My courage will come from knowing I can handle whatever I encounter there—because I was designed by my creator to not only survive pain and love but also to become whole inside it. I was born to do this. I am a Warrior.

lay on the dirt, weeping. Those flowers had made him his true being, which was blue, and finned, and not mine. I thought I would die of such pain, which was not like the sinking numbness Aeëtes had left behind, but sharp and fierce as a blade through my chest. But of course I could not die.