The Anomaly

Remember when we brought you home?  You were two feet high, just like one of them.  You were so proud and distinguished, even then.  When we fed you, we offered only breads and fruits.  But you took, gratefully, always returning with smiles and kind words.

 

Yes, you spoke even then.  You came to us that way.  A little bud, happy, healthy and whole, you were so eager to please us and so ready to mingle with the others.  We knew when we took you that you were unique.  Not only did you surpass our expectations, but you also exceeded even your own high standards.   Do you remember telling us stories about your future?  Do you recall all the gloriously detailed tales you laid before us, all the while oblivious to your true history?  We would marvel at your capacity for mimicry and adaptation, even within the sparse confines of your carnival.  So much time was spent readying different obstacles for you - sharpening traps and stretching rawhide thick and taut.  Many hours were spent researching the most efficient means of preparing you for this trial.  To be forthcoming, there were darker moments when doubt of your survival stirred sleepless nights.  Concerns about your cycle, and the nature of your creation, kept us quarreling over your inevitable transformation for seasons on end.  But look at you now, here in the circle.  Witness the majesty of your becoming.

 

Never accept, ever in your weakest moment nor worst recollection, that we intended anything but success for you.  There were no options available to us but victory, and in your young, eager face and sterling bright eyes we realized that you were our one key to freedom, our one and only chance at purposeful and undetected assimilation.

 

No one will sense your true intention, as your behavior has been altered to appear as one of their own.  Never can any within their massive detect your origin, as your maturation and training has wiped away any and all possible foreign traces.  Familiarity breeds disrespect, yes.  But do not confuse the chiding of peers with your true nature being revealed.  They are as blind to your truth as they are their own.  Their redemption can only be deciphered at the moment of their demise.  The light of the afterlife will shine unto all truths, known, unknown and forgotten.

 

With us, you walk the narrow path of the chosen.  You were not born of us, not bled from our womb nor fed from our breast.  Your kind were cast out long before the dawn of our era, forgotten to the black ash of the Fall and lost to the winters of the Ruin.  Only the chosen can reveal the source of the hidden light, only the one raised as another can release the Light of Memory and correct all that has been mistaken, heal all that would be ill, speak all which is left unspoken. 

 

Slay those who would destroy us, child of now.  Protect us from our enemies.  Deliver us from the inquisitor’s cruel and unfathomable banishment.  Leave your mark upon all thus judged and score their every monument.

 

Rise, crusader.  Conquer all before you rest eternal.