She was fragile. She could feel it – fragile in everyway. The thread that tethered her to the fragment of sanity bowed in jeopardy of snapping; just like every bone in her body when she dared move. Her joints threatened to give way and weakness plagued her muscles; just as she felt her emotional hold give and her spirit weaken.

       It was back – the virus that had almost crippled her had retuned. The fire burning inside her wasn’t anger or lust as it had been only a week prior – but pain budding, her body fighting a losing battle. But even then as the anger had cleansed the open heart-wounds left by the man she prepared to defend – she felt it.

       She had known the exhaustion she felt throughout her body wasn’t from the lack of sleep or the double shifts she’d been working. No it was an enemy she knew all to well since childhood. It had beaten her then, robbing her of what little normality left in her world of people who already strained to understand who or what she was. She fought outside attackers all too often for a youth – but this attacker didn’t play by physical rules, and so she’d learned to fight a different battle; beating back her body and this foe.

       But then she’d had the luxury of giving in till she could build her internal army and slowly fight back. Now there was no time, no option for retreat. She lived in this battle field and now her internal foe had an outside ally. The sleeping enemy had been awakened but not like before – it had an enabler this time; and not just one. This time she would have to fight on more than one battlefield and not a battle could be lost if she were to win the war this time.

       There were easy ways out – but the options that left her with only changed the direction of the attack not the field.

       So that strategy wouldn’t do – to cut out the very people she needed in order to eliminate the emotional fight – but that would leave her alone to face her mind, body and the outside world head on with no allies but still the soldiers kept coming.

       So with options, that were no options at all, and standing terms of surrender she could no longer live by – she faces the shapeless attackers who lurked in the shadows of the vessel that she now called friend and foe. She stood, took a fighting stance, and with a shrieking battle cry flings herself into the field, using one fight to battle for and against her, with her and behind her.

       “Nex ut somes, nex ut animus! Porro ago informis pectus pectoris quod proditus phasmatis! May EGO victum vos totus!

             “Death to the body, death to the soul! Long live the hideous heart and treacherous spirit! May I conquer you all!”