The child was a clear eyed curious youngster, a miniature destrier ready to do battle with ignorance,  stomping about and issuing childlike snorts of glee when she ran down an answer to one of her many questions. The little creature’s soul had made a friend of rapture.

But every beginning meets its end, some quite inhumane. So it was that her world was rent by the prideful whose cruelty was carefully practiced over time past and would be in time to come. Thus the rape of rapture overcame her family and hope fled only to be recovered in the distant future, and only in preciously small increments.

Cruelty found its mark. The family was broken. The self-anointed great rejoiced. The family now scattered waited and worked and hoped. The family still waits, conserving the hope of a new beginning.