SandScript 2023 [Digital Exclusive]

FROM THE ASHES OF GLORY
Elizabeth Grace Lowe
Your face is bruised, and your body scarred. Blood flows steadily from the wound on your
head, slipping down your face. There is so much pain that you shouldn’t be able to stand, but
you can. You barely feel the pain, for a blanket of numbness seems to cover you, and you are
warmed by the fire of anger in your soul.
A thousand thoughts race through your mind, but one is behind them all, beating out a steady
rhythm in the chaotic orchestra of your brain. “His fault. His fault. His fault.” His fault that you
had fallen from grace in your father’s eyes before you were kidnapped. His fault that you are
living in the desert with a group of assassins and thieves. His fault that you are broken.
Yet though he destroyed your past, your brother built your future. His betrayal had thrown you
into the depths of slavery. But from the depths, you had built a throne of power. You had held
everything you ever desired. Fear and respect from the hundreds of people in the group of
outcasts. Wealth gained from years of back-breaking work, and a path to revenge bought with
the blood and sweat of decades of labor.
But now, you have lost it all. The empire you had worked for years to build has crumbled
before your eyes.
As you stare at the burning remains of the once glorious land, a tear starts to slide down your
cheek, tracing a river through the field of dust on your face, watering the roses of blood that
bloom along its banks. Another tear falls, as you see the smoke rising over the desert, born
from the flames that lick hungrily at the few remains of your domain. Everything is gone, and it
is his fault.
Memories start to sing and wail in your head, echoed by the steady beat, “His fault. His fault.”
A time when you were young comes to your mind. A time when you had believed your brother
loved you. When you had played in the bushes of the garden, fighting the garrisons of ants
that came to attack the castle of leaves. He had made his love look so genuine, but you know it
couldn’t have been real. What happened a few years later proved that.
You had told your brother that you didn’t enjoy the bustling life of the politics and etiquette
that surrounded you, and he had told your father that. The heartbreak on your father’s face
haunts you to this day.
Though your kidnapping had nothing to do with any of that, you had learned to blame your
brother for it. It was easier to feel anger than to wallow in the grief that came from knowing you
would never see your family again. In time the pain had disappeared, and the anger became
the real part of you.
“His fault,” you try to say once again, but deep down you know it is yours. Your brother loved
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