A few days passed with that same routine, gauze changed, reduced, the main deflection on my face now merely a few bandages, and they would stay that way for another week. Left in the dark of a date to be set back to work, and the possibilities emerging from the black ink of the mind, calligraphy pens stabbing into the head, ink and blood and anxiety flowing out. Perhaps I had cried when nobody was there to see or hear me over my injuries. I had never truly liked how I looked to begin with, from the first encounter with a mirror, to how other's reacted to someone as bestial looking as me, but to be even more inflicted, jagged rough scarring, a trail coming from right below the right eye to onto the chest, a slight one even touching my pec. And with all of those bandages removed, I could see it all, staring out of the window at my left side, a beautiful misage of a home, and here I was, like a stain of black ink on such beauty. I was essential to the piece, I was their warrior, but I still felt torn either way. I mourned my body, the temple, the sacred temple known as one's body, aching constantly, with enough of the day's daily mindnumb to distract one from just how much existing tormented. But when there was nothing to the day, it plagued and plagued.

Whispers in the hallway. I stay quiet, still looking outwards to the freedom I already missed within those few days. Whispers and then the sounds of -- three people, walking, one heavier than the other two, one more frail, the other dead in-center of the hall way. It was the dead of night here. Can't be good to have strangers around at such a time. My body shifts, tearing itself from the hope symbol of lights shining from home windows, lights and blue stone, and onto a drab drape, decorated with the flowers of a place nobody in this city had been to anyways. Imported goods. Just like me. An import to be used, and then once I was too ugly and dirtied from blood and what else disaster brings, to be discarded. But for now, I wait until that day comes, the day to be thrown back into where I came from.

Three shadows can be seen from behind the drapes. They pass, whispers, familiar voice, but no words discernable, but that voice differenciated from how I usually heard it. More somber. The other two old men, and as soon as they came, they pass by, they turn a corner the bed is next to, and leave, and all I can do is look back outside on the sleepless stresses of my midnight worries.