The slow, steadying thumping of boots on stone echoed down the long, spacious corridor. Unlike many, this one was both well-lit and stunningly immaculate. Every inch of the stone walls, stone floor, and stone ceiling seemed to have been carved from a single, immense chunk of the same rock. All of it was hewn with precision, not so smooth that it felt synthetic under the brush of my fingers but not so rough that it felt abrasive as I dragged them in my walk. The blue-gray walls were lit thoroughly by imbedded lights that cast down beams of soft yellow-white light. If all the corridors of this combat school were as comfortable to me as this, I probably would have stayed a great deal longer. The dull coolness of the stone, the impression of a mine shaft or underground tunnel, felt good and, above all else, so profoundly right.

Of course, the only reason I noticed was because I was on a combination sugar high, caffeine high, and sensory high. The sugar high was from my visit to earth, where some of the locals had treated me to a food they called marshmallows, pure white sugar made by pumping air into some sort of syrupy concoction. The caffeine high was from visiting a cafeteria-picnic area, where they had been serving an apple broth mixed with some kind of herb that I was reasonably certain would kill a mouse if the poor thing tried more than just a nibble. The awareness high stemmed from the same reason I was walking down this particular corridor in the Dome. I was unarmed. I had no weapon. It was not rare for it to happen, but it was the first time I had been forced to be without weapons for more than five or six days at a time. It had been almost two weeks, in my own time, since I had handled a blade.

The awareness high made everything seem more of what it already was. The echoes of my boots were more obvious than they would have been, the cleanliness of the hall more impressive, the stone more fitting, the sense of touch under my fingertips more overflowing, the small impact of my feet more jarring. Even the lights seemed more vivid, even the temperature more noticeable. It was a strange feeling. It was as if every nerve in my body had been exposed to daylight for the first time, as if warmth that had never suffused beneath my skin had suddenly overwhelmed me, as if my heart had been dead and was now beating in a perfect rhythm. Everything was more real. Everything was more interesting. Everything caught my attention, held my attention, caressed my senses like a lover.

I hated it.

Every second I walked, I walked faster. The armory was in this direction, and I had no intention of being deterred from my course. I had been too long without a weapon, and this feeling inside me was far too ... unfamiliar. I wanted to be done with it. One of the wizened old warriors I had mentioned it to told me that it was happiness, freedom, peace—he had told me it was good that I felt this way, that it was healthy. If it was healthy to feel this way, I was more than happy to be submerged in a constant lack of health. My fingers left the wall as my strides lengthened, my feet falling with thumps louder and more firm the closer I came to my objective. By the time I had reached the door, I was all but jogging, and both fists were clenching and unclenching to relieve the tingling sensation running through them. They wanted a blade to hold, just as much as any other part of me.

When I reached the door, my hand paused before the handle. What if he was right? If I was just now feeling happiness, it would mean I had never felt it before. Was my life really that ... pitiful? What about freedom and peace? I had been free my entire life, or so I thought, even if my life was almost entirely dependent upon constant wars, personal or otherwise. I was throwing myself in them, always. It was simply the way it had been for me. My hand shook, dropped. If he was right, it meant that something as simple as losing, as going without a weapon, had opened me to a world I had never seen before. Was putting aside combat really that important to happiness? to freedom? to peace? Politicians waged war without weapons, destroyed peace. I had seen married men who were as dismal and angry as anyone, yet they never carried weapons, never participated in combat with their spouses. Freedom ... I had always believed that without a weapon, no man or woman or child could ever have been free. Was I wrong?

A frown worked across my face. Did I really need a sword at all?

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[Graphics by Me.]

[The signature links to Aleksandr Sokoll.]
["I believe in sleeping." ~ Bruce Lee]