sarah coughlan

“How is for a bit later,” I giggled, leaning in to kiss her cheek, playfully licking up a bit of my mess. “When is now. And when is Saturday, when you were still at Grandpa's. Apparently getting it like I just got it from Daddy, you naughty little girl!”“You told her?” she gasped as she turned to look at Daddy.

Roc and Ingram hurled themselves forward, propelled by a pulse of their wings, and met in midair with two kicks swinging, only for their legs to collide like dueling swords. They dropped down to the ground and again went at it, hurling attacks at each other with rapid speed and ferocious power. Their long legs swung wide, their talons capable of gutting each other like fish. Ingram used a similar fighting style to Roc, relying on kicks imbued with slashing talons, but just as Roc was skilled in the technique, so too was he accustomed to defeating it, having fought countless eagle warriors back home like himself.

Maybe you and I do deserve to suffer for our wrongdoing. If that’s so, then it means that when things get painful, when things get difficult, we don’t have the luxury of quitting. We don’t get to end our lives to escape what we did. Whatever form the pain takes, we bear it, we endure it, we welcome it, all while we try to make this world a place where people like us, like how we used to be, have no place, and the people who would be hurt can instead live in peace. The next time you encounter an obstacle you cannot overcome, when you just want to curl up into a ball and quit on the world, remind yourself that you don’t deserve the peace of surrender. You have to keep working, to keep fighting, to keep suffering, until the day when you’ve fully repented.