For a man who follows his heart can never be weak. That’s what I used to believe, once, before the bodies piled up like autumn leaves, and belief curdled into something thinner than blood.
I caught the whistle player once, a man stitched together by calluses and riddles. His tune wasn’t music; it was a wound dressed in melody. It scraped something raw inside me. A song of mystery, yes, but also of cruelty, a tune without mercy. When I asked him how he knew such things, he only laughed. Said the desert had taught him.
Said that Mother Gaia, if she ever existed, didn’t whisper. She screamed. Through the grains of sand, she dragged him down, ankle-first, bone-deep, until he touched her molten heart. Said he came back remade, not better, just aware.
"Men," he spat, as if the word itself offended him, "have always been the destroyers."
Not gods. Not fate. Not even history. Men.
And I realized then: this isn't about nations or borders or wars. It’s about the individual. The one who chooses to light the match. The one who watches the blaze.
It is the gender.
It is the myth we wrote in our own image, thinking ourselves gods, when all we ever were, are, was ruin.