[i]The best place to mediate is in the tiger's mouth.[/i]

Dyssia eyes the row after row of teeth--shiny silicon soldiers, glistening with saliva, mustered in row after row and filling a mouth that is too large by half--and thinks, just for one second, that the Way [i]sucks[/i] so hard.

Because for it to work, everyone--[i]everyone![/i]--has to lift where they are. And she's--

She can't look away. Won't look away. Has to curl and bunch and be ready to move at a second's notice because--

Is it weird to feel pity? Here, now, face to face with, with, with [i]this?[/i] Not in the sense of the kind of pity you'd spit at someone with barbs in your teeth, would dribble out with honey sweetness, the acidic kindness of someone who, oh honey, bless your heart, let mama show you how it works, but of--

This is want. Want and greed and hunger and biomancy and cruelty, out of which has emerged even greater want and greed and cruelty. 

She [i]did[/i] look sad, didn't she?

"Get them out," she murmurs, still not looking away. Not panicked, not urgent, just…

Resolute, is perhaps the right word? Everyone has to lift where they stand, after all.

And she's right [i]here[/i], and Hephaestus is right [i]there[/i], and behind her, a host of children is being led by the most trustworthy sheep in the galaxy.

"Get them out," she says again, and lunges for Hephaestus.