#poetry #sciencefiction #writing
Would you trust this man with your children?
Story and narration by Richard Paul
Sound effects from epidemicsound.com
I try not to think about the war,
Nor the travesties that bound us to it,
Velnibeth and human both; it's a bore
And has cost us much time and heartache,
Time the humans don't have; for their sake
I look to the future, to shape it.
Luckily, we need not sit around
For many adventures yet remain,
Forsaken prey vessels to hunt down,
Old tyrants and criminals to snare,
Victory's heady revels to share
To challenge those pointless years of pain.
To this end, I've repurposed my ship,
The Mrakryeva, to train and entertain;
With young blades from both species, we slip
To the Plagueworlds and hunt for vermin,
Raiders mostly, who we bear within,
To dance with us, once the day has waned.
One of the war's few boons, it must be said,
Is how it tore down the humans' conscience;
Once overblown, now all but dead,
A lifetime of death's seen it thrashed and cracked,
Yet now it threatens to slither back.
We'll not suffer them to lose their sense.
Our species' fates are joined together;
In time, as should ever have been the plan,
They shall choose to join our Empire,
Thus their hearts must know, there is only us,
No grief is meet when curs displease us.
By my cruises, their young will understand.
So far, things have gone very well indeed.
On the last hunt, we caught twelve deserters
Whom my boys and girls did make to bleed.
Afterwards, to the dance hall I went
A trice, to find them bloodied and spent,
Lain as familiar as lovers.
At first they were standoffish and grim,
The war's foul shadow makes hate easy
But the hunt plucked it from under their skin,
Helped, of course, by the crimson powder
In their wine, to encourage blood to burn,
As is meet, by youth's toothsome lechery.
They were then fast friends in short order
And eager to share in all adventures
And make sport of traitors and monsters.
They danced to the screams and drank spilled blood,
Helpless before joy's rampaging flood
Against which no folly endures.
Oddly beautiful creatures are humans,
So short-lived and yet no less alive.
There's such an urgency about them;
Our kind fall for them so easily
For all we must lose them so quickly,
Still, that's a worthy grief and sublime.
Apologies, I distract easily;
Well, in short, we will have prey for years
And I have berths to offer cheaply
To any youth who craves adventure
And could stand to be shaped for the future;
It'll be a memory they'll hold dear.