Every story is made of strokes: of the pen in ink crossing over itself upon the sheet of paper; of the sound of a telling in the air, carving up where before was still plainness, inaction, inert unvibrating air, as water frozen, flat, waveless; Every story is made of strokes swung by a character’s hands, and arms; leaps, landing in a battle attack, as two lionesses suddenly become a single whirlwind of anger, reborn for a brief time to cut across some still land; strokes of a knife into flesh, inert made, or rendered suit for meat at meal to eat; strokes of flashes of lightning cut into the black page of night, or of stars into that arena come, a sky hewing; so may iron of a star’s fall cut, and of its material, be forged a sword, for cutting, and if broken, in time, of shards may be written, upon plates of brass, by that same iron’s instrumentation, now in pen held to cut by strokes a tale, whose telling will strike the fateful blow, of an enemy not by meteor, nor sword, nor brave assault, ever at last felled.
