The string of events that brought me here is long and nonsensical. But here we are.
- Step 1: Decide that maybe an 8k word long short story after the climactic events of your story is mildly disruptive.
- Step 2: Decide to replace it with a 'prophetic'/poetic analysis to clarify your complicated-ass plot
- Step 3: Because this is the first time you've actually thought about this poem, realize that it would be cooler if "X hurts Y, X spares Y" would be cooler as "X hurts Y, Y spares X"
- Step 4: Consult ridiculous timeline table to see if your five sets of hypotheticals supports this (weirdly enough, it does)
- Step 5: Realize you now have to rewrite the poem that you vomited at the beginning and hoped for the best.
- Step 6: In an act of sheer masochism, decide to rewrite it in meter.
Anyways. Before:
Long has it presided over our age of discordance
And will not wither til its seed returns aflame
To take root in earth unstained by blood
From its renewal blooms the flood
That sweeps away the walls in which our discontent is sequestered
To kindle in all the mercy that spared it
After:
The unwithering crown, it long awaits
Its seed returns from wounded flame
Hurt withheld, its roots unstained.
From renewal will bloom and free by flood
Our discontent, remade, unwalled
What spared it: mercy, kindled in all
Better, I think, because of the meter. And definitely good enough to go back to not thinking about this at all.