My Cardboard Balcony

God and Satan's Tea Time by Belinda Roddie You say your problems are too heavy to carry around. I say we bury them seven hundred feet underground. You think the world will sink in an ocean of our sins. I reply, "It's either you or I who will ensure humanity wins." And your hands are too hot to cradle, and your cup is steaming now, and I'm sweating in my white robes, using their hems to wipe my brow. You say your problems are infectious and very soon, they'll spread to me. I say, "The trouble is, you think we're one and the same, but I don't fall that easily." "Well, that's the last time," you inevitably whine, "that I ever invite you over for tea."

King Henri's Fourth Legion had swarmed its way across the Dead Savannah for the past three months, leaving rotting carcasses and the last screams of the dying behind them. The soldiers ignored the smells, or if they didn't, they breathed the odors in deeply as if admiring the perfume that they had created with their swords and axes. As every other battalion had crumbled against enemy forces, the Fourth Legion pressed onward, the heat baking the once shimmery silver surfaces of their shields.