‘I recall Mother’s tender care: my infancy alongside, suckling peacefully; weaned gradually to our family’s seafood diet (I adore calamari!)- supplemented rarely by an odd leg of other flesh. My schooling… long past!... was crucially formative– teaching me the ways and means, goods and ills, of this life. I have been a voyager since my youth, a wandering, solitary soul- though not through choice; my mother’s passing was bloodily traumatic. Our scattered kin have been persecuted for centuries by ruthless invaders of these realms. Bereft of gentling influence, scarred visibly and psychically, I may have become tougher, angrier, than nature intended. I go marked too by accident of birth: a peculiarity of pigmentation- not shameful to me!- but rendering me conspicuous. One foe particularly seeks my doom: regarding him, I neither expect nor intend mercy. Since our first tumultuous encounter, already he walks painfully the poorer for my wrath.’
[Moby Dick]
Last edited by Graham King; 06-11-2013 at 08:31 PM.
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