Unscarred

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They say a thing once broken will always show the seam.

Broken skin, broken bones, broken heart and broken pride: I bear the marks of all of these.

But more than this, my flesh has become a tally of other’s lives: this faint mark, here, the first - an orc clawed at my shoulder as my knife skewered his eye. See this stripe? a Southron’s blade; this dint a black-fletched arrow. My adversaries did not live to tell their tale. All that’s left? the marks they gave to me.

I should never want to take a life and go unscarred.


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