"Nancy Holder - Highlander - Measure of a Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Holder Nancy)

and as any wee, trusting baim, you smile and reach out your chubby
fingers to faces that croon and hearts that embrace. You are held within
the band, the tribe, the clan. You belong. You have rights,
privileges, duties, and obligations.

Then, slashing deep, lightning upon a battlefield, the sword hacks into
body, heart, and soul. You are not the longed-for son, the mother's
mirror, the prayers of your grandparents.

You are no one.

You are outcast.

Although your body heals, your soul and spirit are forever maimed, and
will never again be whole.

From this moment on, you are alone inside yourself for the rest of time.

And alone, you are abandoned, driven out to hunt your own kind, who hunt
you in return. You may love fiercely for centuries, but at the
Gathering, your beloved may take your head. You may protect, but your
student is a hunter, too, and there can be only one.

The mortals you love will prove their fragility, and you will mourn in
darkness over their rose-strewn graves.
If you attempt to stop loving, you will be more alone than ever. And of
everything in the world, you are the most alone already.

Fort;ver apart, forever waiting, forever watching, and Watched.

But no, not forever.

For imagine the heartbeats of your days and nights, pulsing endlessly
like star bursts. Is there a limit to the heavens?

lnfty is a mortal dream.

Is there a limit to eternity?

There can be only one.

And so you go through your life a being unlike any other, even the ones
who are of your kind. A lifeless object-"tana, scimitar-is more vital
to your existence than your blood or your breath. You are a secret, a
cipher, a legend even to yoursell Since you do not know the who and why
of yourself, you must cling to what you have become. Motherless,
fatherless, a family dynasty of one.

Who wants to live forever?