She Is 17 Hands High

she is seventeen hands high said my cousin Lee. Like a well-built stallion? I ask, for this amazes me. He laughs. Wait until you see her, he says, truly. She will show up brandishing a sword, she carries easily. Tossing it as if it is a toy, yet I can see it is steel. We’ll get along okay, she says, but here is my deal. You cannot disappoint Lee, he is my man, I will not have him put down. At first I think she is teasing but her seriousness says I do not clown. I agree to take him as seriously as the battle at hand. She holds her sword in the air and lightning sizzles past in a band. I command the weather to let me kill as many Gnots as I can today. I am in awe of her, terrified, as I watch her stomp quickly away. Where did you find someone like this? I ask my cousin Lee. He is staring after her, as amazed and in awe of her as me. She just began fighting next to me in the Battle of Wingoat he said. By the time it was over, she had a little pile of sixteen newly dead. Never break up with her, I told him. You might be her next prey. He gave me a wink and said “I am not going away.” They married soon after and raised an army of their own. Each one bigger than the last, their house was soon overgrown.