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Update the-mirror-dirge/3. third-parable.md

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mayday 2026-01-11 11:30:59 -06:00
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### THIRD PARABLE: Only give yourself up if it guarantees victory.
*Lights up, but dim--we're underground, now, or something close enough to it. Center stage, a stump, waist-height, of something that might have been a calcified tree--or a huge spine.*
*Through the audience, THE NAVIGATOR enters, guided by a witchlight over his shoulder, folding his map as he does so. His feet crunch on the bones beneath his boots, and the whistle of the wind sounds, faintly, like music.*
*(NAVIGATOR, stopping before the stump, back to the audience)*
We're here.
*BEAT. The witchlight's hue swirls. NAVIGATOR sets down his pack, and stares at the stump for another moment, in silence except the music. He begins to circle it, slowly, til he faces the audience from the other side.*
*NAVIGATOR*
When I was a child, they sought to teach me obedience. I was a wild little thing, of course, it didn't take no matter what they tried. Even when they sought to beat me into shape, they simply taught me not to let them catch me.
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notes:
monologue. i'm still working on it.
should be the kind of thing that is. i don't wanna say Portentous. but this is the one where by this point, if you're performing the play, you can no longer reconcile the things that don't make sense, no longer brush it off as _just the wind,_ so to speak.
this should feel like he's going to invoke something if im doing it right.
not sure how i want to end it. i got two thoughts and neither of em seem quite right.
1) he summons something and plays a game. this feels more like it should happen midway through his monologue and chess isn't canonical to tayen rn.
2) he sacrifices himself, for something greater. this...i'm not sure how to make it happen.
*(Enter THE INKMAKER.)*
*THE INKMAKER, to the audience, plucking berries for his basket.*\
@ -10,7 +34,4 @@ When they sought to beat me into shape, to strike while the iron was hot, they c
*(Offstage, a ruckus.)*
They didn't teach me to be what they wanted. Oh, yes, they taught me how to hate. They just taught me how to hate *them.*
*(THE GUARDS and THE PRINCE enter, stage right. THE PRINCE is held by his arms, by two of THE GUARDS--he's clearly been beaten.)*
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