Editing Cain - Bodhisattva of Murder (section)

==Fiction==
On the fifteenth day of Thermidor, I reached my destination.
The stair of one hundred and fifteen-thousand steps was behind me. I’d passed the field of ruinous blossoms and the singing stones whose melodies warn mendicants to turn back. Before that I’d sailed the ocean of fruit, and dug deep beneath the hill of regret. When I met myself coming the other way, I knew to tell myself only two things and these I listened to wordlessly. The yawning maw, where the path wended off of the world and into the sky, I traversed nearly without incident. The hall of wanton women was a struggle, I will confess. For a time, in the land of lost dreams, I forgot myself and lived as an accountant for a small rural bank in Idaho, but I remembered myself again and moved on.
I arrived at my goal.
”Another one then,” he said, turning around.
The man I met at the top of the mountain turned to me. On his forehead danced a glyph of blue flame, a word in the language of the Angels. When I glanced upon that mark, his mark, I knew without question, this was the one whom I sought. I sank to me knees before him and placed my head on the ground, wordlessly.
”Yes, yes, very nice. So, which type are you?”
I responded that I was his humble servant and this did not please him.
”Well of course you are. You’ve come all this way. But two types of men come to see me. Which are you?”

- From the journal of Yoritoku Robespierre, who was never heard from again


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''Once upon a time, there were two field mice named Al and Cal.
One day, the Cat came down upon Al and Cal and showed them his teeth.
“Bring me food, or I will eat you!” growled the Cat.
So Al and Cal went back to their holes and brought the Cat their food.
Cal brought the Cat all of the corn he had saved up for the winter. The Cat sniffed the corn and growled. “Corn? Am I a pig?” it snarled, “Bring me something better! Bring me meat!”
Al, on the other hand, had found a grasshopper and brought that to the Cat. The Cat sniffed the grasshopper and ate it on gulp. “Delicious,” it purred.
Cal had no grasshopper to give the cat, nor any other bugs. The Cat wanted meat. And 
Cal only knew one place to get meat.
And so Cal brought Al to the Cat, and the Cat smiled its kitty smile and swallowed up Al in one bite.
“You’ve done a bad thing, Cal,” the Cat said, still smiling and licking its paws, “You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have done what I said.” And the Cat smiled and walked away.
And Cal was all alone.
The End.''

- An excerpt from Fairy Tales for Nimble Children by Orson Scott Card


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”Another one then,” 
He turned around and I knew him instantly, by his mark and by the age and wisdom in his eyes. I dropped to one knee, pulling off my helm and averting my eyes so that he would see that I was respectful.
”Yes, yes, very nice. So, which type are you?”
I showed him my sword hand then. Blood dripped from it; blood that would never wash away.
”Ah,” he said without smiling, ”You want to be absolved?”
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I wanted to scream. The ghosts following me wailed in my ears, wailed that I would never wash away their stains, would never truly be free of my crimes. But I did not scream. Instead, I nodded once, never bringing my eyes up to meet his.
”Alright,” he said after the longest of pauses, ”Would you like some tea?”

- From the diary of Sir Edmund Forlorgan, who would one day become Brother Porolius of the Utopia at World’s End