The Voices of Reason

         There are rules, and then there are their rules.
         I just have to look in the mirror to remind myself whose I follow; to see that shine again, that faint glow of camaraderie. 
         Sometimes I think I might win, and then today I realized there’s no such thing as freedom, only the pain of a barren destiny.
         I must overcome myself; Community over competition, unity over the cold breath of independence, the whole suffocating the singularly weak. I am between them now, alone, and my path is but a clearing in the woods I once followed as a child. I am grown, but yet still beholden to their desires, even now burdened with the strain of a debate I can no longer bear; one group within, and one without, both at war with my intentions.
         We all live and work here in the home of the many. I have a room I share with Constance, my sister citizen. She is suspicious and selfish, and has threatened my disclosure to the patriarch below. I fear something must be done tonight to bring her back into the fray.
         They demand her compliance.
         They whisper her penance.
         It had become a trial between us to see who would succumb to sleep tonight, but I was prepared; she drank her tea without a thought to the darkness that fell upon her.
         I rise now to her bedside with her sentence in hand.
         And then they are with me again, guiding my will, forging my fate.
         I hear them talking outside the door, encouraging me to fulfill the ritual, their voices empowering me; to overcome, to join them once again in rapture.
         And then the others are with me again.
         I hear them banging on the door, screaming my name, demanding, fearful. Afraid.
         But neither need doubt my commitment.
         I have found my family once again.
         We are home.