knelt before the , newly a Buddha himself, seated among the highest of the cosmos, raised past the Heaven he had once tried to storm — and asked for the one thing that was still, after everything, undone.
There is the band. He reached up toward the gold circle on his head, the ring the master had tricked him into wearing fourteen years ago, the cap he had put on himself because it was bright, the leash with no loosening spell, the thing that had tightened on his skull every time he was too much of what he was. I have never once been free of it. Not in your service, not in exile, not for a single day of the whole road. Now that I am what you have made me — now that there is no more road, and no more master to need me held — will you take it off? Say the words, or teach the master to say them, and let me feel my own head bare for the first time since I was a fool who wanted a shiny thing.
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