"When I was your age, I was widowed, and living every day waiting to die in battle. I was a terrorist. I had no life, no intentions, nothing but duty and vengeance and battle. I had a purpose, but I was not alive. It is not the years on your skin that makes you a child. A five year old can kill. My partner was an elite assassin before he had a birthday in double digits." His tone was scathing and hot, banked fury in his eyes.
"A child is someone who can not see past herself. Who can not grasp the ramifications of the blade she wields. Who has never thought of the tears that will flow as her blood does when she dies. A child is the girl who must be saved from the fire, instead of rushing into the flames for her younger sibling. A child has no place is battle, has no honor to call her own. When you pick up a weapon, you set aside your childhood and forge your own path regardless of your parents or your clan or your colony. Either you are a child playing at a warrior in which case your parents should beat sense into you and lock you in a closet. Or you are grown, and you must make your own way, alone, and on your own two feet."