Winding down

[wants_the_phd]

WHO: Roses and ?
WHERE: Rose barn
WHEN: Post-ritual evening 54 through morning 55

[Whew.





Whew.]

Comments

[wants_the_phd]

Yeah? What was it?

[finalbows]

Zidane. At least it was supporting cast. The hero's gallant friend and ally who chooses protecting the purity of their love over the practical concerns of brokering peace with a rival country.

[wants_the_phd]

[Romance sure seems like an awful lot of trouble sometimes.]

You know, Belle was looking for ideas for a performance he could put on for Rubato. Have you pitched this to him?

[finalbows]

No~. I didn't know that. But Rubato WOULD be able to appreciate it, if I had to pick out someone from the rabble who would.

[wants_the_phd]

I bet you could get a copy of the script from Red, if you don't already have it memorized.

The hardest part might be finding people who could do the performance justice.

[finalbows]

[ the look of someone who is contemplating deeply if no Shakespeare Lord Avon ever again is worse than BAD Lord Avon ]

[wants_the_phd]

If only we had those on-demand memory coins again. You could create a wall of water and play the memory on there like a hologram.

[finalbows]

If only.

[ pulls out an unused, non on-demand memory coin. tilts it to and fro. ]


You know, sometimes I wonder if we could use these for more than just a few moment's entertainment. Memories are powerful. I've used them to do terrible things before. And it feels telling... this world chooses to make them a currency that we just keep receiving....

[wants_the_phd]

Do you suppose memories are something you can spend instead of just receive? That might explain why everyone's amnesia situation varies so wildly from person to person...

[finalbows]

Unsure... Don't think anyone's ever tried. But it almost feels like an invitation, doesn't it?

...
With enough power.
If you follow them back.
One after another after another.
Life before life.


There's something... really beautiful you can find.
Wanna see?

[wants_the_phd]

[She has no idea what he's talking about, as usual.]






Yeah sure, why not?

putting my html back in because the legibility feels weird without it

[finalbows]

<sub>[ sits up. he summons a sphere of water, and then, just as she'd earlier described, sweeps his arm grandiosely to the side to command it to spread into a big curtain.

palms the blank coin. and pulls out a different one, from one of those small vest pockets you can barely store anything in. ]</sub>

If you look at this and tell me it's just a rock, I shall consider you a failure as an aesthete.

<sub>[ He pushes the coin into the water.

The scene is certainly unearthly. Clouds stream below like a churning primordial sea, interrupted only by quartzy platforms. Those are rocks, but they are not the rock.

The rock is something she's seen before, in passing, in a dream. A messy hunk of yellow crystal, spinning gently in the air amid two ornate metal rings.

Angel Devil is in front of it, floating as is typical. He's clad only in white tatters and patches of ruby-red fur mixed with far more feathers than usual. And for all he looks haggard in the eyes, his face is as good as a blank mask.

It's so small. There are places where it has already begun to sprout new points.

The memory of Angel Devil raises a shaking hand to it, hesitates, starts to pull away--
and is frozen in time, as his current day self commands the memory to freeze. ]</sub>

[wants_the_phd]

[She's an appreciative audience. There's always so much going on in his memories, they're cool to watch.]

Which world is this?

[finalbows]

_{[ airily, ]}

All of them. Technically.

[wants_the_phd]

How so?

[finalbows]

<sub>[ he reaches out to the curtain of water, and interrupts it, tearing a hole where now, water isn't.

in but a moment, that pretty rock is completely gone from sight. ]</sub>

Experience nourishes the soul... the soul nourishes a crystal... if you twist together memories, and climb them back like a rope...

It's like... tracing a lineage.
Eventually... you get to the start.

[wants_the_phd]

So this is the origin of... souls?

[finalbows]

This is the origin of life.

<sub>[ drops his hand.
slowly, the hole fills back in,

and the crystal of origin returns. ]</sub>

[wants_the_phd]

[Is this the origin of life of HER world? Is her world linked to his in some way across a vast multiverse-spanning family tree?]

[She isn't really sure if she can accept it as truth just because he says it's so, it seems so incomprehensible. But everything about the pasture has taught her that she knows barely anything about the nature of reality. So she's willing to entertain the idea that this may be real -- if not for her universe, then for someone's -- and if that's the case, the magnitude of what she's looking at is pretty staggering.]

[She's quiet for a moment.]


Is this different than the heart of Terra you were feeding souls to?

[finalbows]

Yes. Very. Think of aging Terra... as just a notch on the rope to grip, on the way upwards to this. Spitting out each world we'd ate, growing in vigor, then inevitably dwindling back to the side of Terra's own mother crystal...

After a fact, it's all just memories, right?

I'm sure... a memory demon would be capable of a lot.

[wants_the_phd]

[She considers it for a moments.]

So, what were you doing in this memory?

If his brain WASN'T cursed: 1/2

[finalbows]

Something I luckily lived long enough to regret.

However, instead we get, 2/2

[finalbows]

Remind me, what was I for, Azdaja?

Help us Belle

[wants_the_phd]

Killing as many people as possible to harvest souls for a dying planet.