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31_days2010-01-16 11:26 pm
cofmanynames.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2010-01-16 11:26 pm
[January 16] [Original] And then you die, but that's all right
Title: And then you die, but that's all right
Day / Theme: January 16: from their cradles carried toward what is excellent
Series: Original [ifupdown]
Character / Pairing: Implied-Matthew, implied-Daisy
Rating: PG, pretty innocuous
This is what they do, basically: people are born and they do what they think they want to do and then they die.
(After they die more stuff happens, sure, but that – but we’re not allowed to know, not yet. Maybe he knows; even that’s unlikely, though. Sorry. Maybe the gods know, but – they say they didn’t truly make everything, so maybe that’s one of the bits that was already there, and waiting.)
They do what they think they want to – this is the right way to put it, not only because they have other people pulling at them and pushing at them and trying to make them do one thing or another; that’s what they call interpersonal relationships, things like friendship and family and love and so on and so on and on and never ever ending. It’s the right way to put it because there’s paths laid out for them, and it’s not that they can’t pick different ways; it’s that here, for things to fit together as they do, the people don’t.
(See now as people doesn’t just mean mortals; the immortals – as immortal as anything gets, anyway – are just as bound. They have a fringe advantage, in that they could conceivably survive without a path pulling and pushing at them to follow me, come this way; it’s still less advisable than to – say – stick skewers in your eyes.)
So perhaps they technically couldn’t: where they are wouldn’t be that place, and its future wouldn’t stretch out as it does, fitting without a surprise when you know all the pieces (and it’s only that they don’t know all the pieces, though they can sometimes pick them all up in far retrospect and there are those who believe this will help), without them following the way they have to, always and forever.
Still they feel – they know – that they can choose (it’s just that they’ve already chosen). And their choices and paths are all tangled up in other people’s, so that the whole of the world is a great big net with no holes—
Almost no holes.
It is possible – go back, you’ll see it to be possible – for there to exist persons without a fate. They are to be pitied, perhaps; it’s the worst thing anyone can imagine (the worst thing anyone can’t imagine) to have a fate and have it taken from you.
People go through life with a hazy blanket of, on some level, knowing what they’re doing around them, protecting them from everything else and fitting neatly into what they expect and what they need to know and believe. The most terrible thing in the world is for that to be taken from you.
And the people with their fate intact will not be able to remember you if you’re not there, and you will never quite be able to figure out where you are, because half your mind will be gone anyway, and on the good days maybe you can seem normal, but it’s not a promise.
(There are those who ask: would it be possible for there to exist people without a fate to begin with? This is a question that won’t be answered. It can’t be answered. It would be a monstrosity, unthinkable even by those who would strip the fates – the lives – from others. Certain that this means someone has probably done it.)
Day / Theme: January 16: from their cradles carried toward what is excellent
Series: Original [ifupdown]
Character / Pairing: Implied-Matthew, implied-Daisy
Rating: PG, pretty innocuous
This is what they do, basically: people are born and they do what they think they want to do and then they die.
(After they die more stuff happens, sure, but that – but we’re not allowed to know, not yet. Maybe he knows; even that’s unlikely, though. Sorry. Maybe the gods know, but – they say they didn’t truly make everything, so maybe that’s one of the bits that was already there, and waiting.)
They do what they think they want to – this is the right way to put it, not only because they have other people pulling at them and pushing at them and trying to make them do one thing or another; that’s what they call interpersonal relationships, things like friendship and family and love and so on and so on and on and never ever ending. It’s the right way to put it because there’s paths laid out for them, and it’s not that they can’t pick different ways; it’s that here, for things to fit together as they do, the people don’t.
(See now as people doesn’t just mean mortals; the immortals – as immortal as anything gets, anyway – are just as bound. They have a fringe advantage, in that they could conceivably survive without a path pulling and pushing at them to follow me, come this way; it’s still less advisable than to – say – stick skewers in your eyes.)
So perhaps they technically couldn’t: where they are wouldn’t be that place, and its future wouldn’t stretch out as it does, fitting without a surprise when you know all the pieces (and it’s only that they don’t know all the pieces, though they can sometimes pick them all up in far retrospect and there are those who believe this will help), without them following the way they have to, always and forever.
Still they feel – they know – that they can choose (it’s just that they’ve already chosen). And their choices and paths are all tangled up in other people’s, so that the whole of the world is a great big net with no holes—
Almost no holes.
It is possible – go back, you’ll see it to be possible – for there to exist persons without a fate. They are to be pitied, perhaps; it’s the worst thing anyone can imagine (the worst thing anyone can’t imagine) to have a fate and have it taken from you.
People go through life with a hazy blanket of, on some level, knowing what they’re doing around them, protecting them from everything else and fitting neatly into what they expect and what they need to know and believe. The most terrible thing in the world is for that to be taken from you.
And the people with their fate intact will not be able to remember you if you’re not there, and you will never quite be able to figure out where you are, because half your mind will be gone anyway, and on the good days maybe you can seem normal, but it’s not a promise.
(There are those who ask: would it be possible for there to exist people without a fate to begin with? This is a question that won’t be answered. It can’t be answered. It would be a monstrosity, unthinkable even by those who would strip the fates – the lives – from others. Certain that this means someone has probably done it.)