he's learned, in his time here, that people are generally not what he is used to. they are flawed; they are mortal, and their lives last only so long. they are capable of violence against each other that he would not have conceived of, and this is simply-- it is how things are. there is a normalcy to it that he still sometimes struggles with, that makes him see many of them so differently.
flaws such as theirs would not have been tolerated in creations of his world. 'humans' would not have persisted, for their tendencies to unduly harm each other. they would have been unmade.
and knowing death has happened here, that violence has, is no substitute for seeing these things visited upon someone. for seeing their capacity to work against each other in less direct ways, to harm others for their own personal gain.
a hand is pressed to his temple, in the aftermath of this, and he shakes his head as he slowly exhales.]
slowly, she lowers her hand from her throat. there's nothing there. it's safe. she can breathe. this isn't the peng manor in the capital; for better or for worse, it's the library in a world she still doesn't know how they got to. waner isn't across from her, and neither are her maids; it's emet-selch.]
...it was how my first life ended, and how my second... began.
...many of the beginnings remained the same, but - I was able to use what I knew to change the outcomes, in some cases.
[...]
I wasn't able to prevent them from coming to our house. But I was able to protect my mother. I learned medicine in time to be able to identify the poison they were trying to kill her with and prevent it.
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he's learned, in his time here, that people are generally not what he is used to. they are flawed; they are mortal, and their lives last only so long. they are capable of violence against each other that he would not have conceived of, and this is simply-- it is how things are. there is a normalcy to it that he still sometimes struggles with, that makes him see many of them so differently.
flaws such as theirs would not have been tolerated in creations of his world. 'humans' would not have persisted, for their tendencies to unduly harm each other. they would have been unmade.
and knowing death has happened here, that violence has, is no substitute for seeing these things visited upon someone. for seeing their capacity to work against each other in less direct ways, to harm others for their own personal gain.
a hand is pressed to his temple, in the aftermath of this, and he shakes his head as he slowly exhales.]
...Su Jiuqing. Was this-?
[was that some sort of dream?]
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[she wishes it was a dream.
slowly, she lowers her hand from her throat. there's nothing there. it's safe. she can breathe. this isn't the peng manor in the capital; for better or for worse, it's the library in a world she still doesn't know how they got to. waner isn't across from her, and neither are her maids; it's emet-selch.]
...it was how my first life ended, and how my second... began.
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[that her soul failed to pass on, in some way? or is this how the afterlife works in her world?]
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I remembered everything that had happened to me. And... things started to happen the same way I remembered them happening.
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[he's contemplating this, with a frown.]
Did they always happen the same way?
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[...]
I wasn't able to prevent them from coming to our house. But I was able to protect my mother. I learned medicine in time to be able to identify the poison they were trying to kill her with and prevent it.