consolation | kenos inbox

[It has nothing to do with missing anything...there could be not a single object or person in the world belonging to her and it would have exactly the same worth.

But Gray is wrong about one thing, at least, in that obligation and affection are intertwined. Because Caren's love extends into the world, she had been willing to release it. She had been equally willing to love those living in this strange, new, temporary world, and whatever came after it. Another inexplicable miracle. Another universe's worth of sins to weigh down.

But the influx of Meridian sunlight that entered her - however it happened; Caren doesn't remember the full details of what happened during the struggle for the Oracle - pulled the existing thread harder.]

Let's see. There's a town I grew fond of despite myself. It's a place I hardly know anything about, and yet when I think of it I feel an inexplicable nostalgia. It was an agreeable place to stay for a while.

[ A town Caren grew fond of "despite herself." What odd phrasing. It sounds like, for whatever reason, Caren is hesitant to admit to herself that she's allowed to like things. ]

What did you find agreeable about it?

[ The people, the scenery, the weather, the food? It's pure curiosity on Gray's part, to know what Caren values. ]

[no shit gray]

Do you know, it would be difficult to say.

[This is surely an answer that Gray will find cryptic, like some sort of puzzle that Caren has laid out for her to slide the pieces into place. But unlike her typical acrid tongue, this isn't something she's dangling at arm's-length.]

The people there were too happy, enough to make me sick, but I wouldn't mind staying among them for a while. What I know about them or about living in that town is disconnected. Maybe I'm just remembering a dream.

[For her to have this inexplicable dissonance, an attachment that exists in her feelings but not in her mind, shouldn't be something to dwell on for so long. A dream that should vanish but survives shouldn't be, but is, the glass dome under which a fleeting happy memory is pressed.]

[ Too happy? What a strange thing to be disgusted by. Gray has seen what it means for a people to be terrifyingly jubilant, but she has a feeling that isn't the case here. ]

Isn't it normal to want to be among happy people? What did you want to see in a new world as a Zenite... if not that?

[Sorry that some of us literally get sick when we're surrounded by too much happiness, Gray? It is, at least, a much different experience to poke at people when they're happy.]

I didn't give much thought to it. However, I thought it was an impractical promise, that a world already totally lost could be restored in kind. [Indeed, the first thing that toward her toward Zenith had been more of a distrust of Meridian from the start.] I hoped the lost would find a place where they belonged, if I had a hand in it.

[Her actual hand clasps her elbow as she speaks, squeezing there, seeking some kind of control, perhaps.]

[ How altrustic of her. It strikes Gray as at odds with her demeanor, but in the context of the Church, Gray supposes this sort of solemn righteousness is actually on-brand. Though all that squeezing Caren is doing at her elbow is a little suspect... ]

When I think of what world I'd like to see, I have a hard time. A world too perfect would be unnerving. And if a perfect world stays perfect forever, it's just trapped in time.

[There are things in her memory that should not exist there, though the longer Caren lives with them, the more she feels some reconciliation with them and the less she hopes things will even out and disappear. To hear Gray describe a stagnant, perfect world makes her spine feel like the first cracking line that snakes up glass.]

Hah, [she breathes slightly in understanding.] So a world that is both beautiful and hollow holds no appeal to you.

I do not think an ideal world can be without flaw. It cannot even be with pain or unhappiness. The center cannot hold... and it's human to change.

[ Gray nods slightly, for once feeling that they're on the same page. ]

Our world was flawed, but it created the people I cared about. If there's a more perfect version of it, I don't have the creativity to know what it would look like.

[ Though maybe the creativity has already been done for her. She blinks as the thought comes to her. ]

I suppose the Garden of Eden was supposed to be paradise, but I don't know if most people would count that as their preferred paradise.

[Even in their agreement, there's something in Gray's words that Caren cannot connect to - though it does underscore her motivation. The seed to shift to Meridian may have been forcefully planted, but it's growing in soil that was already there. Caren's existence feels fixed regardless of her choices, but for her to realign to Zenith's ideals would condemn Gray to abandon hope for the world containing her love.]

Some also say the Fall was necessary because man could not achieve free will without it. [In that regard, perfection could also be called incompletion. She tucks her grasping hand into her elbow and crosses her arms.]

Although, free will might be why we find ourselves in our current situation. Both sides are burdened by choice.

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