Come Sail Away IC Inbox

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice mail message is in a weary voice: "Erin Peters. If you called in the middle of the night and I didn't answer, I'm dying. If I pick up and someone on your end isn't dying, they will be shortly. Text otherwise."

Comments

[decrypter]

"You're taking the full walk around the pasture to your point, Erin."

She knows when she's being led around.

[crushed_pearls]

"...Helena, you do remember the prison-gin empathy powers, right? Those ones? The ones we had a whole discussion about? I wasn't dancing around my point, I was trying not to ask directly about what made that sea change in your heart but if you're gonna just say it directly we go to the prison gin hours."

[decrypter]

There's a silence that's half a beat too long.

"...what does it feel like, to you?"

You can't just ask a girl to go spill her secrets and not at least let her know what flavor her secrets seem like.

[crushed_pearls]

"Like the first scent of woodsmoke when you get home to your own hearth after a long journey," Erin answers, poetically. "There's something warm in you and that warmth radiates out from you, and it's quite pleasant, if I'm being honest. 's why I thought you might be willing to talk about it without me just crassly tossing it out there like I did."

[decrypter]

...Ah.

"It's hard to get something past you, isn't it?"

There's a feeling as Helena tucks herself a little more securely next to Erin, the little bird wrapped up in the larger bird, and a soft wordless hum of thought.

"Let's phrase it as I understand something better than I did before. Perhaps in a way that was already there, but hadn't come to conscious thought yet, and got a chance to privately blossom."

Or perhaps it's that death has a way of throwing things in perspective, and the waiting between death and life solidifies it.

[crushed_pearls]

"Seems like it makes you happy, little bird." Erin nuzzles Helena's hair with her cheek (she makes sure to stop eating before doing this, and resumes after; Erin is Fucking Hungry). "'m glad. This world is beautiful and abundant too, for all that it's also everything else."

[decrypter]

"Yes. And...it does. It does make me happy, and I hope to hold onto it as long as I am allowed."

Even in the midst of the pain and confusion, the surging tides of different thoughts, not everything is endless suffering. Some of it is the very balm.

"I've never thought the world was only bad. Sure, I ended up in a bad place, where terrible unspeakable things happened to me and others. And pain was bound to happen no matter what became of my life. But...there are so many wonderful things that can be found as well. There are so many I've yet to discover."

[crushed_pearls]

"...Hey, little bird. You up for an annoying existential question from someone who doesn't respect philosophers?"

[decrypter]

"Always. We all know half of them didn't respect women as their own entities, anyway."

[crushed_pearls]

"I promise I'm not leading you anywhere with this, I'm asking your earnest thoughts." Despite this assurance, Erin lapses into silence for a good while. When she talks again it's with a soft hesitation: "Is there a thread that connects the past self to the future self? And if there is...what is it? What's the continuity that goes from the infant to here?"

[decrypter]

"Time. What you've experienced. What you haven't. We are as much shaped by what we have at our hands as what we have not. Even if your memory feels unsure, you know that you are not an infant, because you've spent more time existing than one."

It's a simple answer, almost too straightforward. But it's what she honestly and earnestly believes, when memory isn't always the most reliable barometer.

[crushed_pearls]

"Mm." Erin hums softly to herself. "I was taught that I should kill my past and bury it. I'm starting to think that I've misinterpreted the instructions. This...while thing has me thinking about it. The past is back and offering a do-over."

[decrypter]

"But if you do over the past, are you the same person? Are you the Erin I know?"

Time doesn't flow backwards for a reason. On and on, the steady march, even their resurrections aren't undoing that their death ever happened in the world.

"The past doesn't need to be killed, for it's already past, but you can say a eulogy for it all the same."

[crushed_pearls]

"Heh. We don't get to escape so easily even with the do-over. But...these memories do have me thinking...about what I might learn from 'what if'." Erin squeezes her wing a little tighter, a little closer. "...The people who love the Erin I am now went back there, and they gave the me I used to be advice, or companionship, or questions. And now it's all here, in my head. Just like it's all there in yours."