week four curfew but we all bully zetsu

[pura]

Comments

[graverot]

Nothing to be sorry about. There's nothing wrong with that.

[except when it's upsetting a bird, but he doesn't seem judgmental about it.]

[nightchild]

[thanks shale...

Itsuki just looks at his hands for a moment,]

Wherever we go on Thursday... Are those places a part of the prism?

[graverot]

[hmmm. they think about it, a little flare of worry.]

Well, yes. They have to be, everything is part of the prism. But I don't know what's causing those things to occur, or why you're getting dragged in there.

[nightchild]

[he nods slowly,]

I wasn't there to see it -- but Te-kun and Jiu-chan died in that place we were in. I think I did too, but it's kind of fuzzy.

If we died there and came back, somewhere that's part of the prism... then what about here? Maybe...

[there's worry, tension, but also the barest thread of hope, desperate.]

[graverot]

[and in return he'll get unease and sorrow.]

No. [very definitively, interrupting the trailed off thought.] Where you went, I've been trying to figure it out. Some sort of... something in between a dream and a reality. You know not everything you saw in there was real; time didn't pass the way it appeared to, right?

And you've seen what happens to people who die here. They die.

[nightchild]

[...there's a pulse of grief]

...That was a dream, and this is the reality, huh?

[graverot]

[yeah. they seem sorry for that, though, but nod slowly.]

I don't mean to be blunt. I understand why you ask. [...] I used to tend to a graveyard. I've met a lot of people dealing with grief.

Often they're, uh, coming to our temple, hoping for a particular type of miracle. And the world is full of miracles, even from the little I've seen of it, but the desire for that particular one is what I've most often seen tear people apart.

Accepting loss is...the only route to heal from it.

[nightchild]

[Itsuki listens carefully, expression neutral. But his emotions ebb and flow a little, at their words.]

I've always thought that granting that miracle was the solution.

Then again, I'm all about turning away from the hard parts in life. ...Maybe that's why it's hard for me to change.

[graverot]

[oh. sympathy at this response.]

Many do. Even me. It all depends which parts are the ones you don't want to look at. [...] What kind of miracle would you try to grant?

[nightchild]

[he thinks this over]

The kind where you don't ever have to be sad again? ...Even if it means believing in an illusion.

[graverot]

[oh. he nods, understanding somehow. there's certainly empathy there.]

It would be nice, not to have to be sad. A little hollow, but nice.

[nightchild]

...But it's not something you'd choose for yourself.

[graverot]

[shaking his head.]

If something has happened that's worth being sad about, I'd like the opportunity to feel sad about it. I think those feelings are usually necessary ones.