{!}
Before you sits a somewhat hastily bound book. Inside, a petal of a pale pink flower has been pressed, the pages smelling of old tea and the walnut ink that is characteristic of works produced, as it were, 'on the cheap.' Someone has taken pains to copy it out, though the scribing is a touch messy in some places-- written almost clumsily. The frustration practically bleeds over the page.
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Once a man hunted a giant through the mountains.
For ten days and ten nights he followed its trail, chasing prints he could lie in thrice over. No matter how doggedly he pursued, however, he never glimpsed the creature, though he had seen it once before.
A heartless thing, a killer of men. Good men.
A hunting party.
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On the sixth day he saw once more a windswept canyon he had passed through. On the eleventh day, he saw it once again. In his mind, the circle formed, and he knew that he was hunted just as surely as he was hunter.
So he set into the canyon a snare, tied of rope and stakes from fallen brothers, and climbed upon the rough-hewn walls to lie in wait.
And so the hours passed.
The eleventh day turned to the eleventh night.
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When the giant approached, the snow sang hymns. The wind shivered early mourning. The stone beneath his fingers, appealing to his better sense, whispered him to go.
But he would not abandon his post.
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When the giant fell, legs tangled in rope hidden in the snow, it cried out in surprise. When the hunter fell upon it, the cry became of fear. When he hacked at its face, intent on drawing the kill out, it cried in pain. When the hunter drove his blade into its brain, the crying ceased.
And then he was alone, for not the ice nor the canyon could bear to look at him.
Heartless man, killer of beasts.
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The wind grew colder then, and the light died away, and the hunter turned to the giant’s corpse and carved an opening into its chest. There he settled, in the warmth remaining, and waited for the dawn.
It was, after all, the least the damnable creature could do.
Thus the night passed, in howling wind, with the thud of slowing heart all around him- as it takes a legend some time to die.
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With the dawn came the waking, and with the waking came the terror, for his nest within the ribs had frozen into a cage. He kicked and thrashed and screamed, but the wind did not carry his voice, and the canyon would have covered its ears if it had.
Soon, he lay beside the giant’s heart, as the ice crept further in.
And two heartless beings were buried there, together.
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To Tulip.
I wished to put down in words more precisely my thoughts, if not for your benefit, then mine.
You are like a child. You are doctrine without belief. You are free of choice, because of your duty, and thus your choices are meaningless. You do not have the tools to comprehend the world beyond rationality, and so you are unreasonable.
I have met many with few emotions. Some with none. They sought this grand purity of thought, which you should possess- and yet you are little more than a child, doing each thing you were told and never deviating. Confusing duty for doctrine for divinity. What a pitiful thing they reach for. What a flightless existence, to be reduced to calculations. And a crime, to reduce others as well.
You have not seen the world sufficiently to make any judgement. You do not know how people work- you see them as so beneath you, you have not even bothered. The only thing mortal about you is your grotesque views on those you see as lesser, and it does you no credit.
Ants indeed.
The real world is complex. Purity, of all kinds, is a worthless sham. And you are the biggest sham of all, with your heartless claims and your stubborn perch. Do not tell me my emotion is weakness, when emotion has shaped this world, and you.
Still.
What good is it, to say we might save Fita, if we cannot save you as well?
-VW