Fan Fiction ❯ Truths ❯ Chapter 1

Notes: This is set in Telenia, an RPG I created; I think it can be read without actually knowing the game, as all the information relevant to the story is explained within it. All characters in this are mine.

Backdating: This was written in February 2005.

Sometimes he wonders what he's doing here. Redemption, they called it. Serve in your second life to make up for the sins of the first. But what service do they require? Why is he here? What do the Powers want of him? He is young; he died young in his first incarnation and is therefore forever young in his second, no matter how much he learns or lives. Perhaps that is why he doesn't understand. Perhaps youth cannot comprehend such complex, weighty moral matters.

But he wants to understand, struggles for understanding. He has asked others, all the others that he's met, because there is a bond among analogs that is born of their nature, of their knowledge of the Powers and of the place between lives that no human can understand, and even though their humans often hate his, and his human cares nothing for theirs, they will answer his questions. Even if it is only because he is young, they respond to his desire to understand.

He asked the cat first. Not because the cat was the first he had met; far from it. Not because it was the first time he'd asked himself the question. But because there was something about the cat, a weight of many lives and many humans served, an aura of experience and wisdom, and a sorrow that told him that this will be the last time this cat lives in this world. The cat told him that they are here to guide, to nudge the humans and urge them on, to make them take their place in the great ever-weaving tapestry that is history. The cat said that they are here to make sure that their humans do not repeat their own mistakes, for do not all cats do similar things? Do not all gryphons do similar things?

But he cannot accept the cat's answer, and it is not because of his youth and inexperience, or the mistakes he never had the chance to make. He does not want to be an agent of the weaver called Destiny, and he does not want to inflict that cruelty upon his human. He thinks that the role the cat has claimed is what makes the cat so sad and the cat's boy so sad, and he thinks that the cat is weary of hurting his humans for the sake of history. He does not want to be worn down into what the cat is, life after life of straightening threads only to realize at last that he is only causing pain.

He asked the eagle second. The eagle had not had the cat's many lives, but then, so few do, for the Powers only ask for one redemption. Still, the eagle's human was the most like his, of all the many humans he has met, the same fear that births cruelty, the same unconcern for that which is not like them. The eagle told him that they are here to serve, that the crimes their humans commit are irrelevant to their redemption, because the point of the second life is not the good or bad but the act of service. The eagle told him that they are here to dedicate themselves to something above and beyond themselves, to do what in the first life is not possible even for the most devoted of the holy.

But he cannot accept the eagle's answer, despite her clear belief in it, reflected in the unwavering devotion she gives to her human. He does not want to be an enabler of evil, refuses to believe that the Powers would reduce him to such. It does nothing but harm to his human, and he does not want her soul stained when she goes into the place between lives and faces the Powers, for while he knows she is already tainted (as is the nature of the first life) he does not want to aid in applying that taint. He loves his human, but he does not want his love to be blindness.

He asked the panther third. He didn't know the panther, still doesn't know the panther except for the one brief meeting, but felt then that asking a stranger might be the best course. Besides, he had felt it then, the panther's alienation from the panther's human, and it had horrified and fascinated him and drawn him to question it. The panther told him that they are here to correct, that it is better to punish their humans for the blood on their hands than to let the humans go into the second life with such a taint to undo. The panther said that they must accept the pain that punishment brings to themselves as well as their humans, because humans are hard things that can only learn through pain, but the analog must not give pain without experiencing it themselves.

But he cannot accept the panther's answer, seeing the panther bound away with agony in every line of corded muscle. He does not want to hurt his human so fiercely, or to feel the same pain in return, the ache of slow and steady separation or the blaze of pain that only two minds linked can cause each other. He does not want to risk the final loss, to walk the fine line that the panther walks every day, between too much contact and the awful, endless agony of no contact at all. He does not want to scar his human, thinks she would break under that treatment for all her cold, brittle strength, and sometimes he lies awake at night and thinks about the panther he'd only seen once and wonders whether the panther's human has broken yet.

He wants to understand, but he wants to understand now on his own terms. He does not want to ask others, anymore - the bitterly old and wearied cat, the eagle so innocent and faithful even after facing the Powers, the panther strong in convictions that tear apart the sacred bond. He is young, but youth is no barrier to understanding, even the eternal youth of the second young. The only barrier to understanding is the urge to seek it through others. They all have traces, glimpses of the truth he craves, and are content with that, because they are not young. He is young, and idealistic, and he wants the whole truth, bare and naked, even if it sears his soul into nothingness with its awful glory.

And so he will follow her, his beloved human, through her fears and her rages, through her brittleness and her unyielding strength, through her loss of self and reign of terror and perhaps her final defeat under the rebellion she knowingly invites. Sometimes he will make a suggestion, like the cat's scrap of truth. Sometimes he will aid in an evil deed, like the eagle's scrap of truth. Sometimes he will let her feel the pain of his anger, like the panther's scrap of truth. But for the most part, he will follow her, because it is in her footsteps that he is meant to walk in this striving for redemption. After all, how better to learn the "why" of what he was commanded to do, than to do it?