[ Angel Devil. ] [ chatcube, or action. ] [ if you're visiting the rose barn, look for the door with the creepy bat-and-angel-wing sigil on it. Knock first! Or get zapped. ]
[She's silent for a while, mulling that over while staring at constellations she doesn't have names for.]
We ruined our own world, once.
I spent my most joyful days in another, more lush world, studying creatures so fantastic it was hard to believe they were even real. I liked to imagine it's what our own world was like, before it died.
Here... it feels like both the living world and the dying one, separated by a wall of fog.
I wonder if our ancestors found themselves at a crossroads like this one. I wonder if they tried to make a difference, too.
"To live is to give life meaning, yet one must take others' lives to survive... in that way, life is death, itself..."
Do you think... Where it might have went wrong... was when they all stopped looking what they consumed in the eye?
I'd be different. If I hadn't had to watch the lot of it all, living. My Master would even say... his goal was for Terra's people to never have to even consider that cycle.
No... We're the opposite. Looking a thing in the eyes as you tear its throat out in your teeth is the appeal. Just like we're looking to do with the beast we're hunting now.
There used to be other zmeu subspecies... different clans, different cultures. But just like we see in every other sort of evolution, the population that's the most competitive in its environment is the one that succeeds. In our case, it was the population that was the most ruthless, the most greedy, and the one that most rejoiced in carnage and domination.
We consumed the other zmei. We consumed all our ancestral livestock. We consumed the rest of the world until the whole ecosystem collapsed, and then we consumed each other.
It's only by tempering our natures in the face of oblivion that we survived, but that desire to conquer and rend is still baked into who we are. And when it can't be expressed outwardly, it manifests in our society and culture and our social dynamics.
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no subject
We ruined our own world, once.
I spent my most joyful days in another, more lush world, studying creatures so fantastic it was hard to believe they were even real. I liked to imagine it's what our own world was like, before it died.
Here... it feels like both the living world and the dying one, separated by a wall of fog.
I wonder if our ancestors found themselves at a crossroads like this one. I wonder if they tried to make a difference, too.
no subject
Do you think...
Where it might have went wrong... was when they all stopped looking what they consumed in the eye?
I'd be different. If I hadn't had to watch the lot of it all, living.
My Master would even say... his goal was for Terra's people to never have to even consider that cycle.
no subject
There used to be other zmeu subspecies... different clans, different cultures. But just like we see in every other sort of evolution, the population that's the most competitive in its environment is the one that succeeds. In our case, it was the population that was the most ruthless, the most greedy, and the one that most rejoiced in carnage and domination.
We consumed the other zmei. We consumed all our ancestral livestock. We consumed the rest of the world until the whole ecosystem collapsed, and then we consumed each other.
It's only by tempering our natures in the face of oblivion that we survived, but that desire to conquer and rend is still baked into who we are. And when it can't be expressed outwardly, it manifests in our society and culture and our social dynamics.