we prefer to help ourselves

A did not offer to Na'el a gambit; a promise, a hand, a chance. It was far too long on for something so foolish as that.

A now understood, and had for generations, the difference, and the barriers, between what you wish and what you will.

Humans are powerful creatures. No matter what gods descend upon chaos, individuals will always have the run of it. And since life only proceeds toward death, those that do not try to accelerate it try to slow it down.

To an infinite standstill. This much is common knowledge.

And Na'el, he...could not deny.

Could not deny the desperation, the dead-eyed nullitude that, in some sense, ran in the family. How else to look forward? How else to shut out the inevitability, the writhing wrath?

One could only watch over children for so long. Something always happened to them. Something had happened to her, and here she yet was.

She had to do something. After all, wasn't he just so human?

The word that best explains us.

What we're reaching for - what we always have been - is a world with which we can so safely and righteously be complacent. A world which does not, by its very nature, demand that writhing mass overrun in calamity and legacy.

It's never happened, so far.

(It probably never will.)

Can there not be nature? Can there not be music?

Na'el can never again be naïve enough to ask such things of A. She'd dispatched with those questions long ago. What he can give to this world...someone has to take the step.

Someone has to face to the arbiter. Someone has to grapple with the divine.

Someone must allow that silver-fingered grasp on his soul, to see if it's even possible - and if not, to continue the legacy of humanity in that same electric storming blaze.

She'll join with absolution.