ebb and flow, let it go

Cheering. We've just "won" the "battle" and they're cheering.

I can't stand it.

What if it had been us who had lost, and they'd been sole straggling survivors picking up the pieces in the process?

The corpses don't even remain to be mourned over. It's just the essence. The memory.

The memory that has been shattered and beaten by endless war. Just like all of us, as we have been irreparably altered. These experiences won't leave me, much as I try to let them bleed peacefully, when I perform my duties as off-seer.

(I can't bring myself to call it something so simple, so natural, so right, as playing a mourning song.)

No. None of us are winning, here.

Lanz and Eunie...I've always known them. They've been just as much a part of me as- oh, I don't know, my right eye. I'm not mad at them for taking pride in this. They've never known anything different. After all, aren't I the weak one for not being able to face up to it?

I can't be the only one. At least, I hope not.

I'm sure they'll say the same, eventually. Would, anyway. If we ever meet any of them. If we haven't killed them all, first.

Not that that's too much of a problem. There'll always be more. There are new terms - firsts, anyway - starting all the time. It never lets up.

But if it did...if we were able to connect...

I'd like to ask them. What do you want to see, from this world? If you could have something better, what would it look like?

I'm sure it wouldn't look like shouts of joy and passion, as we watch those wayward flames being snuffed back up into those horrible clocks without a second's hesitation.

Mio says, "You're right. Especially when you've gotten up to the end, like me...you think about it."

Sena nods earnestly; Taion looks away.

Lanz's presence, larger than them all, is comforting, as he's bridged halfway between awkward sympathy and truly empathetic understanding.

Of course she'll survive, Eunie prods him, always has. That's what we're here for.

But in Noah's mind's eye, Ethel rips her last three months right out through her ears, and he retches like he's been punched roundly in the gut.

Because she smiles. Because they've hardly got an independent choice to think, who's wrong. And because someone, somewhere, is cheering for their downfall, as if those ten years they hand out like cotton-eyed candy weren't short enough to begin with.