The Day My Dream Died

64 - Reaping to Sow

— 64 —

Reaping to Sow

//\\

Eclait doesn't return to her place beside the woman—who gazes around red-eyed and impassive, apparently not too upset about her pipe—instead, she sits on the edge of the cart beside Lise. "Sorry, I see you wanted to change her mind and all that but I just didn't care."

Lise shook her head. "I don't know that I could have after I'd smoked, which is when it escalated anyway. I don't understand why she was upset about it—rather, I could understand, but her reaction bypassed reason straight to outrageous. Something incongruous about it."

"It's some sects of Harmony who get all unnecessary about shit that don't deserve it."

"Sects? Seems antithetical."

"It's the ones who hate it that need it," Eclait shrugs.

That doesn't follow what I... ah, whatever. "Fair enough."

Firelight spills slow from the can's lip. I've missed something. I don't know what, but this situation... something's off about it. In the dim flicker, she watches the woman of the alley searching the ground for the upper portion of the pipe. Forgoing it, she tries to smoke from the broken end of the bowl's half and croaks, spitting cerise off her split tongue.

"Eclait," Lise begins, pausing to craft her phrase, "have her beliefs become a problem any time before this?"

Eclait looks up, hair hanging lank to frame her smirk. "What, you mean besides all the time?" She cackles. "I've been trying to get her to stop clinging since Kellean. Thought seeing more shit might do it, but... Well, you saw how they've done ruin on her." She shrugs.

I see. Lise nods. "That's unfortunate." She is sorry she hadn't picked it up sooner. "Can I leave Bente with you? I feel the need to cleanse myself after this journey."

"Sure, he's not going nowhere."

Lise hobbles along, a seed of the strange set in her chest. Her right hand, every other step, blooms on the faces of buildings. Clay, cold and coarse, scratches first fingertips, flats, a small pleasure of scratching and tickling on her palm.

Everything is diminished. Distant, Pain wails for its misplaced strength. Underwater, shame babbles incoherence. Beyond the main road traffic is feeble. The lanterns ubiquitous there are sparse here, and people pass at a strangely sedate pace—their dimmed forms just as difficult to define.

The fool I am—I miss knowing.

What she would give for a moment's prescience. A lick of certainty. A whiff of absolute. She can't care less. It would do her well to care less. She can't care less. Striving to live, she desires nothing more than to achieve death. What she would give for a moment's prescience—even the callow semblance from the past. Back when her parents told her what good parents they were and she could smile sincere.

A fool's question: Is it better to be born cripple, or to be crippled? A fool discerns.