Reversal (Camren/Norminah)

Chapter 12: Write to Me Your Nightmares

Lauren frowned. "So she just made it all up?"

Reading it through again, Shawn shrugged. "It means something. No idea what. But it's definitely not true."

With a heavy sigh, Lauren went back to the book.

"Those puzzles though." Shawn tapped his chin, causing Lauren to look up slowly. "It's no secret that Camila's a little weird. She can be very dark sometimes, and you can definitely not find any of that crap in an iSpy puzzle. Those things are supposed to be made for kids."

Lauren nodded, flipping the page over so a new passage was available. This one was written in a different coloured pen, and the date had been changed about a week forward.

Something that really needs to change is the ignorance of those locked in the past. Time is a linear variable. It moves only forward, and never stops, slows down, or reverses itself. In the past, the purpose of old to new generations, was to pass on knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is the transmission of established tradition, mixed with a little personal experience, and maybe even a touch of bias.

But now, the knowledge that we have has been tied up with a little bow, and is available to everyone. The world is changing. There are some that are so proud, that their wisdom becomes their identity, no matter how misleading it may be.

That pride leads to ignorance. Locking themselves in the past, they negotiate and argue until they have convinced themselves that the knowledge they have is far more glorious than anything others can conjure. That is ignorance. That's the inability to accept change, and instead, to negotiate and shout their way through everyone else's opinion.

They're the people that I can't stand. To withhold judgement. To consider both sides of a story. To never show unnecessary hostility, and to blend together the concepts of inferiority and superiority so that neither have the chance to exist. Those are some the most important qualities in any person, young or old.

Lauren sighed, turning the page over to a new passage. Just as she expected, it had absolutely nothing to do with the last.

Seahorses are interesting creatures, and there are a whole bunch of reasons why. First, they're named because they have a very horse-like appearance for a creature that lives underwater. Their bent necks and long snouts resemble equines, as well as their distinctive tails. Seahorses also swim upright, a behaviour which few other marine species share. Another unique feature of seahorses is that their bodies are not scaly like fish, but are comprised of a thin skin that is stretched over a series of bony plates which are placed in the form of rings throughout their body.

Want another cool thing? How about reproduction. The male seahorse has a pouch on the front-facing side of the tail, which is used to hold the eggs deposited from the female. The guy then carries the eggs with it until they are developed, then releases them into the water. There's a "shoe on the other foot" situation if I've heard one.

Most types of sea-horses can be either as short as a staple, or as long as a hammer. These changes in size don't matter, because the creature will have other types of adaptations that will help it to survive. The animal can change its behaviour to allow it to live in its environment. But this is only most sea-horses.

If only the same could be said for all types of seahorses. I guess only the lucky ones make it out.

Lauren closed the book and dropped her head into her hands. She felt like she had just been through the rigour with a science lesson, an opinion article, a children's puzzle, another opinion article, and another science lesson. Lauren blinked. Was there a pattern there for a reason? She turned back and flipped through the pages once more, looking for ways that each of the topics could be put together.