Kaprao Ocimum | passiveSampler (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
flowerwhisperer) wrote2013-03-15 05:39 am
flowerwhisperer) wrote2013-03-15 05:39 am
[AU] a dream of fall
I
Your garden houses millions, no, billions of souls, and you can hear all of them at once.
It is a strange interaction between your current domains and the things you have always been able to do - when each life is represented by a plant, your brain simply plugs itself to them and it's almost the same as being plugged into someone's spirit, however tangentially. Sometimes you get headaches from it.
You realize you might be impinging on someone else's domain (probably one of the others who actually...deal with feelings) but you can't really help it.
Through this network of souls and lifeforce you hear their desires. ...No, perhaps it is better to say you merely receive impressions thereof, that you have long since learnt to interpret. You know the trivial, meaningless and petty desires of billions of people, though unsurprsingly it all blurs into a vague pool of white noise to you, simply because those desires are forever plentiful and neverending.
And then there are the big ones. The desires you recognize as a pattern throughout mankind, the "ten desires" that all those petty desires fall under, to some extent.
Pleasure, knowledge, prosperity, belonging, superiority, happiness, love, meaning --
The attachment to life, and the envy of death.
...Haha, you envy them a little, for that.
II
The people who end up in your garden are often a confused lot, if not insane or already at peace with their fate. It is understandable, because these are usually the ones that have died suddenly, through unfortunate coincidence or inevitability, ones who have never really thought hard about the afterlife because it's not as if they had expected death.
You just patiently answer any questions they have, even though some of these are questions you have heard too many times before, and ones that you think you're not the one who should be giving them the answers to. Sometimes, however...
"Do you really know what it feels like to die?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, you know what they say about you being undying."
"Undying doesn't mean 'never died', you know."
"So what does it actually mean?"
"...Mmm, that I have died too much. Much too much."
III
You go down to the mortal realm, sometimes for courtesy calls, sometimes in response to prayers, sometimes just for flowerviewing. You go during spring and summer and fall, though you suppose in the case of the latter it's really more colourviewing than anything else. There is something emphemerally beautiful about the transience of seasonal flowers; how for a few glorious weeks they are the pinnacle of natural beauty, the subject of poems and art and the adoration of mankind. It is something deserving of being coveted, you feel.
IV
Even after all this time, the Transgressor is still the one you are most comfortable talking to about certain things, because you feel most people do not want to hear fatalistic talk from the one in charge of life and reincarnation. It is also something familiar, which is a blessing considering how much things have changed around the universe.
You are relieved that the Transgressor is hardly surprised at the fatalism you've retained, because he knows that it takes so much more than ascending to godhood for that deeply attuned sense of inevitability to go away. If anything, your domains may have made it more important that you kept it.
So you talk to him about cycles and karma. As one does.
V
Things should have a beginning and an end. A start and finish. That is how the cycle of life is. To have one without the other is meaningless.
The lives of people are like candles; thesoul flame burns away at the body wax, until there is nothing left, or otherwise unceremoniously snuffed out by circumstance the wind. Even the gods will be extinguished one day, however many millions of years and deaths it takes before it stays that way.
To continue that metaphor, you are the candle that remains burning even when it is outside in a wintery night, in defiance of all natural laws.
It has always bothered you, more so because you are the one who pays heed to nature's laws the most, but when you were younger those concerns took a backseat to other more pressing matters. Now, the weariness of living is still there, and you feel yourself some kind of contradiction, some aberration, in the design of Life.
You know that the game was not something to be won, and it was a miracle that you all had managed it as well as you did. You wonder if perhaps, this is your part of the price for that miracle.
You can only wait for eternity at this point, with the occasional death for respite. They are never long enough.
VI
Your garden grows more bare with the passing of time. Once, you would not have thought of this as possible; now you're just irritated that it happened the way it did.
The passing of souls has become a chaotic mess. There are too many to manage, and now there is no one except you left to manage them -- it is a task that is too much for you alone. Few are able to reach you, and so they linger in the world, a potent stew of despair and regret and hatred and fear. There are no seeds left for you to plant, and so you can only watch as the world succumbs to the nuclear winter that has enveloped it. As the universe succumbs to heat death.
Your mind is quiet now, and there something terribly lonely about that.
You know it is inevitable, but it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
VII
It's the end of the world, and you are exhausted.
Everything is gone, and the only ones left are you and Entropy. Their defeat is inevitable, you know this as you bite into their lips and twist their hair and slice them open, watching them bleed their strange grey blood. You think that they know this too, which is why they simply smile and laugh as their life slips away from them. They had the last laugh, as always.
Ah, what a despicable look they had in those final moments.
You stare down at them, kiss them one last time before you cut their body apart and pull out their organs.
In the end, someone has to be around to clean up the mess.
Your garden houses millions, no, billions of souls, and you can hear all of them at once.
It is a strange interaction between your current domains and the things you have always been able to do - when each life is represented by a plant, your brain simply plugs itself to them and it's almost the same as being plugged into someone's spirit, however tangentially. Sometimes you get headaches from it.
You realize you might be impinging on someone else's domain (probably one of the others who actually...deal with feelings) but you can't really help it.
Through this network of souls and lifeforce you hear their desires. ...No, perhaps it is better to say you merely receive impressions thereof, that you have long since learnt to interpret. You know the trivial, meaningless and petty desires of billions of people, though unsurprsingly it all blurs into a vague pool of white noise to you, simply because those desires are forever plentiful and neverending.
And then there are the big ones. The desires you recognize as a pattern throughout mankind, the "ten desires" that all those petty desires fall under, to some extent.
Pleasure, knowledge, prosperity, belonging, superiority, happiness, love, meaning --
The attachment to life, and the envy of death.
...Haha, you envy them a little, for that.
II
The people who end up in your garden are often a confused lot, if not insane or already at peace with their fate. It is understandable, because these are usually the ones that have died suddenly, through unfortunate coincidence or inevitability, ones who have never really thought hard about the afterlife because it's not as if they had expected death.
You just patiently answer any questions they have, even though some of these are questions you have heard too many times before, and ones that you think you're not the one who should be giving them the answers to. Sometimes, however...
"Do you really know what it feels like to die?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, you know what they say about you being undying."
"Undying doesn't mean 'never died', you know."
"So what does it actually mean?"
"...Mmm, that I have died too much. Much too much."
III
You go down to the mortal realm, sometimes for courtesy calls, sometimes in response to prayers, sometimes just for flowerviewing. You go during spring and summer and fall, though you suppose in the case of the latter it's really more colourviewing than anything else. There is something emphemerally beautiful about the transience of seasonal flowers; how for a few glorious weeks they are the pinnacle of natural beauty, the subject of poems and art and the adoration of mankind. It is something deserving of being coveted, you feel.
IV
Even after all this time, the Transgressor is still the one you are most comfortable talking to about certain things, because you feel most people do not want to hear fatalistic talk from the one in charge of life and reincarnation. It is also something familiar, which is a blessing considering how much things have changed around the universe.
You are relieved that the Transgressor is hardly surprised at the fatalism you've retained, because he knows that it takes so much more than ascending to godhood for that deeply attuned sense of inevitability to go away. If anything, your domains may have made it more important that you kept it.
So you talk to him about cycles and karma. As one does.
V
Things should have a beginning and an end. A start and finish. That is how the cycle of life is. To have one without the other is meaningless.
The lives of people are like candles; the
To continue that metaphor, you are the candle that remains burning even when it is outside in a wintery night, in defiance of all natural laws.
It has always bothered you, more so because you are the one who pays heed to nature's laws the most, but when you were younger those concerns took a backseat to other more pressing matters. Now, the weariness of living is still there, and you feel yourself some kind of contradiction, some aberration, in the design of Life.
You know that the game was not something to be won, and it was a miracle that you all had managed it as well as you did. You wonder if perhaps, this is your part of the price for that miracle.
You can only wait for eternity at this point, with the occasional death for respite. They are never long enough.
VI
Your garden grows more bare with the passing of time. Once, you would not have thought of this as possible; now you're just irritated that it happened the way it did.
The passing of souls has become a chaotic mess. There are too many to manage, and now there is no one except you left to manage them -- it is a task that is too much for you alone. Few are able to reach you, and so they linger in the world, a potent stew of despair and regret and hatred and fear. There are no seeds left for you to plant, and so you can only watch as the world succumbs to the nuclear winter that has enveloped it. As the universe succumbs to heat death.
Your mind is quiet now, and there something terribly lonely about that.
You know it is inevitable, but it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
VII
It's the end of the world, and you are exhausted.
Everything is gone, and the only ones left are you and Entropy. Their defeat is inevitable, you know this as you bite into their lips and twist their hair and slice them open, watching them bleed their strange grey blood. You think that they know this too, which is why they simply smile and laugh as their life slips away from them. They had the last laugh, as always.
Ah, what a despicable look they had in those final moments.
You stare down at them, kiss them one last time before you cut their body apart and pull out their organs.
In the end, someone has to be around to clean up the mess.