cascade | kotlc

27. The Beginning of the End

- F. V.

Time may be defined, may be constricted and bounded, using definitions regarding entropy and other metaphysical manners; but, in essence, time is a dimension of which we cannot understand, and as much as we demonstrate control over this world's space we still cannot rewind time.

The future remains an unsolvable mystery we cannot predict, and the past is a set story we cannot change; we have no choice in such matters, we cannot rewrite our past, and we cannot annotate our future; such processes are simply against the very foundations of life and the principles of death.

Time is inevitable. It is all and ends all, it will always arrive, and it never comes late; it is never too late, and it is never early, it arrives when it must, to its own content; it churns and boils its plot, and as time progresses much is lost, but much more is gained.

Consider the future, the past, and the present in which we live; consider the daisies, the wind, the skies, consider everything we have; these are sure to wither and die as time flows its charted path and eventually empties into the sea.

Progress will be lost, yet progress will be made; while dirt is filtered out from a river and relocated onto the shores, there will always be a continuous supply of dirt into the river; shall the dirt reach the sea, may the beaches fill, and as time progresses, may the sea itself be filled.

Progress is lost for progress' sake, and progress is won for the sake of progress; may progress be the eternal cycle of time.

Time determines life, and time determines death; it is a fact of this world that death must follow life, and there is always a future in which death occurs, and a past before life happens; the present is life, until it is death.

It is with great conviction that we presume, no life can be without death; and if such life without death should exist, then the concept of life itself is effaced, because a death defines a life, and without death life cannot be truly alive; so instead of choosing whether to live or to die, we may suffice in choosing when to die, and how to die; and shall we have no choice over our death, we may remind ourselves that our life is always under our control.

-The Wrong Almanac.

Fitz closed his eyes. The quote, about life and death, had drilled itself into his head from who knows where.

Beside him, June shivered, and her eyes fluttered open.

"Hey," he muttered, and June startled, her hands flying over her chest and grappling at some unseen wound. Her face blotched with red, and her eyes were reflecting pure terror.

She opened her mouth as if to scream, and then she shut her mouth again, open, close, her eyes blinking with tears about to overflow. The wind warped around her, funneling and dancing with an airy symphony that was somehow brutally depressing.

And then June finally let loose a small, muffled whimper, a tremolo of a panicked C, and buried her in his arms.

"What happened?" he whispered as he caressed her back and let her bury her sobs in his chest. "Hey, shh, it's fine... it's alright..."

June only continued sobbing, her body wrenching with her twisting tears, and she was breathing heavily and rapidly, each one of her hastened inhales a gasp for air. Almost like she was drowning, she was hurriedly swallowing gulps of air, and she was hiccuping and rasping and losing her voice.

"June, June, it's alright... hey, honey, it's alright... June, it's fine..."

She was shedding all the tears she could possibly have, emptying more water into his shirt than Linh could possibly muster from the Dead Sea. Her body was convulsing, and there were goosebumps all over her skin.