The Flying Fool

The Escape

"Evil? Evil is subjective, my good man. What is evil to us might be perfectly normal to them. Who are we to judge what is evil or what is good?"

Captain Rourke, trying to prevent a massacre on Rourke isle. His crew stumbled upon natives who were sacrificing their own young. The quote was written down by one of his crewmembers.

_________________________________________________________________________

Seconds, minutes, days, months. Time passed. David could hear the sound of a lock, tick..tock, silently going inside his own head. A 100 ticks, 500 tocks, more than a thousand of tick tocks.

Finally David turned away from his own reflection and the Darkness shattered revealing Jester and the grey sky, littered with various paths leading to damnation, for what else could be the end, but that?

Jester himself had changed as well, at first David couldn't place him but then he knew. Jester looked like David. With eyes full of life and hope, no scars riddling that body, to David it seemed like a parody of him, but also of what he could've been if his life didn't turn the way it had.

"That last vision. What was it?" David finally asked, looking away from Jester.

"A vision of what could've been and a test." Jester walked to stand beside David, who still refused to look at him.

David didn't reply. He waited for Jester to continue by himself. "All you've seen was the truth and at the end I wanted to show you what destiny took away from you."

"I don't believe in destiny." Davids attention wandered as he saw two shadows, one big and one small flickering in the sky until fully disappearing.

Jester chuckled. "Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We're all just pawns in a bigger game."

"The only pawn was me, letting you manipulate me." Surprisingly David didn't feel any anger towards the fact.

"And I'm a pawn of someone else, and that...someone is yet another pawn. And so it goes and goes." Jester appeared in front of David and grabbed his shoulders, holding him in refusal to turn away from the truth. "I manipulated you so you can rise above being a pawn, above being a king or a player. I want you to rise above the game and destroy it, together with everyone on the board. You want that aswell don't you?"

Broken bottles, tears, a happy family flashed in Davids mind for a second and then it passed. "..Yes"

Jester gave a sigh of relief. "Perfect, then..." Before Jester could proceed David interrupted him.

"No, first tell me why. Why do you want to die? Why were you there when I was born? Why...me?"

"I've been dead for a while now, this is just an echo of me. A fade ghost, whatever you want to call me, my life is not my own..." Before Jester could continue his form faded but then flickered back to life. "No...that's enough for now, can't reveal everything. To answer your second question it was just luck, I was close by in the fade when you died and I attached myself to you. I guess that answers your last question as well, doesn't it? It was just luck."

"If destiny exists, then it wasn't luck was it?"

Jester laughed. "Such a narrow view, it'll change in time." He paused. "Destiny is not a narrow path. Destiny is a wide road, a road that leads us to where it wants to go, yet on that road we can move. We can take a side path, we can stumble or stop and on that wide road there's definitely room for luck. Do you understand now?"

"All I understand is that you've no idea what you're talking about." First Jester talks about destiny as a player in a board game and now he defines it as a road. Can't he keep it to one metaphor.