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[tragic_mask]

Arriving at the Visitor's Center, Melpomene takes a look around.

"Well, this is it. In all its touristic glory. "

Comments

[tragic_mask]

"Closure is good," she agrees.

[mechanicalswans]

"I want to be done and move on," he agrees. "So that things might stand a chance of working out--the best possible chance, you know?"

[tragic_mask]

"Yes," she says. And she does know.

"But what would we have, if you had closure?" She looks at him, meaning it to come out jovially, and failing.

"We're here, now, because we know for a fact that you're a god without love and all I'm going to do when you're gone is get someone to write a poem about it."

[mechanicalswans]

"We wouldn't have anything," he says quietly, after a moment. "It would probably kill me, and I don't know whether I would be reborn."

He takes a drag on his cigarette. "We know that will happen, yes. But thanks to the lack of a prophecy, we don't know when."

[tragic_mask]

"There you go," she says. "And that is the long answer for why it's good-- maybe-- that you're not in the prophecies."

[mechanicalswans]

"We'll just have to manage somehow," he says. "Do as we like, until we are ready to move on."

[tragic_mask]

"Sounds like a brilliant philosophy," she says.

[mechanicalswans]

"If we aren't undone by my inability to be spontaneous," he says. "I need to work on that."

[tragic_mask]

"I've tried and I've tried, you know," she says, melodramatic. "But you are such a hard case to work with."

[mechanicalswans]

"It's that Teutonic stubbornness," he agrees, and takes a drag on his cigarette. "It's so hard to make me change routine, even when I know it would be in my best interest to change."

[tragic_mask]

"It's okay." She smiles. "Being a god of anything isn't really conducive to change. We get to stay the same, forever."

[mechanicalswans]

"Surely you must've changed, at least a little, since you started out," he says. "I know I have, over time. Not as much as I should've, though. Probably."

[tragic_mask]

"Well, I'm a little less naive," she says. "More tragic. But that's probably just the evolution of my personality within certain parameters."

[mechanicalswans]

"I'm a bit colder," he says. "More mechanical, in more ways than one. But I think--"

He glances to her, then back to the road ahead.

"I think that when I do feel, it's more pure than it used to be. By virtue of its rarity."

[tragic_mask]

"Purer? In what way?" she asks, as she watches the world flash by outside the window.

[mechanicalswans]

"If you feel all the time," he says, "feelings can get muddled together. Or you build up a tolerance, as with alcohol. But if you don't feel, things are... more clear, if that makes sense."

[tragic_mask]

She thinks about it for a while.

"Yeah," she replies eventually. Though it doesn't seem like that would always be a good thing."

[mechanicalswans]

"It makes it very easy to wallow in things. If you haven't experienced them in a long time, if there's a chance you might not experience them again, you want to cling to them."

[tragic_mask]

"You did strike me as the wallowing type," she says, amused. "I do understand what you mean, though."

She's silent, for a while, hesitating-- then she adds: "There are some memories I rehash over and over, not because they're pleasant to remember, but because they're the ones that stand out, for the raw feelings involved. You know. In contrast with other times, when I was happy. I remember those times as well, but they're tinted with a different sort of regret."

She's rambling and she knows it, trying to piece together what she's trying to say without actually giving examples.

[mechanicalswans]

"I do that as well, I think," he says quietly. "For me, it's part of my work--I have to be in the right frame of mind to achieve certain effects, and there are memories I can lose myself in."

A pause.

"And memories I burn through, for the work. The ones with the strongest resonance give the strongest effects. They don't seem to dull with age."

[tragic_mask]

"I remember you telling me about the memories you take from waiting, and memories that don't really matter. But-- you can reuse the important ones, then, in your work?"

[mechanicalswans]

"I can," he says. "I can give them up altogether, or just parts of them, or I can use the echoes of them--like working by candlelight doesn't diminish the light of the candle, if that makes sense. It's a matter of choice, if I choose to give something up for a project. Sometimes I do."

[tragic_mask]

"What makes you decide you want to give one up?" she asks, quietly. "Aside from the wasted moments of waiting for a train, I mean, which I can understand wanting to use up."

[mechanicalswans]

"If the project is important enough," he says, "or if there is no other way to create the desired effect. I don't do it often, but it does happen sometimes."

[tragic_mask]

Melpomene thinks that it would have to be a pretty damn important project to give up some memories.

Out loud, she says nothing, only nods, and ruminates.