Orb: 19th of Rebirth’s Height

[demonsintheoven]

[[Snow is looking... oddly sober, yet utterly unfocused. Her eyes seem to have dulled and she's not quite looking at the orb directly.]]

It wouldn't change anything, would it? If you could go back in time... something else would go wrong. You'd spend every moment fixing and correcting and in the end, you'd never have gone back in time to fix the thing you'd broken so you'd undo it all.

[[No slurring, no real trailing off, no signs of an open bottle... totally sober. Weird.]]

Comments

[greatsquirrelhunter]

Snow okay? Want to change things?

[demonsintheoven]

[[a warm smile]] If it could make anything better, I would, Little Wolf.

[greatsquirrelhunter]

Faolan likes things now. [Decisive child knows his own mind.] Snow and Faolan and Hawk are together. There are bunnies and squirrels and good smells and room to run.

[demonsintheoven]

[[she can't help but smile warmly at that]]

You're a good boy, my Little Wolf.

[greatsquirrelhunter]

[He beams at her] Yes! Good boy!

Faolan being Snow home?

[brosif]

It is a fool who looks to change what has already been written rather than make their own story.

[Suspicion, and also concern. The last time she spoke with this women, the sky fell.]

What do you know?

[demonsintheoven]

[[she laughs, shaking her head]] Nothing. Same as always.

[brosif]

Then what do you see?

After we last spoke, I tried to kill the king. I would like to avoid that same outcome.

[demonsintheoven]

Nothing. [[Her smile looks so relaxed, so-- blissful]] I can't see anything at all...

[brosif]

I would take that as good news, were you not a seer.

[shorterinperson]

There's no sense in lingering on things you can't change.

[demonsintheoven]

But sometimes you can change them, but you don't know how.

[shorterinperson]

In the present, certainly. But the past is what it is.

[demonsintheoven]

I guess...

[shorterinperson]

What brought this on, anyway?

[consultmybooks]

[...the sort of existential line of thinking that Giles is sadly familiar with. And so, resting at the very edge of Schwanheim and watching people go about their business out of the corner of his eye, he nevertheless replies:]

The past is, is a bit more fluid than most people seem to think. Even so...sadly, I agree. Attempting to fix the past, especially directly, is supposed to traditionally end quite badly. Just, just look at the grandfather paradox.

[demonsintheoven]

[[looking a touch curious at the new voice, her head tilting just a touch, but oddly away from the orb...]]

What's that?

[consultmybooks]

[...Giles looks about properly at Snow, frowning at a half formed recollection that the sight of her brings to his mind.]

The...the grandfather paradox. Old theory of time travel. Sorry. You, um, you might not have heard of it.

[demonsintheoven]

My son is the smart one of us. [[shrugs just a touch]]

[consultmybooks]

[He smiles wryly, at this.] Y-Yes, um, I...know the feeling, sad to say.

The Grandfather Paradox is simply the theory that, if you should happen to manage to go back in time and murder your grandfather so that all his descendents including yourself would cease to exist, you then could not actually have gone back in time and killed him, because, um, you w-wouldn't have existed to do so.

It requires a great many assumptions, but I suppose it gets the point across.

[sadkitty]

Um. I guess so?

I mean there's a lot of things I'd want to change, but I guess there's no guarantee that I'd do any better the second time around anyway...

[demonsintheoven]

[[a nod]] Forever fixing something broken that forever shattered in your hands as you tried to hold it...

[sadkitty]

I, uh... I think so?

[You're not really sure you understand. But you do, a little? Sort of?]

Maybe you could get a new... one...?

[...that might have been a mixed metaphor. You're still NOT ENTIRELY SURE what you're talking about.]

[demonsintheoven]

[[a small laugh]] You can't get yourself a new life that easily.

[sadkitty]

That... sure is a thing that is true, yes.

[UNCOMFORTABLY TRUE, even.]