eswareinmal | Orb: 19th of Rebirth’s Height

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Orb: 19th of Rebirth’s Height

[[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.]]

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[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.

Like how going back to stop someone from dying would change everything so that there'd be no reason for you to ever find out how to go back in time in the first place.

Precisely. So, um, either they would still die, or...the resulting paradox would rip reality to shreds.

Personally, I've always had trouble thinking of time as anything but linear, but, then again, time travel is one thing that, um, is actually supposed to be impossible, back home.

When it's not linear, that's when it all falls apart, isn't it?

Precisely. If, if time were a strictly linear invention, then presumably, anything you did in the past wouldn't actually change you as a person. So, so at some point in your personal past, you still might have researched time travel to fix...whatever it is you're attempting to fix. [He knows it's almost certainly not his place to ask.]

Still, um, the, the general consensus seems to hold that isn't the case.

[[Snow is quiet, pondering this a long moment]]

Then it doesn't matter, does it? [[finally seems to decide]] If the sand is gone, it's gone, never to be recovered....

[Giles nods, staring at nothing but still aware of her presence all the same.]

N-No matter how many pieces you gather up, a few would still be missing.

...s-sorry. I always seem to lend, um, something of an especially depressive tone, to conversations like these.

[[She laughs, a dull, tired sound]] You can't make me any more depressed than I always am. [[she shakes her head, winding up looking a bit more to the side than before, her eyes still not looking at anything in particular.]]

[There it is again...]

Actually, um, given the direction this conversation seems to have taken, I would say that you're holding up remarkably well.

[...and then the memory clicks. Giles only just bites himself back from saying anything as obvious as "you're blind". He's been blind, before. It's not something you tend to forget.]

Things have gotten a little better. [[smiles a touch wistfully there.]] Its quiet for the first time in so long....

Y-Yes, um, well. [Giles doesn't know quite how to reply to this, but he does his best.] This is my first day in this place, so I can't exactly comment on how quiet it is. From what I've heard, granted, the, the quiet times are something to be enjoyed, of course.

[[Even sober, Snow often made about as much sense as the lyrics of a pop song.]]

Quiet up here. [[points to her head]] Finally found something that makes it all go away. [[There's a sigh of relief]] The booze never really did...

[...there's a pause from Giles, and then he proceeds to massage his temples as though to chase away an oncoming headache. Because he does feel an oncoming headache.]

...never did for me. Um, don't know why anyone else should be so fortunate.

[[her face falls slightly]] You have it too...?

I don't have anything except a distressing lack of corporeality. S-Sorry if I gave the impression otherwise. I just, um, have on occasion made the attempt to get drunk so, s-so things quiet down a bit.

[[a blink]]

... you're dead?

[[her head tilts slightly as she looks rather lost in thought a moment.]] Though the walls of worlds, leaving behind at the vale what had been left before... [[Her voice is quiet, sounding like she's quoting lines from a song]]

You're the guide, arn't you?

I'm the...

[At this, Giles hurriedly shakes his head, even though Snow doesn't look as though she'd see the gesture at all. His tone of voice, however, is emphatic enough:] I'm, I'm not anything. Certainly nothing like that. Don't, don't trouble yourself about that.

[[she nods, head rolling forward just a touch]]

It isn't all gone yet.

[[says in an apologetic tone, as if that explains anything.]]

What hasn't gone?

What is it that you're trying to get rid of?

What's in my head. This helps. [[She holds up her wrist where an gold bangle decorated in some off symbols is. Mind, she only has a general idea where the orb is so he's not getting a very good look at it.]]

[Giles tries to tilt his head to get a better look at it, and then gives up, because it's just a bit too far to the edge of his view.]

Um, sorry, would you mind moving your hand to the right a bit? [It's the symbols that really interest him at the moment, and he can probably at least file them away to look into later.]

[[She obliges, just assuming that she missed where it should have been for him to see anything, but not really caring too much.

The symbols don't really look like anything legible, almost like a touch like Scandinavian runes written like Arabic script, mixed with something utterly alien.]]

[...yep, nothing he's ever seen before. He'd ask her to translate, but...well, she's blind.

So, Giles tries another question.] That's, um, a fascinating series of charms. If you don't mind my asking, um, w-where did you get them?

[[and she wouldn't be able to even if she weren't.]]

There was an old man selling trinkets. He said it would help. First time anyone said that that it was true. [[her arm slumps back to her side]]

[...um.]

A-An old man? H-Here in town, d'you mean? A peddler?

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