An unfortunate side effect of education among the masses is lack of respect.
The truth of futility was the hardest truth of all, and for those clear-eyed enough to see it, there was no escape.
Fiddler straightened, eyes on the stars glittering overhead. Desert stars, sharp diamonds that ever seemed eager to draw blood.
Certainty was an illusion, a lie. Fanaticism was poison in the soul, and the first victim in its inexorable, ever-growing list was compassion. Who could speak of freedom, when one’s own soul was bound in chains?
Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.
Instead, we fell inside ourselves, ever deeper, that endless eating and spitting out and eating all we spat out – this is the seductive sustenance of hatred and spite, of rage and vengeance.
Unwitnessed. There was crime in that notion. A profound injustice against which he railed. In silence. Like every other soldier in the Bonehunters. Maybe. No, I am not mistaken – I see something in their eyes. I can see it. We rail against injustice, yes. That what we do will be seen by no-one. Our fate unmeasured.
An unwillingness. I can carry no one else’s burden – not even for a moment. We are all pulled inside ourselves now, each alone...
We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide.
The Claw smiled. “You have begun to learn, Paran. Never be too easy with the knowledge you possess. Words are like coin – it pays to hoard.
Introspection was an act of supreme courage, one that few could manage. But when all one had left to stir was a heap of crumbled bones, there was nothing else one could do. Fleeing the scene only prolonged the ordeal. Memories clung to the horrors in his wake, and the only true escape was a plunge into madness – and madness was not a thing he could simply choose for himself. More’s the pity. No, the sharper the inner landscape, the fiercer the sanity.
We destroy to create. But we deny the value of everything we destroy, which serves to make its destruction easier on our consciences. All that we reshape to suit us is diminished, its original beauty for ever lost. We have no value system that does not beggar the world, that does not slaughter the beasts we share it with – as if we are the gods.
I wonder,′ Trull said as he watched the momentary stand-off, ’if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators.
Some wounds never heal, and that man has just taken such a wounding.
And where did this insane notion of buying loyalty come from? It’s a contradiction in terms.
The mind held too many secrets. The brain was a sack of truths and their power, hiding there inside, was absolute. Twist one truth into a lie, and a man became a wolf. His flesh and bones could only follow, straining to reshape themselves.
No doubt there’s a tale there.’ ‘Indeed, but it’s not relevant.’ ‘Meaning you don’t know it.’ ‘Precisely.
None to witness. Dust of dreams, dust of all that we never achieved. Dust of what we might have been and what we cannot help but be.
Inequity, else how can power be assessed, how can the gifts of privilege be valued? For there to be rich, there must be poor, and more of the latter than the former.
So talk. You can think while you’re doing that, since with you the two activities are clearly distinct and mostly unrelated.