voice

[anklets]

[This query brought to you by a pretty handful of missing puzzle pieces, not that you'd know, since Lenalee has no intent to justify or explain that imagery, nor to keep picking at scabs until they fester.]

We've already seen how the smallest change made can rewrite the entire history of this world. People are unborn, warheads are undropped... because we've cut out the circumstances which led to their happening.

How do you think that it might be the same for us? Transports come and go so often here and no one knows why. Whatever we do, we are always altering chances, there is no reason not to consider they could also be our own. That someone arrived on a day no longer existing may suddenly leave, or return by new circumstance, or forget they were ever here before.

It may be that we don't "go home", just. "Never arrive".

[ about ten minutes after broadcast, through careful squinting and experimentation, the feed is locked from Gilbert Nightray ]

Comments

[anklets]

[With cheeks shamefully red and still wet in streaks where she'd missed, Lenalee wishes there were a switch to turn tears off but apparently there only exists one to turn them on. She's struck by a childish feeling of exposure and covers her mouth until it stops twisting.

Why must he always appear? Like some jack-in-the-box... Offering sweets.]

I'm sorry. [ he likely won't care for this but she hates even more the idea of being coddled, and at least it is an honest apology ] I hadn't meant for anyone to think I intended blame. But the idea of changing so much and not being affected by it... Isn't that like something out of a fairytale?

[maddeninghatter]

And I'm sorry for being cross with you. I know very well that the person you're blaming the most for all this is...

[ He closes his hand and swings out of the chair, floating up on his toes and then down, so that he's half-kneeling, half-crouching right beside her. His fingers open again, but this time he's holding a handkerchief up to her. ]

...yourself. You're wondering what you could have done differently, hm?

[ Kids who don't like being coddled are the kids who never had the luxury of it. ]

[anklets]

[Well, she's certainly never been able to afford the finer things.

Before his voice has even faded from the air, something very big inside her gives way, though she doesn't realise it yet, though there is a hitch which runs through her fingers as she reaches for that cloth. She stares at it a moment, brings it to her chest. There is a ridiculous comfort in it she can take from, selfishly.]

Too much is breaking.