I'm ridin' down your moonlight mile

[tiersdes]

Who: Troll 1/Seth (tiersdes)  and Troll 2/Shiroe (zealouspeter)
When: Saturday, January 29th, 5pm, before Grandmama's Boy shows up.
Where: The streets of Sector 4
Summary: A Crusnik and a Mu pass by each other in the street, and the cat is quite literally out of the bag.  Or rather, away from the NV and out of the house.
Warnings: Snarkiness and trolling, but are those

Comments

[tiersdes]

"...Huh. So you're a firm believer in survival of the fittest, hm? A little Darwin in the making, with your vested interest in anything out of the norm?" Seth chuckles, in spite of Shiroe's grave, fierce expression. "I suppose you have a point, especially since you used to live out in space. Still, even the weak have value. They depend on the strong, and pay the strong tribute in turn."

...Like the Terrans in the Empire.

His comment about anarchy hits close to home----after all, as Empress, she was the only thing holding things together back home. If she died...

...No. She wasn't about to dwell upon it. "Perhaps. But anarchy will always be quelled; that's also the nature of how things are run---no matter where you go. It's a cycle, really, when you think about it. Things come down, new things go up, and so on and so forth. It's just a matter of weeding out the bad apples and bolstering the good ones." She says nonchalantly. "That's society. That's life."

After that bit of wisdom, there's pause before she answers his---blurted---question, and suddenly, she looks up at the cloudy sky.

"...You know what? I'm not sure." She says, laughing a bit sheepishly. "Nostalgia, I guess. Lilith used to read that story to me, as a child."

[zealouspeter]

Darwin. There was a scientist who he'd only thought of as a relative myth, the same as people of this age seemed to think of Egyptian Pharaohs and Medieval Kings - but what he had learned of Darwin here, beyond the simple evolutionary facts the S.D. system had given them, it fit. The man's findings seemed to hold nothing but truth. But then -

"It's too rigid." This was a conspiratorial topic said in a normal-conversation voice, as if they had suddenly touched on the weather. His face lightened up, shoulders moving back, relaxing. "There's never any change. And when there is, the only time it leaves a real impact is when it's negative. You can't deny that-- it's what people focus on more than anything else."

The media was proof enough of that- the S.D. government was proof enough of that. A result far worse, as far as he still believed (though he occasionally wondered, in moments where he wasn't entirely himself, whether the S.D. government really was in the wrong, considering what he'd seen here), than anything else. She wouldn't believe that, probably-- she'd rather have any government than no government at all, even if she might say differently. People always said differently: that was a fact of life, too.

But then, she was a dictator, wasn't she? A soft one, tempered by sub-rulers, but still a dictator.

"What good is a tribute when the strong could get it themselves? That would make them lazy as well, if they're always served." And a pause, as that last topic came back around. Lilith... He remembered her name being mentioned, vaguely, but there hadn't been exacts, had there? The Methuslah's - Seth's - mixed and mashed really-too-long past, of betrayal and hope and whatever other poetic term could be added--

He much preferred Neverland.

But if she didn't belong in it, then he wouldn't count her as part of it (but then, his standards were a bit unfairly high). So, "What other stories?"

[tiersdes]

Seth lets out a small breath, closing her eyes as she leans the side of her face on her palm. "There's never any change because people fear change. Once something's already set in stone, it's hard to erase it. You have to chip away at it, little by little, until you create something new. People only acknowledge the negative aspects of change because it gives them more reason to be adverse to it. So unless people are open to change..." she trails off for a bit, opening her eyes once again and looking more somber, more solemn---the face of a dictator, indeed--- "...Do as the Romans do. Or at the very least, modify it. Even if it's only an illusion of change."

There needed to be order. Without it, you would end up with cataclysmic events like Armageddon. Or the war against and near-genocide of the Mu by the S.D. government. Either way, not only society would suffer---the environment would, too. Whether it was Earth---Terra---or the vast reaches of space. Destruction and chaos waited for no man. No non-human, either.

"Lazy? Perhaps. But it keeps things balanced. If the strong dominated over everything, things would also devolve in no time. Egos would clash. That's why we need the weak around, to basically keep everyone sane." Seth laughs bitterly, thinking of the Empire. "There are no easy answers, Shiroe. Society, over the years, has become a quagmire of ambiguity, ambivalence, and ulterior motives. It'll take someone prodigal to sift through all that and tidy it up."

She sounded a bit more cynical than she'd really meant to when she said all that, but---it was true. She wasn't that prodigal "someone." She'd already done all she could. All she could do was to preserve what she'd already built. To protect it.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And she's glad he didn't pry for any more details about Lilith. She wasn't someone she wanted to talk about right now, especially with all this talk about society and government and the rest of the hootenanny that came with it.

But, to reminisce over her childhood---that was more comfortable territory. And her expression shows it. She smiles again. "The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, A Thousand and One Nights, The Lost World...many, many stories. It's odd, though. Looking back upon it, the stories she chose were almost prophetic."