The Depth Of Life Will Dim [Closed]

[pryr4thedyng]

Character(s): Rory and Simera, among the sleeping.
Content: Simera addresses her existential crisis with the one person crazy enough to understand.
Setting: Second Library Floor
Warnings: None

Comments

[thejoychild]

Simera shook her head and caught his hand. "I was going to talk to you, if you're not sleepy yet," she said quietly, sliding down next to him. "Micas said I should ask you," she clarified.

[pryr4thedyng]

Rory's eyes narrowed, though without their usual sharpness, merely crinkled at the edges, and his fingers fidgeted in her tiny grasp. While the child's needs and wants had seemed quite simple, her motives as transparent as that of any child, a solemn tone had crept into her voice.

"What is it?" he asked, a genuine concern fluttering at the edges of his conscious thoughts and confusing him as much as endearing her presence to his own. An easily missed, reassuring squeeze was given her as a reflex to the sudden feeling, and Rory began to breathe evenly once more, given something of worth to focus on that he was certain wouldn't somehow come back to devour him.

Well, fairly certain.

[thejoychild]

"I think that I'm not real," Simera said quietly, looking slightly guilty about it. "I think that I might be like a stone, not a person." She chewed her lower lip, thinking for a moment, before asking, "People are supposed to come from somewhere, right? Everybody else came from somewhere."

[pryr4thedyng]

There was a questionable lapse, a stinging silence in which Rory questioned her sudden self doubt with the same intensity that she questioned her existence. Her small form was suddenly precious to him, and he saw firsthand and for the first time that her fragility was not in body alone.

"How do you mean, Simera?" he said gently, careful both of the sleepers next to them and of her obvious distress. "That you can't remember where you came from? Many people forget where they come from, it doesn't make them any less who they are."

[thejoychild]

Simera shook her head. "There was nothing before here. I was just here, and nowhere before that," she explained. "This is the first place I was and I knew lots of things that I didn't learn." She looked up into Rory's eyes. "And I know more all the time. Things that aren't in the books. Every time I wake up, I know things that I didn't know when I went to sleep."

"I think," Simera said, frowning, as she cradled Rory's hand in hers and played with his fingers, "I think I just look like a person, maybe." She chewed on her lip again for a long pause before saying. "I'm not sure what else there is to be, though... Can you be a fake person?"