#reverxiii

[aevitium]

✧ ˖  @reverxiii asked:

Would humanity be happier if they had never grasped for knowledge? If they could have kept their newfound knowledge a secret, would they have continued to live comfortably in that garden, knowing what is outside? In this simulated garden, Pardofelis knows she's little more than the ghost of a dead girl. Every smile, every purr, every flick of her tail is an echo of a girl who once lived. She knows what happened to that girl and the fear that the same thing will happen to her when this is all over lives at the back of her mind, a constant specter on her heart. You see, Pardofelis doesn't like thinking about sad and complicated things very much. She likes simple things like sunny spots and canned tuna. She figures she would be happier if she didn't know, if she could go about her days restocking her store and greeting the odd visitor. (She still does go about her days anyway, living comfortably with all of her dearest friends.) Pardofelis drapes herself over Elysia's lap. They've struck a bargain today: in exchange for showing up on time to the gathering they'd planned, she gets to nap on Elysia's lap afterward. Some shiny rocks and shells had passed hands, too, but she's less happy about those than the opportunity to nap. A pair of mismatched eyes look up at Elysia, squinting in the mid afternoon sunlight. "Hey, Ellie? Are you happy?"

Here, they are merely memories. Habits personified, pieces of data programmed to follow a series of actions like they might have in the real world, were they still real.

Familiar strings tug lithe fingers into a head of tabby hair, a series of ones and zeroes somewhere they cannot see, to scratch just so behind a pair of pointed ears.

"Hm?"

Here, they do not have feelings, merely shadows of them. It's not a thought that pleases Elysia, so she likes to pretend it is not true. Fortunately ( in some morose, ironic way ) she is quite well used to that.

"Of course I am~"

Elysia peers downward, crystal eyes amused as though the question had been silly. It is, in a way-- this is a world made of the hearts and minds of her most beloved friends, an eternity in their company. There is no world to save here, no terrible thing to wake up to tomorrow, no fear of everything crumbling to pieces as you sleep.

( Disregard that you needn't sleep, that tomorrow is no less artificial than today, that time never moves. )

But it's true, or at least she thinks it is. In a terrible, selfish way, where she pretends to know that the world outside this garden will survive because there is so little she can do for it any longer. Where she tells herself what was done was good enough, because she has no way of knowing if it wasn't, and because it is all she could offer.

In a selfish way where she tells herself that the people around her, the ghosts of her friends, are happy too. Because to her a stagnant, monotonous eternity is okay as long as they are with her, and she is with them, so they must feel the same.

And if they do not? Well, she isn't certain she would like to know.

"How could I be anything else?" Birdsong is her laughter, fingers sweeping beneath Pardofelis' chin. "Frowning gives you wrinkles, anyway. Why, look at Kevin! I keep trying to tell him..."

She fills the air with words that mean nothing, with laughter that can only ever sound like hers. When she looks to Pardofelis again, she's smiling. She always is.

"Don't tell me I'll have to start lecturing you, too!"