>>5828316“Wait…” you began, narrowing your eyes. “The soul is magic, you said—rather, magic and the capacity FOR it lends volition to living things. And you YOURSELF are a spirit without biology—”
“Rather an impolite way to put it,” the spriggan huffed.
“—but what about elementals? When I traveled east, I visited with another court… That of the spirits of the steppe and wastelands. Sun, heat, sand… Those sorts of fey were there, and their mortal children, called Neme or Ashurati. Theytold me that ELEMENTALS were ‘soulless’… But they’re like YOU! How can THEY be soulless, then?"
“They are NOT like us!” the spriggan protested, loudly enough to temporarily attract the curious attentions of his court. “You might as well compare a great and towering tree, or a rich and vibrant forest, or a field of expansive grass to… To a puddle filled with chlorophyl! To a pool of proteins and a sprinkling of carbon!”
“But if a being doesn’t need magic to have a soul—or volition—and a being MADE of magic which has SOME volition still doesn’t have a soul… What IS a soul?”
It kept coming back to that question, for years now. It was a question you couldn’t answer, no matter how hard you tried, and it was at the heart of the clones’ failure. Then and there, voicing it seemed to bring the music to a standstill. The court all slowed in their dances and lowered their instruments and voices, watching and listening to you and to the spriggan. So too did Izirina, watching you with great interest now—greater even than she had for the fey.
“The soul…” the spriggan began, his voice the weary creak and crack of an old tree buffeted by wind. “The soul is the secret signature of the gods. That is the truth of it, little ones. The good and the bad, Light and Dark, from Above and Below… When they fashioned the first beings, they put something of their own being into them. They used different materials, over the years… Light, and shadow, smoke, and the elemental forces from those planes you reach into… And they took the matter of this world, too, to clothe them. They made us… As they made both of you"
He gestured expansively to the court, to the jackalopes, to you and to Izirina, and to the tree, the grasslands and farm-fields all around, and perhaps to the cities and villages whose lights speckled the gloom of near-night.
"A craftsman leaves tool-marks. An artist has a telltale technique. And every thing that is made, and created has an INTENT behind it. THAT is the soul: the meaning, purpose, and intent of the gods, preserved in magic, as the blood or sap or slime of organic life preserves its design across generations.”
