>>6076898You take a moment to recover from this. You tremble, and feel as if you knees might give out and, after that, as if you might fall to the earth below and crumble into dust. But how were you to know? How could you know for SURE? What else could you have done, duner the circumstances?
“It… It doesn’t matter,” you mutter, and force yourself to look up and to meet the gaze of the divinity before you once more. “Please, hear me now: I’ve made mistakes, but if you allow this war to proceed… That will be a far greater mistake. Humans will die… And reptilians, reptilians that can still be better than they are! And others… Elves perhaps especially. You must KNOW that the Sylvan Realms won’t survive another great war, as it is now!”
“Our predictions—those we can still put any faith in—show many such dark futures… But so, too, some which luminesce with light and love, Child.”
“Predictions,” you mutter. “They’re a gamble, aren’t they? And educated guess? Like forecasting weather that’s always changing, even with all your advanced magical devices. It’s gambling with lives!”
“It is,” she admits.
“You would do that?” you demand.
“I… Would not, if there were another option,” she admits.
And so, in that expectant silence, it comes back to this. Even as you try to reclaim your half-forsaken faith, and grapple with the revelation of your lethal miscalculation, your antipathy for prophecy remains undeterred. If anything, the knowledge that all these conflicts were brought about over a couple predictions has made you all the more eager to avoid them—to divorce yourself from divination’s cruel calculus. You cannot, WILL not, give the secret of <Final Revelation> to the Bonum Chaoticum, as much as you revere them. Nor can you withdraw from the world, and live as a hermit, as Izzy might suggest. You have friends, aspirations, a life! And what would such a thing mean for Izzy, let alone bubbly COSTELLA? Abandoning them? Forcing them to dwell in isolation with you?
You run your fine fingers through your raven hair grabbing a handful of it in exasperation. What is the answer?!
And then, as your fingers find your ears, you find your answer.
When is a worm nor a worm, or a wyrm not a wyrm? How can you avoid a prophecy of an elven descendant of Izirina Henzler who brings destruction or dark domination, but still keep your promise to her, to make her a mother? How can you remove your threat, and atone for your actions?
“When is ‘Tips’ not ‘Tips’?” you ask, as you idly tap the sharp points for which you were nicknamed, when first you came to Hawksong all those years ago.
