CL: Let's see, when I lived in Midz be-Aridz I was a student scholar--but in a sense we're all student scholars now, aren't we? Midz wasn't a terribly large or interesting town, but I miss it all the same. It's weird, I miss the smell of the fishmarket I walked by every morning on my way to the shive.
CL: That's the place of study, the shive.
CC: what were u studying
CL: How to live. What the universe is.
CL: How can I explain this... your nations don't have much in the way of occult philosophy, do they?
CC: idek what that is lol like mystery cults?
CL: The True Word, the Name That Is, is what spoke the universe into existence. Nothing can exist without a name, right?
CC: what if no1s ever seen it tho
CL: Doesn't it still have a unique nature? That nature doesn't just spring from its true name, in a sense it is its true name.
CC: so a name is what a thing is like
CL: Succinctly put!
CL: So everything has a unique name, and if you call on it you can learn about that thing, or reproduce it, or alter it. It's angels that are listening for those names, more or less. So we study this, the origin and constitution of the cosmos, but we also study philosophy and ethics, which is what separates us from sourcerors--they only care about the power they can get by learning to command the angels.
CC: but isnt ur friend ac a sourceror
CC: sry ur more or less friend
CL: I don't know what AC wants, or the true reason they asked us to play this game with them.
CC: it doesnt exactly work like that tho does it
CC: we were always going2 play
CC: aj just told me we were made by this game just 2 play it
CC: she just hatched us i guess?
CL: That is what AC claimed as well. They told us about a source interpreter that does alchemy directly, and I honestly wasn't sure if they were yanking our collective chain. Well, they also claimed it was information from their own future. It seemed like too many layers of obfuscation to me. It would be a convenient fiction, that we were always meant to play.
CC: i guess it makes sense 2 me since i was awake on prospit 4 seasons be4 we started playing 4 real
CL: Right. There is that.
CL: Maybe I just don't want it to be foreordained. I never did much care for the Book of Eternity.
CC: ?
CL: It's said that everything that's ever happened is written there, and everything that ever will happen. Already put down, immutable.
CC: so why dont u like it
CL: If all my decisions are made already, my making them doesn't matter.
CC: ? yea it does its not like u looked in the book
CL: But in a real sense, if the Book exists, there are no decisions, just me following the path already laid out for me.
CC: hmm actly sounds kinda like following skaias visions
CC: skaia tells me what ill do to help every1 out n then i do it so they get helped
CL: And if you didn't follow those instructions?
CC: bt then ppl wouldnt get helped
CL: A thought experiment, then--you see yourself doing something terrible, something you'd never want to do.
CC: i wouldnt see that tho cos i wouldnt do it
CC: unless there was a reason i was forced 2 i guess
CL: I can't say I quite understand you. Perhaps your people have different ideas about free will than mine.
CC: free?
CC: what other kind is there?