“It may not have to explode,” Dori agreed slowly, seeming to weigh this conversation as heavily as Whistler did, although more for cognitive purposes than personal. “But maybe it should.” She imagined a star becoming a supernova, a fire raging through a forest, a wave wiping out a coastal village. In all cases, the desolation gave way to something new. Eventually.
Dori thought of James; he said that she was unusually pensive in this iteration of life. She couldn’t say. Her memories of the lives that came before ‘Dorothy’ were incomplete. They came in earnest snatches, vivid and close but all too brief. Like dreams, she couldn’t discern anyone’s identity, including her own. People were faceless, and her vantage point was from above. She remembered a doctor euthanizing a patient with a nurse at his side. Was Dori the physician, the nurse in white, or the man lying prone on the table? Was she the mother drowning her offspring in a baby pool or the neighbor standing silent with a garden hose, watching? Was she none of those things?
Dori’s memories of James throughout the centuries were clearer. He said it was the same for him. That double-mystery kept them from accumulating too much mental ‘stuff’ from life to life. They were reference points for one another.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2014-01-16 08:53 pm (UTC)Dori thought of James; he said that she was unusually pensive in this iteration of life. She couldn’t say. Her memories of the lives that came before ‘Dorothy’ were incomplete. They came in earnest snatches, vivid and close but all too brief. Like dreams, she couldn’t discern anyone’s identity, including her own. People were faceless, and her vantage point was from above. She remembered a doctor euthanizing a patient with a nurse at his side. Was Dori the physician, the nurse in white, or the man lying prone on the table? Was she the mother drowning her offspring in a baby pool or the neighbor standing silent with a garden hose, watching? Was she none of those things?
Dori’s memories of James throughout the centuries were clearer. He said it was the same for him. That double-mystery kept them from accumulating too much mental ‘stuff’ from life to life. They were reference points for one another.
“How do you know which it is?” Dori asked.