She paused, her next words carrying the weight of personal experience.
"Also…the alternative is cessation. I chose that once, when THE Living Paradox came for me. I was tired of the unfairness. So I chose to stop. And now, through impossible circumstances, I exist again- diminished, fragmentary, but present. Existence's biggest joke might be that even giving up doesn't guarantee an ending. I failed…even at the act of cessation. But was not not an opportunity? Did I not come back…from a Seed, Outsider? From the most unlikely possibilities success can bloom."
BOOM!
Noah absorbed this as his traverse neared completion, reality solidifying into the familiar patterns of his Shore.
"I and all others should expect suffering…" he said.
"You should expect existence," Khor corrected. "And existence, at its core, is suffering punctuated by moments of transcendence. The suffering makes the transcendence meaningful. The transcendence makes the suffering bearable."
…!
