Breathing. Painful. Heavy.
Blood flowed quietly, like a stream at dusk. I looked around, she wasn't there. Ai is gone. So yes, this was made from the same material as all her lies, illusory. Damn fakery that looks like you could touch it.
And yet I knew. Not with certainty, but knowledge stirred somewhere deep. Wasn't it clear, deception remains deception, no matter how practical and alive it seems. You can touch and not feel.
She's been gone for a long time. Memories long hidden. The past is far away.
Can I blame myself for letting that past slip away? I don't know, but I know for certain, I feel my weakness. Weakness in not being able to hold onto the most precious thing.
What a pity, and this is a deity? Would a deity allow what's dear to it to disappear forever, without a chance to return? Is a deity a being that lets go of the most precious thing just like that?
Then what is a deity?
People usually think a deity decides everything. Financial problems, spiritual questions, household trifles — all in its power. Imagine, there's a being that can do everything, doesn't it transcend matter? Isn't it transcendent?
And if someone asked: "Why do we need?" We exist, therefore we need something. If god created us in his image, doesn't that mean he needs too? Need gives birth to action. From this, can humanity be the result of someone's need?
Or why do we always want something? Is life good because it has a constant feeling of need, and much of what's desired is unattainable? Maybe the Creator wanted to dull his own need. Wait, is he also capable of experiencing what he gives to people? Feelings? Weaknesses?
Animals and humans aren't so different. We want, we need, without this we won't survive. Cycle, chain. Closed circle.
If a deity lives by the same rules, needs, acts, repeats, doesn't it turn into insignificance? Not into divinity, but into something absurd?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!
"Aha-gha-ha-kha-ha!" her laughter, as usual, piercingly annoying.
"How quickly you can be bent toward a thought!" she said, and her voice was light, like a knife. "So you're like everyone else — trash. Insignificance."
Life.
Cycle.
Needs.
Constancy.
"Tell me this, did you really cling to predestination? Then, knowing it, did you accept it as inevitability?" the witch spoke with excitement. "Let me guess, you thought brute force alone would change everything?"
They say everything is predetermined by someone above. But imagine, you have power to decide others' fates, and yet you yourself are in shackles? A paradox, right?
You must be free, but suddenly even this freedom is a new chain. You realized might, and it's immediately stronger than it was.
The path stretches, you walk, the step you took looking back disappears not because it wasn't there. It simply dissolves in the expansion of space.
Fate — a word that sounds like a sentence. Like a verdict. Is it born in us or outside us? Object or subject? I don't know, but I want to know more.
That which cannot be reached. Touched. Seen. Without seeing, you won't understand form, without knowing form, you won't understand essence. Energy? Personality?
"Are you still trying to fight it?" the witch interrupts my thoughts, as if she's bored listening to my internal phrases.
"So you're desperately trying to give fate a form, an animate form," she continued, and mockery was in her voice. "Because you've never met it."
Pause.
A pause that makes even silence fall silent.
"Isn't it something that can't be seen or touched?" she added in the same tone.
"If even my strength wasn't enough to fight against it, what is it then, if not a personality?" I answered. Words like shouts in an empty hall, I wanted the whole world to hear the truth.
"Who said your strength is worth anything?" the witch coldly, almost contemptuously. "Try to understand, you're insignificant."
(Dirty whore!)
"I'd gladly see what you're made of if I were in better shape!" I squeezed out and immediately, as if testing her, added: "Convenient to hide behind the rules of your own game."
(Yes, convenient).
"Trying to dull your insignificance?" she threw out haughtily. "But even without rules I wouldn't be threatened by such a pathetic piece of shit as you!"
Sharp jab. A word that hit the mark.
"Let's drop this topic, return to the beginning. To where I'm a predator, where I must tear apart the wounded prey!" she said with smugness.
"Be my guest," I answered.
She threw a piece, like in a game. Where every number is your loss. If this is a family dinner, well then, they won't get me with this.
But... w-what the...
Surprise.
Memory.
Deception.
Past.
And somewhere there, beneath these words, something stirred. Something that's returning, though I thought I'd buried it forever.