VIII. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!

[epigrammatical]

[AUDIO, public. The morning after the event ends and Tu Vishan starts moving again.]

I am not alone, I gather, in detecting a change in the air here. It is rather like waking on the very first day of the Season, with all the possibility that lies ahead—or waking the morning after the last day, with the happy knowledge that one need not be at home to anyone that day. We have, I suppose, escaped the fate of Des Esseintes's tortoise.

---

[AUDIO, private to Dorian Gray.]

I have finished Mr Findley's novel, Dorian. A most marvellous book; quite gorgeous and affecting.

But I must ask you, dear boy—is what he writes about Oscar true?

[He's already guessed that it is. This is less a real question than the confirmation of a sense of creeping dread.]

Comments

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[aloadeddie]

The kedan get offended at the weirdest things. It's like the worst culture clash imaginable.

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[epigrammatical]

Have you found yourself at odds with them very much? Perhaps I have simply been fortunate.

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[aloadeddie]

Not all that much, I guess, it's just... when it happens, it kind of sticks out in your mind, you know? Probably because it's so weird.

I'm pretty sure once I offended a kedan because I wasn't wearing a hat on the right day of the week or something.

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[epigrammatical]

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall that there is a day in the month when certain shades of blue are frowned upon. The intricate customs of Japan and India, as I hear tell of them, are similarly arcane.

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[aloadeddie]

Japanese customs aren't that tough to figure out. It's a relatively simple system, that makes sense. And it's not hard to find the information, either. The kedan don't seem interested in explaining, however.

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[epigrammatical]

They are certainly inclined to keep their own counsel on all things. Daowei is more forthcoming than many, but even he will often invoke "the Emperor's business" or "the custom of our people" in the most irritating ways.

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[aloadeddie]

Still, I guess my original point is that a madman with a gun is very dangerous, but a madman with super strength, the ability to fly or to set things on fire with their mind? Far as I'm concerned, that's a lot worse. Kedan customs notwithstanding.

And what do we really know about the kedan, anyway? We're not even sure what they usually look like.

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[epigrammatical]

Your point is sound. I suppose I have always imagined, or perhaps merely hoped, that were such a one to become dangerous, there would be a means by which he might be suppressed.

As to the kedan, I have often wondered what their true faces might be, though of course one doesn't dare inquire. Perhaps their true form is something like an artist's mannequin, featureless and plain.

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[aloadeddie]

You have a surprisingly creepy imagination sometimes, you know that?

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[epigrammatical]

[Henry laughs out loud at that.]

Is it really such a shock, my dear fellow? One doesn't spent time amongst the most morbid of artists and writers without absorbing a little of their sensibilities.

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[aloadeddie]

I suppose so. [Arthur sounds - well, a little pleased with himself, if anything.] I think I remember hearing somewhere that the Victorians were pretty morbid and obsessed with death.

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[epigrammatical]

Are we? Yes, I suppose so—it cannot be helped, perhaps, when the Queen has herself made an art of wearing mourning for over twenty years. Life is all too easily cut off in our day as well, and death cannot be kept at a far distance in such circumstances.

In truth, death is the only thing that terrifies me—for can survive anything else. [He says it quite lightly, a drawing-room quip, although it's also absolutely true.]

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[aloadeddie]

Count yourself lucky. Learning to throw yourself into a rain of bullets might sound appealing, but it's not. It's really not.

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[epigrammatical]

[A small chuckle.] The only firearms I encounter are aimed at fowl, and I am quite content to keep it that way.