victormakesart | (no subject)

"It is, a little. I guess 'cause I've got a lot on my plate. But when I come here, sing what they sing, pray what they pray, I feel... connected to things."

"What kind of things do they believe in? I mean besides the whole interconnectedness thing."

"That death is a returning to the songs. It's like reincarnation but not. You return as a good moment for people you love, a rain when the plants need rain, a warm patch of sunshine when it's cold, good notes."

"Sounds kinda like what Ewya does for Her children. Energy's borrowed, including life energy, and when you die it goes back to Her."

"That sounds real nice. Makes a lot of sense to me."

"Yeah. You don't really reincarnate as the person you are, but part of you is preserved in the Well of Souls. Your life energy goes back to Ewya and gets... recycled, I guess, into something new. Maybe a plant or a pali or something."

"I really like that a lot more than I like Western ideas of the afterlife."

"Big props to scientifically measurable stuff like that, huh? And I've heard the voices of those who've died, when I was connected to the trees. It's all real. At least for Pandora."

"That's amazing, honeybee. Yeah, I mean, I just don't get that whole afterlife-is-a-place thing."

"Me either. I mean, before I ever signed up for the whole Avatar thing. Once you're dead, you're dead, that's it. Maybe it still works that way for humans, I don't know."

She looks shockingly scared for a moment, and she wets her lips, and she says, "I don't know. I don't know what the soul means. Where it's located. I don't wanna die. I wish I could stop everyone from dying."

"I'm not saying that is how it works, that's just all I thought before," he clarifies.

"I don't particularly like anything dying either. On Pandora, any death that doesn't serve a purpose is a waste. Even if you just accidentally killed a nantang."

"I think that's how it might work for humans. When I died, that's what happened. But I can't say."

"I don't know either. Maybe there's some kind of afterlife, or the whole borrowed energy recycling thing. I'll never know."

"I just wanna live forever, and make everyone else live forever."

"I don't. Life's gotta continue. No new life if you've got no energy to get it from." Jake shrugs a little. "It's the law of the jungle, and it's harsh, but there it is."

"Yeah, y' see, not a fan of that. I know the song can't stop, but, heavens... it ought to. I know, I know the logical reasons against that sorta thing, but why's stagnation on a grand scale always bad? If we're evolving mentally, why do we have to- why do people have to die, why can't we keep going, improving, moving forward?"

"I gotta say that people tend to do things when people die. Accidents happen, safety gets improved. You make a bad call in combat, you learn never to do something like that again, and it saves more lives. Your twin brother gets killed, you take his spot and end up liberating a race of people you otherwise wouldn't have given a shit about."

"I... I guess that's true," she says, swallowing down the lump in her throat. "That is true, in an objective sense. It's actually a really wonderful point." She just wishes it made it hurt less.

"Don't get me wrong... if I could have Tom back, I'd take it. I don't want him to be dead. But he is, and if he wasn't, I'd still be a bitter old asshole in a wheelchair."

"Yeah. Yeah, I understand that, for sure. It's nothing really like what I've gone through, because losing a twin is much worse, but with my scars... I wouldn't get rid of a single one of them, because they're what brought me to my family."

He nods, and curls his tail around her wrist. "Exactly. It's that kinda thing. Things happen for a reason. Sometimes it's a really shitty reason. Sometimes it only really looks that way from the outside. You don't know what it is until you're there, and then you're different than you were." He's not very good at the whole touchy-feely sort of thing, although he's miles better than he was before.

She touches his tail by where it has her wrist, running her hand up it as far as she can go, which is not far. "It's true. I'm not all sure, yet, what the bright side is. I guess it'll take time. I, um. I think on that world there's a heaven. I mean, there's a hell, so there'd have to be, probably. So. At least they went to heaven?"

"That's a good bet." Jake's never believed in a heaven, although he knows that Eywa exists and he's touched Her, but that's different. But he's not gonna say that there isn't one. Not necessarily because he believes it exists, but he knows there are some things people can't know, and besides, it'll make her feel better.

"Yeah. I dunno if stuff like that exists on my birth-world, or the world I live on now, but I know about hell on that world."