The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin #5)

by Daniel Abraham

“It seems to me that what makes us human is our ability to create a dream and live within it. History, I think, is storytelling that begins, ‘Here is a thing that actually happened,’ but after you’ve said that, you’re constrained by all the same rules of technique and structure that a playwright or a poet labors under. Which was why I said that history itself is a kind of performance. Consider.” The actor held up a finger. “Why do you suppose there are no plays about good people being kind to each other? Thoughtful lovers who, in the face of adversity or misunderstanding, have a conversation between them?” “Because they’d be terrible stories,” Marcus said, laughing. “I agree,” Kit said, “and why is that?” “Because nothing would ever happen.” “It would, though. People would be thoughtful and kind and gentle and resolve their hurts and confusions with consideration and love. Those are things. They happen. And they seem like nothing. Thoughtfulness and kindness and love, I contend, are so much the way we expect the world to be that they become invisible as air. We only see war and violence and hatred as something happening, I suggest, because they stand out as aberrations. In my experience, even in the midst of war, many lives are untouched by battle. And even in a life of conflict, violence is outweighed by its absence.”