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Without use of constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of mysteries, your constructs will fail.
Find the strength to pursue both, for these are our prayers. And to that end, welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.
The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place.
“The shrine’s not for Bosh,” Sibling Dex said. “It’s for us. People, I mean. Bosh exists and does their work regardless of whether we pay attention. But if we do pay attention, we can connect to them. And when we do, we feel … well, you know. Whole.”
They were running up against a wall, and it didn’t matter whether they understood where the wall had come from, or what it was made of. The only way to get through it was to stop trying, for a while.
Welcome comfort, they reminded themself, rubbing the little pectin-printed bear with their thumb. Without it, you cannot stay strong.
“Nobody should be barred from necessities or comforts just because they don’t have the right number next to their name.”
“And don’t think of yourself as a problem,” Dex said, a protective edge entering their voice. “If they have an issue with you, that’s on them. And it’s not even about you, personally. They just … don’t understand what you are. Or maybe they can’t fit you into their beliefs, and that scares them. The unknown makes us stupid sometimes.”
Me and mine believe the further you distance yourself from the realities of what it means to be an animal in this world, the more you risk severing your connection to it. History tells us loud and clear where that road goes.”
our way of life shows you how comfortable the world is on its own. Paring things down makes the small comforts all the sweeter. You don’t know how to be grateful for a well-sealed wall if you haven’t had a winter storm bust through a weak one. You don’t know how sweet strawberries are unless you’ve waited six months for them to fruit. Elsewhere, they have all these little luxuries, but they don’t understand that food and shelter and company are all you really need. The world provides everything else without our meddling.”
“Well, that’s the nice thing about trees.” Mosscap put its hands on its hips as it looked around. “They’re not going anywhere. You can take all the time you need to get to know them.”
It was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed?
The farm was a place where Dex knew they would always be welcome but never in the same way as before they left; a place they knew intimately and no longer knew at all.
You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be. I say that wherever I go.” They threw a hand toward their wagon, its wooden sides emblazoned with the summer bear. “It’s painted on the side of my home! But I don’t feel like it’s true, for me. I feel like it’s true for everyone else but not me. I feel like I have to do more than that. Like I have a responsibility to do more than that.”
“How am I supposed to tell people they’re good enough as they are when I don’t think I am?” they said.
