Difference between revisions of "Logs:You Have To Die Once"

When Aishani dreamt of her father this time, there were no crowds and no gallows; she couldn't quite remember what happened or what was said, but it felt like a long, long time ago, when he used to take her around on business, when people still thought she was too young to pay attention. But she'd always been told to listen, from before she was able to speak - and she did. Sometimes she heard things he didn't, and she'd get to stay up late to sit around the fire with the adults and listen to the music there instead of hearing it from the wagons, in bed with her cousins.

She didn't remember what was said, but she remembered he was trying to tell her something important, something she should have remembered, something that was a disappointment for her to have lost. He would have been disappointed. She remembered words, words he read from a book that wasn't much more than scraps now, words that he barely needed to read. He just remembered.

When she woke the next morning, the dream was lost and hazy. The more she tried to remember, the more elusive the details became. Everything slipped through her grasp, but she still felt compelled to go into the room with her pin-neat desk, open the hiding place she'd chosen for her little wooden box - the older one, the one that held everything she had left of him, her family. She went through the scraps carefully until she'd found something that triggered the sense of that dream, an echo of what he'd said. It took some time... and she couldn't believe she'd never realized it was a page before - but it pieced out before her like a puzzle.

It wasn't her father's writing, it was someone else's - and it was old. He must have kept it with him for a long time, though she didn't know how it came to be in pieces, how those pieces found their way to the little box that held all she knew of her parents, all she had left of her family. She ached to speak to her aunt, who would listen, offer advice, maybe tell her what her father would have thought. But it was impossible. All she had was the box, and now, this... note. Advice.

It read:

Know the difference between hearing and listening. Learn to listen to people.

Repay the kindnesses bestowed upon you.

There are no small promises. A man's promise should weigh more than his life.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You can tell more about a man by his enemies than you can by his friends. A man with no enemies is worthless.

In life, we only encounter the injustices we are meant to correct.

If you want to live well you have to die once.

Shani wasn't sure that she believed in anything beyond death. But the dream... coming now, at this moment in time... It couldn't be coincidence.

Well, it could be. But she'd rather believe it wasn't. She'd rather cling to an imaginary connection than none at all.

And she knew why she hadn't found until it now. It had waited until she needed it.

You have to die once.

No fear.