It takes her a bit, picking at her food, hunched over her plate protectively. An unconscious gesture, seen all too often at soup kitchens and in prisons...
"...I need you to understand that where I went wasn't Hell," she begins quietly. "You don't need to sin to go to the Fairest of Lands. Anyone can go, for any reason at all. Babies snatched out of their cribs. Children pulled through their reflections on the bus. Mothers, and fathers, and teens who made the wrong friend, or read the wrong book, or broke the wrong spiderweb. It is not God's justice. Its existence is not compatible with a loving God."
Her sleeve, across her eyes. A shaky breath out. "...Human things can't survive there. It doesn't conform to laws of nature, only of contract. Without a pact with the air, you can't breathe. Without cutting a deal with the water, you can't drink. Without the consent of the berry, you could gorge on the bush and die with a full stomach, because it did not agree to nourish you. Humans can't make those deals, not really. Something...something in the human soul resists being able to see the world in the right way, to hear the voice the breeze speaks in, to know the language of a bee's wings that spell out hidden truths. We can't talk, and if we can't talk, we can't agree. So that part of us has to go. The lords of the Fairest of Lands take it, they rip it out of their slaves, and they teach us to see. Some resist, and they die, an' they're luckier for it. We call the survivors...my people...the Lost."
no subject
"...I need you to understand that where I went wasn't Hell," she begins quietly. "You don't need to sin to go to the Fairest of Lands. Anyone can go, for any reason at all. Babies snatched out of their cribs. Children pulled through their reflections on the bus. Mothers, and fathers, and teens who made the wrong friend, or read the wrong book, or broke the wrong spiderweb. It is not God's justice. Its existence is not compatible with a loving God."
Her sleeve, across her eyes. A shaky breath out. "...Human things can't survive there. It doesn't conform to laws of nature, only of contract. Without a pact with the air, you can't breathe. Without cutting a deal with the water, you can't drink. Without the consent of the berry, you could gorge on the bush and die with a full stomach, because it did not agree to nourish you. Humans can't make those deals, not really. Something...something in the human soul resists being able to see the world in the right way, to hear the voice the breeze speaks in, to know the language of a bee's wings that spell out hidden truths. We can't talk, and if we can't talk, we can't agree. So that part of us has to go. The lords of the Fairest of Lands take it, they rip it out of their slaves, and they teach us to see. Some resist, and they die, an' they're luckier for it. We call the survivors...my people...the Lost."