Welcome to Gaia! ::

“Ultimately, every call for justice is a call for retribution. But your arguments supporting lex talionis in your own favor have some skewing- How many people have you already killed, maimed and assaulted, stolen from, property destroyed and other general acts of terrorism and anarchy-based-in-destruction rather than anarchism as a philosophy. That your death is owed already is pretty well established. “

“Her own cause falls down in that she was seeking your death not for what you’ve done, but as entirely preventative measure for crimes not committed- which is asinine when defining and establishing justice. She was wrong in that, so you could argue that each crime be parsed in individual as debts to the individual instead of to society. And no-” He lifted a brow slightly, “The codified laws of retribution are highly exact. ‘trading disfigurments’ doesn’t cover the ‘debt’. An eye for an eye. You are entitled to an eye, no more, no less. She pushed you off a building and used you for a landing. That much is exactly what you are entitled to in the same broken ribs, the same or approximate same of broken limbs of your wings- her hands being the closest approximation. You weren’t burned. You weren’t exploded. “

“Revenge is not just if it is done wholly out of anger, and not in the cool exacts of debt. Revenge is not just if it is disproprotionate. If it becomes disproportionate, is allowed to involve payment by parties not involved, or degrades into...what is essentially a sort of self-pity, emotional masturbation, you end up with situations like blood feuds in the mafia or the Njal’s Saga from Iceland. “

“The fact that she’d miss the point of an act of random violence is just more support for keeping it exact if you feel the need of it. She is one of the people who was at the first attempt to free you. Her magic and cooperation might be one of the only ones that we have viable access to for future tries. Maiming her and her level of understanding of such things might burn that bridge- are you convinced a replacement can be found for her help, that you are willing to risk she may not help in the future. You may be cutting off your nose to spite your face in hurting her or disabling her. “

“Mostly food for thought. Under-punishing those who commit crimes, or the allowing of ambivalence and plea bargains, is a moral cowardice and mark of the failing of a civilization. Something that she’d understand would ultimately be better. “

“First, it makes her ‘right’ in her determination that you have no redeemable, no provable asset of true humanity in you. “ Quenton considered the revealed food, impressed first that Alois had managed take out anything even on the pains of someone’s terror. “You are also only thinking of the present, of immediate gratification of a primal desire. Whatever it is that you’re both basing your determinations of the future on seems to paint you as exactly that. “

“Act on it now, give into it at all in the present, and it ceases to be a slippery slope fallacy for me to point it out- you both provide the parade of horribles in your ‘memories’ of what you do and become in your subservience to responding to situations based on animalistic ‘like or dislike’. As much call you a rat and put you in a skinner box now so that you can start pounding the cocaine paddle. “

“What you’ve both described lends some support to the idea that we live in a deterministic nonlinear system of time. It can only be a theory, but if taken as true, then we know that there is sensitive dependence on the initial conditions. Let yourself be controlled by impulse earlier, more completely, and you may set in motion what you try to avoid earlier. You may give chaos a greater hold in you and lead the divergence into a worse scenario than before. “

“You want to enact positive changes in orientation. Whatever small characteristics that time could amplify to significant effect in a direction that doesn’t involve yourself mostly lobotomized, a slave, and so mired in tar and terror as to have made yourself your own La Brea Prison. You must play both the long and short game now. You can’t afford not to.” With the paper wrapping, the gyros were a highly unusual choice from his expectations of Alois. Served so was usually a fair food, cultural festival sort of thing. “Street food? You know you eat these with your hands? They look amazing, though. ”

And lamb, naan, and tzatziki were generally pretty stomach-gentle from all his own experience. Preemptively, even if the offer were declined the position was preferable, Quenton shifting his seating to be side by side with Alois’. “Do you want to be cutesy? I could hold yours for you.”

“You disprove assumptions of motivations, but you don’t disprove the points as removed from them. The theories stand as reasons doing so is a bad idea based on value of outcomes. You’re only giving reasons it is a good idea that point to zero-sum. She is nothing so killing her must mean nothing- but in a deterministic nonlinear system that is exactly incorrect. “

“I do agree that there are other possibilities beyond the ‘this must be the future’. The spells available to the differing people in this war point to practically infinite possibilities for what the magic can do pending the power and influence of the creature. “ You are so invested and interested in proving me wrong in things. In the winning or losing. One would think that our separation would have taught that it was never the end result that we were really either after, but the play in the game itself. How bored the rest of the days become, without this chess of ideas. Or is it that even that part is a completion of the act? Why not. The lesson may be learned without diminishing the excitement of a hit in the fencing.

I wonder if the discussion is just for the joy of it, in that sense. Maybe you’ve already determined what you intend to do either way.

Flattering, in that sense. Maybe even foreplay. But you’ve figured out that chord of mine long ago. “She isn’t right that you lack in redeemable worth or humanity.”

The pun almost earned an unmitigated chortle, but Quenton caught the noise in a swallow. Fire danced in eyes with entertainment, regardless. He took a piece of lamb and set it on the back of his own right hand, lifting it in offering, “Or why not nantaimori for that matter? Excepting I don’t know that either would improve the flavor or experience of eating. And gyros aren’t sushi. “

If eating be the primary sought experience.

‘Enjoy the method for what its worth’ is its own problem- what parts of murder and why do they bring pleasure for you. The infliction of suffering as a pleasurable, rather than a distressing act. I could push that point. But that would probably interrupt the latter, which sounds like its making progress. You at least recognize the merit in the thinking because it relates to what you do in your own scheming. Else why complain so loudly and bother to hate at it. That is where it should be, needing reinforcement. Which you invite, whether meaning to or not. A separate game of positives and redirection to them, and maybe flustering if I do it well. “Technically, you should. ‘Naked sushi’, ‘body sushi’, combining the pleasure of bodily form and objectification pleasure with aesthetics of food and the sexualization of the act of consumption and nourishment. “

Since he’d moved his own seat to next to Alois’ already, it was an easy task to lean over with deliberate slowness to press lips to the corner of the white and jutted jaw. Then speak close against the skin, “Curious, ever seeking the edges and boundaries.”

And drag his lips to the temple just above, pressing them again, “Intelligent, acquiring new knowledge and skills quickly and able to apply them.”

Then back and down to the gauged lobe, the rare-touched skin behind it- “Persevering, taking challenges of ‘no’ and in spite of oppositions making successes of goals and ideas.”

A new game of positives he personally valued in his lover.

Never content to allow something positive to flourish in your games, especially in relation to yourself. It wasn’t surprising that rejoinder of negatives were made. What else was there in Alois but spitting in the palm outstretched for his help and peace. No doubt you’d have killed most feelings of such generosity in most who tried, then called them ingenuine for not persevering beyond your hostilities. Hans mein Igel. Das scheint sich auf unser Märchen zu beziehen. How often it feels like a tale now. I am no princess to bloody at games.

Quenton matched the pause, considering the warmth of breath from Alois’ closeness across his own lips. Bone lashes closed to half-lid over fire, then closed completely as he moved to stand from seat and take new position on Alois’ knees while facing him. “ Candor of the self and search for it without the crutches of the definitions of others. “


Deft hands wrapped around to press thumbs precisely along the stressed muscles of lower back in alien hybrid configuration of wing and human anatomy. “Autonomous, in ability to act without company, but bearing and valuing it when it is present and worthwhile.”

“Should our next meeting be over sushi, to indulge your missing out on the phenomena heretofore? “ It was like an exercise of two chessboards played at once. Or maybe three, with the food still near and needing to be attended in attention as well. Were his throat capable of Faustian noises, Quenton would have purred.