"It didn't even sound human when it screamed." He hadn't lost any sleep over it. "It wasn't her. The nose knows." He tapped it. "And the ears."
The cruelty of their captors and their extreme punishments aside, he'd had to move on from traumas and terrifying situations his entire life. Sometimes with peace, sometimes with resignation, but the moving on had always happened.
The image of stabbing Eep was a powerful and painful one but the screeching, the fact it had attacked him had made it lodge firmly in his mind as just another thing with teeth and claws. It was another monster he killed, another life or death situation he'd walked away from.
"One thing no one here has ever understood about me, not even after watching that ridiculous thing about my life, is that the life or death stuff? That's always been my whole life. Walking away from that is how you live. That's in all of you, though, what I am. The old ways of thinking. You all came from where I come from. Even that snotty green guy, a long time ago, his people had to figure out how to bang a rock against a clam to get the meat out, and were probably running from something with bigger teeth."
He went on, "Monsters are easy. Everyone has that in them, to survive all that, and let it go. You have what's left of the people in the past that could do that in your instincts. That's why the worst parts of this place aren't the monsters, they're the people that act like monsters."
He made an 'eh' face. "Monsters that act like people? Different thing."
He found a better way to say what he was thinking, and smiled that little smile he did when he found the words, since it wasn't always easy for him, after so many years of talking to a sloth. Talking was easy, saying what he was thinking and saying it right was hard.
"Ooh ooh, I figured out how to say what I wanted to say! Accepting something bad and letting it go to focus on now and what you want to do now and what you want to be is living. Anything else is just surviving. It wasn't Eep and now it's dead and I'm sharing food with my friend. If I was still upset about it how could I be happy sitting here with you?"
no subject
"It didn't even sound human when it screamed." He hadn't lost any sleep over it. "It wasn't her. The nose knows." He tapped it. "And the ears."
The cruelty of their captors and their extreme punishments aside, he'd had to move on from traumas and terrifying situations his entire life. Sometimes with peace, sometimes with resignation, but the moving on had always happened.
The image of stabbing Eep was a powerful and painful one but the screeching, the fact it had attacked him had made it lodge firmly in his mind as just another thing with teeth and claws. It was another monster he killed, another life or death situation he'd walked away from.
"One thing no one here has ever understood about me, not even after watching that ridiculous thing about my life, is that the life or death stuff? That's always been my whole life. Walking away from that is how you live. That's in all of you, though, what I am. The old ways of thinking. You all came from where I come from. Even that snotty green guy, a long time ago, his people had to figure out how to bang a rock against a clam to get the meat out, and were probably running from something with bigger teeth."
He went on, "Monsters are easy. Everyone has that in them, to survive all that, and let it go. You have what's left of the people in the past that could do that in your instincts. That's why the worst parts of this place aren't the monsters, they're the people that act like monsters."
He made an 'eh' face. "Monsters that act like people? Different thing."
He found a better way to say what he was thinking, and smiled that little smile he did when he found the words, since it wasn't always easy for him, after so many years of talking to a sloth. Talking was easy, saying what he was thinking and saying it right was hard.
"Ooh ooh, I figured out how to say what I wanted to say! Accepting something bad and letting it go to focus on now and what you want to do now and what you want to be is living. Anything else is just surviving. It wasn't Eep and now it's dead and I'm sharing food with my friend. If I was still upset about it how could I be happy sitting here with you?"
The Zen of Guy.