i_speak_softly | Seventy-First Theory [Voice/Action]

[It's been an extremely frustrating month. First he was kidnapped and experimented on by the Malnosso, while everyone else in the village - as Don learned later - got to fly, with their own wings. As the long-vanished Raphael would say, "Turtle Luck runnin' true to form".]

[When the droids returned him, he was invisible for a week, and spent most of that time watching his partner have a serious substance abuse problem, while the Turtle himself was powerless to do anything about that or the underlying issues causing Robert's addiction to resurface.]

[When Don became visible again, Robert tried to explain himself, but the Turtle had seen too much of drugs in his own world to want to hear any more about it. As a result, for the past few weeks relations have been strained at best in the Hamato-Hastings household.]

[Today Don heads out to the beach, seeking to clear his head and reconnect with his Filial magic. The Malnosso's experiments had had strange effects on his control of the elements, and he thinks he'd better spend some time re-establishing his bond with the spirits, the true source of these abilities.]

[In the afternoon, he happens to check his journal and finds a long, privately-filtered written message from Robert: another attempt to explain his behavior. Part of Don doesn't want to read it, but another part knows he owes that much to his partner of over two years.]

[That doesn't make it easy, though, and Don can only stand to read the manifesto in small pieces over the next several hours.]

[When he's done, he stays at the beach, watching sunset, watching the stars come out. When night and solitude have made him invisible again, he opens his journal.]

Have you ever learned something... that made you change your perspective... on something you thought you would never change your mind about?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Then you're your own example, aren't you?

[He hesitates.]

It's more complicated than that.

Why do you say that?

Mostly what I changed my mind about was whether other people could change theirs.

Other people, huh? What did you think before?

I thought that very few people could ever learn to accept someone like me. But here, almost everyone does. I've almost started to take it for granted.

So it's like that . . . Well, Luceti's a pretty big place. There's bound to be people who can't accept as easily as others.

Of course. But I would say the ratio is about opposite from back home.

I'm not surprised. Luceti's the most tolerant place I've ever seen – probably because we're all considered just one thing to the Organization.

That does have a way of bringing people together.

[Though he now wonders whether you've experienced intolerance yourself, or just seen it.]

[Ask and ye might receive, anonymous.]

It's both a good reason and a bad reason that we won't remember Luceti when we go back. You wouldn't have to pine for the tolerance you lost, but you would have lost that experience, and maybe the ideal that goes with it.

Some people consider Luceti just a cage, but there are good experiences that come with it.

[On a different kind of day, he might.]

In that sense, I think I'm glad I won't remember.

I would be glad, too . . . but also a little sad.

But it's probably for the better that things turn out that way.

Seventy-First Theory [Voice/Action]

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