The way Jigano framed it, the situation looked quite messed up indeed. Like she really was being taken advantage of, used and made to bend... as if none of this had been her choice.
"He's always been honest about how he is," she replied softly. "He's told me everything about his past, about his time here, about the mistakes he's made, and what it cost him. What it's cost others around him. And every time he gave me the option to leave, to turn away before I inevitably got hurt. But I didn't listen. I stayed, and I stayed, and I promised so many things...
I never walked into this blindly, Jigano. Please don't place all the blame on him... I'm hardly innocent myself. There are plenty of flawed and hateful parts about me too, and I've done things he's not likely to forget. Or forgive."
Turning focus back on the topic of fate and fortunes, Maea listened with interest to what Jigano told her about his homeworld. It was rare for the man to bring it up at all, and her attention was rapt, expression lightening as soon as focus was drawn away from her own problems.
"I've had the same thought," she told him, almost eagerly, as he talked about the threads of fate branching with choice, with action, with possibilities defined and solidified into reality. "I don't know if you saw the message I put up on the Notice Board recently? I had another dream, or vision, or whatever you call it... and this time it was a lot more clear than before. I think, to answer a question we asked ourselves before, that it's not any power or divinity that granted me the information, but more that I was somehow able to look back on the past, to see what had happened." Maea's hands became expressive, weaving through the air to emphasise her points.
"I wonder if its similar to what your mother could do... only I'm looking back, and not forward? And I have no control over it. At any rate, I had the feeling that I was following a path back towards a certain point, like a finger tracing the weft of a tapestry... Behind was a clear picture, but ahead lay only varying possibilities. All uncertain, all possible, all existing at once... until something makes them solidify. Which is pretty much what you just said."
She offered him a lopsided grin. It was all conjecture, really, and diffiucult to prove or even explain properly, as it was only a sense granted in the memory of a dream...
Maea
this too shall pass
