Putting the telescope down, I walked over to the couch and laid down on
it, with indignation filling my every move, for I was almost enraged
that the Zards and Canitaurs both should fail to tell me, whom they
claimed to respect as kinsman redeemer and whose decisions would seal
their fate for good or ill, that there were other survivors from the
Great Wars. I was also shocked by their selfishness, for while they
fought pettily amongst themselves over how they would change their lands
for the better, a seemingly important question about past and future,
they completely ignored the sufferings of other humanoids, to whom their
way of living no doubt seemed like a paradise. But there they were,
stuck across the sea on their desolate lands, unable to cross to Daem
and enjoy its plentiful resources and luxuries, yet not at all unaware
of them, for as they labored in their hopeless ways, they could see Daem
shining like a heavenly vision before them, one which they were not able
to touch or grasp, but instead one that must infuriate them to no end in
their heart, at the knowledge of fate's unfairness and their utter
hopelessness and complete poverty, not because of their laziness or
their ignorance or anything involving their actions whatsoever, but
simply because they had been born on the wrong side of the sea.
At that moment I was embittered against both the Zards and the Canitaurs
for their selfishness and their pretensions of morality. There is no
morality where one sees another starving and suffering and does not
help, when one sees a whole race of people living on a land where
nothing but sorrows dwell, but will not let them share the wealth that
was given one by no doing of oneself. There is no morality in
selfishness, and when I saw those wretched people, I no longer felt like
redeeming those on Daem from the impending doom of humanity. Whatever
plans they had for me they never told, I sensed, for there was something
deeply wrong about the way they looked at me and talked about me,
something deeply wrong about the way they patronized me and treated me
like a silly child, while I was the one who was to decide their fate.
The Canitaurs and the Zards both looked at me with a subtle sense of
deceit and ill will, all that is, except Bernibus, which is why our
friendship flourished so swiftly. As I laid there with thoughts of Onan
and the decision that I was to make, and of all the responsibility that
was put upon me involuntarily, as I thought of the conflict of past and
future at the neglect of the present, as I thought about the
self-obsession and overindulgence that come with wealth, and the desire
for still more that accompanies it, I fell to sleep and into a place
where no troubles lay, for my long day and night had left in me no energy
for dreams.
Chapter 10: Devolution
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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