text | ota

[rebells]

[Someone's bored, evidently. Or perhaps just at his wit's end.]

So I thought I might as well pose the question.

How does one get an intelligent but warlike species that can't communicate and doesn't seem interested in anything but attacking people to calm down?

- Jay, if you wanted to know.

Comments

[rootandbranch]

[matter-of-fact, though his tone is a little distant]

Battlefields are battlefields, and the ones who fight on them will die or live by their own hands. That's always true. But this battlefield wouldn't even exist if we weren't here. What we decide to do is what will change things for this world. That's power.

[rebells]

. . . we've already changed the situation by being here. I just wonder if that's in the way we wanted to.

[rootandbranch]

See, that's just what I mean! You get it. We're the ones changing things. We could withhold help from Qri, too, even if it'd be a pain for us. That would change something else.

Dad says, power and wiles are understanding how you could be the one to bring everything down, no matter what you're looking at. Dad is a donkey's ass, but he's right.