[ It's hard to tell. If asked that question, they wouldn't know how to answer, because they have so little to compare it to.
(They have always tried to drown themselves out, to be busy, not to think. But they have so much time to think now, and it drowns them in turn. Everything they've left unsaid is a weight that is so much harder to hold.)
They've tried so hard to communicate, to make things easy to follow. To work in straight lines and linear sentences and to put into action what they've been taught. It is difficult, because their writing and their thoughts go in circles. It revolves like the language they knew from their birth, the sigils that hum and whisper, old images painted on signposts.
Being given permission not to do that is a relief. ]
Still do not remember everything
Cannot [ Or will not, maybe. Their own mind is a closed book to them, sometimes. Some things, even in rest, they mercifully don't recall.
They stare at nothing. The next words take a while to form. ]
There were so many
None of them lived except me
Don't understand
[ Waking up surrounded by the dead, so long ago, had dealt them a wound they struggle to articulate, even now.
They take too much on themselves, as ever. The guilt, though less all-consuming now, still lingers in the way they speak of it, their hesitant motions. Thinking about it is still painful. ]
no subject
(They have always tried to drown themselves out, to be busy, not to think. But they have so much time to think now, and it drowns them in turn. Everything they've left unsaid is a weight that is so much harder to hold.)
They've tried so hard to communicate, to make things easy to follow. To work in straight lines and linear sentences and to put into action what they've been taught. It is difficult, because their writing and their thoughts go in circles. It revolves like the language they knew from their birth, the sigils that hum and whisper, old images painted on signposts.
Being given permission not to do that is a relief. ]
Still do not remember everything
Cannot [ Or will not, maybe. Their own mind is a closed book to them, sometimes. Some things, even in rest, they mercifully don't recall.
They stare at nothing. The next words take a while to form. ]
There were so many
None of them lived except me
Don't understand
[ Waking up surrounded by the dead, so long ago, had dealt them a wound they struggle to articulate, even now.
They take too much on themselves, as ever. The guilt, though less all-consuming now, still lingers in the way they speak of it, their hesitant motions. Thinking about it is still painful. ]