[muffled spooky scary skeletons playing in the distance]

[geonomy]

Who: You! Me! Everybody!
Broadcast: idk but we've sure got a pretty broad cast of folks eh, eh
Action: HECK YEAH PLANET MINGLE
When: 10/7 until plot update or recaptcha

It's a deep, deep forest filled to the brim with fungi, mysterious life forms, and pitch black darkness. Explore if you dare and discover all these things and more! Just don't get lost...

Comments

[complicatedliar]

I hear it is good to be around people who have qualities we lack.

[He's not so convinced.]

[precedented]

Oh? You're a fountain of wisdom today, Loki. And who shared this with you?

[complicatedliar]

I am a fountain of wisdom every day.

[He falls silent for a moment, then huffs a little laugh.] My mother.

[precedented]

[ Leto hums. ]

A wise woman was she, the All-Mother of Asgard.

[complicatedliar]

[He knows this, now. In his (rare) self-reflective moments, he knows she had tried to tell him a great deal and he'd ignored her. And he knows he should heed her warnings. He knows he ought to have listened while he had the change.]

And never appreciated for it.

[precedented]

That is often the way it is for parents. But she knew. It was not in vain, Loki, though the end was sore.

[complicatedliar]

She knew everything, I think sometimes.

[precedented]

[ Leto has no fond connections to his mother and father, though their spirits reside in him. Trying to look for answers in them had always left him bereft, but Leto knew not all families were like that. ]

She knew you.

[complicatedliar]

[He laughs.] To her sorrow.

[precedented]

It is best not to attribute your sorrows to hers. They are not the same.

[complicatedliar]

I can only guess at her sorrows. [He hadn't listened enough to know when there was time.]

[precedented]

It is best not to imagine it.

[ Leto sighs. ] I spent years wondering how my meeting my father would go. Hoping he'd come back. Shelter me. Save me. Such things were never meant to be placed on a person's shoulders.

I do not think your mother would want you to ponder such sadness.

[complicatedliar]

Fathers are fair worthless creatures from all I have seen. [He has opinions about dads.]

Yet I think her sorrows ought not be forgotten, and who else shall remember them?

[precedented]

I think she would prefer her joys, her life than the sorrow of her death.

[ That's how his mother would have preferred it. ] My mother gave me life. She knew what it would cost. I resented her for it, for a long time.

Do not forget, but do not let it be the sum of a person.

[complicatedliar]

Perhaps it has been too long since I knew her joy. And who brought her joy was a different Loki who is long since gone. [The bright, quick boy who everyone had thought was her son and Odin's. Before he'd become an object of masculine despair, really.

He touches Leto's cheek lightly.]

I regret, but I do not resent her for anything. Anything I might count as a sin against me was the responsibility of Odin.

[precedented]

[ He tilts into Loki's touch, eyelashes fluttering. ]

The sins of the parent often bloom in the children they bear.

[complicatedliar]

And thus are we all born into the unfairness of the universe.

[precedented]

I don't mind it.

Do you?

[complicatedliar]

On the whole, I like it better than the notion that all good and ill is deserved.

[precedented]

I've never understood that concept to begin with.

[ Mostly because Leto is far too old to address morality in black and white. ]

[complicatedliar]

[Dryly:] It is an excellent way for those privileged with good fortune to convince themselves that they deserve their superiority.

[precedented]

It is a societal construct. We've discarded most of it in the future and that was a failing in its own right. They found different ways to demonstrate superiority.

[complicatedliar]

How do those of your time lord it over the less fortunate? [It is always interesting to hear new things, even if it's just humans.]

[precedented]

You assume they come in contact with the poor. I can assure you, they don't usually bother.

[ But he considers this. ]

The Harkonnens used to have tournaments. That's how the poor forgot their pain under their rule. The Atreides were more benevolent, but not all that connected to their people. For the people did not need them.

[complicatedliar]

[It isn't as if Loki goes out of his way to rub elbows with the unwashed masses. But his misanthropy tends to cross class, race, and creed. He just despises everyone, with rare exception.]

How curious, that the people did not need their rulers.