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[dragony]

It's been a while, but I suppose I'm curious—and it's hard to do much for curiosity, once it's born, is there? Some feelings can't be snuffed out, once they exist, no matter how much you might wish for it.

[ The voice is that of a young woman, somewhere between late teens and early twenties, lower-middle pitch and a steady cadence. A little tired, perhaps a little bored, but not irritably so. ]

Darkness, Earth, Water, Light, Wind, or Flame.

Choose one, please. But, before you do, know that there's no right answer, or wrong answer, and there's no moral component to any of them. "Light" doesn't mean good; "darkness" doesn't mean evil. Only whichever suits you. Something a little trivial, perhaps, but I'd like to hear your answers.

Thanks.

Comments

[dragony]

Hmm, well... I arrived in this world in January of last year, but I was first brought to a world like this long before that. To that world, it was six years this past February.

I haven't seen my hometown since.

[hisheartsdesire]

[He gasps in awe and surprise.] Oh, I hadn't actually realized there were other worlds specifically like this one, where people are taken from other places as well.

[She'd have to be used to acclimatising to various situations, then.]

I hope it's not too personal to ask if you've ever wanted to see your hometown after being away for so long... [But he wonders if she has, or if and how often she thinks about it.]

[dragony]

Were. A very small minority of imPorts here are refugees from another foreign world like this, where we first gained that title.

... There are... parts. That I would want to see again. But the way things are, "I" wouldn't "return" there, if I were to exPort.

[hisheartsdesire]

[A pause. Does she mean to say that other foreign world no longer exists? He'd ask about that if her following remark hadn't been even more curious.]

But what do you mean, that you wouldn't return there? I'm afraid I don't understand.

[dragony]

When an imPort is exPorted, that is, returned to their place of origin, they return to the exact moment they left, with neither the memory nor the experience of having ever been imPorted in the first place. This is how different people from the same universe, the same microcosm of reality, can arrive here from two different points in time, but have no knowledge of this place. The one who departed from the earlier time period does not go back to tell of their adventures or warn others; those that depart later know that the other never left to begin with. You cannot change your future, with what happens here. You cannot change your past, either.

If I saw my hometown again, I'd be as I was when I left. So the girl who would return home... she wouldn't be the one who missed it, in the first place.

[hisheartsdesire]

Oh, I see. Someone— [Dorian Gray, actually.] —told me that people come and go, sometimes for unpredictable stretches of time if they don't leave altogether. And it's not so easy to tell which is the case when either happens. But to not have memories about this place after leaving? He didn't say anything about that.

Still, that seems to explain some things. Thank you, for explaining all that.

[dragony]

Sure.

There is no way to tell, by the way. I've seen some extended departures last years without any intervening memory loss. It's always rather disorienting for them, unfortunately; the world changes so rapidly.

[hisheartsdesire]

I guess that might be said of time here and whenever people go back. He said the first that he'd left, seven years had passed at home; the last he was exported, only a month or so had passed before his return. But I suppose what you're saying is that we ultimately have no control of any aspect of it, then?

[That's unsettling, but only if he thinks about it too much. Might as well nip that in the bud by acknowledging it's completely out of their hands.]

[dragony]

The lengths can be long on this end, too: they seem to be "home" for only a day, but when they return here, to us, months or years may have passed, too.

But you are right. We are not the masters of fate.

[hisheartsdesire]

I question that anyone has any control here at all.

[dragony]

I wouldn't say so. Not about the big things, anyway; I'm merely grateful when I can take one step after the other, and still wind up where I expected to go.