"Do you ever wonder about destiny?"
I looked up from what was left of my serving of salmon in cream sauce.
We'd finally browsed past the less mobbed parts of the promenade, ending up in a place that I wouldn't have set foot in not a few years prior. The place could be described as 'pleasantly posh', with a balcony overlooking that section of the promenade and offering a more or less encompassing view of the festivities.
Like I said, wouldn't have set foot in, if it weren't for the fact that I apparently owned a quarter of it. Or that was what my investment counselor told me.
We'd been having a pleasant silence between us for most of the meal, when she'd sprung that question on me.
"Sure. Doesn't everybody? Though I mostly think it's something we're here to defy. More often than not I just don't care. Shrug, move on."
She laughed softly, nodding, then sipped her coffee.
Coffee?
Eeek. Bitter.
I winced. Did somebody switch our orders?
Possibly, since she was doing something along those lines as well.
We switched cups.
"I've always tended to believe in it. A sort of ... grander destination we are all travelling towards."
I sipped as Maetel spoke. Odd. This one seemed too sweet. I didn't mind that too much, but ...
"It's not necessarily wrong," I shrugged, frowning a bit at the passing moonlight. "Maybe the scope is a little bigger than I've ever bothered with. I'd like to believe in free will and making one's own choices and all that."
"Free Will," she cocked her head, her voice sounding oddly ... out of synch. "The condition of a human soul is perplexing, don't you think? The balance of light contrasted with darkness."
There was _something_ wrong with this picture, I thought as constellations floated up above and the smell of saltwater tickled my nostrils.
"There's no such thing as an absolute, when you really come down to it, I think," what the hell was that ringing in my ears, anyway? "Or maybe I'm just playing Trigon's advocate."
"Indeed, mirror image. Picture perfect. Subtly different from before," the sheer emotionless candor of the statement momentarily floored me, and I could hear the faint sound of china shattering on the floor. "Was your hair always gray?"
"What?" I replied, blood draining from my face as the vastness spun for a moment and then ...
"Katz? Is everything alright?"
I looked up from what was left of my serving of salmon in cream sauce.
My head felt ... odd. The closest I could compare it to was the feeling you get right after you wake up from having passed out. Sort of ... cottony and tingling.
There was a vague, fading recollection of something that I had ... been trying to hold onto?
...
I blinked.
The panorama of the promenade to my left, Fen milling about below, the ceiling in its Saturn configuration again, and everything else perfectly normal.
Maetel was kneeling beside me, one hand on my shoulder, giving me a concerned look with the most brilliantly green pair of eyes I'd ever seen.
I have no idea why I did what I did next, but apparently I didn't mess it up too badly.
Next I knew, I was pulling back, the palm of my hand still cupping on of her cheeks, and the voice of a waiter excusing himself for interrupting sounding from somewhere doorabouts.
"That was ... very pleasant," Maetel blushed faintly. "But why ...?"
A number of insanely inappropriate comments were momentarily shot and buried within my mind, because there was a time and place for that sort of thing, and this were neither one nor the other.
"I ... don't know? No. That's not really true," I said slowly. "But there was a moment there I was insanely grateful that you were you."
"Who else would you think I was?" She said, not accusing, but genuinely curious.
I shook my head in puzzlement. Why did I say that?
I knew it was true, but other than that realization, there was nothing _there_.
Well, whatever it was, it could wait.
"You're right, though. It was very pleasant. Shall we leave it at that for the moment?"
Which was when I found myself on the receiving end.
And, hell, could the girl kiss.
Ah, dream sequences. Or, in this case, daydream sequences. The stuff WTF? is made of.
Yes, Schrdinger has gray hair. He doesn't realize it, though. It's like a mental block. And since he's already been like that when going up in the Uncertainty for the first time, everybody thinks it's either a dye job, or that it's always been like that.
And yes, this has a point. Whether I'll ever get to it is another matter altogether.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm