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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sialia" data-source="post: 1949238" data-attributes="member: 1025">How did one begin? Did you use a knife and fork for this sort of thing?  Or just go for it face-first? Dizzy. Dizzy like the moment when you lose your balance at the peak of the jump and know the ground is too far to be any help, too close to avoid hitting. Dylrath knew the sensation of falling well. He’d done it many, many times.  I am falling, he thought as he leaned forward, leaning his face on Kelsey’s chest. What do I do when I fall? Besides hitting the ground, that is. What would Master Tomtom say? ‘Tumble, you fool.’ If you have to hit the ground, hit it on some part of your body you can afford to bruise. Any landing you limp away from is a good landing. And Master Alix? The lessons of Master Alix were only sometimes in what he said. Mostly they were in watching what he did. The Last Lesson of Master Alix was: Those Who Make Deals with Evil Gods Make Good on their Promises or Spend Eternity in a Bag.  Which went with Tao’s lesson regarding never offering anybody eternal devotion unless you really, really mean it. And with Master Nolin’s object lesson that being suicidal is a good way to get yourself killed. And Cadrienne? Had she ever said anything useful about how to keep it all from going bad, when it all looks like there’s no way left but straight on down into the ground? Apart from the business about how to talk somebody into accepting a spell effect so they couldn’t resist it when it came, which is, incidentally, what that stupid disk is doing to you, he reminded himself. Taught it everything it knows, he thought wryly. Maybe something about not being able to help everybody in the world who needs help, even if you really want to? Something about some people being beyond help? Nah, she never said that. She said soppy things like ‘Hope!’ Hope. What is there to hope for at a moment like this? He thought: I hope I don’t have to eat this body.  I really hope Calphas knows that it’s not ‘cause I’m shirking. It wouldn’t do any good for me to go with Teliaz now--I can’t do anything more for him . . . This has gotten way beyond me. I hope when I die, I die a good clean puking-up-with-fever kind of death and rot for a while and then maybe get eaten by scavengers. And stay dead.  The thought brought a certain bright lucidity to his mind. He imagined himself actually trying to eat Kelsey’s chest.  He snickered.  Say ahhh, he thought, open wide. Wider. No, really, wider.  With this jaw and his scurvy teeth, he wouldn’t even be able to chew through Kelsey’s shirt. He chuckled at his own absurdity.  Pride, he thought. My pride is all soft and squishy. I’ll land on that.  He collapsed in convulsive giggles and slid to the floor. After a bit, he wiped the tears from his eyes. “I think you better go now,” he said quietly. “You’re not coming with?” “’Tempting . . .’” he said using Tao’s intonation out of long habit. “But no.” “Your loss. Well, boss, can’t say I didn’t try!”  After a moment’s doubletake, Dylrath realized it wasn’t addressing him.  “Pity,”Teliaz said, stepping away from Kelsey’s body as He became visible.</blockquote>

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