(sorry so short)
Act as if in a trance, Amy left her brother with Martha and the four other shiva wolves. She
felt it. Oh gods she felt it! She knew precisely what revision to existence reality had made
now to keep itself consistent. She took some items from her room not waking the other
pups and climbed to the roof (oh how her mother would have shouted at her).
Once safely on the top of the room, Amy sat down, she'd do this at the beach, but this
amazingly had more privacy, and she wanted to be able to feel the sun as she .... as she...
Amy cried, her tears looking like two new lines on her white fur.
"I'm sorry, I'm so, sorry."
Reality, HAD no heart. It's creator did surely, but existence itself had no morals or
consciousness, no pity or cruelty, it simply did natural what path allowed for existence to
heal itself in the most effective manner without erasing a thing totally from existence.
Amy used one of her claws to prick her own paw, drained the blood into a small ink pot,
and taking a calligraphy brush and with talent born of another life time, she write down in
english and kanji the names Marcine and Jack and their family names. Of family and
friends who no longer remembered them even existing. Amy choked back tears again. She
didn't want to smear the writing.
Amy knew the chaos being assimilated harmlessly into reality was needed for existence to
continue without damage... but that didn't mean she had to like it!
Amy wrote names of people who no longer went by those names, had never gone by those
names and those who would never exist now. her blood acting perfectly as ink as she
made her way down the scroll. She thought for a moment, then included what would have
been the names of Trevor and Queen's kittens. Couples who could no longer meet.
Children who could no longer be born.
The brush nearly broke in two in her paw's grip.
And of course, there was Jack and Marcine, two human souls, the most precious thing in
all of creation until the advent of two new species of man now walked the earth. "Don't be
silly Amy," She said to herself in a completely unsure and almost scared tone, "Souls don't
have species or genders or ages...they, they are eternal..."
Amy put the brush back in the tiny ink pot of her own blood. She shivered. "Jack-san...
Marcine-san, I am so sorry for you. If not for the shifts in reality, a cure could have
existed for you, but... if you were never human... there is nothing to revert. I know you
wouldn't understand what I mean by it but, I am so sorry..."
'Is this my punishment for cheating? The reaction to my action?' It made Amy feel sick to
her stomach to think that her removing the power of 'instant devotion' from the
transformation gifts of the pack... wait...
"The cubs didn't transform... the cubs with their power to leap from one location to
another in the real world like Alice and her sisters can in the mirror world..." Amy
wondered... had THAT been the final nail that had caused this punishment as a natural
reaction to pushing reality in one direction to where it would push back? Had the fact the
pups not transformed when brought into the mirror verse... were Jack and Marcine now
paying that price? To be sentient at heart, but to lack the things that made sentience
worth while.
"The more I and Marie-chan try to make sure things in this remade reality work out all
right... the more reality seems to punish us for trying to rewrite fate according to how we
think reality should be... Jack-San, Marcine-San, I beg your souls for forgiveness."
And then there was the rest of the gold deer. They were logically now biologically as
capable of being sapient as Jack and Marcine.... did they all have souls now too? Was that
even within reality's will to make souls from nothing? Or where they like the -things-
Marie Cruz had secretly helped wipe out centuries before, self-aware, but devoid of
anything that made self awareness a noble trait....
Amy didn't WANT to know where those souls came from if it as the former. If it as the
latter, then Jack and Marcine would be unique compared to the rest of their kind till they
died of old age... However long they lasted now with the life span of an uber healthy deer.
'Jack and Marcine accept it as their fate that their herd is meat for the pride and pack even
before reality shifted but... but still..' "At least before Jack and Marcine were respected for
-becoming- what they were... "
Weather they had souls or not was meaningless in the end. The gold deer were sentient or
sentient enough. But they did have a culture, the ability to use tools, a society. All those
deer who Jack and Marcine had attracted before going to Big Bad island had gone from
being limited and confused by what Jack and Marcine had been teaching them, to being as
aware of the universe as they were.
"I know it's not cannibalism," Amy said to herself, "If it's not the same species, then it's not
cannibalism." But hadn't some of the pack been talking about the legendary Big Bad Wolf
as if he was a cannibal in spite of the fact his victims had all been humans?
"Meat with a brain that is aware and understands." Amy thought, "It would have been
kinder if they had just become dumb animals who couldn't fully appreciate their fate." Amy
sighed, "But reality -isn't- kind."
++++++++
"You were a paladin." Marie Cruz said the winged dragon/lion statue (purely atheistic, after
all, gargoyles could carve themselves to resemble nearly anything, but could only function
properly in stone shaped like a winged humanoid), "You were part of a just and honorable
order whose duty was to protect pilgrims on their journey to the holy land. But your king
betrayed you and called you an evil sect.... You came to this holy place for refuge after
seeking refuge with the stone beasts. I will need your help soon to protect those of our
faith. As a Knights Templar, I ask you to fulfill your duty one last time."
The statue didn't move, didn't visible react. Marie Cruz sighed.
In another timeline, she had come to a descendant of a Knight Templar who had carried on
the training and code of his ancestor in secret (though this was hardly the powerful
shadowy sect that later conspiracy theorists would create any surviving templar into). Now
that this man had become stone. She had come to him instead in this timeline.
Marie Cruz walked away. Wondering if in ten years it would be easier to bring a statue or
a gargoyle to the new world.