[[livejournal.com profile] theatrical_muse] 259 - "I don't understand..."

Dec. 2nd, 2008 11:05 am
prodigalwatcher: (Not What I Used To Be)
[personal profile] prodigalwatcher
259 - Write a prompt that begins with the words: "I don't understand..."

"I don't understand."

Illyria turned to look at me with that wide-eyed, head-tilted expression that I had come to associate with her being surprised at my powers of observance or deduction.

"Exactly that," she answered. Just the tone of her voice was enough to chill the blood. I had never heard any being sound so utterly dispassionate in one moment and then sneeringly dismissive in others.

I frowned. "Exactly what don't you understand?"

The expression disappeared. Apparently, I had just reduced that estimation. "Don't."


Sighing, I leaned against the same railing that the God-King had been perched beside for hours that day, staring down at the anthill chambre that was the Wolfram & Hart lobby. Workers of various degrees of evilness rushed to and fro, doing their jobs, coming to work, leaving work, going on break, meeting for trysts in the copy room. I glanced down at the bustle, then back at Illyria.

"I appreciate a good mystery as well as complex syntax, Illyria, but I'm afraid you're going to have to give me some more to work with."

"I'm," she parroted back. "You're. Don't."

I blinked. "Contractions. You don't understand contractions?" I was aghast. Over the course of the last few days, Illyria had interrogated me on everything from popular entertainment to automobiles to the online porn that Spike liked to browse on the company computers. But this was... new.

"What is their purpose?" Illyria was, as always, deathly serious.

I shrugged. "To join two words into a single, more compact word having the same meaning. 'I am'. 'You are'. 'Do not'. Contractions are nothing more than grammatical tools of expediency."

"Expediency." Illyria seemed to turn the concept over in her head. "You wish to communicate faster."

"Yes."

It was time for the disdain to return to her tone. "Why? Your language is so pitifully simple already. Small brains, primitive methods of communications... and yet you wish to simplify even further. Why?"

She really did have a way with words. "To save time, I suppose."

Something that might almost be a smile quirked at the corner of Illyria's mouth. "Saving time," she repeated, imbuing the words with the kind of condescending amusement only a would-be higher being could muster. "The most ridiculous of all your notions."

"A figure of speech," I retorted.

"A fallacy. Time is infinite. One of the few words of any worth your kind has created is 'continuum'. Time is an ocean without end. One cannot save it, spend it, waste it or kill it." Illyria gazed back down at the anthill. "And yet, humanity is obsessed with it. You attempt to beat it back with science and religion, try to deny its inexorable advance."

I shook my head. "We're mortal, Illyria. Our time is finite, and most of us wish to fill those moments with as much as we can. Most of us want to live as fully as we can before we cannot."

"And you, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, why are you not... living fully?"

A breath. A pause. And yet, I had no answer.

Illyria inclined her head toward me. "I do not-- I don't understand."

"Neither do I."


(524)

OOC Note: Illyria mentioned is [livejournal.com profile] not_the_shell, and is used with the mun's kind permission.

Date: 2008-12-02 08:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fakingitsomehow.livejournal.com
OOC: GAH, Wesley & Illyria angst. Really well-done.

Date: 2008-12-02 09:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prodigalwatcher.livejournal.com
OOC: Thank you! Yes, they are an endless source.

Date: 2008-12-02 08:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_freaksrus/
OOC: That was great!

Date: 2008-12-02 09:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] prodigalwatcher.livejournal.com
OOC: Thank you very much!

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Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

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