Winn reponders upon the Before people. Though cursed with crude communication, their wonder was in their long lifespans. These giants could reach ages upwards of 100 years or more which would have seemed like an impossibly long time to Winn had he not recently experienced simulated Time in terms of the far end of the number scale. Still, 100 years is nothing to turn your snout up at. The oldest person he ever knew had been his last living greatgrandguardian who had returned to Mother when Winn was a youngbun. This person reached the impressive old age of 49 and only had their Light depart after being captured and then repeatedly requesting to be publicly executed after the final humiliating defeat of the headless decaying Solar Kingdom by revolutionary forces. Well, at least that's the story that his guardian had revealed to him when he turned 10 years old and reached his long anticipated social adulthood.
"Ah yea dude it's all good, you know I'm here for you" zips from Theon into Winn's moderately rejuvenated mind as the mossgreen deerkind's arms loosen and gently sets Winn back down on the pale pads and regained strength of his own footpaws.
"Of course. Yes. Thank you...Theon" is all he needs to respond as they understood each other as fully and naturally as any two people who trust and depend on each other to live and grow.
As far as supernatural experience go, this is not one at all for Winn. He and Theon have spent every day the last few months hugging and holding each other as do the rest of his university peers and professors. That night of the first day that Winn and Theon had gotten acquainted they began to sleep in each others arms in their shared nestroom. This had been the case with most new pairs that formed that day in the classroom. Sure, there are a few sweethearts and best buds who have stuck together since Year 1 or even enrolled as a pair, but the vast majority of student pairs are made up of people who are often total strangers to each other at first.
Frictionless understanding and cooperation is the way of Mother's Pearl. For many professors at university and for academics in other institutions, it was typical for them to have no foreknowledge or expectation to learn of another's feelings and beliefs before forming what can be a strictly professional physical relationship. Clove, that rabbit magician with too much color in their eyes, once spoke of how it had been evolutionarily imperative for these bodies to discover the means of transforming and making sacred their unique vulnerability: a physical dependency on companionship. No person in this world can be alone for too long or they will succumb to loneliness and their Light will be drawn back to Mother. The tolerances of how long and what closeness of intimacy are unique from person to person and so forming a persisting pair can be a somewhat annoying process of trial and error pairing. Here in this modern era of the 14th year of Light, it is not even a conscious thought for prospective student pairs to gauge their compatibility through the mindspeak network of the university. They openly broadcast their parameters and automatically find everyone available who fits into their range of tolerance. Theon could have found himself content to pair with just about anyone and was happy to watch one particular anyone so excitedly climb down out from the Light of the sky and towards this Pearlbound deerkind.
Their mutual exchange of Light satisfying them, the two deerkind continue towards their shared inevitable goal. With the stability that walking coupled with his mindspeak comm grants his fractured mind, Winn slowly pulls inward to dwell and so did his companion Theon retire to his own dwelling. The two of a kind set out on their auditorily ambient final stretch through the earthen and autumn toned Path. They share in the occasional transmission and helping hand as Winn dwells on transmission itself. This he considered to be the greatest blessing that Mother bestowes upon everykind. Winn considers the mindspeak comm affixed to the base of his antler, the marvel of modern information and communication enhancing technology that make citywide organization possible. It had been developed and distributed widely in the city through the spontaneous and highly complex worker and academic organizations that sprang up during and after the conclusion of the Sunking's unfulfilled nightmare.
It was strange to consider that the same technology that now gave him some peace of mind had began its development first as a tool of social regulation which then made its way into the hands of that eccentric tinkerer and then became a weapon of domination. Some foolish soul housing a little too much Light willingly went and got mindtrapped in that metal crown and had become a marionette of loneliness and insecurity. He ponders on how the problem with creating something that lets you push all your emotional regulation dampeners to one side is that those newly unrestrained feelings and compulsions can not be content to stay within that one mind. They puppet and use your capacities of intelligence, intuition, and judgement to find their vector into every mental medium like a virus through a host.
Winn has lived through quite enough mindbending by way of the displaced actions of absent players for several lifetimes. He feels ready to let go of the past and to get on with Life. His mind begins to open to the possibility that it is time to replace the parts of himself that he's lost and forgotten on his journey with what he has found by Mother's gentle grace. The final ascent awaits Winn and Theon and they slowly and steadily make their way up that gradually receding hill.
As the two souls crest that final rising motion of the Path, Winn spots the Gate. His body feels lighter. He finds himself walking faster and faster, only hampered by Theon's secure grip on his hand. He can't manage a jog but as his pair picks up the pace, Winn is pulled along. They both cross the last checkpoint hand in hand, that final doorway through which Winn was endlessly assured in the reward for his faith and perseverance. He bolts through the Gate secure in knowing that there is only descent left into that garden of Life and knowledge. He has lost so many things dear to him in mind and body, parts that he may never again access in this Life, but there, within the deepest chamber of his heart, Winn feels that he would rather forget and not slow down.
