Collette leaves her hand there for now, listening and absorbing what he's said. Her expression changes very little from that open, sympathetic, slightly worried face. She can admit to herself that certainty helps. Uncertainties are the ones that eat you up. Wondering how her brother will be in the aftermath of the war, if he'll ever know how she died. He'd care, she doesn't doubt that at all, but will there be monuments to the fallen in the Yeerk War? Will they believe a bunch of kids from the halls of the children's hospital sacrificed everything in a desperate gamble for the future of Earth?
They better. She believes they have to, though it's so abstract, thinking about the world you'll never see again.
Armin has to worry about the one he will see, about his family there, what will happen to them, how long they'll be safe, when that safety will be brutally ripped away.
"We never get to know the future for sure. I guess here, we can cheat a little, if people come from the same world but further down." It happens every so often, but... "At the same time, that's part of the mystery in living. It's not always nice, but it has hope built right in, because as long as you're alive or moving forward after something, you have a chance. So even if you don't know what's happening with your family, or what will, it won't be happening without you."
It's when you die that you know nothing is going to have a "next," not in the classic manner of thinking. Reincarnation doesn't mean preserving the attachments of one life in the same way, though you may find those souls again somewhere along the chain of lives and existence within the one. "I'm sorry that it feels worse with him gone. it's a lot easier when you have family around you, even -- kind of especially -- here."
Or else you make your own, for a lack of familiarity from home that dwells in your quiet moments when no one needs to know you're blindingly homesick for what you can never have. Collette can't, won't fixate on any of that. Thanksgiving, the idea of giving thanks, is built in so firmly as part of her way of existence that what she feels is the gladness of having any chance at all, meeting new people, making new friends, seeing new things in a world-wide adventure.
Even if it's started with another conscription into war.
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They better. She believes they have to, though it's so abstract, thinking about the world you'll never see again.
Armin has to worry about the one he will see, about his family there, what will happen to them, how long they'll be safe, when that safety will be brutally ripped away.
"We never get to know the future for sure. I guess here, we can cheat a little, if people come from the same world but further down." It happens every so often, but... "At the same time, that's part of the mystery in living. It's not always nice, but it has hope built right in, because as long as you're alive or moving forward after something, you have a chance. So even if you don't know what's happening with your family, or what will, it won't be happening without you."
It's when you die that you know nothing is going to have a "next," not in the classic manner of thinking. Reincarnation doesn't mean preserving the attachments of one life in the same way, though you may find those souls again somewhere along the chain of lives and existence within the one. "I'm sorry that it feels worse with him gone. it's a lot easier when you have family around you, even -- kind of especially -- here."
Or else you make your own, for a lack of familiarity from home that dwells in your quiet moments when no one needs to know you're blindingly homesick for what you can never have. Collette can't, won't fixate on any of that. Thanksgiving, the idea of giving thanks, is built in so firmly as part of her way of existence that what she feels is the gladness of having any chance at all, meeting new people, making new friends, seeing new things in a world-wide adventure.
Even if it's started with another conscription into war.