greatdeduction | PC CATCHALL FOR RIKA

...All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

[He murmurs, eyebrows knitted together.]

I cannot say. But...there's something to this Dust matter, you know? An Angel of Dust...daemons of Dust...the dead turn to Dust...and then can reform enough to the point where they can write us letters. It doesn't bode well, for something that should not have an encore.

I don't understand it well.

But if this does end up being another loop...

[ well. she doesn't finish that thought. ]

[Grimly:]

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. [...] Which you hardly deserve.

And if this isn't a loop, and I return home...

[ back into the frying pan? there's no good answer. ]

... Better to keep your mind on the matters at hand.

[That's right.]

[There's no easy way out.]

I shall. I have no choice to. But the circumstances we bring to the table, I find, matter more than not, sometimes.

[ she thinks about it for a moment... ]

What people come from might change what they're willing to do.

Of course. And you see how that's easily preyed on. Mr. Hoover was a stunning example of that.

I worry that it's too easy for people to say they would never make such a choice, but to wind up doing it anyway as soon as it becomes personal.

...That's what I worry, Miss Rika. It is easy to say no to the devil in your own time, but if he shows up at your doorstep, will one say no, then?

It's not as easy as one may think, to resist temptation.

I don't believe that these angels even have the power to help me, anyway.

[ but she doesn't expect that to hold anymore weight than anyone else's denial. ]

Haha. They make lofty promises, apparently. But we have little to show for whether it can become reality.

[He shakes his head.]

If one must obtain a wish...I think you should grab it by your own power, not by the hands or strings of something else.