circumitus: This is drunk and confused... (this is worse than naked and afraid)
【Rey】 ([personal profile] circumitus) wrote in [community profile] ataraxion2015-03-02 11:24 am

011✖; (voice)

"People tend to believe in something, whether it's gods, a god, some sort of afterlife or nothing at all. Nothing can be something, can't it?

"In any case, the belief in the soul and that it goes somewhere after the body dies has surprisingly been a subject of interest these last few years. Is the soul a thing that is natural, and can it be created out of something that is unnatural?

"What happens to the vessel once it's no longer occupied by whatever makes you you?"

['You are a vessel. You are born to die.' Those were among the first words she's ever heard, and yet the connotation behind them are unsettling for her now.]

"Is there any place like a Heaven or a Hell for a thing that's not born but made by a person, or is it more likely that we just disappear entirely once the vessel dies?"

[Death had never been a scary prospect for her before. Not when she had something that she wanted to live and die for. She almost misses being empty, when she didn't have to worry about the things she would leave in the likely events of her eventual demise. Everything has an expiration date, after all.

[DEEP THOUGHTS coming from the lounge with booze.]
worthtempting: (this stone; this heart)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-03 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
One is saved by being good, and following the teachings of the Lord, and one is damned by committing evil deeds and following the wicked ways of the Devil.

[it sounds rote when she says it, though it is perfectly true. sophie just happens to be the soulless twin.]

Or, I suppose, one suicides and is consigned to the eternal purgatory of the Onyx realm, from whence the Elder Creatures came.

The twin without the soul, though, they cannot commit sin or know grace. Their words and deeds leave no mark on the soul, for better or worse.
worthtempting: (something like a girl)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-03 09:40 pm (UTC)(link)
You do? I don't suppose the soul business applies, though.

[christine hates sophie, for not feeling the devil's temptations. for not being the one responsible for their fate. for good and evil not being so starkly simple as she'd like. for sophie stubbornly refusing to be her sins or her whipping boy or anything other than sophie.]

What is your twin like?
worthtempting: (dust in my head)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-04 04:10 am (UTC)(link)
He killed nearly as soon as he was born, but he is the better of you?

[it's a question, but she's not skeptical. it's a complex thing, being good.]

Mine...tries. She certainly fears the Devil as much as one should. No one wants to be damned.

[she pauses. when it comes down to it, sophie doesn't really understand good and evil. without a soul, there's no intrinsic comprehension of such things. love and hate, kindness and unkindess, sure, but not good and evil.]

But I don't know what will become of us in the end.
worthtempting: (there's a hollow at the end of the road)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-04 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Is self-control a measure of goodness? I'm not sure where acceptance ranks on that scale.

[it's not a facetious statement. if self-control was a measure of goodness...well. how could anyone get to heaven?]

For most it is the fear of damnation, an eternity spent in hate and torment. For my family, it's...more personal.
worthtempting: (dust in my head)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-05 02:39 am (UTC)(link)
I'm fairly sure that part of being evil is doing bad things with knowing and purpose. It's important, yes. But a sorcerer attempting to do evil requires as much control as one intending to do good.

[there's a pause, long enough to edge toward awkwardness, where it seems like sophie might not even be breathing, and then a sigh.]

People fear damnation because an eternity of torment will inevitably be unpleasant. I have met the Devil, and glimpsed the seat of his power. He has whispered into the ears of my brothers and sisters. Mostly, it seems people save or damn themselves without his help, but it is personal, between us.
worthtempting: (like a castle made of sand)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-06 06:29 am (UTC)(link)
[this time, the breath sophie lets out sounds wryly amused.]

The one with the soul, of course. She fears the Devil well enough, but she also thinks killing me will absolve her of...something. She would take my sins as hers as though that would forgive her own.

That said, I am not really capable of judging her. In most things not related to me, I think, she is good, but she is blind to the truth of many things.
worthtempting: (i can't be your saint)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-06 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)
In this case, it would only drive her toward damnation.

Oh no, I have a heart. I feel. But I do not have the burden of saving or damning two. I know what it feels like, to be damned, but God has no interest in one like me. Which is fine, I've had enough interest.

[and when it comes down to it, as the one with the soul, christine has some control over sophie. she has just fought all of her life to resist that control, to remain herself instead of an extension of her twin.]
worthtempting: (that matters more than survival)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-07 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
[rey's words make sophie remember what the devil had said to her that night: i think you would be happier. the insidious thing about the devil is that he is quite likely right. sophie's suffering would have ceased the moment she ceased to be sophie. the devil would have loved her, or at least the creature he shaped her to be, and there is a sort of joy in taking pride in one's damnation.

but then she would not be sophie.
]

It might be easier. It is simple to live an existence where the choices are all made for you. But that is not the existence I have chosen.
worthtempting: (so low that you can't get under)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-07 04:18 am (UTC)(link)
That is what I don't want to happen to me.

[she has the idea that rey may not have had the freedom, or perhaps the power, to resist. sophie has no soul, but she was still born from the body of a woman, an individual and not simply a vessel. or perhaps she was born an empty vessel, to fill as she chose.]

But you are free of them now, here?
worthtempting: (i did not come here for saving)

voice, private

[personal profile] worthtempting 2015-03-07 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[she had meant well, in her wish to be worth tempting. she had meant well, telling manfred to hold on to whatever love he could find in this world. she had meant well, drawing on the red to face the devil. she had meant well, trying to keep francescu from her father's legacy. or, at least, she had partially meant well. christine meant to save them, trying to murder sophie.]

Meaning well does not seem to count for terribly much, in the end.