(no subject)

Do you understand?

It's about contact. It's about the bits of yourself you leave behind in the keeping of others, and the fragments of them that they give to you, and the way they can make you whole. The way they can make you see.

It's about taking a space, and filling the void. About leaving something behind, about taking something with you, no matter how tiny.

It's about loving -- because that's the only thing that endures. Even hate, which is the only thing as strong, corrodes. It burns you up and eats away at you until there's nothing left of you or of it. Apathy drifts away, gets blown to wisps in the face of the smallest sighing whisper of caring.

It's about taking someone's hand, about holding someone dear, and never letting go of them-the-way-they-are-to-you. Even when they change. It's about taking the changes, each new them-as-they-are, and adding it to the previous images, until the whole is so complete that nothing, nothing about them is unloved, even when it's disliked, because it's part of who they are.

It's about doing that again. And again. And again. And never stopping.

Can you love the world?

Can you open up your heart and stretch it around a person? How about another? Another? Can you wrap your heart around a race? A species? A planet full of beings just as lonely and lost and aching and wise and broken and awe-ful as you are? Can you look them in the eyes and see them, and not turn away from your own reflection there? Can you taste their regrets and their bitternesses and the sourness of their defeats, and not seek to wash the taste of your own away?

You can if you make contact.

(no subject)

She awoke to find a different nurse standing beside her bed. In the plastic and metal bassinette lay a tightly-swaddled bundle, eyes shut and black wisps of hair curling wildly.

She smiled, falling through a dizzy, giddy moment of recognition. The nurse reached down and picked the infant up, and as she reached up to take her daughter from the nurse's arms, already jealous of contact, she knew that nothing would ever be the same. Frightened but joyful, she took the baby.

Alys -- Allie? Lyssa, she decided mentally -- woke as the transfer was made, though the infant did not cry. Solemn eyes fastened on hers, and she felt hers widen. Lyssa's eyes were a deep violet. "Where," she asked the baby softly, "did you get those?" There was no response, of course, and she sighed, unwrapping the swaddling and running her fingertips lightly over the baby's tiny legs and toes. Lyssa's skin was wrinkled, tissue-thin, and papery, blue-traced veins visible underneath. "You're so beautiful," she whispered, hugging the baby close. "So beautiful." She didn't notice when the nurse left the room.