Status Updates From Night's Sorceries (Flat Ear...

“What is the point of anything?” unhelpfully returned the witch. “Flesh is dust, life unreal, an illusion, a play we are at.”

She yearned to die, but had not the courage to accomplish it. She yearned to live, and knew this was to be denied her.

The pomp of the proceedings otherwise discomforted Pereban. He had been used to modest and apologetic festivals of death, whereat the gods’ forgiveness was asked for the temerity of having lived at all.

“Say nothing then. You do not need to speak of it to make it so. It has occurred.”
“But I shall think it a dream.”
“All life is thus.”

Babies are born knowing how to cry, but not how to laugh. In the world, however, they quickly get the knack of laughter. This is so now, and was so then, in the time of the earth’s flatness. And perhaps each of these facts—the instinctive equipment with grief, the swift acceptance of pleasure—says at once very much concerning the school of life.