I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed. - Paulo Coelho
Timestamp: Summer 81, 515 AV
She would be the one to do it, she could feel it in her bones. Within the hollowed places of the morrow, against the grain of ivory. It seeped into her muscles, the tendons and ligaments that bound them. She could feel it in the way they ached. The way they groaned as moisture slipped into the air, collection of the morning's dew off the grass, and remnants blown over from the not so distant bay. She could hear its crashing, hear its roar, just a loudly as the ringing bells that circulated her mind. They seemed a memory, but they were no more than an aggravating haze within her ears, or perhaps, a signal that she had happened onto something, that for once, was a truth among so many lies. For the world was filled with them, and she found that as she aged, it became all the more difficult to sift through them all. To know which way to look first, and where to begin, as they all kept on piling up all around her to the point where she felt as though she were being buried by them. To the point where she felt like she was choking; drowning within them as they enveloped her. As she fell again, only to find a cushion at the bottom, waiting for her. A cushion of thoughts she could not categorize. Could not place on either side of the fence, as one or the other.
Talya sighed as she sat out on the grass, looking out over the world. She could see the sun upon the horizon, peaking out over what looked to be a more rural district of the city. She breathed deep, in through her nose and out through the mouth, as its golden veil blanketed the earth, and the thought that she would be the one to find the truth and the lies of all things came to her once again. Or rather, what was right, and what was wrong. Not in the way of opinion, but actuality, which she supposed, was all that really mattered, even if your heart and your mind didn't always agree with what was found, or what was said. The thought, she found, was melancholic, and brought a frown to her face, as everything she had known, and everything she had ever grown up experiencing, was that Rhysol was good, even if you couldn't always see that he served powers greater than your individual self. Such was the way of fate. Such, was the way of destiny. It was a cruel mistress; a loveless entanglement that followed you through life, until the moment you left it, and it abandoned you as easily as a leaf did its tree during the fall.
Talya sighed again. It was not a pleasant thought. She didn't often like to think of her destiny, nor even her fate because of it. But sometimes, she found, that she had to. Sometimes, she wondered how much their hands played a part. Sometimes, she wondered how much her own did. She pulled her legs into her chest, bending them at the knee. She raised her hands from her side, and set the elbows against the twisted knob of bone below. The rest of her arm leaned over the side of her limb, but she raised them a little higher, so that she could see her outstretched fingers. Her nails, and the dirt that had formed a thin layer of crust behind them. She blinked, as she turned them over slowly. How much could they do? How much of a role did they, or any other part of herself, truly play within the grand scheme of her fate? Her ultimate quest to find the validity in what was either considered good, or evil before she dropped dead? How much free will did she really have? How much of a free will did anyone truly experience? For the gods... they made everyone didn't they? And the strings they tied to their toys, left them little more than puppets.
Didn't it?