#vialio

I don’t buy into any of this astrology nonsense, obviously. But knowing it is more or less mandatory when dating, so I do pay the bare minimum of attention. I was born under Noreng with Lofsing and Rede Kufku in retrograde.

That supposedly means all kinds of things about my elemental affinities and personality. It means a positive connection with Wind, Noreng’s element, and traits like education, the color purple, and dance. Supposedly speaking in the color of your affinity has special spiritual power. There’s a lot more as well, but it’s all as boring as you would expect. Sulmere thinks we don’t get along because their primary sign, Kufku is in retrograde for me. It’s not because they’re a shitty parent or something, obviously. It’s because of magic.

The writer tells me that retrograde planets are a rarity in Earth astrology, but they’re very common here. After asking them a few questions, I figured the reason out. Earth astrology is based on the concept of the universe orbiting your planet. If you presume that, it creates the occasional illusion that the other planets are moving backward. That’s “retrograde.”

Most astrology in the various cultures of Darisa based their measurements on the presumption that the stars and heavenly bodies orbit Kur, our largest moon. Based on the geometry that creates, you will find retrograde orbits happening very frequently.

…

I am completely calm when it’s appropriate to be. Sometimes people think they can get away with pushing me around or bullying just because I’m young and I have to put them in their place. But I never do that when it’s inappropriate.

And how am I supposed to know that someone founded an entire region dozens of lives back? They wanted me to basically give away half my business! It shouldn’t matter who they were if they presume that I’ll just hand over everything I’ve worked so hard like it’s nothing at all. And I didn’t say anything that was actually wrong about what they were wearing.

I think everyone made some missteps there. But people I’m working with can’t be bothered to tell me some critical piece of information, it’s more their fault if negotiations get heated than mine.

Having the time to calm down after YOUR PARENT MAKES AN ASS OF THEMSELF. Because that certainly isn’t possible within just a few lives. UGH.

I had to talk to the writer a bit before I understood your question. Initially I just thought you were demanding the meaning of life from me. But then I realized that you were asking something even more absurd. The writer tells me that you presume that having too much life is bad. That there comes a point when being alive is a negative.

However. Perspective changes enormously between lives. This is something I don’t suppose you will have had opportunity to appreciate. It isn’t just your visible body that changes. You have a new brain, with all the quirks and nuances that come with something like that. There’s a reason we take new names with each lifetime we live.

Broken bones. You can’t hear me right now, but I am laughing like you can’t believe. Vialio doesn’t get to answer this one. They would just say “No, everyone I know is stupid and irresponsible. Also, Sulmere has no money and I just can’t stand that in general.”

Let’s see. They decided to start their own Siasha temple in their first life. They were so short at that point that they were even smaller than someone who has just persisted. You don’t see children often, so it’s kind of odd to think of how small that is, but they marched into the our town’s temple and made the declaration, bold as brass. Obviously not much came of that. There aren’t any rules explicitly against it, but in your first life you obviously don’t really have any kind of independent legal standing. We barely had enough folks to keep a whole temple (and I use the term ‘temple’ generously, here) going, so splitting that wouldn’t have worked.

What else, what else… They ran for office quite a few times in their second and third lives. I’m not sure that really counts as “rebellious” since within the system, but their speeches were something else. If you think that Vialio’s temperament is a little rough now, you would have done a double take back then. They generally ran on the “you are all lazy and nothing you do is right, but I am here to fix you” platform. Which never really went over too well. Honestly, I feel like they will probably get back into politics one of these lives. And they’ll probably be pretty good at any office they manage to get.