The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.
P
ravda has catalogued, rationalized, placed every aspect of his life into uncomplicated segments. There are chapters. Moments, dissected and studied. Mistakes revisited. Triumphs stored in pristine corners. Every event contains a corresponding lesson; every tragedy has become a teacher; every hope, every dream, mere ink into diaries. This is how he lives: pieced away into controlled memories, thoughts, intentions.(How else can he live, with the aspects of his past that haunt him? How could he ever be an administer of judgement, of justice, if he are a man first and a judge second?)
It had never worked that way.
Pravda had never been a man first; a man with hopes and dreams; a man with wants and desires; a man with a heart and soul.
He had never stepped back to marvel at firelight and stars; he had never thought to regard them as anything other than objects to study, characters to catalogue in a vast store of knowledge.
At least, on the precipice of spring, that is what he would have you believe. At least, when he turns those mismatched eyes and that jagged face toward Ipomoea, the light transforms him from man into statue; from soft into hard; from dreamer into stone.
The man within Pravda had wanted to surprise him; but when Ipomoea pivots to respond to him with the calmness that bespeaks of his Sovereignty, Pravda is reminded of pride’s foolishness. The air between them reminds the scholar of fables and poetry; mystic, smoke-filled, more opaque than clear. Pravda steps closer to answer—
“No,” he says. “But perhaps that is only because I do not believe in wishes at all.”
Znaniya, from where she dozes beneath the trees, stretches out and plucks a dandelion from the soft loam.
“What should I wish for?” she asks, with childish enthusiasm.
Pravda does not know how to respond. He looks at her and then, impulsively, says: “Us.”
In this light, Ipomoea is marked as dramatically as Pravda; his pink eyes seem almost feverishly bright in the way they catch and flicker.
“Only actions,” Pravda adds. “Can make events transpire.”
There are moments, like this one, when he feels as if his words are inadequate; as if there is a sea behind them, turbulent and expressive, that cannot be conveyed by speech.
“May I walk with you? I am still new to this land. Please, show me what you love about Delumine.”
Although phrased like a request, he cannot quite keep the thinly veiled demand from his words, softened insomuch as a blade kept beneath a pillow.
