paradisa | XXXVI.

[For anyone who got excited about how long baby Hellboy (or Hellbaby, if you like) stuck around, hopefully they won't be too disappointed to see the familiar tall, red figure carefully picking his way through the snow around the castle.

Or to hear his deep voice coming over the journals, for that matter. He pauses in the gardens, carefully brushing snow off the stone bench, though he's not really going to sit down. But it's something to do, as he dictates to the pages.]

I almost forgot yesterday was Ash Wednesday. It's a little weird without a priest, but we didn't have one before for a long time, either. It's hard to keep track of time, here. It'll be Easter again pretty soon, but the last one seems like it was just a short time ago.

[A pause, as he thinks about what happened last year.

Probably he shouldn't dwell on it, so he continues.]

Anyway, for those of you who are new to the way the castle likes to celebrate holidays, I'd stay away from eating anything festive for the next few days. Just a heads up.

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I remember. [ The candy, that is. ]

The castle is generally pleasant during Easter, then?

So far it hasn't done anything overtly creepy, no.

It has respect to spare then.

I don't know if I'd go that far.

Decency?

Maybe "coincidence."

Is everything cruel intended and all that is good only chance?

As far as the castle is concerned, probably.

That seems an unfair judgment.

Do you really think this place has any good intentions?

It has not all been bad.

When you consider that even the good things act as its food...

Then it eats both the good and the bad, does it not?

Right, that's how it works. So everything it throws at us -- good and bad -- is for its own purpose.

Just like life, then. We have never blamed that for the good or the bad.

I don't think life feeds on our reactions to the things that happen to us. [Mostly.]

Do we know for sure that is what the castle lives on, our emotions?

I think they found something during one of the expeditions that said that. It feeds on us.

Just the happy parts or the sad ones too?

All of it.

I think.

Do you not think it is better to be loved, and so, to dole up happiness instead?

Hard to do when the castle likes to make us miserable.

Sometimes we choose to be one or the other.

[He's quiet for a second, thinking about how -- if the castle hadn't taken the effect of alcohol on him -- he'd probably be nothing more than a miserable drunk. Still.]

I guess you're right.

[ She chuckles. ]

Have I changed your mind?

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hellshaped - 2013-03-19 05:16 (UTC) - Expand