The Once-ler (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
whichwayyoulean) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
paradisa2012-08-14 08:30 pm
whichwayyoulean) wrote in paradisa2012-08-14 08:30 pm
Entry tags:
Ten Truffula Trees
[Ted's arrival was unexpected, to say the least. Even more unexpected was the story that came with the boy. Things were not completely lost. They got BETTER. The damage he'd done was beginning to be mended. And he got to live to see it, something the Once-ler had long given up on. Sure, it took a long, long fifty years for someone to come around who cared enough to make things- Oh.
And then, very, very carefully, the Once-ler writes in his journal, as the dawning realisation hits]
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
[The last part, he speaks, with the sigh of someone putting the final piece of a jigsaw together. A piece that has been lost under the metaphorical sofa for a long time, leaving the picture incomplete. Until now. He casts a glance at the nearest wall. The Unlesses are still scrawling their way along the surface. Of course they are. Just because he knows what the word MEANS now, doesn't mean that the message is any less important. In fact now it's more so.
...Besides, he knows only too well it's supposed to be a reminder. He did something unforgivable, and regardless of if it would be fixed or not, that fact remains the same. He can't and won't forgive HIMSELF for what happened to the Valley. It would be doing the Lorax a great disservice if he did. When he finally speaks into the journal again, his tones still have that quiet, underlying sadness to them; that self-loathing that would never go away. But this time there's something else as well. Something almost like hope. A very begrudging hope, as if just having it put everything in danger of falling apart again. But hope, all the same]
So. Someone from my world showed up. From the future at that. I need to remember to ask him if they have flying cars yet. That would be cool.
And then, very, very carefully, the Once-ler writes in his journal, as the dawning realisation hits]
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.
It's not.
[The last part, he speaks, with the sigh of someone putting the final piece of a jigsaw together. A piece that has been lost under the metaphorical sofa for a long time, leaving the picture incomplete. Until now. He casts a glance at the nearest wall. The Unlesses are still scrawling their way along the surface. Of course they are. Just because he knows what the word MEANS now, doesn't mean that the message is any less important. In fact now it's more so.
...Besides, he knows only too well it's supposed to be a reminder. He did something unforgivable, and regardless of if it would be fixed or not, that fact remains the same. He can't and won't forgive HIMSELF for what happened to the Valley. It would be doing the Lorax a great disservice if he did. When he finally speaks into the journal again, his tones still have that quiet, underlying sadness to them; that self-loathing that would never go away. But this time there's something else as well. Something almost like hope. A very begrudging hope, as if just having it put everything in danger of falling apart again. But hope, all the same]
So. Someone from my world showed up. From the future at that. I need to remember to ask him if they have flying cars yet. That would be cool.