“I still don’t get it!” the wagoneer so hurled in voice, nearly waving his arm whilst he held that sack full of turquoise glow-stones. “So, you’re telling me that…shooting a person or…anything with a ‘soul’ or whatever in the head…can…but does not always… ‘erase their soul’ or…something like that, and that somehow just…destroys all their mana and whatnot magic, and…this only happens when you…blow their heads off…only ‘the wrong way’?” Indeed, he was still focused on that subject which the foreigner had long thought was no longer relevant.

  The foreigner sighed, holding over her own shoulder a sack full of magenta glow-crystals. She felt she had explained this enough times already… Albeit, granted, this subject was already rather complex and difficult to explain normally, let alone in simplified terms in a tongue she was not necessarily fluent in.

  “It is as I said…” she began to reply; “The head…or the, ehm…the ‘brain’ rather, it is very important; inside the brain is you—everything that…makes you experience the you, if that has the sense. So, to destroy the brain is to…destroy the you and…to destroy all of the experiences and all of the the memories that are…you.”

  “Uhuh, yeah, yeah, you said before, I just…” the wagoneer tried to interpose, yet…

  “Conversely,” the foreigner merely spoke on, “the brain…and also the spine and… Though those are not as important, but… The brain, we can say, also contains…or… It is where your, as I said, the ‘soul’ also…inhabits, we can say. The soul is not you, but it…ehm… Copies?—Yes, that word is better. It copies you, and…makes itself you… But it is still separate. It is not you—it copies the brain and…all of the memories of you and…the feelings and…everything that makes you, making itself essentially you but…it is not you…continuatively, if that has sense…” Her words felt like they were spinning in circles.

  “Yeah, that still doesn’t…” the wagoneer nearly muttered, though he still tried to listen and wrap his head around it all.

  “But regardless, the soul and your…brain or…the mind, I guess that is the better word, they are in the…harmony, I guess that I can say—they can…affect each other, yes.” she thus continued to so attempt to explain… “And so… Normally, when there is death, the brain will…rot and become…the mush, but the soul will… Ehm… Cut itself from it, I guess that I can say—it does not fully do this, because it is remains bounded to…you and remain that way for the long time, but it…cuts enough so that…it does not copy…the rot and…the damage, if that has the sense. But when the brain is struck directly and…at this…certain speed and…the damage is really…bad to this…certain degree, and because the soul copies from the brain, it may…copy the destruction before it can cut itself and so…it erases itself—or well, kind of. And…this, again, does not…always happen; it…depends.”

  “Again with ‘kind of’ and ‘depends’… So, if this shit doesn’t happen every time, then…when… when…” He scratched his head, frustrated by his own persistent confusion; “So, like… A shot to the head can cause this, but… What about an axe to the head? Huh? If all that’s important is if the head’s hurt or not…”

  “Hm… In that…event, it is still possible but more unlikely to happen than with the headshot because…the axe does…the different type of the damage and the speed is…more slow.” the foreigner…answered. “A headshot with the…gun or other…shooters of the fast projectiles, it is the particularly…highest likelihood of…causing this to happen.”

  “The highest?” The wagoneer found that almost unbelievable.

  “…among the highest, I suppose that I could have said…” the foreigner clarified.

  “So, what… If I shove a bomb in a man’s mouth and blow his entire head into shattering spit, that is lower than a round straight in?” the wagoneer so asked, almost more rhetorically than not.

  “In that…event, ehm…the speed could be too fast, so…yes. The entire brain being fully destroyed at once will leave the soul in the…uhm…‘shock’, I guess that we can say—it does not know…of what just happened, to say it that way, only that its…other is now gone.” the foreigner answered; “The possibility of the soul erasing itself…depends on how fast and how bad the damage is, where the damage is, and…if the destruction is incomplete or not.” Among many other potential factors.

  “…uhuh…” His head was frankly starting to throb from this discussion.

  “So, to say… With the headshot, the shot from the back of the head has the lower likelihood than the headshot to the front of the head, because the front is more important. And if, somehow, you were to be…annihilated instantly and reduced to this…pile of…nothingness, your soul may still remain even though the brain has been…reduced to this nothing, because…it happened so fast and so completely that…it is left confused and in shock.” the foreigner…tried to explain. “The…connection, I suppose that I can say, is…cut immediately in that event, with no…damage or any of the things to copy; it continues to hold onto whatever was last…reflected.”

  The wagoneer groaned somewhat as he scratched his aching head; “No offense or anything, little lady, but you just keep making this even more confusing than the last explanation!” he loudly said, frank; “And something’s telling me you don’t quite get what the fuck any of this is either…”

  ? … ? The foreigner remained silent… In a way, he was…kind of accurate. This phenomenon, after all, was not fully or comprehensively understood even by her and those with whom she was associated; there were no rules or predictive ‘laws’ governing, only tendencies and patterns observed and documented. “Well, it is…complicated, if that is the right word. Too much complicated…”

  “Gods’ sacred…” the wagoneer exhaled, having parsed through his confusion… “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever understand whatever your…views are… I guess this is what they call a…‘new world surprise’ or ‘different folk startle’?” he remarked aloud; “I just don’t see things the same way you and your folks do, like at all… I mean, when I grew up, I didn’t even know that thing in our head was important—we thought was just some blood-cooler or something; to me and my folks, the heart was the source of our consciousness and soul…”

  The foreigner immediately looked at him quite blankly, as if having been taken aback by such a primitive presumption… “…you believed that the brain was this…‘blood-cooler? That is…the dumbest thing to think.” Indeed, she was very blunt. “

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  “Well, that is mean of you…” the wagoneer so replied, though he was by no means insulted; if anything, he found humor in her deadpan bluntness.

  “If I were to stab the big stick into your head, and you survived, you would unlikely to be the same you as from before the stabbing of the big stick.” the foreigner so stated. “Surely, your people must have noticed that…those who were hurt in the head so many of the times would change? Struggling to think or to remember, maybe becoming more…uncontrolled or aggressive or uncaring?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s right…” The wagoneer huffed a little; “Though, like I said, that was all when I was growing up… Things were different back then… Now we know better.” he thus remarked. “You know, outside of these big fancy cities and towndoms, most commonfolks don’t really know shit about anything—we aren’t taught anything more than what we needed to know about the seasons and farming and what all; everything else came from our parents and our parents’ parents… Heh, before the Empire came around, most folks in my village didn’t even know how to read ‘nd write…”

  “Wait…” The foreigner once again looked at him, dumbfounded… “You did not know how to…read and to write? Is that what you…say?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t learn until I was ten… Guess that’s why I’m bit of a slow reader, hah…” the wagoneer replied.

  “So, you imply, then, that…to read and to write is not common?” Reading, writing, and speaking were such a ubiquitous triad to her that…it was difficult for her to truly conceive of being able to speak one’s dominate language without being able also to read and write… Indeed, this being the case for an auxiliary or ancillary language was one thing, but one’s…first and most dominate language…

  “Hah! Nope… Not sure where you’re from, little menace, but…reading and writing were noble or city-folk things up till a few decades ago… Serfs and peasants, those who toiled the fields, like I said…we just had to know how to do all that stuff; reading and writing, not so much—besides the most basic, I guess, haha” He seemed rather humored by this, indeed.

  Yet the foreigner could not find any humor in such a reality… She had no words to really reply, in fact. To her, such a state of things was beyond bizarre, it was absurd… Even if the priority of these so-called ‘serfs’ and ‘peasants’ was agricultural production, being able to write, document, record, and read would surely make such more efficient and easier to do?

  “So…you are telling to me that there were…some of the peoples who could read, but not all of them?” She was, indeed, confused… “I give sorry, but I am…trying to understand…”

  “Yeah, basically…” the wagoneer chuckled somewhat; “There were some in our villages who knew the basics, but…again, reading and writing and being fancy in that way was a royal, noble, or city-folk thing, not rural-folk.”

  She lightly nodded her head, processing… “And none of those who could read and write ever attempted to…teach any of you who could not do so to…also read and write, when they were able to?” Indeed, in presence of such a hole of…knowledge and practical skills, it was prudent for those who had such to transmit such to those without such.

  “Yeah, I mean… Again, reading and writing and just knowing stuff used to be a luxury… But times are changing, you know? Even in the archaic realms outside the Empire, I heard them Far Westerners have been going to villages and teaching their stuff to the peasantry” he thus replied.

  Hm… ‘Luxury’, the foreigner noted that interesting word; she knew what it meant… Indeed, right… In a way, knowledge and information generally were rather the ‘luxury’ in places such as here, no matter their origins. Such things, after all, were never inherent or intrinsic, but provided and learned… Even she herself throughout her long…long protracted existence had to have been taught and instilled all that she now knew as self-evident or obvious.

  Indeed, although any semblance of memory of such bygone eons had long been eroded into bitter nothingness by time’s ceaseless decay, she logically understood, at least, that at some point she had most likely been like these denizens: primitive and ignorant utterly. Although, even now, in so many ways she was still ignorant; they all were.

  For there still lays in existence things that not even gods understand.

  Nevertheless, “that is…sad, I think…” she began to reply, her voice sincere in a way it hardly was, “to hear that such a thing could be… That many of you were ignorant of…the most essential of things while others…were not… Being not able to even…the write thoughts or memories…”

  Yet the wagoneer merely shrugged; “Eh. It’s what it be… Just the way the world is, you know? The Gods favored some people to know and rule, while others were meant to simply follow and mind our tongues; do what were told by those made to tell, even if it meant that a bunch of us end up being stupider” he replied, dismissively

  “Hm… Perhaps, I suppose. Though, now that I think… There is the pleasantry in being stupid and with ignorance…” she remarked; “Someone who I…once knew, she said something like… ‘to be a sheep is a simple and easy existence…than to be the shepherd leading?’ Something like that…” Her voice was more mellow and softer, more socially cordial.

  The wagoneer could not help but chuckle at this remark; “Haha! Now ain’t that the truth, honestly; sometimes knowledge is a curse alright… After all, it’s what driven so many to madness before, including the Child wore the Crown of Smiles themself… Corrupted and maddened by the truth, as the fable goes…”

  Hm. ‘Curses’ and ‘madness’, such was an the interesting way to frame such. And, in a way, there was some…resonance she herself could feel deep down within…with such a mundane utterance. Indeed… In this moment, she was abruptly reminded…that there were many things, many truths, that were better to be kept in the shadows of blissful obscurity.

  The foreigner sighed… “I suppose that…we may say that… You have your own…beliefs, and I have mine, in the end of all of this. And…even beyond what I said, there are many reasons for me as to why I do not aim for the head, even if they are…difficult to understand…even for me. But I simply avoid doing so if possible. There is…a disgust.” she was speaking honestly in a way that was atypical, dragging this whole conversation back to what had begun it; “However, as you had seen with your own eyes… There is real reason, and there is the risk of…causing the loss of what we need; the glow-stones. So, it is unnecessary for you to understand the why, but rather the reality of what you see: shooting the head can potentially make our task…slower and harder, so, from this, just avoid doing that.”

  The wagoneer sighed, shrugging almost… “Yeah, ain’t that the truth, huh? I still don’t really get it, but I do trust my own eyes, and I ain’t stupid enough not to see patterns when I see them” he replied. “In the end, this ain’t the first wacky magical Gods-shit I’ve had to deal with… It’s just the way our world is, right? Shit happens for reasons beyond any of us all the time…”

  “That is…a way to think, I suppose.” the foreigner cordially replied. Indeed, theirs was certainly a world most strange; full of the bizarre and esoteric.

  Even if contrived and artificial.

  Ultimately, she and him—those like her and the denizens of here—existed in two divergent alien realities; one more knowing and one more blissfully ignorant. She was reminded from this talk, indeed, the importance of maintaining such; the importance of respecting that she had her domain and the denizens had their domain. Regulations and protocols were strictly clear: it was neither her place nor purpose to judge and infringe; to enlighten or to remind them…that all their abstractions and imagined constructs existed in the background of a ceaseless nightmare.

  A nightmare that she had the luxury of understanding and…the curse of residing within; always teetering the edges of madness.

  Oblivious to the fact that you have already fallen.