inaclovenpine | (no subject)

MIR. Ariel? My Ariel!
Or should I say, my father's Ariel--
But you will come if I sing out for you,
Is that not so?

ARIEL. Call that a song, my little mistress?
Come, come, I've heard you sing a sweeter tune!
Went it not so?

[Sings, as birds]

MIR. O, Ariel, Ariel!
You know I cannot sing as you do!
You smile at me, you jest.

ARIEL. I'faith, my gentle miss,
I smile to see you smile, that is all.
It gives your father ease when you are happy.

MIR. Is that why you are dogging at my heels?
My father set you here to watch?
No, Ariel, stay, stay! I am not angry.
But pray you, Ariel, do not tell him we
Came out this far from home.
He keeps me so close, still, as if I were a babe,
And I am fully twelve years old.

ARIEL. Nay! Are you grown so agéd, little chick?
I thought your hair grew white, like your sire's.
Come, let's away and back--

MIR. I pray you, Ariel, do not tell him.
Let this grove be my own, and mine alone.
Please you, Ariel.
Speak not a word to him.

ARIEL. Silent as breath I'll be, my gentle mistress.

In Milliways, a slim, translucent figure sits cross-legged on the table of a booth. Lying on the table beside her -- it? him? -- is a chain of flowers, looking a little crumpled but still bright.

Ariel thinks perhaps she should not let Prospero see it. Perhaps it should stay here. But before she has to leave it anywhere, she likes to look at it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"--Say you so?" Ariel says, surprised.

"Clarify, please: which statement do you refer to?"

There were at least three there!

"Is't true that feelings breed not in the heart?"

"Yes. In most lifeforms that possess one, the heart is a muscular organ that serves as a pump for the circulation of blood. Emotions are generated in the brain, insofar as emotion can be said to have a strictly physiological origin."

Ariel looks extremely dubious about this proposition.

"While the human heart frequently does undergo increased activity in moments of extreme emotion," Baby offers further, "this activity is reactive rather than generative."

Ariel still looks suspicious.

"Then in the head, emotion seeds and grows?"

That doesn't seem at all right to her, either.

"That is essentially correct. In humans and other lifeforms with analogous internal systems."