CROV: That's them. Raptor Asterestia. The dreadful dragonmouth themself.
CROV: Smoking in the monastery? Stranding Vasan with Jaquel? This is so inconceivably frustrating to read, you realize that?
PAN: I do not have your context or any way to discern the personal significance.
CROV: And what do you think is significant about all of this? This is all necessary information? You intend to frustrate me?
PAN: You will understand by the end of this. Some narratives include things that can upset you. You're going to have to acceept that things you don't like have happened that matter to what I am trying to get across.
CROV: Well they shouldn't. You withhold some things and spin me into being uncomfortably "academic" with you and yet you show me sacrilige of my home?
PAN: This is a part of my experience and it would be inapporpiate to lie to you. This does not affect you in any way, currently. You obviously knew that starling has issues with authority.
CROV: Exactly, that starling goes through a trial with substances in places they should have stayed away from, and now even with their experience, still convince a Pigeon to dive down the same rabbit hole they've stumbled down.
CROV: It's absurd that even after realizing that giving up one substance would help clear their head, they dive right back into others.
CROV: How does this bird not understand how much they are perpetuating the same thing they say ruined them?
PAN: These drugs may affect the mind. It sounded like giving things up can cause immediate withdrawal effects.
CROV: Jaquel is right, if they sat in one place for a god damned minute, maybe they would stop being in such eternal conflict, maybe they would stop trying to show off how defiant, how contrarian they are.
PAN: Are you done?
CROV: I don't want Vasan to get stuck on any of the things Aster has. If I'd have known how much of an influence that starling was…
CROV: I would have spoken to Vasan differently.
PAN: How so?
CROV: If Vasan was talking to these two, they surely must have heard of me and known about me for longer than I expected them to once they were here.
CROV: They saw me through those fungi? What does that mean? Anyone with a fungus in their brain fluid can just look into my life?
PAN: That is part of what being in your position entails. You are meant to live as if God is watching, yes?
CROV: Have I told you that?
PAN: You don’t have to, your existence is etched in the aether. Those in my universe see you just fine. The universe, or rather, the negative space the universe is driven to fill, has characters and roles that anyone more complex than that space can recognize. These roles come with innate characteristics that no one has do define but numbers themselves.
CROV: I know, Pan. This is all irrelevant.
PAN: What are we discussing, then?
CROV: I don’t know.
CROV: I don't know, I need some time to assemble my thoughts. I thought all of this was a lost cause years ago. I have to adjust.
PAN: Take your time, Corov.