March 16
All that is mine I carry with me. — When the city fell and the others hauled their goods away, Bias left empty-handed: what was his own was not what burned.
Sayings of the Seven Sages (freely rendered)
Listening mode
All that is mine I carry with me. — When the city fell and the others hauled their goods away, Bias left empty-handed: what was his own was not what burned.
Some abilities can't be repossessed. The way you listen to someone until their sentence is truly finished, the way you untangle a muddled situation or hum a song from memory: no one can take that from you, and no move will ever make it vanish into a cardboard box. The thought is reassuring, as long as you're thinking of things like these.
Except the same holds for your impatience. And for the habit of looking first for the other person's mistake when you're criticised, or for an old reluctance to make phone calls. These can no more be lost, sold or left in storage with someone. They come along into every new flat, every job, every friendship.
With objects, you can choose what to keep. What belongs to you yourself is harder to sort. Much of it you didn't pick, and some of it you would gladly leave behind, if only it were standing somewhere.
It isn't unchangeable, though. It just changes differently from possessions: not by being given away, but slowly, through use. Sometimes it's only years later that you notice you simply made a phone call.
