AtWotES: "Infinite regress"

[ As the festivities continue, CREMATOR and LAZARUS retreat away from the group. Larks watch. ]

LAZARUS

These characters dress up. Think he would smile at our thoughts. He was murdered. He would not smile. A wake. Wedpolkm wasn't even aware of death; what sense does it make to hold a thing like this? Maybe if we spent less time recycling stories by the pyre and more time doing what it built us for-- rotting away in a pillar of calamity...

[ CREMATOR grunts. ]

CREMATOR

You are biased.

LAZARUS

Alright, big guy.

[ CREMATOR walks to the cliff edge and looks below. ]

CREMATOR

It built us for remembering.

[ LAZARUS scoffs. ]

CREMATOR

World was long in sleep, troubled to wake. Brain shrinks with age, every night steals another memory. We are sentinels. We are memories. Fossils of another age. We came to this wake for an absent friend. Seems appropriate to me.

LAZARUS

There's only so much time we can spend dwelling on the past. Today we'll remember Wedpolkm, tomorrow we'll remember someone else. That show never ends.

CREMATOR

May be so.

[ Silence. LAZARUS approaches CREMATOR at cliff edge. ]

LAZARUS

When I came back, I was furious. At her. I still can't forgive her for what she did.

CREMATOR

You are not one to.

LAZARUS

Yeah. She's never going to care that she killed me. It's in the past to her. But it ate me up inside, it split me into many minds. Every day became an infinite regress just trying to figure out which voice to listen to, and I'd repeat it over and over.. until I realized the solution: To forget and not forgive.

[ CREMATOR looks at LAZARUS. ]

LAZARUS

Would you take this memory from me?