[The term is ambiguous, though something about it implies the not-romantic sort. Asch rolls the ice ball between his fingers again, somewhat for practice, but also, a little bit, as a touchstone for the hard truth.
He takes a deep breath.]
So. Feel free to stop me ay any point if something doesn't make sense - for obvious reasons, I've never had to explain this to someone. It's mostly common knowledge in my world.
There are two kinds of people in my world - humans, like the ones most of the train are familiar with, and blades. Blades are magical energy beings who were, until very recently, reliant on being linked to a human to live. Without resonance, we're not anything more than crystals.
[He doesn't really notice his immediate slip into the present tense, but it doesn't really matter, except perhaps to drive home just how recent the change is.]
In order to live, we needed human drivers. The person who wakes us up, who we rely on to live our lives. When they die, we die - effectively, anyway, because even if we resonate with a new driver, in a week or a thousand years, we won't remember any of our previous lives. The life you're living, with the driver you've got - that's it, for a blade. And blades are connected to our drivers our entire lives, with a bond that lets us feel each other's emotions.
I can't overstate how much 'love your driver' is just the default in blade psychology. It's the same way as human children automatically love their parents. Your driver is the first thing you know beyond your own name.
[It's not a perfect metaphor, since blades aren't even really children the same way humans are - but he thinks it's close enough. Sometimes blades wind up being parents, but they don't ever have them. At least not natural blades.]
cw: discussion of abusive relationships (no human equivalent), some gore, "human" experimentation
[The term is ambiguous, though something about it implies the not-romantic sort. Asch rolls the ice ball between his fingers again, somewhat for practice, but also, a little bit, as a touchstone for the hard truth.
He takes a deep breath.]
So. Feel free to stop me ay any point if something doesn't make sense - for obvious reasons, I've never had to explain this to someone. It's mostly common knowledge in my world.
There are two kinds of people in my world - humans, like the ones most of the train are familiar with, and blades. Blades are magical energy beings who were, until very recently, reliant on being linked to a human to live. Without resonance, we're not anything more than crystals.
[He doesn't really notice his immediate slip into the present tense, but it doesn't really matter, except perhaps to drive home just how recent the change is.]
In order to live, we needed human drivers. The person who wakes us up, who we rely on to live our lives. When they die, we die - effectively, anyway, because even if we resonate with a new driver, in a week or a thousand years, we won't remember any of our previous lives. The life you're living, with the driver you've got - that's it, for a blade. And blades are connected to our drivers our entire lives, with a bond that lets us feel each other's emotions.
I can't overstate how much 'love your driver' is just the default in blade psychology. It's the same way as human children automatically love their parents. Your driver is the first thing you know beyond your own name.
[It's not a perfect metaphor, since blades aren't even really children the same way humans are - but he thinks it's close enough. Sometimes blades wind up being parents, but they don't ever have them. At least not natural blades.]