Worst of All Fates…

     "Do you think he had a point?"

     Briar Dallas looked up from her sketchbook, her eyes attempting to focus on her friend as a person, rather than just an object. "Huh?" The artist blinked again, peering at Mariel Dunne as she put her pencil down. "Who had a point about what?"

     Mariel’s greyish-green eyes sparkled as she watched Briar try to collect herself. "Dr. Connur. Do you think he had a point? About that part in Dante. You know…being forgotten being the worst that could happen?"

     Briar blinked once more, then pondered that as she closed her sketchbook on the image of Mariel that had been forming. "Well, I guess he’s got a point. I mean, think about it: would you want to be forgotten? For always?"

     The girl tilted her head as she thought, twining a lock of caramel-coloured hair around a long finger. "The more I think about it, the more I think he’s right. At least from like Dante’s point of view. I mean, look at all those people Dante talks to going through Hell. They keep asking him to tell their stories up above, in the world."

     "Maybe that was the worst thing, even worse than Hell in those days," Briar said with a shrug, stuffing her sketchbook into her backpack. She and Mariel had been friends for less than a month, and already Briar knew that when the philosophy/literature major got on a kick like this, using her for a model was gone for the day. It wasn’t fun sketching her with her brow furrowed in thought and when her mouth was always moving.

     Mariel tilted her head, considering that, and then nodded. "It must’ve been. Even the guys in Hell weren’t bitching about being there, just that no one up above knew the truth. I guess confession can’t be that good for the soul if the priest can’t say anything and your soul thinks it’s been forgotten."

     Briar blinked and looked at Mariel in surprise. "Wow…I totally hadn’t thought of it that way. Is that why everyone was so mad when Dante published that, you think?"

     The girl gnawed her lip as she gathered up her backpack. She was the decisive sort, and made jokes that her bloodline made her authorative. Briar wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but Mariel’s pretty eyes always sparkled when she said it, so it was a good enough joke. "I don’t know," Mariel admitted finally as she led Briar away from the fountains outside of the university’s main library. "It was probably more to do with that political stuff Dr. Connur talked about than the idea that even confession couldn’t save your sorry sinning ass."

     One of Mariel’s chief charms in Briar’s eyes was the creative way she used the few curse words she ever spoke. It was highly amusing to her jaded eyes to watch the shocked expressions around them when pretty, elegant-looking Mariel yelled "Fuck that misbegotten son of a cur with a barbed Mongol’s dick for leaving that out!" when one of their professors neglected to mention a particular subject would be on an exam. Now as they walked across the campus green towards the bus stop, Briar chuckled when a middle-aged woman turned and gaped at Mariel’s back when she heard the "sorry sinning ass" remark. The girls paused at the bench, painted an attractive emerald green, and Mariel scowled at her sneakers.

     "It’s important, it really is, but I can’t quite see why," she said, her greyish-green eyes unfocusing in that dreamy expression Briar itched to capture properly. "I mean, you’re forgotten. Okay, so everything you’ve ever done or said is useless except in that it did have an effect on someone else. That’s still making your mark, isn’t it?"

     Briar frowned as she sat gingerly on the bench, settling her thin frame, backpack between her heavy boots. Obviously, this was going to irritate Mariel until she figured out whatever was actually puzzling her, and that meant a long day for Briar unless she helped her friend out. "I guess it is, but it’s kind of not the same as having you yourself remembered. Like people who get all fussy about Princess Diana. They get really really mad about lies being told now, even though she’s been dead a while."

     Mariel’s brow remained furrowed as she looked down the street, peering for the bus. "I’d sell my soul for a punctual bus," she muttered absently before flopping onto the bench beside Briar. Focusing on the artist’s words with an effort, she scowled a bit more. "That has to be it, right? I mean…the guys in Hell don’t really care about what the lies might be doing for their family, or that the truth might hurt the people they left behind. It’s gotta be this idea that the truth is always better."

     Briar frowned herself as she looked at her boots. It was painful experience that came to mind, remembering her early childhood…everything that had happened to her because of her father. The idea that there might be a darker truth bothered her, and she didn’t want to think about the man being in Hell. Not that the image of her father burning in eternal flame really bugged her, but the idea that he might have taken blacker things to the grave did.

      "Yeah, that’s it," Mariel said suddenly, her eyes alight. "They still had this idea that the truth was always better, and that telling their story honestly might redeem them even just a little. I guess that makes Hell more tolerable." She glanced at Briar, noted the downward pull of her mouth and wonde

red silently just what her friend would never, ever tell her. Briar avoided conversation regarding her past religiously, and that just made Mariel all the more curious. She shook her head and grabbed her backpack strap as the bus finally pulled up. "C’mon Briar, I’ll buy lunch today."

     The artist mumbled something noncomittal and slung her heavy backpack into place, plodding after the glimmering caramel-haired girl lifelessly. No…being forgotten wasn’t quite the worst fate possible…at least not as far as Briar could imagine.

     The worst fate was being remembered.