The Nature of Evil
"But the soulstone was very brittle, you see. It had endured a long journey across the cosmos and had not weathered well. Many cracks and fissures scarred its surface, and the boiling conditions of the black cosmos had bubbled its insides until they were reduced to a fragile lattice of strands and filaments.
"So, upon hitting the atmosphere of this planet, it shattered. What was meant to be delivered whole now split into innumerable unintended fragments, many of which crisped to cinders and vanished in the fire of friction. Some skipped off the envelope of air that surrounds this Earth and disappeared once more into the depths of space, forever lost, forever separated from their siblings. For that is what the soulstone had become: a collection of familial seeds, and those lucky enough to find purchase in the waters and soil that rushed up to meet them would either receive the nurturing care they needed to flourish or would rot and ferment, further lost.
"But those black shards that were sentenced to death did not die. Like the mould in the depths of a black and sunless hollow they found space to grow, just as their comrades in the sun. But they grew bitter, and with malevolent disposition they plotted in unspeakable ways to undo the injustice they had suffered.
"Don't you see?" he asked at length, looking back from whatever far place he'd had to go to conjure the tale, his eyes focusing on the rapt young faces assembled around him. "Evil springs not from purpose, not from any true decisive action meted out by a just opposition. It is random: it sprouts by chance. Where one is given fortune so to must one be given misfortune, and it is the very nature of those circumstances that give shape to what we call evil, and badness. It is as natural as the sunlight of the day and the chill of the evening, forever and anon."
First draft: 140615
Published: 230218