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Comments

[driftsintobuffetline]

[He wants to ask what dying is like. He's morbidly curious.]

Well, yeah, ok, if it makes the Village Protector happy and more willing to protect the town, then I get the villagers' reasoning for pushing the marriage. It's still shitty, but people do a lot of shitty things in the interest of not dying.

[He can't resist.] ...What WAS dying like?

[matadorable]

Yes, I see what you're saying...[There's a "but" hanging in the air. Manolo swallows it down, though. He's partially to blame anyway, so he tries to keep himself from getting too indignant over what happened.

Instead, he focuses on the question. He's actually grateful for it because it successfully diverts his attention toward something else.]

...You know, you're the first person to ask me that. [But of course Newt would ask. He's a scientist. Asking questions is his life's work.

When Manolo answers, his voice is quiet and oddly calm.]

Dying was...the happiest moment of my life. [A pause.] Hearing me say that would upset more than a few people, I'm sure, but it's true. I didn't even realize I'd hit the ground. Instead, I was floating, my surroundings grew farther away, all the pain and grief from before lifted off my shoulders. No more worries. It was freeing -- no, euphoric.

[driftsintobuffetline]

[Newt isn't terribly surprised he's the first, considering it's kind of a rude question, or at least an insensitive one, and if anyone's going to be the first to open his big mouth and ask the insensitive questions, it's Newt.

Manolo's death is nothing like what Newt experienced in that first Drift. That had been fear, anxiety, pain and a pounding rush of his heart--But he hadn't died. He wonders if he had died, would it have been as Manolo described, or would it have still be painful and fearful? Is Manolo's universe a strange enough place that death is both personified in a god and not...painful?]

I'm sorry. I'm trying to get over the macabre irony of you saying it was the happiest moment of your life when it's literally the end of it. [Insensitive again.]

So, did you turn into a ghost? Was that it?

[matadorable]

Believe me, I am totally aware of the macabre irony, so there's no reason for you to apologize.

[Manolo's friends think he's insensitive about his own death. It's really hard to offend him on that front, Newt.]

I woke up in the Land of the Remembered, actually. You've seen my other form, yes? The one that makes me less squishy and more skeleton-y? That's how everyone there looks.