Teresa looked down in embarrassment, but she didn’t answer. It didn’t even occur to her to remind me that I was literally living in a burnt ruin.

Instead, she was puzzled over why I was visiting her. That she spent too much time with my sister and wisdom was evident from the fact that she didn’t simply ask me about it.

It would have been tedious to explain my request on a chalkboard, so I had written it in a letter. She took the envelope between her fingers gently, handled it with a lot of respect. Then she sat down on a pile of laundry and began to read.

Dear Teresa,

I must first admit that it is very unpleasant for me to approach you with this matter. It is only unfortunate that you are the only one who is freely going in and out of the Future’s home at the moment — with the exception of so-called Wisdom, of course. However, she is nothing more than a lapdog of my sister and therefore not capable of independent thinking.

Be that as it may, the request with which I approach you concerns the daughter of the Future. If you have been as attentive as I have been in counting the tears the Future has so far collected as material, you will know that at any moment she will have enough of them at her disposal to begin the actual work creating the body.

The consequences that follow from the awakening of the child have been brought more deeply into my consciousness after a conversation I had recently with a person dear to my heart. The daughter will receive her powers as soon as she learns her true name. Since the Future will probably not be able to pronounce it, my suspicion is that this task will fall to Wisdom.

To say this with unmistakable clarity: In the interest of all, the daughter of the Future must not awaken to her powers.

Therefore, I would appreciate it if you would see to it that Wisdom is occupied as soon as the Future has completed her work. I will then take care of everything else myself. You will, of course, be informed about the exact timing.

As you can probably guess, I cannot tell you who the child is, nor what abilities it possesses, as we cannot take any risks. At the same time, if you do manage to find out the daughter’s name, please don’t talk about it to anyone. It would also be a bad idea to try to guess the name and share your guesses with others.

I would be unthinkingly indebted to you if you should agree to assist me in this matter.

With former regards,

the Past.

Teresa’s brow furrowed increasingly the more lines of my letter she read. Upon reading the last lines, she rolled her eyes.

“That’s a strange way to end a letter,” she said, “and… um…”

Teresa looked at the ceiling and thought for a few seconds, then she shrugged.

“Look, I’d really like to help you, but unfortunately… I understand the risk and all in sharing too much info, but at the same time, would agreeing after reading this not just make me a pawn? Well… I guess since I’ve been doing the Future’s bidding without knowing anything for so long now, I’m already a pawn, maybe… But… I mean, what if the daughter of the Future is called World Peace? Or what if she’s Friendship? … Hope? I’d understand your concern if she was the Goth Fashion Police.”

STOP GUESSING!

She fell silent but continued to look at me expectantly while I racked my brains about what was wrong with my style of dress. Meanwhile, I wrote:

WE BOTH KNOW THAT THE FUTURE WILL NOT BRING FORTH WORLD PEACE.

Teresa’s shoulders sagged. “Can’t you at least give me a tiny hint as to who she is? How am I supposed to decide whether to help you if I don’t even know what she’s going to do?”

I CAN’T TELL YOU ANYTHING MORE. WHAT IF YOU SET HER OFF YOURSELF?

“Aha! So you don’t trust me, but you want me to trust you. So that’s how it is.” She gazed into my eyes, pretending to be disappointed. “Even though I wanted us to be friends…”

I eyed her and had to stifle a smile. After realizing that I wanted something from her, her entire respect for me had evaporated. I thought for a while about how I could make her believe that I was serious. Then I wrote:

IS THERE ANYTHING IN THIS WORLD YOU HOLD DEAR?

The image of the future lit up in Teresa’s mind’s eye. Wisdom stood in the background, waving at the camera. Teresa bit her own lower lip at the admission that she kind of liked her.

“Yeah.”

IF THE FUTURE IS IMPORTANT TO YOU IN ANY WAY, YOU SHOULD HELP ME.

“I really can’t figure you all out,” Teresa muttered. “I’ll think about it. Just give me some time. I know where you live. I’ll write you a letter then.”

I recoiled a bit.

NO. NO LETTERS. GIVE ME YOUR ANSWER IN PERSON.

“… Do you want me to run all the way to your place then or what? I’ll just write to you.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I vehemently and in big letters spelled:

NO.

Teresa laughed in disbelief. “Can you not read?” she mocked me. I got up angrily to leave the house.

“Wait a minute,” she called after me. “Since we first met, I’ve been thinking about something Wisdom told me.”

YES?

“She said that, technically speaking, you’ve existed as long as all living things combined, because you know all their stories.”

Teresa tugged nervously at her trousers.

“If that’s true… then surely you can tell me what there’s more of. Is there more good or more bad? If you add it all together… which side wins out?”

I’ve been through a lot of things, but that moment was one of the few that gave me goosebumps. My hands tightened around my blackboard and I accidentally broke the piece of chalk between my fingers.

I can’t recall the unimaginable amount of time I spent going through and cataloguing my archives to get a definite answer to this very question.

Of course, it’s not as if I ever really had to count. I had always known the answer, and Teresa knew the answer, too. Nevertheless, I decided to take the time to ask her for a pen and a piece of paper to write down my answer for her. She watched me curiously without allowing me to read along, and it took me almost half an hour in total.

When I finished, I looked at the written pages indecisively. I struggled with myself for several minutes as to whether I should really give it to her. I was a little surprised that I had written down another story at all. Before I finally gave the paper to Teresa to read, I wrote on my board:

SEE THAT I WON’T REGRET SHOWING YOU THIS.

Somewhat astonished, Teresa then took the text and began to read:

Dear Teresa,

I don’t want to deceive you. You are a scientist, and I respect that. An individual case says nothing about what the objective truth looks like, but I would still like to tell you about an event that I witnessed, just as an illustration. You will get a concrete answer to your question later.

The story goes like this. Once, on a pleasant late summer evening, I was a small deer. Together with 29 others of my kind, I had been crammed into a makeshift stable made of wooden slats, which stood together with dozens of others in a clearing that was festively decorated.

One of the two people who had driven us here was closing the swing gate, preventing our escape. I could not see the men, but was stirred by their presence as their voices drifted muffled inside the barn.

“Heavens, there are many of them,” one commented.

“Yes, and there’s another group coming from Halmen. Madness, if you ask me, Konrad. Absolute madness.”

A laugh. “Yes, the king really wants to please his son. Who ever heard that before? So many deer on a feast hunt? I mean… that’s going to be another three hundred or so, isn’t it?”

“Well, it was obvious they’d come up with something big for the last day. But it’s crazy to think that those eighty sows yesterday weren’t enough already.”

“What can you do when young Heinrich likes deer best of all. Apparently they don’t even want to eat or sell the animals. He had some other ideas. Wanted a spectacle.”

Eventually the voices died down, but it took a long time for the barking of my fellow animals to subside as well. The stress of the transport still burned in our limbs, but eventually I sat down and chewed some grass scraps I had gulped down at a brief stop a few hours earlier.

I still smelled the presence of people in the clearing, but even if none of them were there anymore, their smell would continue to cling to the built facilities. Beside them, the air carried the easily discernible urine of dozens of roebucks, spreading scent trails to mark their territory despite these unnatural circumstances.

I felt the warmth of the other animals I was stuck here with. Hour after hour, all night long. At one point, an old animal in front of me gave birth to a small fawn. She spent an hour eating the slippery amniotic sac and licking the baby clean. She stalked unsteadily between the legs of other deer as she learned to walk.

Finally, the next morning, when the sun had already been flooding the world with light for a couple of hours, the fresh stench of a human once again crept into my nostrils as the first drovers came back into the clearing and slowly opened one of the stalls after the other.

Again I became terribly uneasy. Soon the barking of another kind of animal mingled with our exhortations, and when the wind told me of their arrival, every muscle in my body tensed and I readied myself to jump.

It was dogs. A pack of foxhounds that I couldn’t yet see, but I could smell and hear. Dozens of them.

The door to the barn opened and a couple of the front deer immediately jumped out. I ducked to the ground under the cover of the darkness of the barn, but when one of the humans came in to flush us out, I jumped up and hopped out into the fresh air. Immediately I recognised the dogs on the other side of the square rushing in my direction. Beside me, several deer jumped to the other side of the square, where an escape route was visible — a grassy aisle leading through the forest, lined with walls on both sides.

I ran with the flow. Some deer tried in vain to jump over the walls into the thicket of the forest. Looking for cover, the others kept running straight ahead, but the path was long and the grass was short.

I jumped forth in panic, slamming my hooves into the ground so hard each time that little shreds of plant matter flew around in the air.

Eventually more people on big horses closed in on us, making noises to egg us on. I had hardly any strength left. Some of the dogs had caught up and now buried their teeth into the thighs and bellies of the deer they managed to grab, only to be whistled back by the humans.

Completely out of breath, I finally recognised the rescue: a river that was at the end of the cutting, flowing along with a strong current. As I got closer, I already saw hundreds of other deer swimming in it, next to several boats with people in them.

The water splashed around me as I, with weakest limbs, hopped into the river and was immediately pulled along by the strong current of the water. Slowly I realised the spectacle that was taking place here. A little further upstream above the water was a large stone bridge from which dozens of people looked down and cheered. In the boats around me sat men in elaborately crafted clothing.

Below the bridge, secured by ropes, five huge deer hung on display with a few bullet holes attached to their antlers, bleeding out.

Downstream hung a large net stretching across the whole body of water, catching everything that was carried along by the watercourse.

A man’s strong hand grabbed me by the back of the neck and then lifted me out of the water. He placed the tip of his knife against my stomach and then pushed it in.

A squeaking sound escaped from my throat. It felt like a heavy punch. Soon I felt blood and parts of my body oozing out of me.

He pushed the knife into me once, twice more — I couldn’t make it out exactly. My body twisted in pain and he let go of me, causing me to fall back into the water and float powerlessly down the current. I drifted into the net where several others were already trapped and slowly dying from their injuries.

I could no longer see anything, squeezed between other deer bodies, and after a while I was pushed down. My lungs filled with water and felt like they were going to burst.

It took too long for me to die.

Behind the net, the blood of the animals coloured the river deep red. This trail was visible so far that it became a spectacle that could be watched by curious people many kilometres downstream.

The showcase hunt was so powerful and successful that it was repeated annually from then on.

That is how this river got the name ‘Doefill.’

Teresa had finally finished reading and looked up with an expressionless face and cramped hands. She crumpled the paper a bit when she folded it. I wrote on my board:

I WAS EACH OF THESE ANIMALS.

I WAS EACH OF THESE LORDS.

I WAS EVERYTHING.

I COUNTED IT ALL.

Teresa’s back slumped.

NATURE IS CRUEL.

SUFFERING WINS.

“… Is that why you are so sad?” she asked and gently put my story down again. I tapped the chalk against my board but wrote nothing.

For a while we just sat there and finally I decided to leave. Teresa stood up to offer me a hand to help me. I accepted the offer. We hugged briefly as we said goodbye.

She seemed a little lost in thought and, after I had left the flat, set about clearing her clothes out of the washing machine until she returned to the house of the Future later that evening.