Tenzin’s Quiet Questions

August 28, 2025

Date: 2025-08-27 15:03

(Tenzin’s Quiet Questions)

[Wed Aug 27 2025]

Washington Commons/span>/spanafternoon, about 76F(24C) degrees, and the sky is partly covered by dark grey clouds. The mist is heaviest At High and Lynch/span>/spanAnnabelle puts on her thinking cap and slumps down to her legs. She begins to sit on her heels- but takes a note from Tenzin and sits all crissy-and-crossy.

Thought is given to the canopy overhead. “Hmmm.” Tenzin pulls out a meager instrument, unadorned. The arrival of two more — Arachne and Constance — see him faintly surprised. “Welcome,” the man speaks comfortably.

Constance lands herself with a thud at the edge of the tree’s shadow, sitting down. She’s vaguely splattered with flecks of blood but doesn’t seem to see any need to change or leave.

Arachne inclines her head toward Tenzin as she ventures toward the group, gray eyes catching briefly on Constance’s assorted weaponry and the carbine in her hands before drifting to find shelter beneath a neighboring tree.

Tenzin skims Arachne’s person as if noticing something familiar. If he finds what he is looking for, he says nothing of it. No words stop the woman who joins a different tree. He appears fairly at peace despite Constance’s full loadout.

“When we met last, we enjoyed silence in the sacred shelter of the Wat Pang Sai. This afternoon, we reacquaint with our words.”

Wandering in slowly, August’s cap is removed, and he casts a quiet look around at the faces, before deciding to approach the tree Arachne sits beneath and take his seat on the ground. Cross his legs in a lazy lotus of sorts with his cap tossed at his lap.

Tenzin speaks to those beneath the maple, “Bear in mind that we do not debate to triumph.”

“Instead, we are here to listen, to weigh, and to seek the path that keeps us from the darker pull of anger, fear, and power.”

“I threw knives at people for a gaming console today.” Annabelle opens up, throwing what’s on her mind out into the leaves. “Is that.. Is that a kind of debate we’re having? I didn’t feel good about that.”

Finding a place to ‘park’ her horse at the edge of this park, which’ll surely have some fence to tether its reins onto, Aishia drifts from sidewalk into the park proper to find where today’s gathered beings are. These are easily found, with some already having made themselves comfortable beneath the boughs of an oak tree. “.. So…” she drawls out, looking around a little – “.. what are we here to discuss?” the questions continue, as she pitter-patters over to join those beneath the oaken bough.

Arachne welcomes August in silence with a distracted smile, a leg drawn up toward her chest with a lethargic bend of an arm atop it. Her gaze shifts back toward Tenzin as he begins to speak, head tilted slightly in contemplation of his words. “Something with corruption, or preventing it, I imagine,” she murmurs in theory toward Aishia, leaning subtly into August.

“I would ask each of you to speak your thoughts, one after the other. Today, we will hear you,” Tenzin humbly requests. His head lowers, fingers drawing the cymbals to a dangle.

Tenzin says, starting off, “How much of yourself, be it body, mind, or soul, is worth sacrificing to survive?“

Tenzin uses a pair of bronze tingsha: The cymbals chime together with a clear, piercing ring.

“You may take your time to think. Ask this of yourself. See what comes naturally to you,” Tenzin suggests gently, nodding to Annabelle and Constance who sit under the maple tree.

Constance considers that pensively for a moment, then states, in sequence, “Ninety, zero, thirty. Percents. I’m kind of attached to my mind but I don’t think I’d mind like, being uploaded into a robot or being a cyborg or something if it was the only way to keep going.”

August opts to remain silent. Considering, perhaps, or just watching Tenzin with a hard-eyed look of his usual stare. His shoulder is lent to Arachne for her support, taken from her as much as he gives, and his hands are set on his lap folded together in a classic meditative pose that seems almost accustomed, but overall, still lazy. Maybe he doesn’t quite have anything to say, because he tips a brow and casts an unsure look at Arachne at his side.

Sophie considers the group quietly then quietly says, “I’m tired.”

“It’s okay to die.”

Annabelle’s conclusion, convened and conspired with the grass below her feet, is given out to the shade underneath the tree. “Help others. Don’t give so much that it hurts others you help to see you. And then one day die.”

“I believe most could agree that there is no cost too great in the name of one’s personal survival,” Arachne voices toward Tenzin after a shared look of uncertainty with August, and quiet words of musing said in hushed aside to Aishia. “It’s the very desperation to preserve one’s existence against all odds that is inherent to the human condition.”

Robert wanders over towards one of the trees and then just flops down, sprawling out, clearly exhausted.

Lykaia lingers for a few in the outskirt, looking down onto her phone and working on it for a couple of moments before moving to wards a tree to lean back against it. Her gaze does rise to sweep over the surroundings, before turning back to her phone.

“Preservation is something different to each and every one. To some it is a selfish concept. To some it is but spiritual. To some it is a communal effort. I don’t think there is a single answer I could give here.” is all Aishia ends up musing after some contemplation, having found a spot to idle beneath one of the trees where she can exchange some more hush-hush chit-chat with those around, without having to disturb whoever took their turn speaking their thoughts when doing so.

Tenzin does not seem to mind the group that sits separate under the other tree. It is a peaceful coexistence in a large park. Shade is plentiful. “It is interesting you have boiled it down to percentages,” he muses to Constance. Annabelle gets a slight nod. “Another interpretation.” He gives Sophie a brief, expectant look but doesn’t pressure her to answer.

The other tree surprises him with voices. The monk nods.

He asks then, “Would you still consider it survival if you were to remain alive, so to speak, but lose your humanity in the process?”

“I’d give everything to survive.” August adds his own piece, after matching Arachne’s look, then turning his head away to look at others, to each face with a voice, in turn. “But to survive what is the real question. Losing your humanity but keeping the self that you embody is favorable, but if survival means becoming an unwilling spirit, a wight, or a vampire – something already dead, that means you yourself are not as you were. The transition from one state of matter to the next always has an element of slippage because of entropy. Something would survive, but it would not necessarily be me. It’d be a monster, a copy in my skin only pretending, and is that worth it?” August shrugs only a single shoulder in dismissal, unclear, or otherwise unknowing. “Too many factors, too many results.”

“I guess that is the heart of it. Surviving is not the same as living. If you strip out everything that makes you human, your hope, your love, your mistakes, your soul…what is left might be a body that breathes, but it is not a life. At least that is what I am afraid of finding out.” Sophie muses thoughtfully.

Constance says “I don’t care about my ‘humanity’. I do care about my ‘sense of self’. Continuity of consciousness.“

Tenzin nods with tranquil attentiveness to Constance and Sophie. “Individuality. For the other, compassion.”

He lists out his own quiet musings, “The body is impermanent. The mind is always in flux. One would argue that it is the soul that is our deepest nature, and this cannot be destroyed. However, to cling too tightly to survival creates suffering.” He sweeps a hand towards Annabelle. “And survival without compassion — without humanity — may not be survival. But others may not share the same perspective.”

Tenzin uses a pair of bronze tingsha: A thin tone shivers the air, sharp and lingering.

Tenzin says, changing the subject thoughtfully, “Is it a kindness to hypnotize or brainwash a friend to cease their harmful actions?“

“Perhaps you may wish to speak first?” Tenzin attributes the question to Annabelle, respectfully.

Annabelle with an uncomfortable correction of her sitting position, switching which leg folds over itself, she asks up from the grass, “How do you define humanity, then?”

She watches people pass on the street. “Is it what cares about each other? Is it a state of intelligence that separates us from animals? Is it free will?” In spite of the goal of discussion, she trails along in a greater spiral of confusion. ”

Rather out of the blue, Aishia tilts her gaze upwards to look at something. A bird in the tree. The state of the sun. The unknown source of a sound. Whatever it is, it draws her focus away for about ten seconds before she looks eastwards. “I’ve things to do.” she notes, already making her way away from the group though not before sparing Arachne a smile and telling her, “It was good to see you again, by the way, Arachne. It has been a while.”

“It’s never kind.” Annabelle decides for her answer.

“Something we ought to establish,” Tenzin comments to Annabelle of the spiral of questions. “We can return to it.”

His curiosity requests, “Why do you think so?”

Arachne flicks her palm up in gesture of parting toward Robert when he announces his pending departure. “Likewise, Captain,” she murmurs, before turning her gaze toward Annabelle when she broaches the question of humanity. “There is no separating man from the animal it is, Annabelle. We will always be ruled by baser instincts all sentient life has in common, no matter how one chooses to dress it up.”

Constance comments, “Believe it or not, this is something I agree with the Temple about. If you’re going to force someone to stop doing something, you should do it the brutal way – the way they understand exactly what’s happened to them, instead of going into their head to fuck them up and turn them into a different person,” to Tenzin’s question.

Constance says “It’s more kind to put a shock collar on someone than it is to hypnotize or brainwash them.“

“I just don’t think doing something someone doesn’t want can be called kind. Maybe good, somewhere. But not kind.” Annabelle reasons on a lilt, turning over to Arachne with a wrinkle of her nose at that thought. “..Okay, so what is it though? What is humanity? Everyone fights over it like it’s holy ground.”

Robert gives Arachne a funny look. He didn’t say anything. “Charities. Zoos. Orphanages. Exploration. There are many who have chosen to turn their bent and efforts to a cause that has nothing to do with consumption or their personal reproduction, Arachne.” He says with strident clarity. “And humanity is exactly that – that which we strive towards, which we create, the effort that we strive in fostering kindness and community. To work against base desires and cruelty and a gluttony for power.”

Sophie tucks a bit of hair behind her ear as she speaks, “Clear pain is different than having your mind rewritten. One leaves scars you can name, the other steals who you are. Annabelle, asking what humanity is feels right, because it slips away the moment we try to define it. There are so many different factors. But, in the end striving toward kindness and community sounds like what we all want. From a psych view, that is the part of us reaching past survival. But I think humanity is both. The striving and the failing. The care and the cruelty. We live in the tension between them.”

“It is easy for compassion to turn into cruelty, without wisdom,” Tenzin bows his head solemnly after Constance, Annabelle, and Sophie say their piece. “Taking away freedom of choice is merely to plant new seeds of suffering. I believe it is best to guide another towards wisdom, rather than to bind them to your will.”

“It may once again become a question of what humanity truly is.”

Robert speaks next, and he listens with reverence. “Does it all boil down to compassion, in the end? Working for a greater good?”

Arachne inclines her head to Robert, the faintest curl of her lip s betraying her appreciation. “Thank you, Captain, for circling us back to the marrow of it all.” Her gaze slips from him to Annabelle, cool in her response, “Humanity is not singular. It is the beast that hungers, yes, the instinct to consume and dominate. But it is also the scaffolding we build atop that beast in desperation to prove we have ascended beyond those baser instincts; the choices, he structures, the reaching for something higher even knowing we are never free of what pulls us down. We are both the craving and the restraint, the wound and the salve. To forget either is to delude ourselves, though I staunchly despise that the Captain was a -man- and thought I would base an argument on the principle of reproduction and consumption, though one could make a separate argument that, come the end of one’s life, there will always be a desire for leaving a legacy and having and raising children to inherit your life’s work or simply not to be forgotten. It is just a higher thought process for the baser instinct to procreate.”

“Ideals are nice in theory and never last when tested against the value of one’s life.” Lykaia chimes by, looking from Robert to Arachne, back to her phone. “Raising children, if you think about it, is an idealized version of life taught to us by expectation. It is unquestioned. A traumschloss given to be pursued, when reality’s far away. Little to do with instincts.”

Annabelle takes in the pairings of definitions with a quirked lip and face frozen in thought. The wind takes her hair and rather rudely rakes her hair over her face. She doesn’t slap the wind for its action, however, it can’t be held accountable for its intent or its action. It just is.

“So what isn’t.” She rephrases, therefore. “If humanity is simply all the things that we are, what isn’t us and why don’t we like it, or, I guess, some of us might like not being human.”

“In The Order, there’s this Grove of trees or maybe tree-people, I’ve never met them, but The Order is generally regarded as being very humanitarian, on definition, to everyone.” Annabelle sniffles, “Are they.. not human?”

Robert cuts sharp – his normally drowsy voice strident and clamorous, attention getting as he properly sits up there on the grass. “Is this what you do now, Arachne? Start with the statement that humans must be ruled by baser instincts, and when I point all organic life is made to eat and reproduce, you try to imply that was not where you started?” His tone is sharp and biting, immediately cutting into Arachne. “And then you turn around and try to make my point for me, as if that was where your position began. Psalm 140:5 (NIV) – The arrogant have hidden a snare for me; they have spread out the cords of their net and have set traps for me along my path.” His voice is cold, but, he tempers it, his voice settling into something more moderate and calm, as if he didn’t start with chewing her out.

He goes back to laying down, folding his hands behind his head. “The worse comes after that. When even those base desires fade away, in the gluttony of eternity. What use does an immortal have for a legacy? They are their own legacy.”

Lykaia says “Interesting rumors.“

“Immortality is a pipe dream.” August tells Robert with a sterner look in reply when they’re lashing out towards Arachne. Cutting in to speak from where he’s sat beneath the tree. “At best, those things have a ‘chance at immortality’, and not a guarantee unless they lock themselves underneath a city’s worth of concrete and never see daylight or another soul that may wish them harm. Why does the antediluvian take an apprentice if it is not to extend their legacy? If they had no need to spread their influence, their control and amass power by others, they are nothing more than walking corpses. Even with their so called inhumanity, they still strive for that singular goal of continuing their lineage by means available.”

August’s expression speaks of disinterest, casting that demeaning look upon Robert still while he drags his teeth across his lower lip in brief contemplation. “Psalm 91:3, Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.” One of his hands briefly lift with an open palm that makes a vague, conversationalist gesture, “No matter the malice of others, there is always the reassurance of divine providence and protection, is there not? Why do you keep that from the wicked, when God tells you to love all of his creations? Virtue and sin both originate from the same source.”

“Forgive me, I am unsure what you mean. The Order does not care for these tree-people?” Tenzin asks Annabelle for a bit of clarification. “What I hear most often spoken of that is not human is a lack of emotion, sympathy, and a feeling of connectedness to their fellow man.”

He quiets as Robert returns fire on Arachne. The monk inhales deeply, and breathes out. All is well for him, still. He looks to Constance. “And what of your thoughts here, Sister?”

Annabelle lowers her voice and seems to direct herself at Tenzin as to avoid the wandering subject of argument over her answers, trying not to feel responsible. “No – Well, these elders aren’t human anymore. They’re centuries old and apparently they’re just here to balance out the world. And yet, like.. People don’t associate them with the same malevolence as the Demons or the Angels or whatever. They don’t get bored and start strangling people with their roots. So.. I guess- I guess I just wondered if ‘humanitarian’ and ‘human’ was ever something moral rather than just.. Different.”

Constance shrugs towards Tenzin. “I’ve lost track of what the current question is,” she replies, honestly.

Sophie shrugs, “I can’t keep track nor am I smart enough too I think.”

Arachne allows a humored laugh to slip free, though her gaze sharpens at Robert, addressing him alone in the midst of myriad responses said around her. “You hear what you want to quarrel with, not with what I said. I never claimed that humanity is only instinct. I said instinct rules us, and it does. Dress it in scripture, in charity, in monuments, it is still the foundation of our nature. That was my beginning, and it remains so. You accuse me of snares, yet it is you who tangle yourself in mishearing.”

Her weight shifts in her half-curl against August, mouth slanted into a pensive frown briefly. “And as for eternity, your claim is a romantic nonsense. Even the immortals grasp for legacy, whether in apprentices, empires, or dominion. Hunger does not vanish with time, only refines itself into influence. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Matthew six and twenty-one. Their treasure is dominion, their hunger is eternal. They may call themselves their own legacy, but they spend eternity proving it to anyone who will watch – and therefore, they have not escaped the baser instincts which drove humanity to begin with. Survival, in what ever form we can maintain it.”

“It seems we are back on what makes humanity humanity,” Tenzin hushes his speech to catch Constance and Sophie up. Hands folded, one is still in its sling.

Dark eyes drift back to Annabelle with a patient smile. “I feel the Order does more than humanitarian work; I hear they just as well have conservation efforts for the environment. Seeing as they are some form of… tree. Would this not fall under that, instead?”

“..Right.” Annabelle blinks, and for just a moment assails the other tree with a piercing glare of frustrated contempt. But grouching isn’t an activity she manages to fuel for very long, and it quickly drifts off into something closer to a pout.

“..Yeah.” She says to her shoes. “It’s probably just a nature thing. I love a lot of things a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever loved a tree. I guess they always seem like objects to me. Like, there’s the tree everyone’s arguing at, and then there’s our nice tree. Monuments. Well, different conversation.” She waves off.

Constance shrugs. “That’s above my pay grade,” she murmurs. “I don’t really care, to be honest. What is, is. I don’t think I’m very human as it is, so whatever.”

“Is it? We are surrounded by their hands and influence. Even now, many of those who rule hell are immortal themselves. And are you calling the woman you are with a pestilence and fowler?” Robert spikes his eyebrows up, looking surprised – and faintly amused – by August’s words, his gaze shifting from him to Arachne and back again. “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat – 2 Thessalonians, three ten.” He counters smoothly before this stormy brow as he studies Arachne.

“I did not mishear. You put a claim of falsehood that we cannot escape it. That all things originate back to it. They do not. There are things that are gifts, of art and creation, are all bent and built on it. Your own point is contradictory – in one breath you claim we cannot escape, and in another, all greatness is the precise effort of us escaping. And immortals only truly care for one thing; themselves. They only give back as it benefits them. If they choose to accumulate a greater breadth of power, it is because they have not yet figured out how to swallow it. You are a woman of logic that weaves back in on itself, and arguing with you further is as pointless as reasoning where a circle starts.”

And with those words so delivered, Robert clambers to his feet – and departs.

Sophie sighs and stands, brushing herself off, “Thank you for the conversation.”

“You are totally the most adorable fowler.” August chimes to Arachne at his side, before adding, “Sounds to me like he hears what he wants to hear how he wants to hear it.” But the disinterest in his voice, that lazy drawl, it returns quietly, and in a subtle lean, he gives his back to the tree for now.

“The affinities of one may not be the same as that of another,” Tenzin ponders, as he puts away the cymbals he’d been earlier ringing.

“One meets the sunny afternoon with open arms. Another glares into the sun, angry that it exists.” He rests his good hand on the maple’s bark. “One monk has to temper his impatience with gardening. Another claims he feels the trees breathing underneath his palm.”

“Monuments are not quite so alive. However, a historian might argue.”

Constance drily comments, “We can probably turn a monument alive if we try hard enough.”

Arachne merely glows in the wake of the departed Templar’s words, finding no fault in the way he framed August’s words, nor how plies her with sweet assurances. “We are who we are,” she murmurs in faint amusement, before expelling a light breath and turning her gaze upon Tenzin. “Perspective shapes truth, yes. The sun does not change, only our stance beneath it. Perhaps humanity is the same, instinct and aspiration both, depending on which light one chooses to face.” A quiet beat, then an elbow bends to nudge August softly. “Shall we?”

“I’ll try to ask a druid to ask the world tree if it’s a monument.” Annabelle mutters off to the north at the great canopy extending down and shading it’s borough.

As the argument ends, she settles her helmet more comfortably on her lap. “..I guess, I mean, in conclusion. People kinda do what suits them. I’ve said it before, I guess, I really-really like the quote. Son, there is no justice. There’s just what and that just is.” She turns her tone down in a goofy attempt at a baritone, but she only gets as lower as a tener.

Annabelle says “I think I want to use a scientific metric on what makes people human, and continue to treat people kindly because it makes me happy. That’s all it is for me, at the end of the day. I screw up sometimes, but maybe violence isn’t the same as killing someone. Like watergun fights but with more blood.“

No further prodding necessary, August slowly hauls himself off of the ground and climbs to his feet, just to offer his hand to Arachne and help her get up as well. “Yes, let’s.”

“Bye!” Annabelle gives out, now with the information before hand that people are walking away. Enough time for an act of kindness!

Arachne reaches up, accepting August’s aid to return to her feet. Her head turns to regard Annabelle briefly, her smile faint and inscrutable. “A scientific metric will give you bones and blood, but not the spirit that wields them. Still, kindness for its own joy is as sound a measure as any. Violence, blood and mistakes are not what strip us of humanity. One could reason that when humanity stops caring for why we act that we become something else.” And with that, she turns, lifting a hand to wave toward Constance, Tenzin, Annabelle and Lykaia as she goes with August.

Tenzin cracks a wry smile at Constance’s remark. He spares Arachne and August a polite nod on their way past.

Annabelle watches the pair waltz away, in steadier spirits, somehow, in spite and despite. “I’m not at peace with hurting people, I guess. Some part of me wants to hear that it doesn’t matter. The raids, right? No one ever dies on them. But it’s still abuse. People don’t like knives hitting them, it sucks. I feel ‘corrupted’ by engaging in it.”