Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 249
words. Now, the book beckoned again, and he wondered if
Hesty’s distraction had been enough to break the spell it had
cast over him. He hesitated; then, when he realized he was
acting like he was afraid of the thing, he stalked over quickly
and bent to read:
An ancient sage held that in different ages, humans held
the senses in different ratios, according to the media by which
they communicated and expressed themselves. Hence before
writing, the ear was the royal sense. After writing, the eye.
We say that similar ratios pertain between emotions.
Each civilization has its royal affect, and its ignored or
forgotten feelings. Or rather--there are no distinct emotions.
You have learned that in the human heart, love resides within
such and such a circle, hate there in another, and between are
pride, jealousy, all the royal and plebeian emotions. We say
instead emotion is one unbounded field. Our way of life causes
us to cross this field, now in one direction, now another, again
and again on our way to the goals to which our world has
constrained us. The paths crisscross, and eventually the field
has well-travelled intersections, and blank areas where we
have never walked.
We name the intersections just as we do towns but not
the empty fields between them. We name these oft-crossed
places love, hate, jealousy, pride. But our destinations were
made by the conditions of our lives, they are not eternal or
inevitable.
We know that the answer to human suffering lies in
changing the ratio of emotions so grief and sorrow lie
neglected, even nameless, in an untraveled wild.
The task of a Queen is to rule a people truly. The task of
the Queen of Queens is to rule Truth itself. We know that the
highest act of creation is to create new emotions, superior to