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// 6: Paragon of Beauty 
// Story: The Humiliation of Quirk 
// by Achaian 
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Paragon of Beauty



It was a quiet revolution at first, as they all tend to be.

It started with a dissonance. The smallest voice of minute discord in a forum of the mind softly, cunningly spoke, and gave motion to a life of tiny instruments with chords of malice. They spread about stealthily through the great senate of the mind, and by slow degrees all who listened succumbed to the bizarre and malicious inferences they suggested. It was a Nightmare of reason; the temples of the mind began to crumble at their very foundations: those who tended them. They had heard the lies whispered and shouted amongst the truth, and they had failed to distinguish them. The senator’s judgments had become ludicrous; the orators had become demagogues; the harmony stripped and broken, yet still a single voice cried out: “Is pain not a thing to be avoided? Can there not be good without it?”

Fluttershy was unsure of the quorum in her mind rejecting the proposition, yet her conscience, though wracked by shared agonies, agreed- if it was not shouted down by the “common sense” of others first. It was a deeply disturbing disagreement, and she began a methodical stroll to relieve some of the tension. The sun was shining, it was by all measures a glorious day, yet turmoil had found its way in.

And what is pain, anyways? She knew it to be a reaction to stimuli, in the most biological sense. But was suffering as a result of an action, as opposed to mere pain, an unnecessary wrong and wounding of the self and others? Or was it an exercise in humility and humbleness that would prevent hurts in the future? Some shouted for the affirmative, that an eye for an eye would stop the cycle, but Fluttershy was already blinded and she knew not what she saw and she comprehended not what she heard and her feelings were all awry and what was good was gone and all understanding went with it!

And she was not so sure, and the voices kept shouting.

Surely some good had come out of suffering, though. Had not the pain of sympathy inspired many great things? Did not the relation of pain in another to pain in the self cause a desire to avoid that malady in all persons? Yet suffering had created a great many who believed themselves unredeemable, and did it not often just as much fail as succeed? It was an uproarious argument; the senate convulsed; it was a fundamental question of thought and morality far beyond any peak that was comprehendible, and the debris that came crashing down the calamitous mountain that hosted the debate threatened to slide her away into a black and murky inescapable chasm.

She stopped walking at the edge of the forest. There were birds there, and they were happy, and simple, and pure; they sang their songs without suffering.

If they were not happy, then would they be sad?

Fluttershy did not know the answer, but she instead rephrased the question more formally and particularly: was evil the absence of good or was good the absence of evil?

Was evil the disruption of harmony or was harmony the lack of evil?

What was bad?

She sat, and considered the songbirds.

The song was harmonious, definitely a good thing. But if she were to heft a rock at them and disturb it (her stomach churned at the thought; she was not one to do such an unkind thing) would the silence be worse than the song? She nodded to herself; it definitely would be worse. Yet the silence in itself was not a bad thing, she realized; the conundrum remained unsolved in that singular situation. Fluttershy would have to become grander in her consideration to gain a universal understanding.

She supposed that there was nothing, and that the nothing was a blank void of space with absolutely no thing to call it home, with no light and no shadow and no earth. Would that be worse than the silence of the birds? It must be- for if the birds were silent in one moment, they could always sing again in another, but if there was nothing then no good and no harmony of any kind could exist. It was true that silence was sometime welcome, but that always existed in contrast to the noise when it had become overbearing. Even things that she considered bad could not exist in the void, yet what did that have to do with suffering? It seemed to suggest that what existed was good, for good can always come of existence no matter the circumstance, and what was evil was… what?

The birds whirled around in joyous circumferences, calling to each other. Fluttershy paused on her reflections, and was warmed by their play for a minute of thankful solitude. Then it came to her: the undefinable realization, the moment of understanding.

Evil was nothing, evil was no thing; for evil was pushing toward a black void of nonexistence, pushing towards entropy and infinite coldness, and did not negative emotions do the same? Did not always the good go toward the preservation of life instead of endless destruction? Did not suffering and pain push toward those most horrible of occurrences, the slaying of the self or others and death, the demise and end of all perception?

The queasiness of the last bit of her thought was prevalent for a moment, but was quickly overtaken by a brightening dawn of understanding- that was it! She could help him without hurting him! With a slight squeak of excitement she took to the air with a swift deliverance in mind, the philosophical wonderings had produced an applicable solution to the pit of painful feelings that Quirk had become. If he can let go, he can learn how to stop hurting himself! Fluttershy’s exuberant conclusion drove her swiftly toward her cottage, and although most would have considered it odd that she cared not what he had done to her, that was simply the justice of her being.