Editing The Past Is Never Gone:PC Aspen (section)

==Notes==
*Justice's soul, seen through a dream: ''A lioness in a makeshift jungle, the green mixed with red and orange of fire. The constant forward motion, keeping the darkness at bay but never leaving it behind. Whether the darkness is following or chasing isn't clear. The view in front changes between prey and other predators, the dead getting burned up instantly. The dream ends with the lioness standing alone, unsure, before starting again.''
*Desire's thoughts of Aspen: ''I waited for Aspen as long as I could before I had to run. I've always been a survivor but I'm faster than I am strong and when trouble came I ran.''
**''Aspen, it was a few weeks before I learned I could enter the maelstrom and call you down from your retreat. Then I listened to your conversion story and told you this one but you cannot remember. Every time I tell you your normal sharp focus fades and you forget every word as I spit it out because you cannot know me and this story is me. Who were you to me? Are you my father, my brother, my son? My skin is black and yours is white but was my skin always dark? What do I look like to you? Everyone sees in me what they desire most, maybe that's why my name is now Desire I don't know what it once was. I cannot know you either. We've been together for more than ten years, I know that by the stories you tell like I was around, even though I'm never in them. Good night, my friend I hope your dreams bring you closer to your god.''

===MC Questions===
*MC: ''Tell me about where you retreated to or went for the epiphany. Physically where was it relative to the current community, how remote is it from them, from whatever is around it?''
**Aspen: ''the Mountain lies to the south, among a vast range of volcanic peaks people call a variety of names like the White Mountains or the Devil Peaks. It holds a glacier, possibly one of the last in the region, which Aspen named "Ararat." Four rivers flow out from its corners, and at its hip grows an ancient ponderosa forest. It is in the shrub-lands below where Aspen discovered the psychoactive alkaloids present in a species of flowering shrubs - extracted, he calls the chemical the "diviner's lotus." Across salt flats and wildfire-ravaged savannas to the north, one reaches the place of the Source(?). It is in the glass valley of obsidian surrounding the glacial Ararat where Aspen received revelation, a growth of the mind and shattering of barriers so excruciating he claims he would have died if not for proper preparation and the complete erosion of ego. He then lived in this inhospitable place for three years, visited by a serpent in his waking moments and by myriads of spirits in his dreams, composing both the "astral" and the "infernal tongues."''
*MC: ''Who in the community collects scraps of old knowledge and lore, and in what form do they collect it? Where do you suspect they get most of it from?''
**Aspen: ''Besides the Circle? Well, we did come across young Cato when we first drove into the valley, not long ago. He was along a dirt tract just some few miles away from the gate, the so-called "mouth of the valley." He's far too young to know the things he knows, but he carried no paper on him as far as I could see. He spoke with a vocabulary I hadn't heard in years, though he seemed to misuse words here and there, to my amusement. After some conversation, in which I discovered his name, age, and his quick aptitude, I invited him aboard the bus. Unfortunately, the Circle may have intimidated him, composed as it is of entirely women (they have been more receptive thus far), and he left us in a bit of a fluster. Since then, I've been hoping to come across him again, for he would make a perfect member of the Circle, easily integrated due to his apparent moral attitude and possessing a critical and curious mind. And, where does he get all of his knowledge? Does he know secret ruins, or have a teacher?''