Chapter Text
Just like every night, Dorothy cannot sleep. She has deep cleaned her entire apartment, twice, reread Apollo and Marsyas and thoroughly danced until exhaustion and she still cannot sleep. Right now the only thing she can do is focus on the storm outside as her knee bounces and her fingers tap and her head bops. If she does anymore she'll get another noise complaint.
Just like every night, all she can hear is the Thunderskin's endless, ceaseless beat. It was all it ever did, maybe all it would ever do. Even if the Mansus grew cold and the Corrivality's flames spread and cindered the world the Thunderskin would still beat to its seven instrument-Names. Humanity could die, ascend to the Glory or devolve into the Carapace and it would still beat. That which does not cease, is not ceased.
It was easy to ignore at first, when she discovered the Invisible Arts and the Hours, even if she occasionally found rhythm and music in the stillest of moments and found herself often waking up when it was raining for seemingly no reason. Though the more she learnt and the more she danced, the more restless she became.
It was the worst during storms, when the sky and sea itself repeated the Thunderskin's own restless mantra and chose to move the world to the drumbeat that never ends through the thrashing of the shores and the thundering of the skies.
It was difficult not to dance then, like her skin would split if she didn't, but even then it was still manageable if she recited enough of Winter. Difficult, painful sometimes, but manageable. Though she always came to regret refusing its song.
Now though sleeping seemed impossible. The dance always demanded more and she could never resist its call or the ecstasy it brought.
So many, the smart, the noble, the ruthless, would do their little cycle forever; Discuss, ascend, die, repeat. All for knowledge, and power, but never for happiness. How many Lantern adepts had drove themselves into madness? How many Winter adepts had drove themselves into despair? How many Edge adepts had drove themselves to death?
The Lantern Illuminates and Winter scholars of the world could debate Horomachistry and Ithastry and on the Chandler all they liked. They could even, in spite or praise, choose to discuss the Thunderskin, on its protecting of the world and its doctrine, but they could never get it. Never get that call. That unmovable, unshakable, call for action and motion.
She did though.
Dorothy might not sleep, might never sleep, but that was ok, preferable even. All we have is now and in a choice between stillness and action a Heart adept will always choose action. Always. She knows because she's met others like her, others who get her. Dancers and optimists and sailors and warriors pledged to revolution.
They might be different, different in almost every way but they all know of life's one biggest purpose; movement. They'll have different names for it sure; to never cease, to always be seamless, to always be renewed but it's all the same.
A revolutionary understands the importance of motion as much as a dancer does, and a dancer understands the importance of joy as much as an optimist does, and an optimist knows the importance of resilience as much as a sailor does, and a sailor knows the importance of action as much as a revolutionary does.
The Thunderskin will never cease. The Lionsmith will never stop in his eternal revolution. The Malachite will never be exhausted. The Velvet will never stop protecting the world. This is their doctrine, and they will never stop, and under synonyms of that same promise adepts that understand life will dance to its message.
Dorothy cannot sleep, Dorthy can never sleep. The moment she stops will be the moment she never moves again. Her veins burn with vigour, her muscles ache to dance and her mind shudders at the thought of rest.
She is out in the storm before her mind can catch up with her and lost in its dance already, and around the world others will do the same.
this is the doctrine of the Heart, and it is the doctrine she will follow until death.
That which does not cease; is not ceased.