Patin's Lessons to the Prophets, Vol. 5: Time

Posted on Wed Oct 1st, 2025 @ 2:24pm by Patin
Edited on on Wed Oct 1st, 2025 @ 2:25pm

1,175 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: Celestial Temple

The Temple shimmered in its usual fashion — endless folds of light that twisted on themselves like ribbons caught in a wind no mortal could feel. Most who entered were either awestruck or terrified. Patin was neither. She shoved her hands into her battered jacket, muttered about how the place looked like the inside of a soap bubble, and conjured herself a cigar from sheer willpower.

“All right, class,” she announced, puffing a cloud of imaginary smoke. “Today’s lesson: time. The most basic damn thing in existence. Or at least, it should be basic, if you weren’t all cheating immortals floating around in your eternal kiddie pool.”

The Prophets rippled in response, a thousand voices weaving into one.
We are of Bajor. We are not bound.

“Yeah, yeah, I know the mantra,” Patin grumbled. “You don’t experience time. You just sit up here and peek in like a nosy aunt at a window. But my people? We live it. And let me tell you, it’s a cruel, stubborn son of a pagh.”

A swirl of golden threads condensed, curious.
Explain.

Patin smirked, leaned back against nothing, and began.

“Time, darlings, is like… it’s like a line. You start at one end — baby, drooling, can’t even hold your head up — and you shuffle along until the other end, where you’re old, wrinkled, and yelling at kids for stepping on your crops. You don’t get to skip around. You don’t get to peek ahead and say, ‘Oh, look, I win the lottery at forty-two.’ You just trudge. That’s time.”

The Prophets hummed.
The line is not real. All is now.

Patin slapped her forehead with a groan. “I knew you were gonna say that! ‘All is now,’ pah! Listen, if all was ‘now,’ then I wouldn’t remember yesterday’s hangover, and believe me, that hangover was real.” She jabbed her cigar into the void like a weapon. “Don’t argue with me about hangovers.”

The Temple pulsed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“Fine, let’s try another angle,” she said. “Think of time as… a river. Nice, right? It flows one way. You’re stuck in a little raft, bumping along, trying not to drown or crash into rocks. No matter what you do, the river only goes downstream.”

We see the river from above. We see the source and the sea.

Patin rolled her eyes. “Of course you do. Must be nice, huh? Sitting in your little cosmic lifeguard chair, looking down at the whole river like it’s a map. Meanwhile, the rest of us are in leaky rafts, bailing with our boots and swearing at the fish. That’s the difference.”

She puffed again, pacing now. “Time means we have to make choices. You all love choices, don’t you? Rhenora had choices. I had one too, and you know damn well how that ended. But without time, choices mean squat. They’re just floating possibilities. Time forces us to pick.”

The light rippled.
The river flows. All choices exist.

“Uh-huh. And yet here I am, dead, because I made mine.” She stabbed her thumb into her chest. “See, this is why you’re lousy teachers. You don’t get it. You’re like kids who’ve read the whole book before class and then lord it over everyone else.”

The Prophets whispered, multiple voices layering like chords.
You are frustrated.

“No kidding I’m frustrated!” Patin barked. “I’m trying to explain boots and mud to a bunch of glowing space squids who’ve never stubbed a toe. All right, listen up. Forget rivers. Forget lines. Let’s go with… food.”

The Temple stilled.

“Yeah, food. Time’s like cooking,” she explained, warming to the idea. “You start with raw stuff — flour, water, maybe some hasperat if you’ve got tastebuds worth a damn. That’s the past. Then you mix it, heat it, do the work — that’s the present. And finally, you eat it, or maybe burn it to ashes because you forgot it in the oven. That’s the future. Bam. Simple.”

A golden ripple passed through the Temple.
We taste all at once.

Patin froze, blinked, then burst out laughing. “Of course you do! You’d ruin dinner instantly, wouldn’t you? What’s the point of a stew if you taste the onions, the broth, and the salt all at once? No wonder you’re so bloody cryptic. You’ve never had to wait for bread to rise!”

She cackled, wiping nonexistent tears from her eyes. “Time, my glowy friends, is about waiting. That’s the lesson. Waiting for the rain that doesn’t come. Waiting for the Cardassians to leave. Waiting for your damn hangover to end. Waiting for a child to be born, or for someone you love to come home. Time hurts, but it also makes things sweet. Like the slow brew of my favorite mountain firebrand — you mash the grain, you let it sit, you heat it once, then you set it down for months. The longer it’s left to sleep, the smoother it gets, the deeper the bite turns into honey. That’s the kind of sweetness only time can make.” She let that image hang in the Temple like the scent of something warm.

The Prophets hummed, light folding in contemplative waves.
Waiting is… the path.

“Exactly,” Patin said, jabbing the air with her cigar. “Waiting makes us who we are. If you’d ever had to wait for a lover outside curfew, you’d know. Standing there, freezing your ass off, praying their boots don’t clomp loud enough to wake the whole garrison. That’s living.”

The Temple pulsed.
We do not wait.

“Yeah, I noticed.” She sighed, shaking her head. “And that’s why you’ll never really get it. You can peek at time all you want, but you’ll never know the satisfaction of watching a dry field finally get rain. You’ll never know the agony of counting days until your sentence is up. You’ll never know the joy of hearing a baby’s first cry after hours that felt like eternity. That’s time. Messy, painful, glorious.”

The Prophets shifted, almost uncertain.

Patin smirked, sensing her victory. “You don’t gotta like it. But you’d better respect it. Because without time, Bajorans wouldn’t be Bajorans. Hell, without time, there wouldn’t be hasperat — and what a boring universe that would be.”

The Temple rippled with something new — not quite laughter, not quite song, but a vibration close to both.

Patin leaned back, puffed her imaginary cigar, and grinned. “All right, class dismissed. Next time, we’ll cover vengeance. Bring your notebooks, I’ve got plenty of stories that’ll curl your nonexistent hair.”

And with that, she flicked an ash that never fell, muttering, “Time. Hah. The one thing I could never blow up.”

 

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