Patin’s Lessons to the Prophets, Vol. 47A: What is Love
Posted on Tue Oct 14th, 2025 @ 5:31pm by Patin
925 words; about a 5 minute read
Mission:
Character Development
Location: Celestial Temple
The Celestial Temple shimmered that day like glass caught between storms — all edges and glimmer, spinning softly in dimensions that refused to stay still. Time hummed. Reality hummed louder.
Patin appeared mid-hum. One hand on her hip, the other holding a spectral cigar that didn’t smoke so much as glow indignantly.
“Alright, shiny folk,” she announced, squinting up into the infinite. “Lesson Forty-Seven—A, because numbering things helps the meatsacks feel important. Today we’re talking about love.”
Love. The voices answered as one — thousands of tones speaking from nowhere and everywhere. You have spoken this word before.
Patin grinned. “Oh, I’ve used it plenty, sure. Usually before running away, or right after detonating something I shouldn’t’ve. But this...” she snapped her fingers. “...this is about understanding it. Which, spoiler alert, I don’t.”
A swirl of golden fog coalesced at her gesture, forming into moving shapes — fragments of memory projected like living sculpture. A younger Patin, mud up to her knees, crouched beside Rhenora in the shattered ruins of an occupied village. Explosions thundered across the frozen peaks in the distance.
“That’s Nozzie, you should know her already, but,” she said softly. “Don’t let her face fool you. She’s stubborn enough to make a Cardassian cry and gentle enough to make a spider blush.” She paused, smirking. “And I raised spiders, so I’d know.”
The Prophets shifted, the image flickering in response.
This bond. You classify it as love?
“Sort of.” She tilted her head, watching her past self slap mud on Rhenora’s burned arm. “Love isn’t just the soft bits, you know? It’s the geometry of chaos. Angles that don’t line up but somehow hold the structure together. You two fit like broken glass glued with blood and loyalty.”
Blood is temporal. It ends.
“Sure. But love’s not in the blood. It’s in the staying.”
She swirled a finger and the scene changed — a flicker of time, another lifetime. Patin, older now, dirty and defiant, dragging an injured Nozzie down a snow-choked slope on a piece of jagged metal. Explosions behind them painted the sky crimson.
“That day, I learned what love wasn’t. It wasn’t pretty, or polite, or even sane. It was me swearing at the mountain gods and biting the wind, promising her she’d live long enough for me to say ‘I told you so.’”
She chuckled, but the sound cracked.
A cloud above formed a heart. Then it exploded into sparks.
Patin laughed. “Now that’s my kind of romance.”
Destruction and affection cannot coexist.
“Tell that to anyone who’s ever been in love, sparkles. You build something you can’t keep, then blow it up trying to protect it. Every time I lit a fuse, I felt it — that little ache that says, ‘you’re alive, but you’re gonna miss this.’”
The Prophets moved, uncertain — like waves trying to understand fire.
Explain.
She waved the glowing cigar at the cloud images. “Love’s slow. Like brewing a batch of arachnid venom whisky. Takes patience, a little heat, and the willingness to lose a finger or two. You tend it, feed it, wait for it to turn gold. And if you rush it...” she mimed an explosion “...you end up with singed eyebrows and a ruined vat. But when it’s right?” She smiled. “When it’s right, you can taste forever.”
The fog rippled, showing her laughing with Remal and Rhenora in some long-forgotten tavern. A younger crew — the Sunfire’s family. Bonnie snickering, Leo gesturing wildly, Coy pretending they weren't watching them all.
“See that? That’s love too. The kind that sneaks up on you when you’re trying to steal someone’s drink.”
Affection within chaos. Connection without permanence.
“That’s the secret, isn’t it?” Patin said, voice quiet now. “We all think love’s about keeping something safe. But it’s not. It’s about watching it burn and knowing you’d light the match again.”
The Prophets stilled. The entire Temple seemed to hold its breath.
She smirked. “Don’t look at me like that. You invited a demolitionist to your eternity. What did you expect — poetry?”
Perhaps.
Patin laughed again, wiping a glowing tear from her cheek. “Well, tough luck. My kind of poetry comes with shrapnel.”
The clouds shifted once more — this time showing her spider farm on Bajor, mist rolling through the valleys. She reached out, touching one of the spectral webs. The silk pulsed faintly, alive.
“Love is like this,” she murmured. “Tension and beauty. Every thread has a purpose, but you can’t see the pattern until the light hits it right. And when it breaks… the web doesn’t cry. It just rebuilds.”
Rebuilding is persistence.
“Exactly.” She flicked the cigar away. It turned into a starburst that hung above her head. “Love’s persistence beyond being. You lot should understand that, yeah? You’re practically made of it — holding on to moments long after the rest of us let go.”
Silence. Then, faintly, a hum of approval — or maybe understanding.
Patin crossed her arms, nodding toward the dissolving memories. “Lesson Forty-Seven-A, done and dusted. Love’s a mess, but it’s ours.”
Love is not possession.
It is persistence beyond being.
Patin grinned wide, proud and defiant. “Well look at that. You’re learning.”
TBC
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