Analysis of the Philosophy topic, Scepticism. Or Skepticism, American spelling. It came from too much homework, I swear.

Another fic about Absol! I am proud of myself :D

. F i n a l i t y .

I was so certain, when I lifted my eyelids this morning, that I would see a glint, a spark of light. For my dreams are still so full of the same, dreams of a world I left behind long, long ago. Was that, too a dream? Have I finally awakened from that bright, colourful fantasy just to find that the real world is one full of darkness? It is so hard not to be sceptical now, for I have been gone from that world of beautiful (perhaps false) existence so long that even my memoriesof that time are only as clear as my dreams at night.

Night? I scoff that I still define my days of existence as diurnal. For what does night mean to me now? Night, a darkness that comes every twelve hours, lasts for twelve hours, blurred at the edges at dawn and dusk. But now, does that mean anything? I cannot even understand the concept of "dark" anymore. Why, when I don't even have the sight to distinguish bright and dark, light and shadow. Shadows don't exist anymore in my world—only shapes, sounds, fleeting dreams from a hallucinating brain—things that sight is not required for.

Then how can I know that my world is real anymore? I know my world through the sensations I feel from my every nerve—the sounds vibrating in my ears, the objects touching my skin—how am I not to know that it is not all a set of false signals, things that I was made to believe, and now believe so easily because I cannot see? Sight is the most believable sense. Without it, it is so easy to fool one. How foolish I must be now.

The world has become so unreal. I am caught between believing that my old world was the only reality I ever experienced, and that my old world was only a dream, something false. When did everything blur so?

Now I don't half care. I can feel a doorstep beneath my belly, cold—cold like ice. I can feel the cool of the evening wind through my fur, and it stirs up, just slightly, a strange memory in my mind, of a similar day. I can smell wild herbs, and if my memory does not fail me, it is because our garden has gone untended for a while.

I can hear the start of an engine, a low mechanical growl that, similarly, brings back dreams of light, of shining headlights and a groaning human machine that has just arrived at our driveway, everything falling silent suddenly, leaving the wild throb of insect songs and frog croaks on the evening wind.

And I can feel a coldness settling over myself, a coldness that has nothing to do with the wind or the evening. I have lived long enough, been through enough, to recognize it: finality.

Somehow, I know what is about to come.

Last night, I heard shouts at home, while I lay on this very same doorstep in the evening. Violent shouts that were nothing like the ones I have often heard—shouts full of pain. Harsh enough to wound a living soul that can hear. I heard my name, heard it spoken with merciless rage—heard myself being called a "nuisance".

I don't care if these things I sensed last night are false signals, unrealities meant to simulate a world for me. My world, now, comes from my senses, and this is what I have been fed. All I know now is that the deepening, heavy finality I feel is real, a suffocating feeling that seems to drag me deeper every moment.

Something is coming. It doesn't take one with sight to know that. Something is coming, something that makes me doubt even the things I know are real.

...

I hear a voice. "Don't worry now, Midnight," it says, a gentle familiar whisper. I raise my head to the voice, as I always did when I could see, a habit I still cannot change. Is this truly the companion who took me to battle, for whom I won so many victories in my early years of life? Were those times even real, or were they just another of my wishful, blind dreams?

"Don't worry," she repeats. "It'll be short and fast. Don't fear, my dear Midnight…it'll be fine…"

I feel a strong hand over my back This gesture would normally bring my security, but now it doesn't, for her hand is cold. I hear a small sob of fear. I feel a needlepoint at my neck,

The finality deepens, deepens, a burning icy ocean that engulfs my world, a cathedral of fading stars.