Making Choices

The civilization of the Espers had changed greatly. For millennia, they had influenced nature, the soil, mountains, rivers, seas, and all the surrounding ecosystems.

Access to more food, one of their fundamental needs, had profoundly changed their ways of life, which, little by little, had transformed their civilization into the one we now knew.

The use of magic may have been nothing more than the catalyst for a transformation of their society that had begun thousands of years earlier.

But if survival had been at the heart of everyday life for the Espers of ancient times, leaving them no choice, the development of their society had brought with it a problem that had never arisen before.

Making choices.

Caught in the ever-unbroken and ever-accelerating flow of society as a whole, this problem then seemed trivial, even nonexistent.

If it was no longer survival that left them with no choice, it was the immeasurable force of the Shadow of society that pushed all the Espers to act without thinking, without making the choices they now had the possibility of making.

Choosing to act for future generations. To do everything they could to leave them a world in which they could live and continue to have choices, rather than simply having to survive.

Choosing to act for harmony between the different elements, despite their differences. And choosing to understand that these differences were a strength, and that together, the different elements were capable of creating a glimmer of hope far stronger than all the elements taken separately.

Choosing to act, therefore, to develop one’s StarDust…