"It would be slightly awkward to take back. I meant it too. It's sort of weird what with the reincarnation though, isn't it?"

"A little. We're special cases," snorts Avedan.

"How much I feel like my past lives seems to vary from - minute to minute. Right after waking up it's all really fresh, and then it settles into being decades ago, fuzzier than - than things that happened the most recent time I was six. But if I'm reading my old notes or every now and then if something familiar that I haven't been exposed to much yet this time around pops up, all of a sudden I'm one of them again for a moment."

"I - don't quite see them as me, in most cases? Sometimes I do. But it's more - they are people with my ability to judge and similar - if not the same - values, so I can trust what they say, or write, but it's somewhat harder to just - be them."

"I think in my case being them is sort of a - collective defense mechanism. If we're all one person it's okay that we get dream memories of other sub-parts of the person that we are."

"Oh. That - makes sense. I think."

"Does it? It sounds silly when I say it out loud, but it's been working, so I don't wind up shaking my fist at Next Time Around Me and don't feel like I'm a psychic parasite on my past lives."

"It sort of does. I'm not worried about Next Time Around Me having my thoughts, because - there's really nothing they could do with them that could affect me? And it would be someone that's essentially me, just - with a different life, so it's not like they're going to do anything nefarious with any of it anyway. There's a privacy issue, and it does kind of bug me that I get all of the... Er, private moments, but it's annoying and a bit embarrassing, not life changing."

"The privacy issue would bother me enormously if I didn't think of all of me as a person with some amnesia issues and a recurrent de-aging problem. I don't want other people to read my mind, not even if I'm not technically around to object."

Avedan nods. "Right. That I understand."

Snuggle. "We've probably had this conversation before, haven't we."

"Probably, but I don't remember having it."

"Yeah, me either. Yet. In a few hundred years we are going to have, like, the All Philosophical Discussions About Continuity And Reincarnation Dreams Night. It will be tedious."

Kiss!

Avedan snickers, and then rubs at his eyes and sloooowly follows. Charp made tea, didn't he? Avedan requires it.

Charp made tea! And biscuits and sausages.

"You're welcome, sir."