Tim dragged his hand across his forehead, his fingers pausing to scratch anxiously at the skin as his brows furrowed in deep skepticism. “What’s this nonsense about ‘inner pearls?” he muttered, glaring at the digital poem before him.
Beside him, Miok let out a dry, dismissive snort. “Sounds like classic transcendentalism to me,” she said until a sharp hiccup derailed that thought.
A faint, wistful shadow flickered across Jules’ face. “One part of me wishes it were true, though.”
Cantara leaned back in her chair and shrugged, a playful, open-minded glint in her eye. “Maybe it is true on some level?”
Tim shook his head, unwilling to yield so easily. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table as earnestness bled into his voice. “Without a fundamental change in our consciousness, how can we ever know? If these so-called ‘pearls’ exist at all, it’s only because we forge them ourselves, through years of relentless training.”