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Families, the Portal of Fate and its Effects on Memories by Ayisdra

Merit for June 2014

This essay, while scholarly in nature, does not use empirical data and relies more on a idealistic mindset in its contents.

Most mortals walk into the Portal of Fates at a young age and step from it around the end of their childhood. The processes of the Portal on the child's body are apparent - memory loss of the time when they first entered the portal. This is an not an issue, as the Portal can do such things. What is interesting is the power of the Portal and its effects on memories of the child's parents. Parents, upon the moment their child enters the Portal for the first time, seem to not have any memories of having a child. The Portal of Fates, itself, makes it clearly known when someone new exits its threshold. If the memories of the parents were intact, then they would rush to their children and welcome them back into the Basin. However, this is not always the case.
 
More distressing, is the fact that it does not just seem to be the parent's memories, but everyone that knows the parents. Clearly, in this time, that people having children is not a secret event. The parents share the news with friends and family. If the Portal of Fates just invaded the mind of those at the time when the child was to walk into it, then the memory removal process would be based on proximity. However, not everyone that knows the child is likely to be at such life-changing moment. So, this tells us that the Portal of Fate has power beyond shaping souls. It has the power that even reaches to all the known planes.

This power may even effects the written word. A parent is mostly likely going to record moments of a child's life down. Their first words. Their first steps. All these and more are things a parent would have a physical recording of. If the Portal of Fates just removed memories, then logically, such a record would be found and upon a parent finding their child, the parent would make some connections between the recording and newly found child. If such physical evidence were to remain untouched, then by viewing such, it would be possible to restore the memories of those fresh from the Portal of Fates.

Why would the Portal of Fates do this? Perhaps it is a product of an internal system to ensure no one is wrongly influenced into joining a family; one that they may have ran to the Portal to get away from. Or perhaps there was a threat many years ago, such that the only way to stop the evil was to erase all who had memory of it, including those who could not walk back into the Portal. Or maybe the Fates just have an odd sense of humour. Without having access to someone from a time when such memories were not removed, there is no way to physically test such hypotheses.

However, there are a few points that I would like to talk about in a bit more depth. One theory is that a person has been physical changed, to the point that their parents do not recognize them. Why would the Fates do this? Another theory is that one is 'forged for greatness' which logic would dictate that there is greatness in numbers and familiar ground. This can be found in family bonds. The Fates clearly ask what one thinks they look like. Logically, they should already know this. They should have known what a person looked like when they first came in, and with a bit of magic they are more than capable of having, are able to tell what ageing will do to the body and have a clear idea what the person will look like grown up. By these assertions, the Fates must having other more sinister plans when they deal with mortals.

The other point that I would like to bring up has a more depressing outcome. This is that everyone has just forgotten about the child. Why would any parent want to forget their children, or anyone that knew of the child? Do they just become a passing thought since they completed this so called coming-of-age passage? However, the depressing nature of this point does not just lay in the fact people have forgotten about this person they loved, but the amount of time that has passed. For the sake of this argument, let us assume the youngest someone has entered the Portal of Fates is age five and the oldest is twenty-eight.

While if the people in this person's life have been waiting the better part of a decade or two, the reasons for forgetting may be a bit more understandable, but what about those who have had their child enter the Portal later in life, and that the loved ones have only waited a year or two? What does this memory loss say about these parents and loved ones? What if they, the parents and child, do remember everything including the age they were sent away? The emotional distress this poses is not conducive to fostering greatness as the Fates claim the Portal does. 

These two points to suggest that the Fates are beyond all of this memory loss. Be it on their part directly or in part of their influences. If they have reasons for such actions, they are not sharing. Perhaps they like the show mortals put on in trying to find family. Perhaps the only real answer to avoid being toyed with if such is the case is learn how to harness the power of the Portal of Fates to shape destinies without their meddling. If someone did find such an answer, would they even be able to keep it in their memories or share it with other without the Fates doing something? Perhaps if such an answer does exist, it may never be found.