This series was not supposed to come out until at least the end of Blake and Jaune's Infinite Playlist, but with the recent news concerning Monty Oum's hospitalization, this particular piece seemed appropriate to release as a tribute for him.

This is for Monty. Get well soon, my friend.

EDIT: The late, the great Monty Oum has passed. We will always remember you. Thank you... for everything.

In Which Ren and Nora Talk About Life, the Universe, and Everything

Some nights, when he wasn't out jamming with the band or playing a show, Ren could be found in the comforts of his own apartment, brewing a homemade pot of tea (today's blend consisted of green tea, mint, and rosemary) and just enjoying the soothing sense of peace and quiet that came with those pleasant aromas.

Today was one of those nights. In fact, it was quieter still; from Ren's vantage point in the tiny kitchen, he watched with a smile as his girlfriend laid comfortably on his living room couch, wrapped in a blanket and enjoying ravenously the novel in her lap.

Not many people realized that the relentlessly energetic Nora was absolutely enthralled by books. This fact was quite frequently used by Ren to achieve very sly means; whenever Ren decided that he had had enough of Nora's antics for a while, he would buy her a book.

That seemed to do the trick, often enough.

Of course, with a phrase like "often enough," it was a fair assumption to make that Nora's book collection grew rather rapidly. Nora was a voracious reader, much to the vexation of Ren – and his wallet. Indeed, Nora probably had enough books to begin the reconstruction of the Library of Alexandria, if she so pleased (although Ren suspected that with a librarian of Nora's overbearing exuberance, the library would probably burn right back down the instant that he blinked).

One can only dream, he thought contentedly to himself as he went to pour himself and Nora a cup of the freshly finished tea.

Across the room, Nora closed the book in her lap softly and lifted her head to look at Ren, an uncharacteristically pensive expression on her face. "Hey Ren?"

"Yes Nora?" Ren carried the two cups from the kitchen to the sofa where Nora resided and handed her one, which she graciously accepted.

Nora sipped the tea lightly, wary of burning her tongue. "What's the meaning of life, you think?"

"42," deadpanned Ren.

"Uh… what?"

"Sorry." With a chuckle, he placed his tea on the nearby coffee table. "The meaning of life… why do you ask?"

Nora made room for Ren to sit. "I guess it's just the stuff I've been reading recently."

"What are you reading, anyway?"

"Uh…" Nora glanced at the cover briefly. "Vonnegut."

"Ah," Ren nodded thoughtfully. "That'll do that to you."

Nora giggled. "But seriously, do you ever think about that sometimes? I mean, here we are, playing shows every Saturday night, working other jobs, eating pancakes everyday-"

"Maybe not so much that last one," interjected Ren.

"- and then we sleep, wake up, and repeat. But life, as quiet as it is, is going on around us every second of everyday, wherever we look. So do we have some great purpose in life, and are we doing it right now? Or is there no objective purpose and life just floats on like it does?"

Ren blinked. "Who are you and what did you do with Nora?"

Nora softly whacked his head with book in her lap. "Hey, I can be smart, too, sometimes. Especially dating you. Your smarts rub off on me, y'know."

"And yet you don't see me bouncing off the walls. I wonder why," teased Ren, which received another playful whack to the head.

"You ass," Nora grumbled. "I don't know. Do you think about this stuff? I feel like you must have. People who are quiet on the outside usually aren't so quiet on the inside, Ren."

Ren smiled at that. Another thing people usually didn't know about Nora was that she was very attentive. If anything, he definitely learned more about himself when he was around his girlfriend.

"I do," he replied, before reaching for his own tea from the table and taking a sip.

"So… what do you make of it, then?" Nora prodded.

Ren wrapped his arms around the ginger. "Well… I guess the best answer I can give you is that I don't know. And maybe that's the point."

Nora frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Think of it like this: if you spend all your life trying to find the meaning, or maybe the answer, to it all, then what happens if you actually… get it? Then what? Do you just keep living life with that answer in mind? What if you don't like that answer? Then what becomes of what you've already done, and what becomes of what you will do? And, I guess more importantly, what will the human race do once we know the meaning of life? Is that the end? Do we just go home?"

"That can't be right?" Nora pondered from the comfort of Ren's arms. "I feel like everyone's purpose in life would at least be different enough to suit every single person. Right?"

"Exactly." Ren beamed at her. "The problem is that people keep searching for this overarching balloon definition of the meaning of life. I think if there happens to be one, it's big enough that we're not meant to find it."

Nora's brow furrowed further. "That definitely doesn't make sense. How can it be so big that you can't see it? You'd have to be able to see something, right?"

"Sure, you'd see something, but you'd never be able to see all of it. It's like being in a forest," explained Ren patiently. "When you're in front of the tree and you're looking at the tree, you can't really see the whole forest, so how do you know what the forest looks like just by seeing that one tree? The universe is so big, and we're so small; so how can we ever see the whole meaning of life when we're just little, tiny scraps of life ourselves? It's such a broad concept that I think if there was an overall meaning to life, it's just not meant for us to see."

Nora pondered this for some time.

Then she peered up at Ren. "Then what's yours?"

"Pardon?"

Nora shrugged. "You said that we can't know for sure what the whole meaning of life is. But do you feel like there's a specific purpose to maybe your life?"

"Hmmm…" Ren went silent for a moment. "Well, it's still a pretty big thing in and of itself, and still hard to figure out. How long does it take before I find out? Does it change constantly based on who I become? Or maybe it's like and endgame, where you figure out what your life amounted to right before you pass on."

He leaned back against the couch and felt Nora move with him. "It's kind of funny. It's a huge question to ask anyone, to just walk up to someone and say, 'Do you have your life figured out?' And most people would love to tell you yes, but the truth is usually 'hell no,' and those who say otherwise are probably wrong."

Ren shifted. "I mean, not to say that they don't know what they want to do in life, but I think as long as you live, you'll always have questions about life. I'd wager to say that the more answers you get, the more questions come about. Kind of like the forest analogy. Once you figure that the tree's in a forest, you try to find the forest, and after all this hard work, you find the forest… then what? What's outside of that forest? And then what's outside of that?"

Pausing to sip on his tea momentarily, he continued. "And yet it's like we're all driven to find out the meaning to our lives. Why do you think that is? That we put that much pressure on people when it's clearly such an impossible thing to achieve?" Ren wondered aloud.

Nora looked at him intently. "Maybe it's just in our nature?" she offered.

"Maybe…" Ren mused, nodding ever so slightly. "I used to chase after that truth pretty relentlessly. I'd question whether there was any meaning to my life or if I was just some insignificant speck of dust that the universe shrugged at. And then sometimes I thought I'd found it. I thought I'd found what the purpose in my life was."

Nora snuggled closer. "And then?"

"And then, every time I thought I had it, I found out how wrong I was, or how my supposed answer didn't hold up all the time. After a while, I just stopped looking altogether. I figure, the chances of me finding my significance in the whole scheme of things are so remote, I might as well just… do what feels right. Maybe I didn't need the truth; I might have found the forest, but that tree was what I've always known and loved, so I went back to it. People who just keep searching for an answer never seem happy with what they get, and honestly, I'd much rather be happy than right any day. Life's too short to worry about being right."

Ren watched from over Nora's shoulder as her fingers lightly traced the edge of her tea mug. "So, are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Y'know… happy?"

Ren lightly kissed the top of Nora's orange head of hair, which made her snuggled deeper upon Ren's chest. "Yeah. I think so."

They held each other for the rest of the night, contentedly in each other's arms.

Those out and about that night would probably have called their method of spending the evening boring, and the severely jaded might even excuse themselves from whatever excursion they were partaking in to use the bathroom in order to throw up kittens at the mere thought of such blissful intimacy.

But for Ren and Nora, it was all they needed.