10-04-2020, 04:39 AM
The Reaches wasn't quite home, the way it was -- or, it didn't have the homey feeling that it had once provided a younger Jude, not without the warmth of other life. Though the mahogany still glowed in the lamplight, though the leather-bound books still stood sentinel, the coldness that seeped into everything without the cook, the maid, the guests... That made Jude feel like a child, that made him feel sneaky, almost dishonorable. For the first time, he wondered whether he had remembered Courtland's invitation correctly, or whether he had simply imagined it. What if he had come here, truly uninvited, just to stir up dust?
No use in feeling guilty now, was the though that slid across his slippery brain, an ice skater gliding from one end of the pond to the other. I'm here today and gone tomorrow. An wave of queer, feverish nausea came over him briefly, then dissipated.
"Not by myself. But I was rarely by myself." He was either with Juliet, or a minder, usually both. Unfair to Near, perhaps, but Jude and his sister were the service dogs of children: exceptionally domesticated due to their public-facing position. How long? Jude shrugged. "A while. Long enough. I was here less, when I was older. When we had more places to go to." Homeschooling could only get Jude so far; eventually the Family had to fake their way toward real credentials for him, and that meant no perpetual cursed roadshow.
He nudged the wine bottle along the end table with one hand, as if scooting a treat toward a dog. "Your turn."
No use in feeling guilty now, was the though that slid across his slippery brain, an ice skater gliding from one end of the pond to the other. I'm here today and gone tomorrow. An wave of queer, feverish nausea came over him briefly, then dissipated.
"Not by myself. But I was rarely by myself." He was either with Juliet, or a minder, usually both. Unfair to Near, perhaps, but Jude and his sister were the service dogs of children: exceptionally domesticated due to their public-facing position. How long? Jude shrugged. "A while. Long enough. I was here less, when I was older. When we had more places to go to." Homeschooling could only get Jude so far; eventually the Family had to fake their way toward real credentials for him, and that meant no perpetual cursed roadshow.
He nudged the wine bottle along the end table with one hand, as if scooting a treat toward a dog. "Your turn."