01-18-2022, 06:12 PM
Oh, good, now they both knew one item that Jude wasn’t carrying. A billion or so possibilities to go until, by process of elimination, they whittled all of the universe down into whatever was in that backpack. Fun game for a long car trip, maybe, but since the car trip had already been spoiled, Near decided he’d rather not play.
“Big secret, huh,” he said, flat in surrender, tracing the line of halfdried blood down his chin with a fingertip. Stubble, stubble, stubble. When was the last time he’d shaved? “Don’t you get tired of those?” The kid’s whole deal seemed to be a patchwork of big secrets. Maybe he loved being an obnoxious enigma. Maybe he didn’t know any better. Near knew he couldn’t have kept it up. Nature abhorred vacuums, Near Farr abhorred secrets. Keeping them, being kept from them. Open doors only, his policy. He licked his finger and began trying to rub the blood away.
But what was this, an attempt to distract him with small talk? “Depends,” he said. “Depends on if we get murdered. If the world ends. You know.” In fact, he hadn’t thought much about it beyond an implicit assumption that he would at some point just head back home and try to get his shit back together – return Isa’s dog, at least.
Hah.
The woman reemerged from the dark, now loaded down with an armful of indeterminate somethings. She stopped in front of the house, spotlighted by the truck beams which blew her shadow up into a looming monstrosity against the trees, then let it all clatter into a pile on the ground. Propping what looked like a piece of rebar upright, she began to pound it into the dirt with a hammer.
“If I said,” she called out between swings, “That at least one of you,” swing, “Is causing,” swing, “interference,” swing, “What would you do about it?”
“Big secret, huh,” he said, flat in surrender, tracing the line of halfdried blood down his chin with a fingertip. Stubble, stubble, stubble. When was the last time he’d shaved? “Don’t you get tired of those?” The kid’s whole deal seemed to be a patchwork of big secrets. Maybe he loved being an obnoxious enigma. Maybe he didn’t know any better. Near knew he couldn’t have kept it up. Nature abhorred vacuums, Near Farr abhorred secrets. Keeping them, being kept from them. Open doors only, his policy. He licked his finger and began trying to rub the blood away.
But what was this, an attempt to distract him with small talk? “Depends,” he said. “Depends on if we get murdered. If the world ends. You know.” In fact, he hadn’t thought much about it beyond an implicit assumption that he would at some point just head back home and try to get his shit back together – return Isa’s dog, at least.
Hah.
The woman reemerged from the dark, now loaded down with an armful of indeterminate somethings. She stopped in front of the house, spotlighted by the truck beams which blew her shadow up into a looming monstrosity against the trees, then let it all clatter into a pile on the ground. Propping what looked like a piece of rebar upright, she began to pound it into the dirt with a hammer.
“If I said,” she called out between swings, “That at least one of you,” swing, “Is causing,” swing, “interference,” swing, “What would you do about it?”