09-24-2024, 05:20 PM
Having godlike powers is sort of like being a billionaire: everyone believes that if they were the one with them, they would accomplish the greatest of things, the most beautiful and the most holy and the most impressive. Nevermind that so many names of the sickeningly wealthy are lost to time, and if they are recalled, it is often ignominiously, for cruelty and vulgarity rather than taste or compassion. Jude might be even more annoying than a billionaire, capable of things that money cannot buy, but he has never known a life or a self where he is otherwise. He knows on an intellectual level that most people do not have a yacht or a stable of thoroughbreds, but he cannot quantify nor qualify his wealth of power.
What Jude has not explained is that there is always a cost to his power: bloodshed. He has always been confined to killing animals -- mostly rabbits, sometimes goats, generally they have not given him cats or dogs, people get touchy about domestic animals -- but it is understood that any living thing can be broken down as fuel. Jude's own blood is fuel for the kind of simple parlor trick he performed for Near.
To save this world -- to snatch back up, now that it is tumbling over the brink -- power from beyond this world must cross over and undo what otherwise could not be undone. What if the ice of the melting glaciers could be refrozen? The felled trees of the Amazon regrown in a heartbeat? Surely if people are going to die anyways, wouldn't it be better for them to bleed for a living world than a dying one? That is half the Family's pitch. The other half is that, unless the Family aligns themselves with a small authoritarian country with a powerful military, they cannot get enough blood to open the gate. Technological advancements are necessary, and those advancements require investment. Thus, the traveling persuasive circus.
Resurrection is theoretical to Jude. He knows he could do it, but he hasn't tried it. He is not superstitious as a religious person might be, afraid that Courtland's soul would not return with his body, but Jude imagines it would take killing at least a few other people to give it a solid try, and he doesn't want to do that. Not killing things is the new thing he's trying.
I am so not sorry about Guthrie, Jude thinks, as Near declares there is no mango lassi, and, better yet, why doesn't Jude just magic one up? "I should smash this glass on your head," Near says flatly. There is the issue that using his powers calls out to his other half, who is seeking him quite desperately. Jude has learned he can get away with minor things, but major demonstrations are at his own risk. The Family must have already guessed he was at Courtland's -- they found him too quickly. It wasn't just his power.
"Are you serious?" Jude gives Near a look. He takes the glass, fills it with water from the sink, sets it down. Then, glancing around the kitchen, he sees a knife block. He goes to it and touches the handles of the blade, finds a short paring knife. He draws it from the block and points it at Near. "Let's cut your hand then." Of course it will hurt Near more and last longer, given that he is a simple mortal creature, but it will also give him a sense of investment. Put some of his skin in the game.
What Jude has not explained is that there is always a cost to his power: bloodshed. He has always been confined to killing animals -- mostly rabbits, sometimes goats, generally they have not given him cats or dogs, people get touchy about domestic animals -- but it is understood that any living thing can be broken down as fuel. Jude's own blood is fuel for the kind of simple parlor trick he performed for Near.
To save this world -- to snatch back up, now that it is tumbling over the brink -- power from beyond this world must cross over and undo what otherwise could not be undone. What if the ice of the melting glaciers could be refrozen? The felled trees of the Amazon regrown in a heartbeat? Surely if people are going to die anyways, wouldn't it be better for them to bleed for a living world than a dying one? That is half the Family's pitch. The other half is that, unless the Family aligns themselves with a small authoritarian country with a powerful military, they cannot get enough blood to open the gate. Technological advancements are necessary, and those advancements require investment. Thus, the traveling persuasive circus.
Resurrection is theoretical to Jude. He knows he could do it, but he hasn't tried it. He is not superstitious as a religious person might be, afraid that Courtland's soul would not return with his body, but Jude imagines it would take killing at least a few other people to give it a solid try, and he doesn't want to do that. Not killing things is the new thing he's trying.
I am so not sorry about Guthrie, Jude thinks, as Near declares there is no mango lassi, and, better yet, why doesn't Jude just magic one up? "I should smash this glass on your head," Near says flatly. There is the issue that using his powers calls out to his other half, who is seeking him quite desperately. Jude has learned he can get away with minor things, but major demonstrations are at his own risk. The Family must have already guessed he was at Courtland's -- they found him too quickly. It wasn't just his power.
"Are you serious?" Jude gives Near a look. He takes the glass, fills it with water from the sink, sets it down. Then, glancing around the kitchen, he sees a knife block. He goes to it and touches the handles of the blade, finds a short paring knife. He draws it from the block and points it at Near. "Let's cut your hand then." Of course it will hurt Near more and last longer, given that he is a simple mortal creature, but it will also give him a sense of investment. Put some of his skin in the game.