He had not yet overcome the profound sense of disturbance the kid’s last show-and-tell session inspired, but distance had mellowed its intensity somewhat, the way air was supposed to round the tannic angles of an old red, so that he could almost make himself believe that the lingering recollection of the whole thing was an exaggeration, a scene from a movie he’d watched half-asleep and if he were to see it again it wouldn’t seem nearly as terrifying. Nothing could have been as bad as all that.
Show-and-tell part two: levitation of the discarded cutting board didn’t hold a candle in effect to what had happened before -- anywhere else, any other time, it would have been a shruggable parlor trick with bonus noise -- but it did snap the sensation of something being incredibly wrong back into focus sharply enough that he wished he had just let it alone. No, had to reach out and touch the glowing burner again to see if it had really been hot enough to blister … He pushed himself up like he’d been scorched. Success, this time, the power of raw discomfiture getting him back up on his feet and a couple paces away from Jude in a motion that he only half-heartedly tried to pass off afterward as a need to move his legs (one calf up in a brief, stork-stand stretch).
The world was always going to end. He was no nihilist, not exactly, but he did take some pride in his being a realist, a position that required certain respect of the fact that everything was going to end at some point. As much as he sort of wanted, once he gathered his internal shit back together, to bluff at not being shaken and ask why Jude thought anyone would be able to help him do anything about the world ending, something else overtook it as more pressing.
“What the hell was Courtland to you?”
Show-and-tell part two: levitation of the discarded cutting board didn’t hold a candle in effect to what had happened before -- anywhere else, any other time, it would have been a shruggable parlor trick with bonus noise -- but it did snap the sensation of something being incredibly wrong back into focus sharply enough that he wished he had just let it alone. No, had to reach out and touch the glowing burner again to see if it had really been hot enough to blister … He pushed himself up like he’d been scorched. Success, this time, the power of raw discomfiture getting him back up on his feet and a couple paces away from Jude in a motion that he only half-heartedly tried to pass off afterward as a need to move his legs (one calf up in a brief, stork-stand stretch).
The world was always going to end. He was no nihilist, not exactly, but he did take some pride in his being a realist, a position that required certain respect of the fact that everything was going to end at some point. As much as he sort of wanted, once he gathered his internal shit back together, to bluff at not being shaken and ask why Jude thought anyone would be able to help him do anything about the world ending, something else overtook it as more pressing.
“What the hell was Courtland to you?”