10-09-2019, 12:41 PM
Jude did not hate the Family - the closest thing that he had to parents. Then again, he was still in that strange, blissful state where ignorance reigned, where it had not occurred to him that his caretakers could have been other way. Maybe they really couldn't have been; Jude hadn't exactly come into the world in a human way, and it wasn't totally clear if that was what what he was. Maybe the only options were to be born and raised like this, or to never exist at all. Maybe those were the only options for everyone, and the idea that one's progenitors could have done better was just a bitter, masochistic fantasy. The sum of the absence of possibility and thought was that Near's comment seemed petty. Children generally avenged themselves by surviving their parents.
Those text messages, read to anyone else, would have probably elicited the same reaction as Russian spammers. Instead, Jude frowned, and looked somewhat disoriented. "The common salvation...?" Jude turned his head sideways, considered. Salvation.
"Maybe he was trying to tell you something." Jude felt definitively that that was the case, but partly by default - pretty much any sentence-shaped noise that emerged from a person's lips or fingers was designed to informed. Whether Courtland had wanted to impart information on literature or the actual apocalypse, Jude could not guess. It occurred to him that if Courtland had warned Near, the latter would have not come out to the lawn holding a gun.
He gave another nod, the kind meant to signal, Well, there we have it. Courtland had taped the 'Harass Me' sign to Near's back, and Jude had dutifully obeyed. Time to take it off.
Those text messages, read to anyone else, would have probably elicited the same reaction as Russian spammers. Instead, Jude frowned, and looked somewhat disoriented. "The common salvation...?" Jude turned his head sideways, considered. Salvation.
"Maybe he was trying to tell you something." Jude felt definitively that that was the case, but partly by default - pretty much any sentence-shaped noise that emerged from a person's lips or fingers was designed to informed. Whether Courtland had wanted to impart information on literature or the actual apocalypse, Jude could not guess. It occurred to him that if Courtland had warned Near, the latter would have not come out to the lawn holding a gun.
He gave another nod, the kind meant to signal, Well, there we have it. Courtland had taped the 'Harass Me' sign to Near's back, and Jude had dutifully obeyed. Time to take it off.