“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
I wouldn't doubt it, she says, and Michael wonders-- should she? When he claims to be strong, to be steady, to be anything at all but a coward buried up to his neck in the soil of his fear and his grief and his guilt, does it matter? Should she believe Michael? Michael who lies, Michael who hopes, Michael who closes his mouth and smiles around unspoken things that cut his gums like glass?
Should anyone believe him?
Elena looks at him and in him, digging and peeling and picking and Michael knows what it is to look at himself, the curious, dull shine of his own eyes when he takes hold of a person and pulls and pulls and pulls until he can hold each reel of film up to the light and see their faces change, frame by frame. He thinks he doesn't much like it. He says none of this, as usual.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he offers. He is shoving back thoughts as he speaks, some far-off memory of blood in the sand an an old woman's eyes when she said I don't know where your father is the way a vulture might have, and Eleven, always Eleven, who had touched her shoulder on his and promised death could not touch him in any way that counts.
And now he is here, Novus, and he is also trying not to think that death has found him, finally, spun the long, long story of his life to a few more short chapters, and how, from time to time, he feels its teeth on his ankles when he closes his eyes.
He doesn't much know if he likes Elena. She opens herself and Michael cracks in turn, shedding shell after shell that he had forgotten he had. This must be how Toro had felt.
He reminds himself to apologize and then forgets the thought altogether.
Elena teases, the soft cream of her face creased with a smile, and says to him: I can go first, if you'd like. Michael takes a step back to see her better and bows his head in invitation. He does not need to say, be my guest, it is there in the tilt of his head, the wet blue of his scarf as it slaps his neck, the small smirk that grows and grows until he is smiling in a way that looks so right on his face it is a wonder it happens so rarely.
"I'm sorry for that, too," he says, "I have--had? a granddaughter that is--was blind. But I last saw her centuries ago, so..." and he shrugs, like it never mattered, like it is a life so far-removed from him that it isn't real, just another film strip rimmed in black, burning away in the fire.
Michael gives her no time to respond, instead tucks his chin to his chest in thought before saying, "I'm afraid of snakes. And most lizards." His smile thins. "I don't like how still they can be."
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