Re: Webster's: Holly & Elijah
Digital was a swirling vortex of invention. People could live entire lives through pictures and messages, through the blips and bleeps of a phone. The house in the woods hated technology. That was quite literally the case, something about his mother's people had soaked into the brickwork. The house broke things. Tried to put them back together, fragile circuit-boards and fused wires but the house was like a faraday cage, stubbornly refusing being host to modern-day technology. Just as well. Would have been entirely happy to carve out an existence in binary, in the snaps and tweets and cheeps of the online world. Elijah listened. Couldn't help it, hearing was sharp. Too sharp, animalistic but couldn't help that.
"Obvious," Elijah agreed, because who could miss the subtext barely peripheral to the text itself? It was luxurious and it reminded him faintly of his parents if he thought far enough back. Worlds, built between two people and inhabited by others temporarily. "But wouldn't have found it. Not without you. Feels voyeuristic." Which wasn't particularly insightful to an outsider, but Elijah was a man who couldn't thrive on touch the way another might.
"Will leave my card details." Trusting, to leave them. The boy could rack up a bill, could charge against the card all manner of deviations from predetermined arrangement but it was just money. Had enough to survive, had a little more than that. It was the more that Elijah played with. Could make more if more cars drove onto the lot but didn't feel like it. There was something about how they were put back together, to purr for their owners, that brought people back.
Understood longevity.
Elijah moved toward the counter, a loping gait that wasn't hurrying. He took the pen, and the paper and he hitched his hip against the counter and put all of his weight over it. Wasn't ordinarily this close to anyone. Observed the boy, if the boy was consumed with his device. Dropped the pen, and it rolled and Elijah reached for it.