Re: Bus stop: Misha & Lou
Misha, he could pass as human the whole day long. It was part of his momma's gift, he reckoned, since passing was part of being malakhim. But it wasn't nothing he'd ever fussed over, what folks saw when they saw him, not in a supernatural way. He didn't worry like folks did 'bout that prison in the Capital, and he knew there wasn't a thing could hold him if he didn't want to be held. Now, he just walked on toward those faded bus stop lights, and he wasn't in no hurry. He wasn't looking over his shoulder for the bad guys to come chasing. Misha, he was comfortable as could be, there and walking at night, in a not-great neighborhood and wearing too much pink for safety. "I don't reckon it's an expectation," he said, contradicting her in that polite way that folks did in the South. "I reckon it's hope." He smiled over at her, and there was a glimmer of what he really was, least 'neath all this current doubting.
He shook his head soom as they approached the stop, and he sat himself on the bench, just like he'd done a few minutes ago and 'fore the incident. "I'm not disappointed," he said, and he meant it in someways. He wasn't sure how to explain, on account of he didn't even understand the current turn of his thinking himself. "We all got bad and good, and we're all going to trip at times. That's human nature," said the boy who wasn't human none at all. "I don't reckon tripping should make us disappointed." He did believe that, even if it seemed plenty incongruous with what he'd said just moments earlier. "My trouble is that hoping don't always make things so, and tripping don't always mean we get up, and loving folks and their mutability, it involves accepting that. I didn't realize that so much 'til recent."
The words were cast out onto the night sky thoughtful, and the bus wasn't nowhere near, so he opened his case and pulled out the colorful fiddle and well-loved bow. She mentioned biblical, and he played some Amazing Grace, real slow and somehow mournful on the summer-thick night air. "The bible, it's just a book," he said, and it was true. It was something that folks, those determined to believe their faith the only true one, would take offense 'bout, but it was true. "The bible's just a book, and every faith has one, honey. Violence, it ain't got a thing to do with snakes, and it ain't got a thing with words writ on a page. You're saying you're violent to survive. I reckon I'm asking if that's really so."