Re: [misha & jude: the capital]
That's spoke like someone who loved someone ailing. Don't fret any. Everyone feels that way at the end, sick and caretakers, and I reckon it's something the mind does to ease things. [Misha, he'd been at plenty of bedsides of the dying during his training, but he never did think on those souls. Instead, he thought of folks he'd known when he was very human and very small, 'fore Heaven or madness had come to him, depending on who you believed, and when he was human and fragile, flesh and bone same as any boy.]
Angels don't choose. Even the waiting angels. Even the real powerful ones. Choice ain't part of Heaven. Choice, it's for your kind, and it ain't for ours at all. [Misha wondered if Jude understood how precious that was, the choosing, and could be it was plenty obvious Misha thought of it. There was longing in the boy's voice, and that longing made him sound real earthbound. There wasn't a thing glowing or winged 'bout the boy that hopped to standing on that step.] I just don't want you getting in trouble on account of me messing up. I just ain't been real clear on where I belong recently, and that was likely part of it. [Misha, when everything was real said and done, was so young. Even Jude, with the near decade he had on Misha, felt old some in that moment.]
Dinner. [That was real easy to agree to.] I reckon you can think on breakfast with fairies or demons or werewolves or witches. [He grinned some.] Humanity, it's beautiful, even when it ain't real human. When I first came to Repose, I reckoned all the inhumanity in it would be real dull. But we're all just trying to be like you, to live like you and with what you got. [He nodded again, and he held out a hand for shaking, as if this was some formal new beginning and old things forgot.] Dinner.