Re: [Lake: "Sparrow" & Luke]
She could make out the dog's white fangs in the moonless dark. She couldn't see the lolling tongue, and she couldn't see that canine smile, but she could hear the thump of tail on dock, and she could tell the dog was nuzzling into her hand. She giggled, as if she was still some young thing that knew how to be carefree, as if there was enough left of her for things like laughter. "I don't think being a pessimist makes anything easier. I think it's supposed to make you safer, but I don't think that works. Not feeling is only for people who really don't care, and you're not that kind of person. You wouldn't be here right now if you were." Her tone, soft and husky and too many nights singing in the bitter Repose cold, was sure. Someone who didn't care wouldn't be there, making sure strangers didn't fall into an icy lake.
He talked about people who weren't nice, and he said words with a kind of knowledge that the girl sharing the dock with him lacked. "I meet a lot of people in my work. Some of them aren't nice, and some of them are. But I think it's worth the risk, meeting the bad ones, because then the nice ones come along, too. It would be really lonely without people, and I don't think I want to assume everyone's bad." She rubbed one of the dog's ears between fingertips. "He's sweet. Is he supposed to be like you, and pretend he's ferocious?" There was a smile there, warm in the dark.
That smile lingered when he asked what she was doing, and she thought she heard a scowl in the stranger's voice. "I'm standing really close to the edge of the dock, because it makes you cranky, and because I think you'd jump into the freezing water to pull me out, if I fell in."
Dark, she only barely, barely caught the movement of his hand as he reached. It was just a blur of nothing in the darkness, and she thought maybe she imagined it. "Did you just reach for me?" Sweet, but with something in her voice that said he was caught, secret revealed, and that she'd been right about everything entirely.