Re: Webster's: Holly & Elijah
Knew the town warped the truth with gossip. Saw it, growing up strange in the house beyond the touch of the lights of habitation, where the sky was still scattered with pinprick stars above the skylight. Heard it as they came in and asked, from the delivery-people, from the customers talking to the birds without really thinking about who could hear. Elijah could, for the record. Nothing wrong with his ears. Or his eyes. But hadn't heard about a boy and his wife and his expression was neutral, registering everything within eyeshot.
Wanted, ultimately to know the boy wasn't going to spring at him. It was unlikely, but it was a live fear, and prickled unpleasantly like electric current close to the skin. Didn't look like the type to spring, Holly-Holiday. Holiday. "Holiday. Holly. Which one?" The kind of name that was chosen. Selected. Rolled around on the tongue and given. Elijah had thumbed through enough books to find resonance in names. Holiday was a novel size, weight.
Elijah wasn't an aggressive man. Despite the beard, the coat, the hat, all of which bulked him out he was a man of angles and planes and soft voiced. Had been told eye-contact was odd, briefly out in the world but had been young. Habits died slowly, twisted and malformed. He stared, but wasn't aggressive. It was unsettling, which the books delivered every month would say was a different kettle of fish. Liked fish, and kettles when it came to that but not together.
He rasped two fingers against the grain of his throat and thought about it. "Occasionally. But less chance of cutting something vital," his smile was quicksilver, a flash and gone. "You learn to live with it."
He approached the boxes of records. Kept his hands in his pockets and kept his eyes on the boy before he withdrew one. The boy, Holly, looked occupied. Elijah withdrew one hand carefully, pale palms, long fingers and began thumbing through records. His head was empty of anything but himself, and he breathed out. Cautiously. But contentedly.