Re: The Woods: Pesha/Tandy
“I’m not saying it’s not a thing,” Billy amended, though his hand made a saw-see motion meant to indicate the ambivalence he felt towards the idea. “I get that it’s a belief system and a self-identifier. And maybe I’m too close to it, but it just feels wrong, how she approached it — the idea of pursuing interest in a way of living and a faith after having done the very thing that the vast majority of people who identify as Wiccan have been super vocal about denying. Like, encouraging people to think it’s all about turning people into frogs and levitating your friends and cursing your high school bully.”
He snorted a little at that, despite himself, thinking back to how he had technically enacted his own version of that last one. Though entirely unintentional, and he hadn’t gotten any enjoyment out of it whatsoever. “Pastafarianism is something I can get behind, because it’s all satirical, right?”
He set the bowl down and opened a drawer, rifling through a stack of IDs he’d found in the lost and found box at the B&B, from wallets that had been left behind and never claimed. (He’d tried working the spell using just a piece of paper cut to the appropriate size, but there was something crucial about using an actual form of identification that he hadn’t quite figured out but accepted to be true.) He picked one that’d belonged to a guy roughly Tandy’s age and general colouring, not that he was sure it mattered.
“Like, wasn’t it all started as a satirical protest against schools teaching creationism as a legitimate alternative to evolution? They’re not trying to get actual church status so much as calling bullshit on the zealots who are actively trying to like, denounce legit science. So as far as I’m concerned, if Scientology can be as deeply entrenched in abusing not just their members, but families in the general public and get tax exemptions? I wouldn’t be mad at Pastafarians getting official recognition.”
Billy’s wallet (a nod to his favourite old-school game system, naturally) wasn’t stuffed with any of the usual detritus like receipts and business cards, because he hated when the thing felt bulky in his pocket. But there were pictures of his family in the clear plastic cardholder thing he’d added, tucked into the slots along with the ID in question: Billy and his siblings, crowded around the table for somebody’s birthday, a snap of his parents when they were newlyweds and mugging for the camera. A selfie he’d taken with his grandmother, just a few days before she died. No cash, and no condoms either, because he vaguely remembered that your body heat could degrade the latex or something.
He waited until Tandy was done inspecting, then crossed back across the width of the trailer with the bowl and the bottle under one arm and the ID in his back pocket, holding his hand out patiently for his wallet. “C’mon, we gotta do the next part outside.”