Re: Bus stop: Misha & Lou
The kid sounded like his certainty curdled a little, that he was safe enough to tell. Lou didn't think he was a threat. She couldn't smell strange on him, like the earth and ozone that rose off her cousin's brother, or the faint scent of ash that clung like the aftermath of a cigarette, to her cousin. Her nose couldn't get a hold on him, but the moon wasn't fat enough to really get the motor running.
Lou hadn't thought of people as all good from the first time someone spat, and that was early enough that the memory was worn, thin like creased paper. Didn't think of them as all bad. Not anymore. That was time, hours and hours with nothing in them and nothing to do but watch other people whose paths wouldn't cross except for poor decisions. You could provoke people into good and bad, they could provoke themselves. "Thinking the best of people is like setting out an expectation they're going to be all that they could be." She shoved her hands in her pockets, and she fished out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She didn't offer them to the kid. The kid was young enough he didn't need any habits.
"Sometimes they rise. Some of 'em, they fall short. Mostly, I don't expect much from anyone. They'll do what they do, no matter what I think of them. Take those guys there. Could be that they had a really bad night. Could be they were drunk and wound up and spoiling for something and going for us was the worst they've ever been in a night. But I don't know. There's a lot of life they have left in them, to do worse. To do better."
She lit the cigarette with a heavy clunk of a lighter that was mostly metal, and she pocketed it and the box in the same pocket. "Sorry you got disappointed, kid." But yeah, she knew violent begot violent. She exhaled heavily, smoke on night air, and she looked at the kid fiddling with the handle.
"Sounds biblical." The man who went around killing. "I've seen violent. I've done violent. It's not a life choice, kid. Not any more, I got old enough that it didn't look much like a solution to anything anymore. Maybe the wolf, but the wolf doesn't want to die anymore than I do. I'm attached to living. What is it you see?" She sounded interested; Lou was.