Re: dock: atticus and mal
"I don't know if I believe in God, but one never knows." He looked across the water at the flickering light. "Throw something into it? Gods like sacrifices to be burnt for them, don't they?"
His eyes skittered across Atticus. Yes, he seemed to very much be living and breathing, though he was a very young son for people he knew to have died when already old years ago. It was hardly unheard of, just a little surprising. He only fixed a look on him when he started talking about restless dead.
Atticus suggested that he knew whether there were ghosts on the island or not, and Mal absorbed the idea, and the thoughts it summoned up, with a nod. "Have you met them?" he asked. "I don't think I would be very happy to be trapped on an island in Repose." That was the legend of the dead airmen, of course - he didn't have the faintest idea it might resonate with the man he was talking to.
He hadn't said his name, and it hadn't even been intentional this time. "Mal Reed," he said, leaning forward a little. "I'd shake your hand, but I don't want you to lean and flip the thing. It's Malachi, actually, I know something about having an uncommon name. Atticus." He thought for a moment, then smiled. "You strike a very mysterious profile, you know. Drifting around the lake in the middle of the night with a boombox. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were cultivating mystique."