Re: Cass & Alex: the (bad) diner
She knew better than to be odd. They had told her that, you know. Back in the room with the doctor. Odd didn't give much hope of stability and stability was to be venerated. Cass didn't venerate anything: she'd no old gods to curse her to say nothing anyone believed, and so she venerated nothing but herself. She was whole, she was here. She wasn't behind bars with the air growing staler by the second. He was out there, somewhere, the man. She'd not been told he'd died. It would have been kinder, had he.
"You make it sound like a malevolent bully," Cass said, deliberately, smiling. The town. It did, occasionally, when it pushed and nudged and prodded with sharp elbows. She'd not lived it, but she'd seen it. The boy didn't sound as if he were bullied easily by towns with nightmares it draped you in. "A little lonely? I would deny it anything," she said seriously. "It can't feel."
But no. Not everyone was. The worst of humanity was sometimes the least understood. But then Cass herself was a murderer. There were all kinds of people caught between the poles of good and evil. Cass wasn't certain she truly believed it was as clear as that. "Church doesn't mean much of anything to me," she assured him as he stammered into his conclusion. "It's an example. A reason for people to believe they ought to be good, even if they wish very badly to be terrible."