Re: The Believer/The Scientist
The scientist grew up in a cold, disinterested home where grand gestures were welcomed largely in favor of day-to-day interaction. The scientist had learned quite early on that it was easy to show one's weaknesses and fault lines through overexposure. Better to keep to oneself, stay hidden in darkness, and then only emerge when well-prepared with a bountiful spread of one's own greatness, like your doctoral journal publications or Nobel Prize. It wouldn't do come around for meager conversation or pleasantries. No, in his family's eyes, one had to prove that their continued existence was to the benefit of humanity, otherwise one might as well stay locked up in their room, prattling into their diary like that Dickinson woman. It can be noted that poetry had never been recognized as worthwhile in the Marceau household, and the accomplishments of women even less so - his father once referred to Marie Curie as 'Pierre's overzealous assistant.' So, it might come as little surprise that the scientist was raised by books far more than by people. Social cues, as such, were a work in progress.
So, if he was interrupting the Father's deep concentration, Abel was unaware. Closing his own books, the scientist gathered them into his arms and began relocating to the same table as the priest. "Would you share some of it with me?" Settling in to the opposite side of the table, the scientist spread his own work out from elbow to elbow. "You don't mind, do you?" He thought only to ask after the fact.