Re: Dream: Janus/Atticus
Janis was a creature that had once been dead. She had different ideas of mortality and immortality, and she took exception to people who assumed that privacy ended on death. That loyalty was no more when it was inconvenient, that there was something more important about events than there were about the people who lived them. But she recognized it was a strange perspective. A weird one. She couldn't expect Atticus to recognize the same, or imagine that one body had always matched whatever was on the inside of it, that sex was something through and through to the bones.
Janis took the cigarette from her lower lip, showing pink lip and white teeth. The green dragon's eyes lowered in blond veils through the smoke, there only as long as Atticus decided it would be. Finally, she said, "You're right. They wouldn't call me a woman then. Of course I was furious, or I wouldn't have done what I did. Stop trying to understand me, Atticus. It never goes well. But I didn't pay to talk about me."
She stood up, planting the cigarette on the curve of her mouth. "You just called her. You'll understand it more when you wake up." Janis watched Atticus' smoke cloud. The man had a death wish, and it was obvious. Should have been low-hanging fruit, but he wasn't. He was just going to accelerate the natural process as much as he could on his own.
She stepped forward and patted his cheek. "I just wanted to be sure you had your own head. But you do."