Re: [Second City: Cat & Jack]
He did not understand. Oh, he knew children were bought and sold, he knew being given over to a woman who looked as if her well of love threatened to drown her without something on which to break it, was probably better than being handed a gun and told to fight up-top in lands blackened, rusted with blood. He could feel the knife-edge of his senses whet, slick to sharper with the smells and the sounds that were strange, instead of home. Jack knew nothing of Newt's hidden present, still less his hidden past. But he wasn't of any particular world, not anymore. He had summoned something out of a book - out of bloody nightmare, actually - and the rift that boarding school and travelling continually around the world until he'd ringed it, had made tore along seam-lines and broke. He wasn't of the world but christ knew he didn't understand it.
He wanted to. The notebook had been an acquisition along the way, a nice little wall to keep curiosity behind, to give it shape and excuse. But there was no notebook here. Jack didn't understand but he strained to. The swagged fabric masked his view, and the scent of exhausted sorrow was thick on his tongue as he leaned closer, his hand braced on the wood of the frame so as not to fall over and in. Extrication from stumbling into an exchange was probably going to be difficult - and he didn't have a wallet anymore.
The woman all ebony and carved lines held out her hand for the little boy plucked like a ripe fruit from the back of the stall and he heard a ripple of laughter overhead. Cat. He didn't need the glimpse of eyes bright as jewels in the dark and he didn't need to see the stall-owner's face as the woman knit her family back together with substitution. It was a story and it wasn't, but Jack let the thread of it go. There'd be another, or there wouldn't be. Observation for its own sake for once in a decade, so far as he could remember and he followed the slim blade all in black that was Cat darting through crowds, dust skirling at his feet and coating his jeans from foot to knee. He was looking for her rather than at the whirlwind tour of stalls and people, the languages thick and flying like birds and if he ached to stop and watch, to stand still and drink it in until five years' worth of thirst was done, Cat danced in and out of vision and there was no time for split-second decision.