Re: [jude & hannah: tea]
Hannah had done terrible things, but she'd never been a scoundrel. She wasn't opposed to it, not really, and she was pretty sure she wasn't really a really good person. She wasn't one of those people that was kind and gentle and good for the sake of it, but she did like people very much, and she was loyal to people she liked very much. She just didn't mind killing people who were bad, and maybe her moral compass was a little cracked around the edges of glass pane, but that wasn't thought or conversation for here or for now. Now was this adventure and tea, and now was this boy with the abundance of curls.
"I keep time all the time, but I don't think it's really important," said the girl of many contradictions, and she smiled at the teaset and ran her fingers along the rim of one shiny cup. "I'm going to buy a teaset," she told him. "It'll be a pretty one made of china, white and with little flowers painted on it by hand." She'd looked into tea a lot since she'd talked to him and after the party, and there were lots and lots of things to learn, and Hannah loved new things.
She wasn't self-conscious at all about the singing. She was programmed to be without shame, and she was shameless entirely. Some of her programming had gone away, and some had been altered, but that was still there, present, looming, waiting, shadows of sunbursts in corners and she was made for dark things with her bright smile. "Maybe your mother didn't like it at all," she suggested. "Maybe she liked a writer or actor by that name, or maybe she met someone nice on a corner one day, and maybe she decided then that she'd name you after that someone nice," she suggested, and it didn't seem odd to her that he didn't know where his name came from. "But I do think she probably heard it lots and lots," she agreed, and she nodded at him.
She listened and listened about the tea, elbows on the table and chin in her hands, and no one had ever told her that elbows belonged elsewhere. She was all attention and all interest, earnest and honest and tell me more. "I can be really dramatic for fun, but I think I'd rather drink the tea. Then we can have a big, fake fight, and everyone can think we're really interesting people with exciting lives."