Re: [The Cat: Nishka & Cat & Jack]
Jack couldn't fault mourning. He hadn't done it particularly efficiently. It had been rather more of the whiskey and a lot of else besides but little need to tie up a life and box it away. It was past now, two years that looked a little more like living instead of existing. But christ alone knew Cat was better at the bartender's bit of listening to whatever someone felt like confessing into the top-shelf stuff. This bar was, however, better for it than the other one. Difficult to grieve with a tassel shaking somewhere near your nose.
But the conversation had slid on, wheels greased with something like the British studious avoiding of eye-contact in the face of strong emotion of strangers. With relief, Jack finished his glass and set it down, picking up the napkin and beginning, absently to fold it into pieces. "You're not. I could list half a dozen neighbors who have wound up in Repose more out of instinct than any real impetus." Which was not Dahlia, but the bred-and-born Reposians were something unto themselves. Dahlia would perhaps work well in a city, something where the raw licked along with the ambition and the hunger and the sharp ruthlessness cantered along underneath the commuter flow.
"Oh, I wound up here entirely by accident." Which was true, although it strained at the seams. He'd chosen it, but he'd chosen it for what it wasn't, rather than what it was. "My brother's now here. I know a couple of families who have migrated together once somebody's put down roots. Or you find people." Smiling.
"Do you want another?" There was no judgment in an alcoholic choosing to slide off the wagon. Jack wasn't naysayer or sponsor, with vested interest in sobriety.