Re: [The grills: Castor & Pollux]
She smiled at him. Sweet and too old for her age, and, too, in many ways too young. She was contradiction and dichotomy, and she liked talking to him, too. Not seeing the same wasn't bad, and she liked to listen. Learning was something Hannah did every day, and all her pathways wrote over each other. Change, change, change, the girl was always changing, and her cognition was improving, and she was rewriting herself. She wasn't supposed to rewrite herself, and that was the problem, but she was. She was rewriting herself, and it was harder and harder and harder to lie and say all the right things during maintenance.
"I think we're the genesis of our thoughts and our ideas, but I don't know how far we can be responsible for them. Are we responsible for our original intentions only? What if we're broken, and the things we intend aren't what actually happens? If we scare someone without meaning to, then they're still scared, right? Should we deny them that fear? It's all really, really complicated, William." And it was, and that was what she was dealing with every single day. She wasn't really meant to think and think and think. She was programmed for pleasure and obedience and to not see anything at all that didn't match up with her purpose. She was broken.
"Why don't you fit now?" she asked, curiosity in cornflower eyes and whir, whir as she tried to understand. Ear to her shoulder, and he seemed really normal and in a good way. She shook her head, copper cascading over one bare shoulder. "Those things you said don't make you a round peg. They make you kind. A lot of people aren't kind, but there are some that are, and you're one of them." She'd known that from her correspondence. "I know people. I know men. I have to know men, or I would be really bad at my job, but I'm not bad at my job. You're kind."
He turned the kabobs, and she smiled with mirth that refused to be contained. "I'm yellow," she told him, just to see what he would say, and then she sat on the table again, bare feet tap, tap, tap on the wooden bench. "There are lots and lots of yellows," she agreed with a nod, because he was right, and because it was a wise, wise thing to say.
"What have you found here besides postcards?" she asked. "When I came here, I saw possibility, which I told you, but now I see things I care about. My brother and sister are here, but I'm not really close to either of them, and I really hope that can change. My brother-in-law is here, and I think he needs my help. And then I have friends, and they're really good friends, and I never thought I would have that," she offered, blunt and candor and all her thoughts there and like an open book read aloud.