I looked it up, and it’s a fair shake that a tightrope walker is constantly feeling ahead with their feet already.\u00a0 It’s a terribly contrived metaphor, but I do follow-up on these things.\u00a0 Apparently one learns first to stand on the rope, and then attempts movement, and then the learning how to turn.\u00a0\u00a0 Not that I was feeling like trying it, but wouldn’t it be an awesome kind of magic if you could just read something like that and then do it perfectly? Some kind of physical adept, perhaps?<\/p>\n
Alas, sometimes my imagination is bigger than magic, I think.<\/p>\n
Doloise followed me in her tailored tie-influenced suit.\u00a0 The tell-tale hart was probably only obvious to anything that had scoped out my closet, and since the Dragon Princess wasn’t the useful kind of fey (you know, like a brownie who would clean my house or give me a deal on Girl Scout cookies or something) I expected those things to be few and far between, like girlfriends.<\/p>\n
Nellie met us outside the restaurant.\u00a0 “He is inside,” she said.\u00a0 She grabbed my hands.\u00a0 “He would not sleep.\u00a0 He spoke cold words that raised bones in the kitchen, and had them seek life’s blood.\u00a0 I do not know–” she broke off.<\/p>\n
“If you could bind him?\u00a0 No, better not.\u00a0 Not if you still love him,” I said, looking into her eyes for a moment.\u00a0 I knew whatever support I could offer was going to be broken in my next question.\u00a0 “Who died?”<\/p>\n
I had thought over how I would ask it on the car ride, and it didn’t come out as smoothly as I’d hoped.\u00a0 She broke away from me, and looked any direction but the one I was in.\u00a0 I sighed, letting my breath out slowly in the humid afternoon.\u00a0 It was hot, and I could feel a sweat beginning to build.<\/p>\n
“You would judge, and you could not know,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But you judge without giving me the opportunity,” I fought back, suddenly.\u00a0 “Look, just tell me if it’s important.\u00a0 If it’s not, if you know it won’t be part of what keeps the cold inside him, tell me that.\u00a0 I don’t want your life story.\u00a0 I want to do my job, get paid, and go home.\u00a0 If you’re happier after that, great, fine, shiny<\/em>, but I’m not a therapist, I’m not a real doctor, I’m not some white knight, I’m just a guy who kicks doors closed when he sees them open.”<\/p>\n She looked at me, then, and said something I didn’t understand.\u00a0 Her eyes glittered black for a moment, and a rumble of thunder followed her pronouncement.<\/p>\n I couldn’t tell if she had prophesied or cursed me.\u00a0 I just pointed at the restaurant.\u00a0 “He’s in there?” I confirmed without waiting for an answer.\u00a0 I didn’t care if Doloise followed or punched Nellie in the gut or if I was walking head on into some kind of obscure trap, I just opened the door with a wide sweep of my hand and waited for my eyes to adjust.<\/p>\n “O! Angel of death, I await you here, heh, heh, heh,” Ivan said.\u00a0 I could tell from his voice that his “heh”s weren’t up to their usual vigor.\u00a0 “Do your duty, but Ivan’s neck is thick!\u00a0 It will take more than one blow from your tiny axe.”<\/p>\n “I am not the angel of death, nor do I play it on TV,” I said.\u00a0 “What ails you, Ivan the Great and Terrible?”<\/p>\n “Ah, to feel that Ivan again!\u00a0 I left him behind in the place where the bones clack and play their unhappy songs.”<\/p>\n “Many a man has given something up for wisdom,” I said, slipping into the booth across from him.\u00a0 “An eye, a drink from a cauldron, their firstborn child.\u00a0 Does anyone ever come back with more than, `Boy, that was a dumb deal?'”<\/p>\n He slammed a meaty hand on the table.\u00a0 “You do not make a funny!”<\/p>\n Well, I try, but sometimes I miss.\u00a0 “Tell Ivan to come home.\u00a0 His Nellya misses him.”<\/p>\n He lurched over me faster than I thought he could move.\u00a0 “He cannot.\u00a0 The veil is there for a reason!\u00a0 We are not to see!”<\/p>\n “But you did.\u00a0 And you speak the tongue of the dead.\u00a0 What do you say to them, Ivan?\u00a0 What is it that was so important to leave behind your heart?”<\/p>\n “Ha-ha!\u00a0 Small wizard, you have a point!”\u00a0 He pulled me by my collar so close I could smell his breath.\u00a0 “There is only one thing ever worth saying,” I was as pinned down by his gaze as his hand at my neck.\u00a0 “You tell them you loved them.”<\/p>\n He let me go and I fell back onto the bench.\u00a0\u00a0 He turned away from me and I don’t know if I was going to see him cry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am not the angel of death. I’m not a therapist, I’m not a real doctor, I’m not some white knight, I’m just a guy who kicks doors closed when he sees them open. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-three"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}