Perhaps, doctor, you should have expected something like this. From her reticence, the cautious reluctance with which Gela finally picks at this scab and makes it bleed afresh.
“Oh,” Strange says, and there’s that startled little sound of someone who is tremendously bad with shows of emotion, feeling an unfair rising strangling panic upon hearing that wobble in Gela’s voice. What does he do with this?
But he will write down that name, and get the spelling, and carve it into his memory later. Mortalitasi. A spell to turn others into werewolves. What a nightmare—
“Gela,” he says, and his hands flutter in an aborted gesture, at a loss for what to do. He should have made tea. Or had a bowl of sweets on the desk. Something, anything to stopgap this moment. There is nothing in this room he can give her except his own words, and that doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
He opens his mouth; closes it again. She doesn’t know what happened to the rest of the group. There was a child. Two items of information, awful in their proximity.
no subject
“Oh,” Strange says, and there’s that startled little sound of someone who is tremendously bad with shows of emotion, feeling an unfair rising strangling panic upon hearing that wobble in Gela’s voice. What does he do with this?
But he will write down that name, and get the spelling, and carve it into his memory later. Mortalitasi. A spell to turn others into werewolves. What a nightmare—
“Gela,” he says, and his hands flutter in an aborted gesture, at a loss for what to do. He should have made tea. Or had a bowl of sweets on the desk. Something, anything to stopgap this moment. There is nothing in this room he can give her except his own words, and that doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
He opens his mouth; closes it again. She doesn’t know what happened to the rest of the group. There was a child. Two items of information, awful in their proximity.
“I’m so sorry that happened.”