Even with the little mishap by the hot springs. Even with the way nine in ten kids at Paul's party were glaring daggers at John for having the temerity to respond to the invitation (as Augustine himself had insisted he do). The drinks downstairs, the conversation, that had been good — a sort of found-family vibe, however fragile, that made Augustine think that maybe his goal of creating a space of safety for an isolated shrike wasn't just a pointless dream.
Then things abruptly got bad, and on the way between there and here, they've gotten a lot worse; it's something of a miracle, really, that he doesn't drop Iskierka-or-whoever-she-became, when the strength in his upper arms is sapped by the sensation of talons shredding and flensing muscle from bone.
But it's just sensation, not fact; he's fought on before, with injuries more real than this, and it's partly to make a statement of how furious (and frightened) he is, and partly because his hands are full, but Augustine kicks the door open without pausing so much as a beat, and stalks in with his arms full of an eleven-foot-long miserable dinosaur who used to be an eight-inch mothbird, with every emotion the shrike is feeling singing in his own nerves —
(— with a lot more knowledge about the Raising of the Unearthed in his memories than John has ever thought to ask him about, no less, and plenty of opportunities to look sidelong at the way the shrike's soul is a misfit in his own body, to come up with his own ideas about how best to blend the two theories, for that matter —) ]
What. Did. You. Do.
[ It's not a nice way to interrupt the evening of two people who've gone off to, in theory, have some sort of kinky sexual interlude. On the other hand: what John has done, no matter what he thinks he's done, is also — quite plainly — not nice. ]
no subject
Even with the little mishap by the hot springs. Even with the way nine in ten kids at Paul's party were glaring daggers at John for having the temerity to respond to the invitation (as Augustine himself had insisted he do). The drinks downstairs, the conversation, that had been good — a sort of found-family vibe, however fragile, that made Augustine think that maybe his goal of creating a space of safety for an isolated shrike wasn't just a pointless dream.
Then things abruptly got bad, and on the way between there and here, they've gotten a lot worse; it's something of a miracle, really, that he doesn't drop Iskierka-or-whoever-she-became, when the strength in his upper arms is sapped by the sensation of talons shredding and flensing muscle from bone.
But it's just sensation, not fact; he's fought on before, with injuries more real than this, and it's partly to make a statement of how furious (and frightened) he is, and partly because his hands are full, but Augustine kicks the door open without pausing so much as a beat, and stalks in with his arms full of an eleven-foot-long miserable dinosaur who used to be an eight-inch mothbird, with every emotion the shrike is feeling singing in his own nerves —
(— with a lot more knowledge about the Raising of the Unearthed in his memories than John has ever thought to ask him about, no less, and plenty of opportunities to look sidelong at the way the shrike's soul is a misfit in his own body, to come up with his own ideas about how best to blend the two theories, for that matter —) ]
What. Did. You. Do.
[ It's not a nice way to interrupt the evening of two people who've gone off to, in theory, have some sort of kinky sexual interlude. On the other hand: what John has done, no matter what he thinks he's done, is also — quite plainly — not nice. ]