It would be very easy, here, just to say, Letting people down is my thing — but maybe it's for the best that that impulse is buried under another.
"What? No, I know all that," Gus says, impatient and bewildered in equal measure, dismissive hand gestures and everything.
"Those names all entered the liturgy — I documented them myself, we played all the albums until they distorted to make certain we all agreed on the lyrics the few times there wasn't a divine mandate — what are you talking about?"
He's... incredulous, maybe, that could be the tone — except there's also a sort of sick/grief layer to it. (Maybe it's just as well that he's invisible, that he's masked — the weight of every year he's ever slipped out from under is all just sitting there, in his eyes, where she can't see it.)
There's a quiet hissing sound, just above her head, that's been growing louder and louder as he speaks, even as his own voice has raised — but it's definitely audible when he stops speaking, and a very fast-moving dark smoke-brown string of lethality falls from the sky —
— falls? Swims? Behaves in a fashion a mortal snake definitely can't? That last part is certain; despite the gravity-assisted speed in launching from above, the snake in question never actually touches the ground — he hovers between the two of them in midair, head raised high and swaying, mouth open, fangs on display — and while a coastal taipan doesn't have a hood to spread, unlike some of its cousins, this one does end up with Gus's spread hand framing his head, like a hood or a halo.
"Stop, Alfred," he says, very softly — as one would, to a younger brother, rather than as one would command an attack dog to stand down.
(The snake lets more of its — his — body down, to whatever invisible surface is supporting the rest of his weight; his mouth closes... halfway. The look he gives Anna says a very clear I've still got my eyes on you, though.)
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"What? No, I know all that," Gus says, impatient and bewildered in equal measure, dismissive hand gestures and everything.
"Those names all entered the liturgy — I documented them myself, we played all the albums until they distorted to make certain we all agreed on the lyrics the few times there wasn't a divine mandate — what are you talking about?"
He's... incredulous, maybe, that could be the tone — except there's also a sort of sick/grief layer to it. (Maybe it's just as well that he's invisible, that he's masked — the weight of every year he's ever slipped out from under is all just sitting there, in his eyes, where she can't see it.)
There's a quiet hissing sound, just above her head, that's been growing louder and louder as he speaks, even as his own voice has raised — but it's definitely audible when he stops speaking, and a very fast-moving dark smoke-brown string of lethality falls from the sky —
— falls? Swims? Behaves in a fashion a mortal snake definitely can't? That last part is certain; despite the gravity-assisted speed in launching from above, the snake in question never actually touches the ground — he hovers between the two of them in midair, head raised high and swaying, mouth open, fangs on display — and while a coastal taipan doesn't have a hood to spread, unlike some of its cousins, this one does end up with Gus's spread hand framing his head, like a hood or a halo.
"Stop, Alfred," he says, very softly — as one would, to a younger brother, rather than as one would command an attack dog to stand down.
(The snake lets more of its — his — body down, to whatever invisible surface is supporting the rest of his weight; his mouth closes... halfway. The look he gives Anna says a very clear I've still got my eyes on you, though.)