Page 64 of Killian
“Yeah… no,” he said shaking his head.
“Three seconds,” said Moira.
“What?”
“Nothing. Do you think anyone will believe us when we get home?”
“I wouldn’t,” he said. “Giant lizards. Skinheads. The Central Branch. I’m not sure I believe it and I’m standing right here.”
Moira laughed again. “I told Cynog that we would come back and visit next blooming season when the doors form again.”
“Oh, good,” said Killian. “I meant to say something about that, but I kept getting pulled away.”
“I told him I would bring him some White Out and a stapler. He was most intrigued.”
“I may have spent twenty-minutes explaining the Dewey Decimal System and, frankly, I’m hoping I got it right. By the time we return Cynog and Augusta may be in some protracted land war over whether trolls should be classified under Geology or Magical Species.”
“Geology?”
“Apparently they’re made of living rock.”
“But… I…” Moira was having a hard time wrapping her head around that, let alone answering the classification question.
“Yes, exactly,” said Killian.
“Well, I admit that there are a lot of things in this place that are a bit of a head trip, but don’t you think it’s nice that there aren’t any humans here? I mean… just a little bit? I mean, I love humans. But it’s nice to be, well, it’s nice to not have to cater to what’s normal for them, I guess.”
“It is nice to be myself,” said Killian. “And it’s nice to have my wolfiness celebrated. But…”
“But what?”
“Warlocks aren’t the only kind of human. And I’m… troubled, I guess would be fair to say, that their solution was to simply kill all of the humans. Yes, they wanted to kill all of us. I’m not arguing about what got done. I just am pointing out that Lonnie wasn’t entirely wrong. A lot of Supernaturals treat humans as substandard or not smart enough to have magic. So, yes, it’s great that I don’t have to hide here, but that doesn’t make this culture my culture or their values my values. I like visiting. Not sure I would want to stay. I think I’d end up fighting a different kind of racism.”
Moira’s knee-jerk reaction was to not like that and it took her a moment to figure out why.
“That is a long amount of silence,” said Killian after a moment. “You disagree?”
“No, I don’t actually,” said Moira. “I’m just thinking. It’s pretty damn easy to think that we’re better than humans. I suppose it’s a…” Moira tried to put her feeling into an appropriate framework. “A lazy way of thinking, I guess. Why can’t humans just… fill in the blank. I must have heard that a thousand times. What they really mean isbe more like me, even though we don’t experience the world the same way at all. So there is no reason for humans to see things the way we do. I know I think like that sometimes, and that’s upsetting.”
“Do you mean that?” he looked surprised.
“Well, yeah. I’m really committed to the idea of working with all kinds of Supernaturals and humans for the good of the planet. But it kind of loses some of the impact when secretly I’m over here thinking that humans are weird and they kind of make me uncomfortable. That’s not awesome.”
Killian laughed. “You are awesome. Doesn’t mean your everythought is awesome.”
“I appreciate the up vote, but I guess it will have to be an area I work on.” She sighed in irritation. Having areas to work on was hard and she disliked it.
“Grandpa, why are we doing this?”
Albert hammered another nail into the bleachers and looked over at her. “That isn’t what you mean to ask, is it? You want to ask why amIdoing this. Particularly since everyone knows I have all the tolerance of a brick.”
Moira laughed in surprise.
“And I’m generally selfish.”
She stopped laughing—that wasn’t funny.
“And I don’t really like most of the species we’re talking to. That’s what you mean.”
