There was no point in deigning that with an answer. Instead she decided to ask the more obvious question, the one she should have asked first. “You have a job?”
Emil looked pleased she had asked. “Of course. There are only so many favours we can call in.”
She had often thought that Emil would die when giving her his immortality. He hadn’t helped much with that impression, straight up telling Coleen that if she accepted it one day that he would die.
“Lots of people wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone to seal away immortality either, to keep someone from taking it,” Emil had commented. When had he first said that? Perhaps eight months before, shortly after her death.
Coleen wondered whether he only did this to keep an eye on her. It was not like he needed more of a life to live. While she reminded him constantly of things he should not do now that he wasn’t immortal, he reminded her more often of things that did not matter now that she was.
Maybe he did not want to live a normal life now. Maybe he waited for her to no longer need him.
Coleen would always need Emil. He was the beginning of the end of her numbness. She could feel it when she thought of him. The need of someone to know her, the real her, as only Emil ever had.
(There had been someone else who eventually had, but Coleen did not want to think of that person either.)
No one could know anything was different. Whatever reason the Keeper had, I would not endanger the Librarian by letting anyone know that something had happened. I returned to the library to spend all of my time there as I usually did.
I couldn’t cry. Even more than that, I couldn’t lash out when I saw the Official. Not that I could. She terrified me.
And that would be it, wouldn’t it? Because of fear trapping us, the Keeper is gone. Because of trying to stay safe, they are just as dead as they would have been had the Official found them. Our own fear is just as dangerous as the actual violence that the state threatens upon us. There is no going around this. It was a hard lesson to learn.
To make something of this lesson? Even harder. Despite knowing what has been sacrificed in order to learn this, that doesn’t make the fear go away. Knowing better actually might make it worse.
If there was one thing Jin had never considered himself to be, it was normal. However, he spent less and less time as he left his youth behind considering other people’s opinions to be as valid, he became normal and every other person became odd. His beliefs didn’t line up with everyone else’s, despite what he trained to become.
Jin hated Shui, but found him completely normal. Maybe it was the shared irreverent attitude, that Shui could express and Jin found ways to excuse or change. Probably why he still saw the man despite not liking him much. Shui had always seemed normal, not strange like everyone else. Probably Heaven’s way of spiting him for not being like the other students of the cloth.
Ling was not odd. As obnoxious as he was, as childish as he was, as much as everyone else around Jin would comment on the child’s oddity. Jin could not see it. Somehow Ling had fit in his life as naturally as something that Jin had actually chosen. Maybe it was because Ling seemed to think the odd things were odd and the normal things were normal. What Jin thought was odd, what Jin thought was normal. Not that either odd or normal mattered much to Ling, as long as he got what he wanted. The typically selfish child. Jin felt more accomplished in taking care of him. Probably why he did it, despite everything else.
Jin couldn’t place a finger on Kun. He should have been odd, to Jin. The man came with a dragon, for gods’ sakes. Despite sharing similar interests, the two of them were not similar at all. Kun told him once, in his usual manner of complete politeness, that if there was a heaven he wasn’t very interested in it. Those were his words, but Jin saw underneath them, to where Kun meant “and it could burn forever for all I care”. Kun was usually better at hiding his true intentions, so he must have wanted Jin to understand.
“But I admire your dedication to the faith. Your belief. It means something to you.”
Not what it meant to everyone else, but that was correct. Kun poured him more tea as they watched Shui try, once again, to teach Ling how to catch a fish from the pond. Neither were very good at it.
“Won’t your masters be upset with that?” Kun asked, referring to Shui and Kun’s actions.
“Probably.”
“Ah.”
Normalcy had struck Jin as odd, but here they were. The last day, before all of this would disappear for him, forever.
Jin would miss normal.
A. A. MacConnell 