ElijahHe was prone to roving, this one. When he wasn't prone to studying or inputting data or being put to whatever task Kalen had put him to in their downtime trying desperately to prove something to someone somewhere that wasn't going to reply (because the voice was quiet, now, did not say what was happening even though it had things to say. Had things it wanted. Had not threatened in days save for its usual live, live you bastard fro tomorrow you die.
He knew he was going to die.
He'd known he was going to die for years, this child who flirted with death. Was intimately acquainted with its quiet nuance but never once asked it to dance with him. no, no death took what she wanted because she always got what she wanted. No one refused death, save for those lucky few who exerted their will and insisted We Will Not Die Today. October makes one introspective about death, and Elijah was no exception. There was an outdoor market of sorts today. Somewhere in some sweet little artistic venue there were people who had brought their wares out of the shops like an impromptu festival and he was looking for sugar skulls and marigolds because he had something to prepare for. Not a ritual, but a holiday.
Jenn had aways celebrated the Day of the Dead, and it was something that Elijah had picked upon turn. Even if they didn't live together anymore, there was always the erection of memorials and remembrance and the stuff that people did for the day was just plain freaking cool.
In the market, there ere things everywhere. Knick knacks and things and masks and what-have-yous that people were passing off as Halloween goods. Someone three booths down had craft pumpkin spice beer.
Because it's October.
If there's one thing that goes on in October, it is Pumpkin Spice everything.
DelilahHere is Delilah, too. Delilah, a young woman who knows the poem of bone and muscle and sinew and flesh, and consequently holds herself with such good posture that it is remarked upon in this day and age of slouching; Delilah, here at an outdoor market because outdoor markets have inexpensive rag bags and Delilah could use more rags, because outdoor markets are redolent, redolent, redolent of apples and it is apples in October apples in autumn apples that the autumning afterlife must smell like, isn't it, all white blossom and loveliness, all promise forever of ripeness sweet on the air for those who are eternal or beyond ripening those who are shades or eat ashes or choose your myth but isn't it always apples, Delilah has a bag on her wrist of two apples, fairy tale apples, and inside that bag a smaller bag of apple and cardamom goat milk soap, and she is holding a third apple against her mouth as she browses over
what is it that she browses over? Why, she is at some cosy little cart where there are threads for sale, threads for sale! needles and patterns and willow hoops and needles, hand-made needles, needles for sale to lance a boil in the armbit of the moon or to sew a button fast on the tide and keep the foam laced to the shore and the sharks where they should be and
or they are just needles. Mostly it is thread, things stitched and embroidered, and Delilah is smiling a little behind her apple.
Delilah is golden, you see, but a certain brand of golden; oh isn't she just? Just certainly, she is - Delilah's like a little sliver of the light that breaks the dark, Delilah's dawn, Delilah's been called Dawn by mistake her whole life, Delilah's a crawling barbaric impression of gold and openings and thresholds and oh, no, she's a young woman, not a myth,
and she is out, shopping, at the outdoor market, and her path will bring her wandering O closer and nearer Elijah and then
we'll see.
[Because Awareness!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Serafíne(also - awareness)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2
Elijah[I wanna roll awareness!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
SerafíneSerafíne is here with Dan, who has his arms wrapped 'round her shoulders and his chin resting on the crown of her head as they chat with an older woman with salt and pepper hair selling leathergoods three stalls down from wherever Elijah finds himself. Sera's wearing a pair of leather short-shorts over fishnets (garters today, buttoned because she is feeling old-fashioned) beneath a shearling lined leather jacket, which is open far enough to hint at the thought that she might be wearing nothing else whatsoever beneath the jacket just the sheepskin and leather to cover her breasts. Like if she yawned or stretched or spun herself about in a circle she might flash everyone in the crowd. That shearling jacket is luxe, though - the richest leather, the softest lambskin, thick and rich and warm.
She has the collar turned up. Of course she does.
She's a bit thinner these days, but you'd have to know her to know that, wouldn't you?
--
And she is swimming in sensation. Turns around and inhales and lifts herself up to the balls of her lovely feet her brow a pressure against Dan's jaw, enough that he looks down from his conversation and offers this grunt of inquiry as she smiles against his skin and takes her leave. Drops her mouth to his shoulder and smiles and mutters something that he cannot quite hear but also knows, intimately and with certainty, to be an I'm taking my leave.
Tumultuous dawn, somewhere close. The first blush of the sun against the sky.
All these things she feels.
And remembers.
And knows.
ElijahThere is a familiar pull at his attention. His hands reached tentatively for some paper flowers- because he couldn't get Jenn real flowers, or else she would think it was a commitment to keeping something alive, but fake ones? Fake flowers he could do- but he paused. There was a pull, something threading, something radiant and it washed over him like dawn, pulled his attentions to something golden and made his brows raise and a smile, yes a smile (something like bison- endangered but once plentiful) and he sees her, opens his mouth to say something and-
"Sera?"
not what he had intended to say, but there was another feeling. Something visceral, something that clung to the inside of his ribcage, something that bloomed and just as he had intended on saying something to Dawn Delilah, he felt his attentions pulled elsewhere. Felt his heart beat a little faster and his attentions pulled one of the myriad of directions it was normally pulled. His was a world rife with sensory input.
DelilahThe hint of tumultuousness does indeed snag her attention first and foremost for it is nearest, dearest, can't be dearest yet, may never be dearest but oh her attention it goes not sidelong for Delilah is not given to sidling or side longings, her longings are forthright, stamped on her broad features, worn like horns bull horns to spear the sun or shake free the moon and turn a key and lock the night from the day and this poesy means nothing, it means nothing, but it is meant to mean that there is something open about her longings and her attentions, a transparent scrim,
and Delilah smiles too, just a little, behind her apple, a demure smile for a cautionary tale, and she has not forgotten the threads she is looking at but she looks first at Elijah and then, a beat after he feels Serafíne, so too does Delilah, and it is oh so familiar a dream and she knows it's true and she turns her head with the unguarded air of something measured out to find that enthralling woman because isn't it that enthralling woman because
Delilah of course can feel that hook of enthrallment, visceral, internal; a suggestion behind her breastbone, and she puts her apple into the bag, sweeping her gold barbarian queen's hair, no, not a barbarian queen's hair, because some sun-shower light catches it and sends it into a fairness whispering its way into the autumn season into that golden moment before everything burns just give it a match and that golden moment is pale is pale is a ghost's sheet and
well she sweeps her hair back and it flares up in a dapple and as soon as she sees Serafíne she will look for Dan-who-is-Sera's-shadow and she will pick a bundle of thread (soft fawn silver) and buy it from the woman manning the needlecraft booth
and then, well, we'll see that too, because all things in their time and in their place
Serafíne"Hi." Yes, Sera, not precisely behind Elijah but close, closer, and she scoops her left arm through a hook young Elijah does not understand he has created with his right perhaps because he willed it and tucks herself right up against him and says, gently - "Are you going to buy that?"
about the paper flower, and waits, if he does.
They are miss-matched, Serafíne and Elijah. Today she is wearing her Doc Martens, so her feet are flat, flat on the on the ground and she's looking up at him, fond and strange and spare, her own hair is merely golden, chemically so, you understand. With deliberately dark roots and a quick, raw immediacy to match everything else about her that is gut-hooking and eye-catching and heart-pounding.
Three beats, you see: while he buys, if he buys, as he buys, and then Sera is pulling him forward to a booth where there are needles and there are threads and there is a golden girl buying moonlit thread.
"Remember me? I remember you," this to Delilah. A glance then, up at Elijah, who is still on her arm. Smiles then, you see, lovely and - well, lovely and something else too, which neither of them are like to understand. "This is Elijah. We like the way you feel."
ElijahWas he gonna buy that?
"Yeah," he replied, and thus paid for the items he was holding with a five. He got a dollar and a quarter back in change, which goes into his back pocket. Not enough to buy a beer, but enough to tip a bartender, and sometimes that was more important. He shouldn't technically have been investing in alcohol anyway, but there were a number of things he shouldn't have done but did anyway. It was nice, though, the feeling of someone warm and fond and familiar and he falls into familiarity so easily. He's tall. He's tall and sharply dressed because he was wearing a vest and there was something about wearing a vest that made most things seem a little more dressed up than they normally would. A vest and about hand full of necklaces that tucked into his short- because someone had tied one on and he still couldn't quite get the knot undone.
Then, to Delilah with them.
"I think she covered everything I was going to say," Elijah starts, "except I've not met you before. hi, I'm Elijah."
To confirm that, yes, this was actually his name.
Delilah[I wish to be cool, and also to roll the amazing die-pool for the hiding of things. Manip + Subt, baby.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 2) ( fail )
DelilahDelilah now has another little bag, paper, paper bag stapled with a whisk of colorful hand-spindled yarn, inside it is the thread, the moon-gleam thread, the moon-spindling thread for half-sick of shadows she shall not be and here is Sera and here is Elijah and Delilah looks happy to see Serafíne and happy to be remembered and happy, see, in this way which means she is smiling, broad and open though her mouth is a neat little Valentine's heart though there is something fleetingly coy about the smile although Delilah herself is not coy and Delilah (who is usually remembered as Dawn, as a morning person, presumed to be awake so early people call her around that hour and it is true, true, she is often awake, but because of the calls, because by moonlight is the time for - no hush keep secrets), well. "I do remember you, and your friend. I am sorry that we haven't seen more of each other. You were cool, I guess still are, and Elijah I've wanted to meet you for a while! I don't," this start-stop thing, where she because in trying very hard to not show that she already has an opinion of the young man she has thought too hard about what she wants not to do so she is doing it which means she reaches up to give him a hug stops hard hardtop like a typewriter clattering then wait no gotta go through with it that will hide the initial okay she is going to hug him again but no maybe fix the hair that is fine nobody will know okay okay don't say anything, as she says, "But I hear you're a good kisser!"
Fuck no she meant to say you're a good guy or a nice guy and it does indeed take her an instant to realize she said aloud what she oh no no no and now she is pink because pink is a dawn color too and she flashes Serafíne a wide-eyed look and then laughs at herself but her shoulders are a touch hunched-up like shit I said a wrong thing.
"I'm Delilah."
Serafíne"Serafíne." You know, one of the burning-ones. And Delilah is coming in to hug Elijah and Sera does manage to let go of one of his long arms so that he can reach for Delilah back if he wants to and Sera's name comes after: after the hug and the wide-eyed look (which receives, in turn, the most deliciously wry sort of smirk). "Call me Sera. My friend's Dan, by the way. He's buying new boots.
"And he is a good kisser. Who'd you hear that from?" This briefest pause, Sera's dark eyes bemused on the line of Elijah's jaw.
"I'm better though." Back to Delilah. Sparking. "I can prove it, too."
ElijahThere is a hug, because he has no problem hugging people that he's just met, and in some way she seems familiar. She seems familiar because there is a feeling bout her, threading, something that he knows and associates with someone they both know. he doesn't make the connection, at least not yet, that this is Delilah the Delilah. The one that Lucy speaks so highly of, the one that is his friend's literal other half. Delilah. That Delilah. that very same delilah that is dawn to Lucy's dusk, and they complete a cycle together, because he could understand a cycle.
She heard he's a good kisser, and once he makes this connection it will make sense on account of Lucy.
He takes the compliment with a laugh, reaches up to scratch the back of his head and find somewhere to look- oh, look! Thread! Yes, thread, thread is something to think about instead of his, "gah, I hope I wasn't drunk when I kissed whomever told you that. Because the rest of that statement is but he tastes kinda like tequila." He looks back.
"And it's true, Sera is quite literally an earth shattering, world-view-rewiring, truth-exposing kisser.":
DelilahAnd he is a good kisser.
"Dan?" but no, no, Elijah, it is still Eijah whose good kissing least kept secret you have commented on, Delilah, and she is still pink and flushed and flushing, blushing, but she keeps her posture oh oh the good kisser is hugging her back it is this awkward tangle of he hugs her as she's going away from that hug okay hug instead this little quick wavelet bump! like a splash lapping against a shore, something brief, and now she is laughing
laughing at herself, laughing because she feels like laughing, a little abashed but more brash than anything, forward momentum, certainly putting her hand up to her hair dividing her glance between the two Magi tumultuous and visceral and surely they would be good kissers both
"No, no, word of mouth has only good things to say, nothing that I remember about tequila, I heard it from ..." Is this a confidance to break? "... Around. On the streets. I guess Lucy might have heard it. Sera," the laughter is golden, too; she cups it behind her fingers, shifs her weight from hip to hip instead of staying poised, "Now how could you prove that? Have you ever kissed yourself? Have you, Elijah?"
And here it comes, the creeping (radiant warmth) of mischief, of gentle teasing, and if the edge of her smile is sly it is still so far from what she is; Delilah is not sly, but surely it's difficult to judge oneself so there she wins, a subtle thaw-sort-of-warmth.
A bit of melody plays from her bag, and she does not startle but it draws her attention closed like a strawstring purse'll work on fabric and she glances down and looks disappointed, "Oh, I must go. I have a lesson."
SerafíneSera is just swimming, really, as she watches the hug - the reach and the reach-not-reach, the back and forth of it - with those dark, fine eyes. This raw, still-mildly-ironic curve to her mouth, and something else behind it, something banked or withheld or not withheld, precisely, so much as curved up in her body or carved into her skin, like a seed or a scar.
"Nothing wrong with tasting like tequila," our lady of the limes and of the salt murmurs her little encouragement to Elijah. Yes, still wry but also tender, as she is wont to be. "I do all the time.
"And of course I've kissed myself. I was 13 once, too. I know how to prove it," a touch of her gaze on Delilah's eyes and then Delilah's collar, the pink tincture to her skin.
" - after your lesson, maybe."
Sera has wrapped her left arm through the hook of Elijah's right again. This is how it goes.
ElijahDelilah.
Lucy may have-
"Oh, shit! Right! I-hey, it's nice to finally meet you- and I don't think I've actually had af ill on make out session with myself on account of not being able to be in two places at once yet." yet. Like it was something he might want to be able to do at some point. Like being able to be in two places at once was going to be as simple and as easy as just waking up one day and getting the Sunday paper or hearing the voices of the restless dead. These were easy things, right?
He subconsciously made his arm available, content to be available and close to another person in the casual sort of intimacy that one could have with their friends. Easy with affections and gestures of closeness- well- just because. Because they felt right. Because they were easy. Because he liked the sensation of being around and with other people.
"And tequila is delicious, there are worse things to taste like."
Delilah"It's nice to meet you too, really it is, and,"
Delilah is no longer laughing because laughter subsides, quite naturally, into the business of leaving, oh yes, even dawn leaves, you see, it ushers in it is a threshold it is a fleeting sort of moment, "Oh, but you should call me Sera. I still don't know many people here, I have a business card but not on me or do I?" look look look hunt hunt hunt business cards for all why sure and, "You both should."
"Ta!" She does this- wait, should she hug? Maybe- okay, another quick hug for Elijah, one for Sera too yes maybe or maybe it's just one hug for them both and then she leaves with a flick of gold
day's here, and all.
Delilah[and I am out! thanks for the play!]
Serafíne"Ta." Sera to Delilah, the farewell easily brushed against Dawn's skin, and Serafíne comes up afterward, just as easy, her eyes dark, as they always are, beneath rather straight and neatly formed dark brows.
They are side by side.
Sera's features are a bit sharper. There is this edge to her that always lives beneath her skin but now shines through a bit more. A certain sharpness to the bones of her face, which are fine too, and something about that sharpness, that hollowness, makes her seem somehow brighter. Luminous, consuming and consumed.
Her mouth is quite as neat as her brows and she has caught her lower lip between her teeth as she considers the apprentice with whom she is arm-in-arm. The curve of her breasts a visible shadow beneath the lapels of her shearling coat, this strange and thoughtless ease to her, for all that she seems attenuated.
"You have more stuff you wanna buy? Or can we walk?"
Through and away from the crowd, not because she dislikes crowds (she does not), but because they may have things to say to each other that strangers should not overhear.
ElijahIt's admirable. A lot about Sera was admirable, a lot other was something he could admire because there was no reason for her to be anything other than admirable, but not unattainable. not relegated tot eh realm of being some far flung idea of a woman. no, Sera was very much there. Very much sharp and real and in the moment and Elijah was enamored of it. Fond, because he was fond of her. Yes, that was a good word for it. Sera existed on all sides of whatever bullshit barriers were in the world.
Transcendent. That was a word for her. What was there not to be fond of?
"Nah, I'm good," he said as he lifted the tissue paper flowers, "October will be here awhile, let's move." They had things they may need to say to one another, and with that he started on his way through the crowd, with Sera in arm and at that moment there was just the moment. Just now. Just the warmth of another person and just the feeling of air on his skin and right now, things felt pretty damn good. Not terrible, not like pressing on some still healing bruise from where he'd run into a coffee table or stabbed himself in the chest over another unnamed mistake.
"Is it weird if I say I missed you?" because he had. missed her, that is.
Serafíne"It's not weird to say if you missed me." She hears that in his voice, in the back of it and the front of it, and she smiles when she hears it and the smile has a shadow of dawn and a shadow of dusk and a helluva lot of stars worked into the substance of it. "Which you did."
Which she knows.
She hears it in his voice.
"I was working my way through some stuff. Ritual and shit, you know?" He doesn't know. No one knows, except perhaps Hawksley.
And maybe not even him. "It's better now." She's been working on it, after all.
Which is harder than you'd think.
"I'm usually around though. You know? If you need to talk, you can always find me. How've you been?"
Elijah"Is that why you look sharper?" he asked, because… she did. And he had noticed. There was not so much a lack of edge to her, but she seemed more herself. More bright, even if there was, literally, a little less of her. She wasn't emaciated, but she was thinner. Sera, to Elijah, had already seemed thin. She didn't seem diminished though, as though nothing could diminish her.
All shadow and dusk and a hell of a lot of stars. Nothing could diminish the sky.
"What kind of ritual?"
And how was he, she asked? How was he and he continues on, smiles because he smiles easily, though not as easily as before. It's not practiced, though, nothing about Elijah was practiced save for lies. He found he preferred honesty.
"I'm better than I was… less mopey but… still sad, still… it's better," he said, "I'm still grieving of a friendship but at the same time I'm… I'm fuckin' floored by how amazing it is that something- anything- can make someone feel like this-" it's strange, he can talk about the experience with Alicia as one with wonder, with surprise and wonder because there was always wonder, always. And perhaps he had forgotten it once but it came back- always, always wonder. "And-"
He stops, he smiles, triumphant, "I've had the first good night of sleep I've had in years."
SerafíneWhat ritual? Elijah asks, and Sera offers him a neat little shrug, which is enough movement to give the other folks threading their way through the narrow little walk between the tents and displays a passing glimpse of her right breast grazing the lapel of the shearling coat. Elijah, mind, tucked up against her, walking the same direction, is not so rewarded.
"Excising darkness." Sera doesn't give him more explanation than that. "Purging it, I suppose. I'm just kinda making it up. What feels right. What makes me feel clean."
Her voice is low. If he glances at her, he will have her profile. Her lashes lowered, shading her eyes, a certain vulnerability in that framing glance: the beat of her heart in her throat, and on and on.
She listens. Gives him a twinge of a smile, which feels like a wound, when he says that he is grieving, and that twings melts into something warmer though less triumphant when he tells her that he is sleeping now.
No more nightmares.
Sera stops. Reaches up and kisses him on the cheek. She doesn't care that she's half-nude, that she flashes strangers again as she reaches for him and pulls him down and gives him a chaste little kiss on his cheek.
"Good for you." On the nightmares. "And grieving's okay. You know? It's just as valid as wonder. Just as necessary as fear. Still sucks, though. Alicia?"
Elijah"If it works, then it works," no judgment, no insistence on how a ritual was supposed to be because… well… he wasn't sure how rituals were supposed to be. If there was a formula to them and if things wouldn't work, but he did know magic was personal. Did know that Sera tore herself open and laid bare for the world and purged all those barriers and limitations to feel the heartbeat of the universe so whatever ritual it was, it hd to be something just as raw. Something just as intent.
He glances to the side and takes in her profile, smiles because it hadn't faded yet.
She tells him grieving is okay, no less valid than wonder or less necessary than fear.
Alicia?
"Yeah," he says, "she… uh… we met on the street and she kinda laid out how things were. I told her I was sorry but.. y'know… that doesn't fix thing… and I don't think she wants me to fix things. And I'm learning…" he starts and the smile falters, like he pushed on a bruise or found a sore muscle he wasn't expecting, "I'm learning to be okay with that. Stasis isn't an option."
Serafíne"Statis is an option," Sera returns, insists really. She is smiling still, but that smile is a little bit private and a little bit strange and a little bit sad.
It is October.
Things die.
"Everything's an option. You can make that choice. I just don't think it's the best one."
Then:
"Still hurts, huh?" Quiet, this. Quiet-quiet-quiet, framed in care and also a quickling surety. He can deflect. He can open up. He can do anything.
That's the space she creates for him, right here on the sidewalk. Right here on the street.
ElijahBut he doesn't deflect. He thinks about it, as he is want to do when things hurt, when bearing what you feel aches and what you want is for something, anything, to feel different than what you feel at that juncture, but instead it's there. He's present. For someone who spends so much time somewhere Else, somewhere between, somewhere that isn't quite this world and isn't quite the next world and he's stuck straddling the places in between he is present.
Elijah is exactly where he is. Exactly where he said he would be
Still hurts, huh?
"Yeah, it does," he tells her. "I had a physics class I had to drop because I couldn't read the fucking textbook without thinking about her. Grace is helping her, now, though, and… and she's helping herself- if Ginger's any indication, which is better. And I'm happy about that… and I know, at some point, it'll stop hurting… and this is new. This-this is really… really new."
Serafíne"That's kind of bullshit." Sera, humming, quiet, burning as she is given to burn, made to burn smiles for him and her smile is peripheral and aching and imprinted with a longing so deep and vast and boundless as to make one breathless. "The bit about how someday it won't hurt.
"The only way it'll stop hurting is if you stop feeling. Or if you turn out to be substantially less cool than I think you are. The way it hurts will change.
"Maybe soften. Maybe sharpen, on some nights. But I'd be willing to lay odds that it'll always hurt, a little bit. That's what happens when you miss someone."
--
"You know what I think you should do?"
ElijahHe lets that sit there, takes it in for what it is because he knows, now, that every moment is this one and every place is this one and that the world is boundless and limitless. She tells him that it won't stop, that it will change, and he can accept that- change. Because change has always been a constant.
It's quiet for awhile, and there's the question posed. A question with one answer only-
"What do you think I should do?"
Because they were being open, because walls and barriers were all bullshit anyway, got in the way of communication, of experiencing things, and leaving one's self open to the world was, for lack of better wording… well… bullshit.
Serafíne"Write her a letter. Everything stupid and everything sad and everything strange. Keep it going for a week. Talk to her. Tell her you miss her. Tell her that you dropped physics because you couldn't read the textbook without thinking about her. Tell her that I think that's awesome because physics sounds like bullshit. I think you should take a class in love and a class in sorrow and a class in LSD instead, who the fuck cares about physics and there's goddamned magic.
"Slip in the bits you think she would like, and the bits for which you want to apologize. Tell her every raw, silly, strange, sad, fucked up little thing that you feel like telling her. Don't worry about what anyone who ever reads it might think. If you can't think of a word write down a thousand other words. Don't erase anything. Just write it all down, in love and grief and faith.
"Or at least, friendship.
"Then take it outside someplace, and build a little fire. You know? And burn burn burn that letter. Watches the ashes fly up to heaven. Maybe all the way to Israel, or Baffin Island.
"Tell her you're sorry there, too. Then it'll be everywhere. It'll be out there. You know?
"That's what I think you should do."
ElijahShe started by saying he should write Alicia a letter, and for a second she could tell that his stomach tensed and his muscles seized and the idea of talking to her again scared him, delighted him, but terrified him because he thought she wouldn't listen. He thought she wouldn't be there to read the letter and-and-
And he listens.
He listens to the fate of the letter and what would come of it. That there would be things he would get to say, things he needed to say, even if Alicia wouldn't hear them because the saying them wasn't even in actuality all for her. There were things Elijah needed to say, because he needed to say them. Because. He laughed a little at the reference about physics sounding a bit like bullshit. Because it was, and there was magic.
But he needed to take the letter, build a nice little fire somewhere and burn it.
He tensed again, having followed along so diligently and he could write that letter, burn that letter, and it'll be out there. Because it had to be out there, and even if the sky was all that knew the contents of the letter, that's what mattered. Someone… something had to know what he would say.
"I can do that," he says. He can do that, and he wants to, wants to because he wants.
