2022-05-15 - I Got Life (Choices)

I got life, mother
I got laughs, sister
I got freedom, brother
I got good times, man

Treat Williams' voice calls from 1979. The moon overhead, indifferent. The calls of the last seagulls circling before settling for the night. Their voices, a backdrop that works surprisingly well. And no one who knows Ravn Abildgaard will be surprised in the slightest that at least he tends to favour older music. There's a bottle of high-end whiskey on the table, and two plexiglass glasses that don't match each other. There's a couple of long-legged men each occupying a side of the sailboat's aft. There's the promise of stars overhead as the colour of day bleeds away.

"All in all," Ravn says. "I think my life is working out pretty okay at the moment."

"I just freaking love the look he gives him," Itzhak says, aggravated ratchet softened to a raspy murmur. "Sings that and looks at the cowboy and just, hnf." He bites a knuckle.

He's lying on his back, a joint in his fingers, a glass of whiskey in easy reach. The joint is responsible for gentling him like this, but don't accuse him of self medicating even though it's true.

"Ain't so bad, right? You know, that girl of yours keeps givin' me the third degree." Itzhak takes a leisurely pull.

Ravn reaches over to steal it -- doesn't even bother to try to pretend he isn't. He draws smoke into his lungs and then hands it back. "Do I want to ask?"

He lets his head fall back so he's watching the last seagull circle on a backdrop of dark blue. tinged by the marina lights. God, how he loves these nights -- the summer nights. How quiet they are, even here, at the marina. Somehow, the quiet remains uninterrupted by the music from other boats, the talking of people on the pier, the occasional car.

"It's one of the things I like about her," he adds quietly. "That she asks. Instead of assuming."

"I like it about her too." Itzhak surrenders the joint without a fight. The sunset is amazing and he's very interested in watching the last lavender clouds fading. "It's very Jewish, the questions. Ehhh, mostly she wants to know that..."

He shrugs, hand loosely waving. "You know. That she'll make you happy. That she won't scare you off."

Ravn hands it back after another draw. He doesn't want to get high enough to get stupid. Just mellow and relaxed and cognizant of the beautiful bleed of colour up there where the last seagull finally breaks its circle. It either found the perfect spot in which to spend the night, or one last opportunity to steal a fry somewhere.

"That's Jewish?" he asks, in quiet surprise. "I thought that was how it's supposed to be. Between anyone, I mean. That you want to make the other person happy and not scare them off."

A hitched shoulder. "She makes me feel confident. Like I'm enough. It's all I could ask from anyone, that they like me for who I am, not who they think I ought to be."

He glances at the dream catcher still on the Vagabond's door to below decks. There are things like it, from half a dozen cultures. "And so far, nothing bad has happened."

"Questioning all the things, what we're supposed to do as Jews. God tells us it's one of our jobs, always error-checking him. Why lots of scientists and lawyers are Jews." Lots also aren't, but tell that to Itzhak and he'll mention a German Jewish refugee named Dr. Abraham Erskine. No, wait, Albert Einstein. Was he a refugee? Whatevah. Itzhak sums all this up with another boneless flop of the hand.

He smiles when Ravn says Ari makes him feel confident. Smiles slow and brilliant up at the stars just beginning to shed their veils. "That's how you oughta feel all the time because why? BeCAUSE you're amazing. Fuck yeah, rebut that, Assistant Professor." Itzhak fingerguns sideways at Ravn, not looking away from the sky. He's definitely well into stupid.

"People who are convinced they're amazing tend to be insufferable." Ravn's gaze remains on the emerging stars. "As long as no ghosts emerge screaming and trying to rip people's faces off, I'm grateful."

He's quiet for a long time. He doesn't even bother to point out for the umptieth time that he is not a professor, nor an assisting professor. The dream catcher on the door; warding runes from Norse mythology and from 15th century esoteric texts, painted in discreet places; under the benches, on the bed frame under the mattress. White sage sprigs tucked in between wild flowers plucked on the beach. Wards, against a vengeful ghost who so far has yet to make an appearance. Maybe they're working.

"I want her to be safe. As safe as anyone can be. In this town, or in life. Here, monsters kill you, in a great deal of the world other people kill you, it's more -- I feel like I put her in front of a firing squad sometimes. And yet she knows." He looks up at the stars again. "And she's still choosing to take the chance."

Itzhak is quiet too, lying there like a cat that demands to be walked around, gazing stonedly at the evening sky.

"I felt like that about Bex," he murmurs. "She did the best thing for herself in dumping me and leaving the state. I ask myself sometimes if she was ever really that into me. Maybe it was just the way she was, she wanted me to rough her up, then she wanted me to knock her up and when I didn't, well, that was that."

Another drag from the joint. Itzhak can hold his breath a while before exhaling the thick smoke. "She knew exactly what she wanted and when I wasn't it," he waggles his fingers up at the sky, "ciao, baby. I can respect that."

"Hurts when the thing she wants isn't you -- but yes. It's something you can respect." Ravn winces all the same because rejection hurts. No matter how much you wrap it in glitter and crinkly paper, 'it's not you, it's me' is still a failure to be live up to somebody else's hopes and expectations.

He looks up at the stars again. "I'm guessing you didn't feel like being a father, or at least not now. If you did -- you'd have gone with her, have that kid somewhere safer. Allow me to thank you for not doing that, on behalf of kids everywhere whom their dad didn't really want."

"I'd love to be a dad, honestly. I just..."

Long silence. Itzhak turns one hand palm side up in the laziest of shrugs. "Maybe I don't think I'd be that great at it. Anyway, I wasn't about to leave. I just wasn't. So she had to go have her baby with someone else. I ditched my old Overwatch account because I couldn't stand to see her online." He laughs soundlessly at himself.

"I think -- we know, instinctively. Maybe you'd be a great dad, but not then, not with her." Ravn looks thoughtful. "I can't see myself as a father, either. I always figured I'd warm to the idea when I got older, but honestly? The first thought that went through my head at Ava's baby was, don't get voluntold to be a surrogate parent. Because I'm not ready, I'd do shit at it, and I don't feel the pull at all. When you have this little voice saying, 'dude, no', it's probably best to listen to it. Not like humanity is dying out."

"Uh," Itzhak says, and wheezes laughing. "Ava's baby? You mean the blue thing came out of a damn cabbage? That's cute but I ain't going within blast radius if I can help it. Roen and his goddamn seeds. Christ."

"Yeah. I mean, it's blue. It's also a little girl named Nimue." Ravn nods. "But I hear you. I had the same kind of reaction -- like, congratulations but, not getting involved. I feel a little bad about it since I'm the one who's always harping on about having each other's backs and helping each other. But I'm also harping on about not being reckless, and on some level, planting Røn's goddamn seeds in a greenhouse next to a faerie circle and then injecting them with the blood from a dead cryptid is reckless. It's running in circles around the sleeping bear, while banging a drum and rubbing ranch sauce in your hair."

Itzhak breaks out in laughing madly, rolls over and thumps face-down on the deck. It takes him a while, but eventually he gasps, "Ranch," no, wait, he needs to giggle some more. "Don't be funny when I'm high. Ugh. I had enough experimenting with botany for a while, lemme tell you. Everything we tried went wrong. This one time I touched a chunk of bark or something and like, lived being an old growth forest for a few thousand years. Kept trying to drink through my fingers for days after that."

"I think it's natural to try to understand. But we're trying to understand things that maybe can't be understood. It's kind of the definition of chaos, that you cannot force rules upon it -- if you can, it's no longer chaos. And the Veil is kind of like that -- like trying to understand and frame things that can't be. If you're a believer, it must be a bit like walking into church and telling God, old man, Creation is very nice but I got a few things I think we need to look into fixing before we launch the big marketing campaign, right?"

Ravn shakes his head again and sips his whiskey. "It terrifies me sometimes. And now I can do these doors too. Meaning, people will come to me and ask, can you take me -- and I can, but I also have to tell them that every single time there's going to be a risk that neither of us come back."

"Yannow what though? Life's like that. Could get mowed over tomorrow because I picked the wrong time to jaywalk." Itzhak flops over on his back again, rearranging himself without a hint of self-consciousness. That deck is unforgiving to the soft bits. "I mean, I agree with you. We can't get the right frame of reference. It's like an entire other universe out there."

"Ariadne said that too. And I agree. There's no such thing as a perfectly safe environment. But there is not being stupid. I'm -- going to have to learn to say no, aren't I? To tell people, yes, I can get you to the Other Side city hall, and yes, we can probably find their records or whatever. But doing so, well, you better convince me the record you want is worth risking my life and yours over." Ravn nods again and crosses his legs, shifting as the mellow of the joint hits his brain.

"I'm scared because it's on me. If I go with someone else to another world, it's not me doing it. But now it is. If we go now, and die, it's me who didn't communicate how dangerous it is. And I need to find a way to -- make a map. To make sure I can jump back here."