It wasn’t an argument, exactly.
The sithen was depressing the living shit out of me, so I headed back up to Mysthaven to see if Nathaniel was busy. He’s been reading up on his Ancient Greek, for some reason (who does that?) but as it turned out, he was looking for an excuse to take a break, and I provided at least some distraction. I shouldn’t tease him — I know his mind is busy with so many things — but only Nathaniel Ballard would distract himself from a stressful situation with the study of Ancient Greek. Seriously.
We started talking about the whole real-jumping thing and what it would mean for both of us. As it turns out, Alec has warned Nathaniel that he must be careful when he thinks of people, for he might just pop in wherever they are. And apparently, he might leave his clothing behind.
Now obviously, this would be fine if he only thought of me! But herein lies his fear of ending up in his mother’s grave. I suppose the thoughtful response to that would have been to say that his mother obviously isn’t actually in her grave: she’s wherever people go when they die, and he probably can’t go there, being undead and all. But it didn’t occur to me at the time.
Instead, I tried to distract him with all the fun things we could do together that would harm no one. For example, I suggested, I could take you to see Star Wars! You’d love it.
Idea theft for fun and profit!
His response? He could, he said, go back, see that film, transcribe the script, and arrive on the scene to produce it before Stephen Spielberg.
I was momentarily shocked! He didn’t even ask me about the dinosaur story, and I was looking forward to telling him that one.
But then we started talking about it, and I guessed Jasper Cove’s economy was based mostly on the trading of black market goods between realms and times. And maybe that’s how, I considered, the Damondreds made themselves so seemingly bottomlessly wealthy: the number of homes they own is a subject that we could debate for some time, for example.
Could we do that? Could we somehow become larger than space and time, amass a crazy amount of wealth, and just float from place to place?
Surely that would carry a hell of a toll, and I think we already have a few to pay at this point.
Luckily, the discussion moved on to more intimate topics before we could begin making concrete plans.
Three Twisted Knots 