{"id":5896,"date":"2015-12-20T19:16:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-21T02:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/?p=5896"},"modified":"2016-04-07T15:21:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T22:21:46","slug":"4-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/?p=5896","title":{"rendered":"– 4 –"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe\u2019s hurting<\/em>,\u201d says Saul. He clenches and unclenches his hand baffledly. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter tilts his head to one side. \u201cIs it gout?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not gout,\u201d says Saul.<\/p>\n

\u201cHm,\u201d says Peter.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re playing rummy. In between their words they flip cards about. The cards are special cards that will never get gout or suffer unnecessarily from storms at sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr storms at sea,\u201d clarifies Saul.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you should help him,\u201d says Peter. \u201cOn account of he\u2019s a wicked thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, since when<\/em>,\u201d says Saul.<\/p>\n

He means, \u201csince when do saints prejudge people?\u201d Or \u201csince when do saints apply that kind of criterion?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously there\u2019s no point in asking when Edmund of Hunger went bad.<\/p>\n

Peter sighs.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t help him, though,\u201d says Peter, \u201cbecause he\u2019ll do bad things with that help. That\u2019s the edge that the wicked things have. They can be kind to us, or mean to us; but we can\u2019t hardly do much to them of anything but stand sadly by and watch. That\u2019s why Bethany\u2019s running around the world with the nithrid instead of attending to important saint business with us, you know. She couldn\u2019t help Edmund!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an oversimplification,\u201d Saul says.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could become saint-advisors,\u201d proposes Saul. \u201cWe could lurk in the background behind wicked things and give them useful advice. Eventually they would internalize it and grow flowers of grace in their gardens of evil, at which point we\u2019d smirk smugly at them, like so.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike so?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRummy,\u201d says Saul. He spreads out the cards. He smirks smugly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can do that,\u201d says Peter, \u201cthen I think you should do that. But if you can\u2019t, then they make tofu that tastes like people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, if you want to get him a gift basket \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t just feed him tofu that tastes like people!\u201d says Saul. \u201cWhat if the tofu is secretly alive?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike, a tofu-person,\u201d says Saul. \u201cA tofu-person, that feels and bleeds and breathes and loves and lives like all the rest of us, until it\u2019s slaughtered by the tofarmer and fed to beasts?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you understand what tofu is,\u201d says Peter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t matter,\u201d says Saul. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t make them stop hurting.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looks away.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just a little bit of blood from his nose. He rubs at it awkwardly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to stop,\u201d he says. \u201cI have to stop it. I can\u2019t help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

He rubs at his hair. He gets blood in it. Somehow it just makes his hair look better. That\u2019s his beatific hairstyling!<\/p>\n

He is holy. He is the substance of miracles.<\/p>\n

But he mutters, \u201cI have to stop being a saint.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHe\u2019s hurting,\u201d says Saul. He clenches and unclenches his hand baffledly. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m supposed to do.\u201d Peter tilts his head to one side. \u201cIs it gout?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not gout,\u201d says Saul. \u201cHm,\u201d says Peter. They\u2019re playing rummy. In between their words they flip cards about. The cards are special cards that will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-15","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Hat_3a_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5896"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5978,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions\/5978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5896"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}