[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]
The knots in Bryant’s stomach tightened. He hadn’t quite admitted to himself how nervous he was about this part, about David opening up to people that they were probably looking for about what they were out here doing and why.
Their reaction is going to make or break this.
The stories he’d grown up on came with dozens of examples of heroes rejecting their role at first, and if there was one thing that he knew, it was that David was looking for people that were supposed to end up being heroes—being legends.
Most of those people tended to say no and walk away before circumstances forced them into doing something else. That always meant when heroes walked away, things got worse.
The world out there’s bad enough already. I’d hate to see what would come with the “worse”—especially if it means something happening to the people here. It seems like they went through a lot before now, judging from their defenses and their paranoia about strangers, especially armed ones. I don’t want to see anything happen to them here, even having just met these people.
He became abruptly aware of Lin watching him even as David cleared his throat in preparation to speak. The young man’s gaze remained intent for a few seconds more, only moving on once David had said the first few words.
“We grew up on a lot of stories,” David began. “I’m sure that you guys did, too, for better or worse, maybe even some of the same ones. I don’t know where all of them came from, but I know at least a few my dad had from my mother—I never really knew Aoife, since she left when I was still really little. Bryant remembers her better than any of the rest of us. Most of the stories were older than old and some of them didn’t make a lot of sense, at least not the first half dozen or so times I heard them.”
“But they started to,” Lin murmured. “The older you got, the more sense they started to make. The more meaning they started to have.”
David nodded. “Yes, exactly.”
“Because that’s when your gift started to manifest.”
“Yes,” David said as he nodded again. “Exactly.”
