Not every
conversation had to be strategically important.
"Really? Deadheading." I remember that I thought of Dan then, about his
views on the cowardice of deadheading, on the bravery of ending it when
you found yourself obsolete. He'd comforted me once, when my last living
relative, my uncle, opted to go to sleep for three thousand years. My
uncle had been born pre-Bitchun, and had never quite gotten the hang of
it. Still, he was my link to my family, to my first adulthood and my
only childhood. Dan had taken me to Gananoque and we'd spent the day
bounding around the countryside on seven-league boots, sailing high over
the lakes of the Thousand Islands and the crazy fiery carpet of autumn
leaves. We topped off the day at a dairy commune he knew where they
still made cheese from cow's milk and there'd been a thousand smells and
bottles of strong cider and a girl whose name I'd long since forgotten
but whose exuberant laugh I'd remember forever. And it wasn't so
important, then, my uncle going to sleep for three milliennia, because
whatever happened, there were the leaves and the lakes and the crisp
sunset the color of blood and the girl's laugh.
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