Nathaniel hated lying. It had nothing to do with morality and everything to do with the sheer, mind-numbing tedium of it. A lie required maintenance, a whole architecture of falsehoods to keep it standing. The truth, however cumbersome, was a one-time burden. Avoidance was better. Forgetting was best. It was, perhaps, why he was such a poor Keeper of Truth, and why his niece's piercing gaze now felt like an indictment.
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She had just asked him a million questions. He had given her a hundred weary, evasive truths.
They were on a bus. Naturally, Mabel had been the one to plan the route, noting down his address. She had even packed a first-aid kit, knowing her uncle's habit of getting hurt simply because moving out of the way was too much effort.
The other passengers on the bus seemed to be ignoring them, their conversation likely sounding like some bizarre piece of fiction. Mabel knew her uncle was durable. She'd seen him get hit by a car when she was six, only to watch him stand up, dust himself off, and mutter "what a hassle." Her mother had always said the same thing: he was unnaturally calm, unnaturally sturdy.
"How old are you?" She asked.
He shrugged, "I'm 27 come this September, why?"
"Aren't you immortal" She enquired
"What?! Who told you that? In a way I guess."
"What does 'in a way' mean? Do you stop aging? Can you be killed?"
"Aging is... sporadic. And yes, I can be killed. It's just... unbelievably tedious. The universe seems to agree it's more trouble than it's worth."
The bus hissed to a halt at their stop, its doors flapping open like a tired mouth. Nathaniel stood, his entire body radiating a profound reluctance to engage with the physical world. Every movement was a negotiation with gravity, and gravity was a tedious, insistent negotiator. Mabel hoisted her backpack, the weight of her entire life now condensed into one suitcase and a bag of essentials, and followed him onto the curb, into the slightly stale, gasoline-scented air of a city afternoon.
"Okay," Mabel said, consulting the mental map she'd constructed from a flickering screen at the bus station. She was the expedition leader now, a role she'd inherited by default. "Your address is 17 Cook row. The map says it's a twenty-minute walk that way." She pointed down a street lined with unassuming brick buildings and buzzing neon signs.
Nathaniel didn't move. He was patting his pockets with a slow, doomed thoroughness, a ritual of impending disappointment. A look of profound inconvenience settled on his features, deeper than worry, more existential than panic. "A problem," he announced, as if diagnosing a flaw in the very fabric of spacetime.
Mabel's heart sank. "What kind of problem?"
"The financial kind. My wallet appears to have been vaporized. A casualty of the… structural disagreement." He sighed, as if the entire concept of currency was a personal affront invented solely to trouble him. "I suppose we walk."
"You don't have a card? Apple Pay? Anything?" She was already mentally calculating the walk, the weight of her suitcase, the setting sun.
"I had a card. It was in the wallet. As for apples, I fail to see how fruit is a viable medium of exchange. The barter system is a myth perpetuated by historians with too much time on their hands."
Quiet, Nathaniel thought back, the effort of the mental reprimand making him lean slightly against a lamppost. I'm economizing my kinetic energy. It's a sophisticated financial strategy.
Just then, a scruffy terrier mix, the color of dust and ashes, trotted past them, its tail a metronome of casual canine cheer. It carried a worn leather wallet in its mouth, holding it with the gentle care of a retriever carrying a prized fowl. The dog stopped directly in front of Nathaniel, dropped the wallet at his scuffed shoes, and looked up at him with an expectant pant, its tongue lolling.
Nathaniel stared at the wallet. He stared at the dog. The dog gave a happy little yip, as if confirming a delivery.
Without a hint of surprise, as if this were a standard municipal service he'd simply forgotten to schedule, Nathaniel bent over—the motion a masterpiece of conserved energy—and picked up the wallet. He flipped it open. Inside was a reasonable amount of cash and no ID, as if it had been pre-sanitized for his use.
"Huh," Mabel said, her eyes wide. She looked from the dog to the wallet to her uncle's utterly impassive face. "That's… that's really lucky." The word felt inadequate, a child's word for a moment that tasted like magic.
"Is it?" Nathaniel murmured, pulling out the bills and thumbing through them. He looked at the dog, his golden eyes devoid of gratitude, merely assessing. "Is there an owner to whom I should return this? There are procedures, I'm told. Tedious ones."
The dog cocked its head, as if considering the philosophical implications of property law, then simply turned and trotted away, disappearing into a grimy alley without a backward glance.
Nathaniel tucked the money into his pocket, the motion final. He let the empty wallet fall into a nearby public bin with a soft thud. "It seems our immediate logistical nightmare has been averted. The universe finds my poverty… tedious. It has a low tolerance for my administrative hassles."
Mabel looked from her uncle to the now-empty alley and back again. The "why" she had been asking on the bus now felt infinitely larger and weirder. It wasn't just about why he couldn't die, but why reality itself seemed to bend around his indolence, smoothing his path not out of kindness, but out of a kind of cosmic impatience. The world wasn't just happening to them, but was, in some strange and specific way, happening for him, working around his monumental passivity like water flowing around a stone. And the most terrifying part was that the stone—her uncle—couldn't be bothered to notice the current.
"So," she said slowly, deciding to file the entire miracle under 'Uncle Nate Things: Do Not Question, Just Adapt.' "We can, get a taxi?"
"A taxi," Nathaniel agreed, already scanning the street with a languid gaze, one hand raised in a half-hearted, almost accusatory attempt to hail a cab. "A wonderfully unambitious mode of transport. I approve. It requires no initiative beyond a raised limb."