Anything But Numb

[Luna Moon]

Alec was a little disappointed that the warmer man had given her to the woman. Tau and Morgaine her head shouted back at her. She curled up in Morgaine\'s arms and started to taste her like she did Tau. Alec tasted her shirt, her arms, and reached up to her neck. She tasted different than him and she knew she didn\'t smell like an animal. Alec lay down in her hands now, winding around one of them comfortably and laying her head over the coil.

Alec stayed like that for a few minutes, but lost interest and slithered out of her arms and onto the floor. She slid across the floor to the television and reached up about two feet to taste the screen. If she wanted she could stand up half her length, but she refrained and tasted all the different smells and tastes. Alec started to go to the couch and slithered up on the armto rest. She looked toward the two people on the floor and yawned, her mouth opening up to reveal light pink gums and needle-sharp fangs. She popped her lower jaw apart and back together as she yawned, then fixed it as she closed her mouth.

[Existentially Odd]

Tau\'s head drew back and he pulled a startled face as the snake opened her mouth and... well, clicked her jaw.  "Oh," was all he could say as he watched the strange sight, wondering if that was some sort of warning or not.  He looked at Morgaine, expression puzzled.

"I do not know if that was a lead-up to her rattling, but perhaps we should leave her to it?" the Oligarch suggested, recalling the desire he\'d had from earlier as he made eye contact with the exotic singer.  "Maybe we should lock ourselves in my room and you can pass the time by singing to me?"

[Harlequin]

When she was young, Morgaine\'s parents had told her stories about the snakes of India– some of which spit deadly venom into the eyes of attackers. So, when Alec reared up and opened her mouth to that rather disturbing degree and exposed those wicked-looking fangs, Morgaine\'s first reaction was to raise a hand to shield her eyes. She quickly ran the raised hand through her hair, however, when it occurred to her a split second later that they weren\'t in India (not that she had ever been). It didn\'t stop her from feeling stupid, but it may have kept her from looking that way.

"Jesus, I thought she was gonna take my head off," mumbled the singer.

She tore her eyes away from the snake for a moment to look at his face after he finished speaking, single brow raised. How subtle! He\'d already heard her sing that night, but Alec hadn\'t. Part of her wanted to give something to the snake-woman in return for letting her see her as she was now – but she hadn\'t asked to see Alec, she\'d asked to see Tau, and now he wanted something in return. "I\'m down," she said mildly, "Should we leave a note, or something?" She didn\'t know the other shifter as well as Tau did, but she knew she\'d feel all kinds of ditched of she came out of her room to find that the two of them had vanished without so much as a how-do-you-do (as it were). She also wasn\'t used to caring about what other people thought. Or waiting. But perhaps it was better to err on the side of politeness when dealing with someone who could kill you in your sleep as easy (it seemed) as not. Not that she was planning on sleeping there. Was she?

[Luna Moon]

Alec\'s consiousness knew what they were saying and she slithered from the arm of the couch landing with a thud on the floor. She slithered to her room, gently flicking her tail along the way, making the small rattles on her tail audible, not in an agitated way but an aknowleging way. She slithered quietly into her room, her tongue wasn\'t flicking in and out but she knew the tastes.

Alec crawled into the room and into a small space by the bed to change. If anyone had followed her, Alec was more preoccupied with being shifted back into her hman form. She lay there and the cracks started, louder than the first time. She lay there completely motionless until all her organs and bones had come together and went back into their places. Alec opened her eyes, the only difference being they weren\'t slits anymore. She sat up, joints popping in and out of place as they realigned themselves. She gathered her clothes and put them on quickly, returning to the main room barely two minutes after she left. Alec smiled at the two people. "And just for a forewarning, I was yawning when I opened my mouth."

[Existentially Odd]

Unfortunately, though Alacer believed her transformation to have happened in a manner timely enough for her to be able to speak with the others when she exited her room, she would quickly realise she was wrong; by the time she spoke, Tau had led Morgaine into his room, handed her her guitar and flopped down on the edge of the bed so that she would have plenty of room to climb on as well.  He was laying on his right side, elbow bent so that he could rest his head in the palm of his right hand and laying as close to the left edge of the bed as he could (it was the side he always slept on) so that Morgaine had the majority of the space.

He\'d closed his bedroom door so the snake wouldn\'t chase in after them but had given no thought to the fact that the human could easily follow - he was too intent on hearing Morgaine\'s voice again (and perhaps asking why he\'d been given strange looks for clapping the performance he\'d seen earlier that day).  "What will you sing for me?" he asked eagerly, his expression both hopeful and innocent.  His long legs were slightly splayed and his feet were jiggling with excitement and anticipation as he watched his guest avidly. His left hand was toying absently with the hairs that went from his belly button to down beneath the waistband of his pants.

[Harlequin]

Morgaine felt a little bit bad about simply scurrying away into the privacy of Tau\'s room, but it was squashed soon enough but the weight of his simple, childish excitement.

It took a little bit of fiddling with the he plopped in her lap before her guitar was out and in it\'s place, with a pick between the singer\'s teeth and her nimble hands picking out simple nonsense melodies on it\'s strings, making infinitesimal adjustments to their tension with her other hand using the pegs at the top of the instrument.

"\'Ell ut oo–" she paused, taking the bright yellow pick out of her teeth which effectively stilled her hands, "Puah – well, what do you want to hear?" she repeated. The question was out of her mouth before her brain caught up with the fact that it seemed he didn\'t know any music, other than what he heard on TV. She\'d give him the chance to answer, anyway, in case she was wrong. Regardless, her mind began flipping through the extensive catalog of acoustic songs (and songs that were never meant to be acoustic, but she\'d gone ahead and done \'em, anyway).

[Existentially Odd]

"A song," he asserted solemnly, nodding his head to show that he meant what he said.  His glance at her fingers sliding over the frets of the instrument might give away the fact that he thought she was already performing for him, and that he didn\'t seem to like this show nearly as much as the one where she\'d sung words - he had no idea that instruments needed to be tuned.

Looking back at Morgaine\'s eyes, he smiled reassuringly, hoping he wasn\'t being too rude to ask her to stop playing... whatever it was she was playing and switch to something else.  "I do not care which one, I do not know any.  I liked the one you sang at the café, though," he finished brightly, hoping that that would give her some direction as far as playing went.  She could whip out \'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star\' about now and he would be enraptured and exclaim over her genius.

[Harlequin]

Sitting on the edge of the bed, she smiled back at him, and the last of the experimental notes faded into nothing. A song. Yes, she could do that. She would\'ve sung him the world, if that what he\'d wanted to hear. She said nothing of that, though; simply: "Cool."

Her hands moved automatically into position on the strings. A certain complex rhythm had sprung into her head, and the lyrics that were poised on her tongue matched nicely with what she felt that he might want to hear, and with her recent state of mind – but it didn\'t feel right. There was suddenly a beat nudging at the corners of her mind that she simply couldn\'t ignore. Lips pursed, she paused, and then, in a series of decisive motions, she tucked the pick under the strings and flipped the guitar onto it\'s face, so that the strings lay against her lap, and the back was exposed. She used this, instead, as her instrument.

The snap of her fingers set the rhythm, and for four beats, it was the only sound in the room

"Hustle
Most every day
\'Cause I don\'t have the good Lord
To Light my way

At first, only the snap of her fingers accompanied the rich sound of her voice, but after the first line, she elaborated on the beat, using her other hand to clap, and then both hands to strike the back of the guitar, creating a deep, resonating sound within the hollow body of the instrument. These three elements, alternating in an intricate pattern as complex as anything she could have done with the strings on the guitar were the underlying components on which she built her song. Rising above them was the sound of her voice, the knot which bound the piece together and made it something more.

At the first line of the next verse – and and every verse after it – her hands stilled, allowing her voice alone to fill the silence. They picked up immediately where they\'d left off, however, coaxing that powerful note from deep in the belly of her guitar.

"So I carry the Hustle
And every hour
Yeah, little by little
Sellin\' love for power

And I\'m steady grindin\'
Straight down to bone
I push it around all day
And when I come home

I find myself alone
No one is by my side
Yeah Jimmy and Good Lord
Come to tan my hide"

The words weren\'t entirely true – Morgaine was not alone, nor had she ever been, but her voice sang beyond the words, to the pain she felt at the disconnect she could feel looming within her tightly knit group. The fact that all the stress and confusion brought on by the world around them could either strengthen their bonds, or tear them apart at the seams. She didn\'t think about any of that as she sang, however, she simply sang it, and knew that it felt right.

"Tell me how all the Angels
Yeah they sing and cry
\'Cause I don\'t have the good Grace
of the watchful Eye

They all know that I\'m lonely
And it\'s in my veins
Yeah I push it on this town
\'Til they feel my pain

\'Til everyone is addicted
Yeah to my name
They forget all the rules
And I control the game

Now it\'s just me and Jimmy
walkin\' by my side
Yeah he told me that the Good Lord
Is to be found inside

So I let him deceive me
Like I did you
Well it\'s hard on my colors
When everything is blue

So I carry the hustle
And day by day
\'Cause I don\'t care that I\'m sinnin\'
In most every way

And I\'m stead grindin\'
Straight down to dust
\'Cause I don\'t got no Angels
Tellin\' me that I must

Go out and seek a savior
Jesus is a fuckin\' joke
If I took your Jehova
Then I\'d just be broken"

 
The word \'Jehova\' stood alone, drawn out beatifically, with silence surrounding it, and the next line was delivered as if it were a new verse. There was a jarring emphasis on the word \'broken\', and her voice filled an extra beat with it\'s jagged edges before the next verse began.

Yeah, heart and dreams
I just wanna be loved
I don\'t know what it means

So now it\'s me and the devil
Gonna take a ride
I look around and it\'s Jimmy
Standin\' at my side

\'Cause all along it was just me
Yeah Jimmy ain\'t there
But I\'m still drivin\'
And I\'m goin\' nowhere


At the end of this verse, the mood took her to finish with the song she\'d originally wanted to do, in place of finishing this one. So she last few verse out, and instead flipped the guitar over once again, and her fingers flew to the strings, barely breaking stride. The new melody she picked out was intricate, but more laid back and upbeat. The song she\'d been singing spoke to her future, and to her uncertainty. It spoke to the things she feared becoming, and to the parts of her that hurt the most.

This song spoke to her past, to her present, and to her cure.

The guitar spoke for her for a few moments as she let Tau get acclimated to the abrupt change. Her eyes had been closed, but now they opened, and caught his. Her furrowed brow unknit, and a smile touched her lips as she turned her eyes back to her hands and began to sing again.

"My name is volatile
I\'ve been this way a long while
I\'d surely like to rest
But the energy gets the best of me

And it\'s been a wild ride
I wouldn\'t change a minute
I can\'t slow down inside
I guess that\'s why I live it."

Here, the guitar became heavier, and her voice rested in it\'s place, though her head nodded, bringing her body with it. Once again, she was lost. At the beginning of the next verse, the guitar subsided slightly, without returning to the sedate pace it had begun with.

Ten years of mischief
Followed by week of thrift
I land on Earth\'s hard face
No legs could keep that pace
And through the rest I sift


The guitar picked up again, and this time, it did not subside as she began to sing again.

Is there ever a time when the state of sleeping willingly leaves my mind?

I\'m not used to it
You\'d think I\'d be by now
The ins the outs
The ups and the downs

I wanna make a mess
I wanna blow off stress
I wanna stoke the fire
Just creatures for a while
I wanna make a mess
I wanna blow off stress
I wanna stoke the fire
Just creatures, just creatures,

Comes and goes it comes and goes
Sometimes I go a little crazy
Sometimes I get a little out there
Sometimes I go a little crazy just like you, I do"


She looked up at him again as she sang the first verse of the chorus, and her smile broadened. Forgoing the rest of the song – which was not as pertinent, and definite overkill, as had a few elements she\'d skipped within the first verse –she opted to repeat the chorus, lowering her eyes back to the strings.

"I wanna make a mess
I wanna blow off stress
I wanna stoke the fire
Just creatures for a while

I wanna make a mess
I wanna blow off stress
I wanna stoke the fire
Just creatures, just creatures."


After the final line, she wrung three powerful chords from the guitar, and then let those fall into silence before she looked up again, breathing slightly harder than normal. It had only taken about five minutes, but she felt as though she\'d walked for miles.

[Existentially Odd]

Tau was feeling much the same way, though... well, truthfully, he wasn\'t sure what he was feeling.  He\'d stopped fidgetting entirely while Morgaine played and his mouth had literally dropped open in wonder, his eyes dancing a furious jig as they followed every move of her beautiful hands (as if attempting to catch them).

At some point he\'d sat up, his legs crossing tailor fashion and his hands curling ever-so-politely into the gap between his legs as he watched avidly, an awestruck audience of one.  though his body was, miraculously, still for once, inside him there was a rage of emotion and wonderment that bore no labelling.

It was so strong, he could taste it and it brought tears to his eyes, so powerful he was swept away though he hardly dared move, so vibrant his every blood vessel thrummed in a blur inside his skin - which seemed too taut, too hot, too wrong, too limiting.  The beat she made echoed in his heart, the words she spoke besieged his mind, the notes she hit bewitched him.  It was as if she\'d rapidly wound him with string so that she could pull him in any direction she liked, but injected him with a million ants that moved incessantly and raged through his body.

He didn\'t know whether to laugh or cry, to whoop with joy or mourn... something.  His body wouldn\'t lose the resonance of the guitar\'s pitch, the beauty of her tones, the frenetic energy of the very air around her.  She was transformed in a way so much more beautiful and meaningful than anything his mutant body could come up with he was humbled and afraid of the glory that was her.  She inspired and astounded him, moved him like he\'d never known he could be and left him aching when she stopped playing in a crescendo of sound he didn\'t have the intellect or training to understand but which his primal instincts exulted in.

"I... " he attempted to speak after a time, his voice sounding strained and foreign to his ears, who wanted nothing of his mundane tones now that they\'d been exposed to heaven.  He was mediocrity and banality in its every form and he didn\'t even feel worthy of speaking in her presence... but he had to try to express his appreciation for... that.  He had to do better than one word, though.

"I... think I understand what being human is, now," he told her with wonderment, for he\'d certainly just had a crash course in every emotion in the human spectrum... it bore no resemblance to the feline one whatsoever.  "I want to... run and jump and... be more, all at once!" he enthused, gathering steam as the words came to him, his blue eyes twinkling wildly at her.  "You are so gifted, I do not fully even know what I feel, only that I do and it... it makes me want to... to do!" he cried, unable to contain himself any longer.

He leapt very suddenly into the air in something akin to a starjump - a move commonly performed by children who reach the apex of a jump on a trampoline.  Unfortunately, though Tau\'s exuberance matched that of a child\'s, his body stature didn\'t and his uncontained bound of joy only resulted in him cracking his head on the ceiling above his bed then landing on his feet and falling down into a crouch, holding said bumped appendage.  "Ow," he said belateldy, laughing as he held ahand to the crown of his head and squinted over at Morgaine.  "Maybe I should have gone with my first instinct and punced on you, after all," he chuckled.

[Harlequin]

"I... think I understand what being human is, now,"

These words were the ones that lay at the core of every artist\'s dream; at least, every artist she\'d ever liked. Everything those artists did, the driving force behind every song, every brushstroke, every word on the page – was to inspire the kind of emotions that Tau was feeling.

Theirs was an impossible task to accomplish, as this was something that almost never happened. Everybody thought they already knew what it meant to be human, or – more often – they didn\'t think about it at all. But when it did happen that an artist inspired such a response, it meant they could rest. It meant they had done their part; they could put down their guitar, their brush, their pen, and sleep.

But the only thought Morgaine had, when her brain started out of the shocked silence his words had inspired, was this: You\'ve done good tonight, Morgaine. She closed her mouth, which had hung similarly open, and solemnly nodded her thanks, which were deeper than he could\'ve understood, and far beyond her capacity to express.

This happened just before he executed his daring jump toward the heavens, only to be stopped abruptly by the most mundane of ceilings. Surprised, the singer barely had the forethought to brace one foot against the floor and one hand against the headboard to avoid getting jostled off the bed when he came back to Earth. Though the sound of head meeting ceiling caused her to wince and grimace, she couldn\'t help but laugh – even as she set her guitar gingerly on the floor, and then scooted across the covers, toward him, "That probably would\'ve crushed my guitar, though, and you\'d be feeling a whole lot more pain right now, if that had happened." Morgaine had done exactly the same thing he\'d done innumerable times, in low-ceilinged motel rooms all across this glorious country, and the pain – while considerable – was nothing to what she\'d be doing to him if her instrument had been smashed, "Let me get a look at your head though; I\'m pretty sure they heard that in Kansas."

Alec had undoubtedly heard it, at any rate.

[Existentially Odd]

"I would never hurt your guitar!" Tau declared, obviously horrified by the prospect.  He also removed his hand from the top of his head and tilted it downward at a very extreme (awkward) angle so that Morgaine could inspect what he was certain was just a bruise.  Already, his mind was off the dull pain in his head and back on her music and the way it made him feel.

"Does all music change the way you feel inside, or is it just yours?  Why did the people at that café not clap for you when you finished singing?  Is it not polite to do that when someone performs for you?  And you were wonderful!  I loved that performance, too."

[Harlequin]

Morgaine shifted to her knees and craned over his bent head, doing her best to keep her tits from smooshing his face (because he was talking, and that would have been impolite). She managed to find a way while her deft fingers poked and prodded about until she found the tender spot, and quickly deduced that it was going to become an obnoxious goose egg at worst, and not the concussion she\'d feared. She listened intently to his questions – fired off so quickly that she had to laugh, "Hey, hey, slow down, buckaroo! Your head might be fine, but mine can\'t work that fast."

But her face was serious as she rocked back on her heels and then settled her rear on the comforter, legs splayed out before her, leaning back on her arms.  "Alright," she said thoughtfully. This was not going to be an easy task; She would have to remove herself from the things she was closest to, the elements that made up her life, and pick them apart – explain them as she would to a child. Morgaine didn\'t have much experience with children (in fact, she wasn\'t all too fond of them at all) but she\'d make a go of it it anyway.

Alright, the easy one first. Music. She\'d gone to classes for this. Taking a deep breath, she caught his eyes when she began to speak, and held them until she was done. This was vitally important, "First of all – Music – good music – is supposed to make you listen. Great music makes you feel. Sometimes it\'s not always important. Sometimes it just makes you want to dance – which isn\'t to say that dancing isn\'t important," She held up a finger, emphasizing her point, "\'Cause it is. But the difference between good and great music comes not from the songs, but from the performer. Two people can sing the same song, and only one of them will make the audience cry. The words are the same, but if the passion isn\'t there," She shook her head, and waved a dismissive hand, "That\'s all it is, is words." Morgaine realized that this may have sounded egotistical, but she knew she had the passion, and she knew that\'s what made her good, "If you don\'t use those words for everything they\'ve got, than the best you can hope for is good." She shrugged, "And that\'s okay. It keeps people interested, it\'s fun, it doesn\'t always have to mean something."

She looked away for a moment, when she answered his next question – the more difficult one, by far (but then, what question of emotion was easy?), "The cafe...nobody who mattered was supposed to see that." She sighed, and raised her  eyes, "That song was full of rage, and bitterness, and other scary stuff that I can\'t even begin to name – and if I had shown those things to the band, they would have been afraid. Of me. Of what was going to happen to us. And nothing good comes of fear like that.

"But after awhile those things start to build and build and build until you feel like you\'re going to break if you don\'t do something, and sometimes it gets so bad that you\'d rather feel nothing at all. That\'s where I was, earlier tonight," She took a deep breath, "Nobody clapped, because nobody wants to see that kind of pain. Most humans don\'t like strong emotion, especially if it\'s negative. It makes them uncomfortable, because they don\'t know how to fix it. And if your average Human can\'t fix something – anything – they ignore it. The people in the cafe went there for a night of soft acoustic and quiet conversation, and I went up there and laid myself out. I would\'ve gotten the same reaction if I\'d gotten up there and taken all my clothes off and shouted \'Look at me. I\'m a human being. I cry. I bleed. And right now I hurt inside, and I want you to pay attention.\' They knew they couldn\'t fix it, but I wouldn\'t let them ignore it.

"And then when you started clapping so enthusiastically, I got angry because well...I was angry to begin with, but also because you weren\'t supposed to enjoy it. You were supposed to feel what I felt, and what I felt was bad, bad, bad. And even if you didn\'t feel it, clapping is generally not the way to acknowledge the fact that somebody – even a stranger – is feeling that way. You were supposed to look away; to try to ignore it, to willingly forget that you had ever even seen me."

The singer smiled; an honest expression that looked natural on her face, but also like it was unused to being there, "But you didn\'t, and now I\'m glad."

She shrugged, and summarized, with a helpless, wry twist of the lips, "Feelings are complicated."

[Existentially Odd]

Tau wore an equally serious and earnest expression as Morgaine rationalised the artistry that was music for him.  Needless to say, he was swiftly educated.  Sure, when he\'d worked at the gas station after newly arriving in the city he\'d heard music, because there had always been something or other being piped through the shop\'s system, whether it be radio or one of the monotonous tracks they owned.

The thing was, he\'d never bothered listening that that stuff, it had been disembodied and surreal, just more strange noises for him to attribute to the alien landscape he was surrounded by and another thing to become acclimatised to.  It hadn\'t ever made him feel... it had barely even registered as being there, so how could it?

Despite those prior experiences, however, he didn\'t doubt his guest\'s assertions about what music was supposed to be, for he\'d just experienced the truth of it for himself.  As far as he could tell, it had to be the right music and, preferably, experienced live and up close for correct profound impact.  Morgaine was certainly in possession of plenty of passion though, so she was likely so good at what she did because of that reason more than simply because she was sitting not three feet away from him and could sing so well the hairs on the back of his neck stood up on certain notes.

"I\'m glad I\'m ignorant to some things," he told her stoically when she explained that it was \'the done thing\' to ignore the rawness of peoples\' pain and be silent if you wanted to be polite.  "Though I didn\'t want to make you mad.  Feelings are very complicated and mostly I do not get too worried by them, because cats do not have nearly the range that a human does," he told her ruefully, smiling in return.

He fell quiet momentarily then, looking into her eyes with a little half-smile tilting the left corner of his mouth upward.  "But then... you went and played for me and that was the first time I have tasted what it is to feel with such passion... and I\'m also sorry that I have not understood it until now, that I have missed out on it for this long.  I cannot identify all of them yet, but I know that the most important one is love.  Morgaine... have you been in love with someone?  Is it like music?" he queried innocently, a frown wrinkling his brow slightly.

[Harlequin]

Another pang of sadness hit the singer as he told her he was glad of his ignorance, but she could understand. When you had as little time as Tau did, the last thing you wanted to do was waste it worrying about feelings. She tried to do as little of that as possible, herself, preferring to just say what she felt and have done with it – but sometimes it just wasn\'t that easy.
 
But then he was looking into her eyes, and asking that question, and every other thought flew out of her head. Love. Love. God, but this guy was innocent. A pained expression came to her face, and she looked away –though for some reason it pained her to do so, "I\'ve never been in love, so I really don\'t know," she said flatly, in answer to his question. This was something most people were surprised to hear. "I\'m not the person to talk to about love,"
 
You could love him.
The thought stopped her, and she paused for a moment, unsure of where it had come from.
Shut up
You could –
Shut. Up.
But he\'s different
SHUT. UP.
 
"No romantic love, at least." She shook her head, to clear the cobwebs. Stuffing that train of though back into it\'s box, she sealed it up tight and shoved it back into it\'s mental corner. Tonight was strange night, "I know that I love my guitar, and my art, and my band," She went on, and looked up again, "And yeah, all of those are like music, in their own way, I suppose, though I\'ve never thought of it that way."
 
She laughed, not without an actual measure of humor, "Like I said, though. I\'m not the person to ask." Morgaine did not believe in romantic love. She believed in the love a man had for his guitar, his brother, his friend, his mother, and his child. The guitar was the only thing that was incapable of betraying him, and if he picked his friends right, they would stay with him until the day he died --  Morgaine didn\'t need anything else. Didn\'t want anything else. Romance was simply a biological imperative; a way to insure that the people who made a child would stay together long enough to raise it well, and when that went bad...it went bad.

[Existentially Odd]

The thumb of his right hand had begun tapping the tips of his fingers in turn, hitting along and then back, along and then back without him paying it too much attention - he had his \'thinking face\' back on again and was puzzling out the concept of there being different loves.  He was sitting on his butt but was slouched back against the headboard of the bed, hands resting negligently across his thighs and legs arranged so that they were more or less curled where Morgaine\'s weren\'t (but he didn\'t mind resting against her, for his awareness of personal space with someone he was fascinated with and wanted to be close to was nil).

Television had been his greatest educator in the realm of human emotions thus far and he was forever watching shows where men were grabbing at crying women and demanding 1) if they slept with him and 2) were they in love with him.  He rarely stayed long enough on one channel long enough to pinpoint who \'him\' was or if there would be a resolution to this dilemma, but he\'d certainly got it into his head that, for people, being \'in love\' was a common and desperate thing.

Morgaine saying that she\'d never been there surprised him, since she\'d just told him how she had a big range of emotions and that she liked to let them out on people who really didn\'t like that back, but he didn\'t disbelieve her.  What really stumped him was that there was a way to qualify love, that it could be directed at a guitar or art... but not at a person.  If she was capable of it, then it seemed stupid to aim something he got the distinct impression (from TV) was overwhelmingly wonderful at things that wouldn\'t return it.

"So... love can be different, depending what you love?" he mused, tilting his head as he offered up the summation of his thinking.  "And you only love things that cannot be in love with you?  Is that because you don\'t want to cry all the time?"

Like the people on TV do.  They\'re always sobbing over love - or being violent because of it.

"Why does love make people hurt?" he added hastily, thinking about the way television men seemed to punch things when the woman they loved told them yes, or they hurt the woman, depending on the show and the answer.  Tau meant the question physically, rather than emotionally, as per his perspective.