airships and waves

10 notes

Eventually, my grandfather said: ‘You must understand, this is one of those moments.’
‘What moments?’
‘One of those moments you keep to yourself,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘We’re in a war,’ he said. ‘The story of this war - dates, names, who started it, why - that belongs to everyone. Not just the people involved in it, but the people who write newspapers, politicians thousands of miles away, people who’ve never even been here or heard of it before. But something like this - this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. Only to us.’

12 notes

As for Sam, he had from the very start had ideas of his own, thank you very much. When he was five, Howard had read the Adam and Eve and serpent story to him. Sam was at that point obsessed with defining, in all narratives, who was “the bad person,” and so Howard asked him whether in that story there was a bad person.
Sam thought about it very gravely. “Yes,” he said, his face serious.
“And who was that?” asked Howard.
“God,” said Sam.