New Teaser, 5/14/03

[Bob Schroeck]

In the absence of new material during my to-the-death battle with my writer's block, I'm ransacking my files of material for suitable, non-spoiler stuff to post. Here's one such scene, possibly one of the few places in the Walk where Doug acts exactly like a typical SI character. (And for that reason, it may not end up in the story at all... but enjoy it while it lasts. )
-- Bob
----------------------
"So why haven't you made an effort to cement your relationship
yet? I mean, you're dancing around her like you're expecting her
to reject you if you go too fast."

"Welll..."

I looked him straight in the blush. "You *are* afraid of going
too fast, aren't you?"

He ducked his head and grimaced. "Well, yeah."

"Trust me, Keiichi, that's not likely." I settled down on the
engawa. "Fortunately, she probably hasn't noticed that you're
taking an excessively long time to do anything."

Keiichi frowned. "What do you mean?"

I gestured vaguely towards where Belldandy was organizing half a
dozen songbirds into a chorus while she washed the dishes.

"Look at her, Keiichi. She looks to be all of what, nineteen, maybe
twenty years old?"

"Yeah..." he trailed off dreamily, and I smiled. Ah, young love.

"She isn't, you know. Fifteen hundred years ago, the Vikings
woshipped and feared her, and fifteen hundred years from now
someone else might well do the same. She's *immortal*, Keiichi.
A deity. And deities *don't* have the same sense of time as we
mortals, unless they've spent decades, centuries, in an avatar.
Your entire relationship -- even that bizarre 'childhood' meeting
of yours -- has all taken place in a blink of an eye for the Mind
that inhabits that body. She could wait for you to make the
first move until you die of old age and after, until the whole
damned planet crumbles into dust, and it would never occur to
her to get impatient -- because the Being that she expresses
simply does not live in Time the way you do."

Keiichi's eyes were wide. I guess he never thought that all
through before. I continued. "The upshot of this, though, is
that the Time mismatch thing works for you, too. You can't
go*too* fast, as far as I can figure -- all this is already
happening in an eyeblink for her; what's one more escalation of
the relationship?"

As his expression grew thoughtful, Keiichi nodded and stood up.
"You've given me a lot to consider, Doug-san," he said, bowing.
"If you'll excuse me...?"

"No problem," I replied, and he wandered off to think. As soon
as he was beyond earshot, I said, "You can come out now."

Urd slid out of a shadow in a manner that reminded me painfully
of Maggie. "That was a line of bull you just fed him, you know,"
she said reproachfully. "We're not inserted into this mortal
world wearing incorruptible vessels; we're actually living and
growing beings with a perfectly mortal sense of time."

I shrugged carelessly. "That's as may be. It doesn't matter.
The whole point was to give the kid a kick in the pants and jolt
him out of his passive acceptance of the status quo."

Urd scowled at me. "Yeah, well I've *tried* that and it didn't
work."

I snorted. "I've heard about your tries, Urd." I shifted my
voice to mimic Mr. Rogers. "Can you say 'bungle,' boys and
girls? Nice try." Back to my normal voice. "You went for the
hormones and it failed. I went straight for the heart. And his
own self-interest. Let's see if it works better."

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.