Now I may forge on with Paladin of Souls. And see if it says anything as useful about the habits (or possibly habituation) of demonkind as Ima Ichiko's 'You wouldn't expect someone to ask for hundred dollars in return for the loan of an eraser, but a youkai might. Their value system is just *different*.' That in a story where to my mind she comes perilously close to All A Youkai Wants is To Be Us. But I'm unfair. She's shown enough humans fascinated by what youkai have to offer- even if she never convinced me sniff- she might as well show a youkai fascinated by what the mortal world has to offer. I mean, something more than the casual amusement Akama finds there. And especially because the draw of the mortal world evidently isn't anything as cliched as love or friendship or
You know, sad but true, most people's conversation bores me. Except New Yorkers, who somehow manage to be fascinating or at least colourful about whatever they're talking about. But most people up here are like Japanese- lots of words expressing nothing but the fact that 'we two are in verbal touch.' This makes it odder that I can have perfectly satisfying conversations that go:
Her: Dan.
Me: Yes, I'm Jeanne.
Her: Mime.
Me: Yup, that's Jemima.
Her: Bee.
Me: And that's Bea.
Her: Eeyai.
Me: Eli's not here. He's sick today.
Her: Hoo.
Me: Hugh's over there.
Her: Eliot. (no, really)
Me: Aaron Elliot's sleeping.
And wait only for the day that Eeyai turns into Eeyai? to indicate that she's registered that he hasn't been here at all today and wonders where he's got to, not simply assumed that he's vanished suddenly the way her friends tend to. But yeah- if we talk different viewpoints, the 14 month old one where people and objects have a random and interrupted existence is pretty different.
