[Bob the hobo] A Celestial Wars Spin-Off Part 1267

PART TWELVE-HUNDRED-AND-SIXTY-SEVEN

[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning]

Thursday

“We need to talk,” Larry said.

“I didn’t say anything I was told not to,” I argued defensively.

“How much have you figured out?”

“Dude, seriously? Are you trying to get me in trouble with Lady Col?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to put you at ease, because this right here?” He copied Robbie’s figure-eight gesture to take in all of me. “Isn’t going to fly much longer. And once they get Lucas in on the interrogation, you’ll fold like a first-time poker player holding two pairs.”

I had to guess that was a bad thing, but truthfully, I’d never played poker. I didn’t think now was the time to mention that. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. Lady Col told me to zip it, and I have no intention of getting on her bad side.” I waved in the direction Boyd and Robbie had taken. “If she muzzles people for swearing, what’s she likely to do to someone who really disobeys her?”

Larry looked at the bathroom doorway again. “Eechee,” he said aloud — for reasons I didn’t understand. It would’ve been easier for him to use telepathy. “Do you give Sam permission to tell me what he knows, so that I can help him navigate things going forward?”

I felt my eyes widen in surprise. “She can hear spoken words too?”

If the conversation is intended for me to hear, I hear it, sweetheart. And yes, of course you may speak with Larry about what you have deduced.

Larry waited another few seconds before nodding at nothing, and I knew—*I just knew—*it was because the orders he’d been given were different from mine.

Larry tilted his head at me and arched an eyebrow.

Fine, you jerk. I’ll start. “I know I’ve got another cousin around here somewhere — someone close enough for me to feel our connection due to years of proximity. I’ve ruled out everyone I know, and that leaves me back at square one, cycling through the same names like a stuck tyre looking for traction.”

I waved my left hand so he wouldn’t think I was deliberately flicking him on my right. “Odds are your other ward is this same cousin, and out of everyone here, I have a few possibilities, but they all have solid reasons they can’t be. And round and round I go.”

“Then perhaps you’re looking at this the wrong way.”

My turn to arch an eyebrow.

“Were you one of those kids who tore the house apart looking for Christmas presents?”

I snorted. “We never celebrated Christmas, and for my birthday, Grandpa let me spend the day doing whatever I wanted instead of hunting along the beach for things he could turn into trinkets to sell.”

“Kinda hard to wrap that up and hide it in the back of the cupboard,” Larry agreed with a quiet chuckle. “Out of curiosity, what sort of things did you do?”

“Not a lot,” I admitted. “I think the point was that I didn’t have to. If I wanted to spend the whole morning feeding Caribbean hermit crabs, I could. If I wanted to lie on the beach and let the shifting tide roll over my legs, I could. There was no guilt or expectation of me on that day.”

“Okay, well — hypothetically — if I said I had a brilliant surprise coming out before the next reunion, would you be the kind of person who’d kill yourself trying to figure out what it was, or would you wait until I was ready?”

“This is my family!” I argued. So much more important than a stupid present.

Larry didn’t answer straight away. He leaned back again, resting his elbow on the sofa arm while he considered me with the same unreadable look Dad wore whenever he tiptoed around the subject of Fisk and the supertrawlers. The kind that made me feel like I was neck-deep in a plan that he wasn’t quite ready to reveal.

I hated that look.

“Come on, man. I’m not trying to be a brat here,” I said, quieter this time. “I get that people need time. I get that some truths are bigger than others. But if they’re my family, that means I’m part of their life too. I should at least be allowed to care.”

Still, he said nothing, but something in his shoulders softened.

So, I pushed on. “I just… I know what it’s like to be the last to know something important. Everyone else in this whole place knew what the veil was except me. Knew about my divinity except me. Knew about realm-stepping, except me! Do you have any idea what it feels like to know everyone else got the memo and I didn’t even know there was one?” My throat tightened at the memory of all the times I’d sensed something shifting in our group and hadn’t understood why. “It sucks, and I wouldn’t wish that kind of isolation on anyone.”

Larry exhaled slowly through his nose. Not a sigh exactly, but close.

“And that’s why I want to help,” I added. “Because I get it.”

“I know. And trust me when I say this person is being well looked after, and they’ll lose their mind when they find out they’re as much a part of all this as you are. The problem is, they aren’t where they need to be to accept the news gracefully. This isn’t like your situation — where there was a void that needed to be filled. Or Robbie’s, where his father that he loved more than anything turned out to be even more impressive than either of them knew. This is different, and in order to accept the good, they must first face the bad. Decades of lies will be revealed that may have a catastrophic backlash. There’s a plan in place, and it’s better you don’t interfere with it.”

In other words, he still wasn’t going to tell me. So yeah, I might have folded my arms and thrown a teeny snit. “You sound like Uncle YHWH,” I grumbled, for if anyone liked to ‘plan’ it was him.

“Funny you should say that,” Larry smirked.

My eyes widened once more and this time my head spun to look at him. “Are you serious? Jesus has a sibling or a kid or something?”

“And now you’re digging again.”

I dragged my fingers through my hair. “Aw, come on! Even you have to admit that’s a huge problem, man! Christianity is everywhere—and just one whiff of Uncle YHWH’s powerbase and they’ll be swept up in a thrall like Dad—”

“Okay … calm down,” Larry said, sitting forward and grabbing my forearm. I hadn’t realised I’d lifted myself off the seat until he did. “Firstly, establishment feeds don’t flow through generations like that unless the originals rope them in to be worshipped too. And secondly, it’s not a cousin through YHWH directly.”

I sat back in the seat, then leaned my weight away from him to practically lie on the sofa’s arm, still watching him. “I’m so confused. How do you indirectly become a cousin?” And then I remembered Dad telling me about the marriage bracers—how blood and essence was shared between the married couples to give each full access to the other’s family line. That would make the in-laws cousins of sorts … No. That still didn’t work. They would still either be cousins, or not. No in-between.

“YHWH has influence over the situation, the same way if you painted a portrait, you would have influence over where the paint went on the page. It’s not through him that this individual is your cousin, and that’s all I’m going to say on that matter.”

I took that and internalised, dropping onto my bed with the built-in TV already up out of the base. “Okay, let’s play with this,” I said to the TV, and used it to begin running hypothetical scenarios where all the facts fit. That wasn’t to say I hadn’t listened to Larry, but if I could help in any way with this cousin before he found out about our connection, I was going to do it.

It took me a little while to circle back to the last thing Larry said. Just as a painter paints a portrait. Or a sculptor creates a statue. The key element is something is created. A construct. A divine construct. Somehow, someway, one of Uncle YHWH’s divine constructs is involved … enough that he has some manner of control over … what exactly? And if it was a construct, that definitely wouldn’t make them a divine cousin of mine.

Meaning the cousin part has to come in from somewhere else. But where?

I returned to the physical realm and turned my head into the arm of the chair. “My brain hurts,” I said, for it was like trying to untangle a real spiderweb one thread at a time, only to save it for later and find the whole thing re-stuck together again.

“Then perhaps you should turn it off and wait for things to happen as they’re supposed to.”

“But I want to help.”

“I know, and I understand why. I do. And I promise you, when the time comes, they will understand that too. Things are already moving in the right direction, Sam. Changes are happening which will allow the truth to reveal itself in time. You just need to be patient.”

“Would you be patient if you found out one of the humans you were hanging out with turned out to be your grandson?”

“Matters of pryde are different. And if I knew the Eechee and Eechen were already well aware of the situation, then yes, I would yield to their authority.”

“Would you be happy about it?”

Larry’s grin grew lazy as he sank back into his seat. “No one said you had to be happy about it, Sam.”

Asshat.

* * *

((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))

I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here

For more of my work, including WPs: r/Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.

FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!