Work Text:
At work, he is forthcoming, but not candid. Those he hunts can climb his family tree, if they are so inclined; after all, he reveals it with a flourish. But the tree is never the same size (and rarely the same species) twice. Relatives blossom and wither on its branches, as the case demands: the uncle who fails to play the bagpipes; the weightlifting nephew who does needlepoint. Sometimes, when necessity demands, he has no children.
At work, he is full of fictions. He saves telling the truth for story-time.
Well, almost. He pretends to his grandson that he reads the stories from a book. Stories about the battle of wits with the cocky villain, so smart he thinks that Plato was a moron. Stories about lists, and digressions, and getting it all in exactly the right order. Stories about the common man who married the most beautiful woman in the world.
(Trying to describe that beauty to the kid was a mistake, though. Better to have kept her, as it were, off-screen.)
And when his grandson wants to call it a night, he is happy to murmur: “as you wish”. He has always been a most obliging man.
Except when it comes to that last question.
FINIS