“Yeah, of course. That makes sense.” Jermaine laughs, an uncomfortable, nervous sound that’s not entirely without mirth. What could you do in the face of the absurdity of it all, other than laugh.

The rest of Jake’s story goes about the same, and Jermaine simply listens, save the occasional chuckle or shake of the head. He was doing his best to absorb it, wrap his head around it. It wasn’t the craziest thing in the world…although it was certainly up there. He’d grown up around stories of demons and magic and monsters. Sometimes around actual demons and magic and monsters. Their house was filled (had been filled) with scores of improbable artifacts, each with a story and history as strange as this one.

But it was different when the story brushed up against your own real life, shifting and refocusing everything you thought you knew into something stranger. Unfamiliar.

“So we’re…half brothers,” he finally says, as Jake’s whole story winds to a close. A strange thing to fixate on, especially given that it really didn’t matter. “Guess now we know why we’re so different.”

It was kind of a joke, kind of real. Either way, he wasn’t talking about the stretching…the conversation really had come full circle.