Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2132]

That surprised me. I would have preferred someone who knew how to use a gun—someone I would trust with a gun. … “I’m not going to be able to sleep until you do,” he said. “It’s that simple. So let’s both put our pain to good use.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2132

Note

The dash in “a gun—someone I would trust with a gun” repeats the phrase as a hinge, shifting the complaint from competence to trust. Mora’s reply answers the unspoken suspicion without naming it, and “put our pain to good use” recycles the narrator’s own private fact (she can’t sleep for pain) as the shared premise of the watch — the exchange is really a pair of adjacent, unacknowledged confessions.